Eclipse + antimatter bug

[Tea is good]

I was playing a halfblood with a darkness deck and I played an eclipse. My pests were at 2/5. Halfblood antimatters two of my pests, then destroys my eclipse. Computer says ok minus 2 attack, and my pests are now at -4/4, no eclipse. Bug fix please?

[jmizzle7]

That's not a bug, that's just how antimatter works. It's a simple equation that multiplies the current attack of the creature by -1. After that, if your Eclipse is destroyed, the buff is removed, decreasing your Pest's stats by 2/1, leaving it at -4/4.

[smuglapse]

That's not a bug, that's just how antimatter works. It's a simple equation that multiplies the current attack of the creature by -1. After that, if your Eclipse is destroyed, the buff is removed, decreasing your Pest's stats by 2/1, leaving it at -4/4.

True, but Ouch.  That seems unintended.  If burrowed, they would go to -2/4. and then if Eclipse were replayed 0/5.  Then if they unburrowed what would happen?

[jmizzle7]

Eclipse adds to the creature's base attack, but doesn't change the base attack itself. Burrow, on the other hand, actually changes the creature's base attack. If you burrow a Pest with an Eclipse out, the burrow halves the base attack, not the 2 attack. So there is no way you can abuse any kind of weird timing loopholes by doing a burrow/Eclipse/unburrow trick to try to get a 4 damage Pest.

Antimatter takes the current attack, multiplies it by -1, and assigns that number to be the new base attack. So when your Pest becomes antimattered, its new base attack is -2, not zero. But when Eclipse is removed, your Pest loses another 2 attack, because the initial gain of 2 was lost due to antimatter.

[smuglapse]

Eclipse adds to the creature's base attack, but doesn't change the base attack itself. Burrow, on the other hand, actually changes the creature's base attack. If you burrow a Pest with an Eclipse out, the burrow halves the base attack, not the 2 attack. So there is no way you can abuse any kind of weird timing loopholes by doing a burrow/Eclipse/unburrow trick to try to get a 4 damage Pest.

Antimatter takes the current attack, multiplies it by -1, and assigns that number to be the new base attack. So when your Pest becomes antimattered, its new base attack is -2, not zero. But when Eclipse is removed, your Pest loses another 2 attack, because the initial gain of 2 was lost due to antimatter.

So, to answer my question, when you have these -4/4 creatures like Tea is good had at the time, then you burrow them, they would remain at -4/4.  And Eclipse would bring them back to -2/5 regardless if they're burrowed or not.  That makes sense, thanks.

EDIT: Ok, just tried it in the trainer because I'm crazy like that.  And the results were a little different than what I had predicted.

The -4/4 Pest became -2/4 when burrowed.  Adding Eclipse (while burrowed) made it 0/5.  Unburrowing it made it -2/5.
Antimattering the -4/4 Pest became 4/4.  Adding Eclipse made it 6/5.  Burrowing this made it 4/5.
Antimattering the 6/5 made it -6/5.  Exploding the Eclipse made it -8/4.  Burrowing this made it -4/4.

So you can keep on adding 4 attack to a death or darkness creature by playing Eclipse, using Antimatter, destroying Eclipse and then using Antimatter again.  Not that you'd want to, but you could.