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During a recent Game Night: Free For All game I played, the Boundless Elves player tried to cast a Thorn Lieutenant and the Glorious Combat player countered it with Counterspell.

The Thorn Lieutenant card says:

Whenever Thorn Lieutenant becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, create a 1/1 green Elf Warrior creature token.

Does the casting of the Thorn Lieutenant getting countered count as the Thorn Lieutenant becoming the target of a spell and trigger the creation of a 1/1 green Elf Warrior?

(We assumed not, and reasoned that the counterspell was actually targeting the creature spell that creates the Thorn Lieutenant and that this does not amount to targeting the Thorn Lieutenant himself, but we weren't certain if this was correct, nor how we would determine what the official rule on this is.)

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No, it does not. Similar to your reasoning, the ability written on Thorn Lieutenant only functions while Thorn Lieutenant is on the battlefield. From the Comprehensive Rules:

113.6. Abilities of an instant or sorcery spell usually function only while that object is on the stack. Abilities of all other objects usually function only while that object is on the battlefield. The exceptions are as follows:

...

The exceptions listed do not apply; they're mostly obvious things that would only make sense if they applied outside of the battlefield.

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  • You can also enchant a karmic guide with a animate dead as pro black only does something when on the battlefield
    – Neil Meyer
    Commented Aug 18 at 15:07
  • @NeilMeyer though the aura will fall off as soo as it reanimates the karmic guide, making you sacrifice it. You will at least get the etb and reanimate something else, which will resolve before you need to sac the guide.
    – Andrew
    Commented Sep 4 at 11:48

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