Yeah I know it's old. Here's the question. We were playing and the question came up about Owen Mercer and Total Anarchy.

Owen Mercer
Whenever an Outsiders character you control becomes stunned during the combat phase, you may return it to its owner's hand.

Total Anarchy
Whenever a character with a cost of 3 or less becomes stunned, KO that character.

Our question was, even if the character bounces to the hand, does he still have to KO it? That's my thinking. His thinking is that it depends on whose initiative it is: my initiative, his resolves first and he bounces back the character and Anarchy fizzles; his initiative, Anarchy resolves first and the character is KO'ed.

you.can.chain.to;total.anarchy's,effect,with,an,effect,and,bounce...either,initiative,just,like,fata lity(space,bar,is,busted,and,haven't,fixed,it...Ilovemykids.lol)

Owen Mercer's effect says "may," which means you can wait until Total Anarchy's effect goes on the chain before chaining to it. Since the character is no longer in play (essentially doesnt exist for Total Anarchy), the effect has no legal target and 'fizzles.'

this is wrong.

it depends on who the Primary Player is (the player who's step it is, or if you are not in a current player's step (such as the draw phase or recovery phase), it is the player who controls the initiative.)

the primary player's effect will be put on to the chain first, then the non-primary player's. so since the chain resolves backwards, the non-primary players effect will trump. unless one player controls both Owen and T/A in which case he will be able to decide which order the effects are placed on the chain.

for example. if the player who controls the T/A (P1 from here on out) attacks into a character that the player that controls Owen (P2 from here on out), then the T/A will go on the chain, then Owen's effect, meaning that Owen's effect will resolve first returning the character to hand.

now to answer the question you actually asked, once the character returns to hand it is not considered the same card that had become stunned, so it will not be KO'd.

TOG is correct. This isn't Yu-Gi-Oh... the timing is dependent solely on matter of initiative. If Owen's controller has the initiative, that bounce effect triggers first, followed by the opponent's KO'ing effect. Therefore, the KO'ing effect resolves first, and that means it is impossible for Owen to allow you to recover your stunned character unless you have some sort of effect that prevents the stunned character from being KO'd, such as those in the newer Underworld spread.

so what there say is...

Who's ever has the initiative.. gets to decided if the card is KO'd OR sent back to the owners hand.

I've went over this with Thanos and Worldship at the CC few months ago.

That's not how it goes.

It has to do with who has priority.

In the case of an attack, the person attacking would have priority first.

In an 'out of combat' stun situation, I believe it goes to whoever has initiative, or it may be the person who has the attack step ... not sure.

However, unless someone controls both effects, there is no choice in the matter. Instead, the person that has priority puts their effect on the chain first, then the other person puts their effect on the chain and they resolve in the opposite order. So whoever has priority will get their effect last. The person without priority 'wins' ... but they don't get to choose which effect goes off, they just get to resolve their effect first.

Togorian's post is right on about how the effects get ordered.

If you're in a particular player's step, then it doesn't matter who has initiative this turn---it's only based on initiative if you're in a shared moment of the turn.

It's not based on priority either, technically, since no one has priority yet when you're figuring out the order of the triggered effects. First the triggered effects get placed, and then one of the players gets priority---and that player isn't always the primary player.

And yeah, if one player has multiple waiting triggered effects, he gets to decide the order that his effects go on the chain. But Player 1 doesn't get to decide the order of any of Player 2's effects.

Exactly, who has the initiative has first to act. Can chose what effect comes first, if they want to

Not really, though. Let's assume that we're dealing with a regular ATK/DEF stun, and that Total Anarchy is not in the Outsiders player's row.

If Owen is attacking a character, then he gets KO'd before he can return himself. If Owen is being attacked, then he has a chance to return himself before he'd be KO'd. None of this is based on initiative, it's just based on whose attack step we're in. And since the two effects are controlled by different players, neither of them has any choice in the order.

If Owen was stunned in that shared moment of the combat phase, before either player's attack step started, we'd need to know who had initiative. But in player X's personal steps, he's the primary player, even if he doesn't have initiative that turn.

So I was wrong and my friend was right? Cool, thanks.

this just makes my head hurt all over again. i believe i went through this already with magic