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Liesa, Forgotten Archangel has a couple of abilities that respond to creatures dying:

Whenever another nontoken creature you control dies, return that card to its owner's hand at the beginning of the next end step.

If a creature an opponent controls would die, exile it instead.

If I control a Liesa and so does my opponent (perhaps they Clone mine), what happens to creatures that either player own when they die?

1 Answer 1

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If two players control a Liesa, all creatures that would die will be exiled.

Liesa's last two abilities are different kinds of abilities. The first one is a triggered ability, as indicated by the word "Whenever". When the triggering event happens, the ability is put on the stack, then as it resolves, the effect happens.

The second ability is a replacement effect, indicated by the word "instead". These modify events as they happen, replacing them with a different event.

In this particular case, any creature that would die is instead exiled, which means that it never actually dies, so the triggered ability doesn't trigger at all.

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  • Would die is why the card is semantically perfect and was throwing me for a loop until I realized why they worded it that way. Dead means they're in a graveyard, which never gets a chance to happen. - "what happens to creatures that either player own [once they're on their way to the graveyard]?" (not 'die'). They get intercepted by an exile command. +1
    – Mazura
    Jan 21, 2022 at 10:30
  • That's just how replacement effects are worded. "Die" is an event, short for "moves from the battlefield to the graveyard". The replacement effect sees that that would happen and replaces it with a different action, moving from the battlefield to exile.
    – murgatroid99
    Jan 21, 2022 at 10:32

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