Why doesn't Soul Conduit allow me to exchange two opponents' life totals if I have Erebos, God of the Dead in play? I would think it would function somewhat like a replacement effect and simply cause the higher player to lose life until he's equal with the lower player, but apparently neither player's life total will change? Whassup wit dat?

There are some gatherer rulings about this:




As to why it works this way, I can't tell you anything other than "because wotc says so".

Right, I know how it works, it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever as I understand the rules. But I've only recently returned, so I'm a little rusty. I mean, I can still pay a ton of life to Erebos' ability then pull the ol' switcheroo, but I was hoping to capitalize on it as a political card, as well.

Life totals don't just become "X". If ever something says "players life becomes Y", it gets there by gaining or lowering life. That being said, this would imply that at the very least, one would still be able to lose life via Soul Conduit, but that is not the case. You cannot cheat Switcheroos. If something says "exchange", the exchange must be feasible at time of resolution or the spell/effect is countered.

Jelly has it right. Setting a life total to a particular value works by having the player gain or lose the appropriate amount of life. This means that Erebos's ability effectively reads "It is impossible for your opponents' life totals to go up."

Since it's impossible for your opponent's life total to go up, the part of the exchange where their life total would go up is also impossible, and if part of an exchange is impossible, all of it's impossible, so nothing happens.

We both know how it works, just the idea is that instead of making it life gain and loss, why couldn't you just switch it and not have it register as gain or loss.

Because good luck setting your life total to 43 from 9 and then convincing the new player sitting across from you that you didn't actually gain any life so their Kavu Predator doesn't get any bigger without them thinking you're a massive cheat.

Yeah, once I sat down and thought about it, if you consider each life total a 'target' and think of Soul Conduit as requiring two legal 'targets' to perform the switch it makes sense. Sort of. Kinda? I'd already known that changes in life total cause loss (or gain) of life (including damage [unless that changed]) which is exactly why I thought it would work as I wanted it to.

Oh well, the deck is running a lot of sacrifice engines anyway and produces stupid amounts of mana so it's not a huge deal to just get rid of Erebos temporarily while I play anti-kingmaker.

EDIT: Why couldn't they just print it as a replacement effect. ;_;

Keep in mind that if you want to exchange your life total of 2 for your opponent's life total of 20, you can still do that.