I know that if you only have one land and you cast Sea Drake then you get to keep your one land because of 603.3d
Why isn't this the same for Lord of Tresserhorn? The card specifically says "two creatures" vs. Sea Drake's "two lands" so I would assume if you only have the lord he wouldn't sac to him self but that's not how it works. Why? How are these different?
As a bonus question, are there any other cards similar to Sea Drake that you can get away with paying the cost if you don't have enough of something?
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Because they don't say the same thing. Lord of Tresserhorn says "...two creatures...". Sea Drake on the other hand says "...two target lands...". That "target" makes a wold of difference. When an ability resolves, you do as much as possible so when Lord of Tresserhorn's ability resolves and only sees the Lord on the battlefield, you will sacrifice it to the "two creatures" clause as you are doing as much of that as you can.
Sea Drake however is different. Since it has to target two lands you control, if you only have 1 land the trigger will be removed from the stack for a lack of legal targets. It will never even resolve so there is nothing to do.
Also worth noting, there is no "unless" clause on Sea Drake due to archaic wording. I am not aware of anything like it that doesn't also have an "unless" clause (meaning if you don't do what it says, do something else).
603.3d references 601.2c-d. This has to do with the choosing of targets. Lord of Tresserhorn does not target anything but an opponent. So the only way that the ability is removed from the stack is if all of your opponents have shroud/hexproof.
As for the rest of the ability, assuming you can target your opponent:
609.3. If an effect attempts to do something impossible, it does only as much as possible.
Example: If a player is holding only one card, an effect that reads “Discard two cards”
causes him or her to discard only that card. If an effect moves cards out of the library (as
opposed to drawing), it moves as many as possible.
So you sacrifice as many creatures as possible if you have less than 2. The reason Sea Drake works this way is because the ability needs to assign all of its targets as it is put on the stack. It's basically a leftover oddity of adding oracle text to portal cards.
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Why isn't this the same for Lord of Tresserhorn? The card specifically says "two creatures" vs. Sea Drake's "two lands" so I would assume if you only have the lord he wouldn't sac to him self but that's not how it works. Why? How are these different?
As a bonus question, are there any other cards similar to Sea Drake that you can get away with paying the cost if you don't have enough of something?
Sea Drake however is different. Since it has to target two lands you control, if you only have 1 land the trigger will be removed from the stack for a lack of legal targets. It will never even resolve so there is nothing to do.
Also worth noting, there is no "unless" clause on Sea Drake due to archaic wording. I am not aware of anything like it that doesn't also have an "unless" clause (meaning if you don't do what it says, do something else).
As for the rest of the ability, assuming you can target your opponent:
So you sacrifice as many creatures as possible if you have less than 2. The reason Sea Drake works this way is because the ability needs to assign all of its targets as it is put on the stack. It's basically a leftover oddity of adding oracle text to portal cards.