DirkGently wrote: ↑7 months ago
edit: okay, so possibly this does not work:
500.3. A step in which no players receive priority ends when all specified actions that take place during that step are completed. The only such steps are the untap step (see rule 502) and certain cleanup steps (see rule 514).
So that would imply that, while the wurm will be on the stack during the untap step, it will remain on the stack while the game proceeds to upkeep, and then players will get priority.
This is a very interesting setup with one massive caveat I will mention at the end. I would argue that the rules don't inherently stop it from working. But we can break it down. Before that, I would mention that, unless I missed something, this combo does take two turn cycles to work as it is written. The Angel turned Undiscovered Paradise can't tap for mana in the opponent's end step right away since it doesn't have haste. As long as it has haste from something, this can be done in one turn cycle. Otherwise, it would have to wait until your next turn after the Angel is cast to really work.
Anyway, let's dive in. To start with, the rule mentioned in the thread is 502.4:
502.4. No player receives priority during the untap step, so no spells can be cast or resolve and no abilities can be activated or resolve. Any ability that triggers during this step will be held until the next time a player would receive priority, which is usually during the upkeep step. (See rule 503, "Upkeep Step.")
Neither Mana Abilities and Panglacial Wurm require priority. Wurm doesn't because of how it functions so it can't require priority which means it doesn't run afoul of this rule. Mana abilities are much the same. They also don't require priority as long as you are in the middle of casting a spell or activating an ability that requires a mana payment. The comment in the rule about "no spells can be cast" is meant to be a clarification on the priority statement not a rule in itself. Which means that this rule doesn't really apply to this situation in any meaningful way as it isn't actually forbidding spells from being cast in the Untap. Just saying that, by default, you can't simply because you don't have priority. The combo is manufacturing a way to ensure the Wurm can be cast which seems just fine.
So, I think a good thing to recognize is that everything listed in the thread beyond the Wurm interaction does seem to work (assuming haste and/or doing this over multiple turns). The Angel interaction stops the life loss from 2 life so the player is still at 2 life as they try to gain 3 life and then draw cards and then search. So, I can't see anything in the "base" combo that doesn't function right.
So, obviously, the question is whether the Wurm makes this work and I believe it does. The Wurm is saying it can be cast while searching and you are searching your library. So that checks out and Wurm allows that to happen. In order to be able to cast the Wurm, you need to pay for it which Pili-Pala allows for. Basically, if we remove the Untap step from the situation, this is hardly any different than any other scenario with Wurm. Something is happening when you don't get priority, Wurm says it can be cast, Pili-Pala then allows the generation of mana, so that works just fine.
Adding in the Untap step doesn't change much. It is really just another scenario where you don't get priority but any time the Wurm is involved, this doesn't matter since you never have priority with the Wurm being cast. Which, to me, means that this scenario is fully functional with the way the rules are written. At least, there doesn't seem to be anything expressly forbidding this from happening mostly because the rules rarely forbid things. They are written to say what can happen and combining all of these things allows this to happen.
At the end of all this, I can't find anything that suggests this cannot be done as written. And Dirk is right that the primary reason this works this way is because everything is replacement effects with no triggers. Dirk is also right that the Wurm will be on the stack in the Upkeep. But the scenario allows putting it onto the stack in the untap which allows for the generation of mana and everything else. Of course, at the end of this, the triggers from the Calendar also go onto the stack in the Upkeep where someone can respond to blow it up before those triggers resolve.
Now, with all of that being said, I will offer the same caveat that I would have offered in the Judge Chat whenever a Panglacial Wurm question came up: scenarios with Panglacial Wurm aren't really really scenarios and aren't really worth diving into too deeply to get a real answer. They are theorycrafting and hypothetical and this is no different. A ton of convoluted scenarios rely on it solely because it doesn't work in the rules right but none would ever actually happen in a real game, this one included.
