I think I have answered someone wrong about this on the IRC judge chat today. If you mutate onto a face-down creature with Morph and put the new creature (the card with mutate, e.g. Otrimi, the Ever-Playful) on top, making the merged permanent a face-up one, you end up changing the status of the face-down card to face-up, so the card is actually now face-up as part of the merged permanent, and so has its face-up abilities, right? But because of this rule:
721.2e. If a merged permanent contains face-up and face-down components, the permanent's status is determined by its topmost component. If a face-down permanent becomes a face-up permanent as a result of an object merging with it, other effects don't count it as being turned face up.
... abilities that care about it turning face-up don't work, with the logic that the merged permanent didn't get turned face-up because its topmost card always was face-up. With Gift of Doom, the result would be that it would be face-up as a part of the merged permanent, but not have been considered to be turned face-up, so its replacement effect wouldn't happen, it would stay in the pile and it would have, despite its face-up text being part of the pile, no effect at all because the merged permanent is not enchanting anything. Correct?
I'm a former judge (lapsed), who keeps up to date on rules and policy. Keep in mind that judges' answers aren't necessarily more valid than those of people who aren't judges; what matters is we can quote the rules to back up our answers. When in doubt, ask for such quotes.
No. You are reading slightly too much into that rule. That rule just explains that if you have a face down permanent (Gift of Doom) and put something on top of it, the permanent as a whole (that is, the merged permanent) is now face up. However, each component remains the same as what it was. The face down Gift of Doom remains face down in the pile and thus contributes nothing to the pile as it is since as a face down component, it has no abilities.
In fact, that rule clarifies that the pile can still contain face up and face down components. It is just stating that the permanent didn't become face up so things like Trail of Mystery won't trigger.
Ok, phew, so I had actually answered correctly, albeit kind of on instinct. Thank you.
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I'm a former judge (lapsed), who keeps up to date on rules and policy. Keep in mind that judges' answers aren't necessarily more valid than those of people who aren't judges; what matters is we can quote the rules to back up our answers. When in doubt, ask for such quotes.
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In fact, that rule clarifies that the pile can still contain face up and face down components. It is just stating that the permanent didn't become face up so things like Trail of Mystery won't trigger.