So I recently played with a friend and he had a Jace, the Mind Sculptor in play and only 1 card left in his deck. He went on to use Jace's 0 ability drawing him three cards trying to put 2 back giving him extra turns to try and win. Now from my understanding drawing a card at any time without a card to draw loses you the game. Was I correct here or can you prolong the game by constantly putting 2 back ?
Nope. You are correct. They draw 1 card and fail to draw the other 2 since there are no cards left in their library. They finish the ability and put 2 cards back and then State Based Actions are checked and the game sees they tried to draw a card from an empty library (which happened when they tried to draw cards 2 and 3) and they lose. It doesn't matter that their library now has 2 cards in it; they attempted to draw from an empty library so they will lose.
He didn't hose me, I told him the same thing and he was upset but ultimately agreed to disagree. This post is just for me to show him the ruling on this.
He was dead. As soon as you try to draw and you can't, you're dead. So you never get to the "put two back" part. Sorry, your friend hosed you.
This is incorrect. The ability will fully resolve, because you don't lose when trying to draw from an empty library, you lose when the game checks state based actions and sees that you have attempted to draw a card from an empty library since the last time SBA were checked. SBA aren't checked during the resolution of a spell/ability, but afterwards.
704.5. The state-based actions are as follows:
[...]
704.5b If a player attempted to draw a card from a library with no cards in it since the last time state-based actions were checked, that player loses the game.
[...]
This is incorrect. The ability will fully resolve, because you don't lose when trying to draw from an empty library, you lose when the game checks state based actions and sees that you have attempted to draw a card from an empty library since the last time SBA were checked. SBA aren't checked during the resolution of a spell/ability, but afterwards.
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