Morgul Horse and Nazgul Events

[zarathustra]

This card allows you to place a tapped Nazgul permanent-event back into your hand instead of discarding it.

Tapping a Nazgûl to bring cards in from the sideboard does not turn the Nazgûl into a short-event. It is discarded immediately upon declaration.

OK, the question has arisen whether you can use Morgul-horse to return a nazgul to your hand if you tap the nazgul to sideboard rather than for the use printed on its text. The rule that people brought to my attention is the one regarding what happens to the nazgul when used in this way: he gets discarded. So it would seem there is nothing for MH to target, and thus it would not be playable. Seems good so far.

But...

If a Nazgûl is tapped to become a short-event as printed on its card, it turns into a short-event upon declaration. At this point, the Nazgûl is a short-event just as if had been played as such from your hand.

So the MH should not be able to target your normally tapped nazgul either! They are not permanent events, as required by MH; they're short events.

This leaves us the unsavory option of ruling that MH can never be used to return a nazgul to your hand. Yuk.

I think we need to read "tapped nazgul perm event" to identify the type of nazgul you may return. That is to say, maybe ICE was planning at some point to introduce non-event nazgul cards. They wanted to rule out the ability to return these to your hand with MH. If this is right, then "nazgul perm" in the text of MH just identifies which kind of nazgul you can fetch: the kind that is a perm event. So it will indeed be impossible to get a nazgul used to sb, since nazgul card will no longer be on the table and thus not be a valid target, but it will be possible to get a nazgul tapped for its normal use.

Make sense?

[miguel]

There's also an entry in the CRF for Morgul-horse:

Morgul-horse
To bring a Nazgûl permanent-event back into your hand, Morgul-horse must be declared after tapping the Nazgûl is declared and before it resolves.

I think it's very reasonable to assume that Morgul-horse can target all the tapped nazgul events which remain in play until they are resolved, as Mark presented. Morgul-horse is also a card from the first set, so the wording might be a little off just because of that.

[zarathustra]

Looks like this one is done already, then.

We read "tapped nazgul permanent event" in the text of Morgul-horse to identify the type of nazgul you may return to your hand. That is to say, maybe ICE was planning at some point to introduce non-event nazgul cards. They wanted to rule out the ability to return these to your hand with Morgul-horse. Thus "nazgul permanent event" in the text of Morgul-horse just identifies which kind of nazgul you can fetch: the kind that is a permanent event. So it will indeed be impossible to get a nazgul used to sideboard a hazard, since nazgul card will no longer be on the table and thus not be a valid target, but it will be possible to get a nazgul tapped for its normal use.

[miguel]

Hmm. Imho that wasn't as clear as it could be, and I don't like to speculate what ICE might have had in mind. How about this:

Morgul-horse refers to Nazgul permanent-events which were tapped. Therefore it can target and bring back to hand any Nazgul which started out as a permanent-event and was tapped. Morgul-horse cannot however bring back a Nazgul tapped in order to sideboard because that Nazgul was discarded upon declaration and therefore is not a valid target for Morgul-horse.

[zarathustra]

Aye.

[zarathustra]

Published, done, locked.