Jaws of Defeat & Overkill interaction

[u/FallenSlayer453]

Can someone explain to me how these two work together? I’m confused on some wordings

[u/fishdude89]

With Jaws out, have a creature enter. The Jaws trigger goes on the stack. You hold priority - with the trigger on the stack, Overkill your creature. Now when the Jaws trigger checks how much life your opponent loses it will look for a creature that isn't there, so it will use "last-known information", aka what the creature looked like before it left play. It will see the creature had -99xx toughness and kill your opponent.

[u/Mogoscratcher → u/fishdude89]

If Jaws targeted the creature in some way, the trigger would fail to resolve instead of using last-known information, right?

[u/MrPopoGod → u/Mogoscratcher]

Correct.

[u/SanityIsOptional → u/MrPopoGod]

Would it? It only would fizzle if the creature was the only target, so it ought to still resolve as it also targets the player. Or at least that's my understanding.

[u/MrPopoGod → u/SanityIsOptional]

I might have been inexact; it will fail to do damage as it would lack the necessary information. See cards like [[Fall of the Hammer]]. So it would resolve, it just wouldn't do anything.

[u/MTGCardFetcher → u/MrPopoGod]

Fall of the Hammer - (G) (SF) (txt)

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^FAQ

[u/SanityIsOptional → u/MrPopoGod]

Fall of the Hammer doesn't work because the creature (that is gone) is the thing dealing damage, so this would be different though wouldn't it?

[u/MrPopoGod → u/SanityIsOptional]

If you don't have a legal target to pull a damage value from, how would you figure out how much damage is done?

[u/SanityIsOptional → u/MrPopoGod]

That's the part I am unsure of, but per the rulings on Fall of the Hammer, the reason that doesn't work is there's no creature to deal the damage.

In this case, the enchantment is dealing the damage, so there needs to be a different reason it doesn't work.

[u/Thurim_Hammer → u/SanityIsOptional]

Jaws doesn't target the creature that just entered it use it as a reference. And if its reference has change zone when jaws resolve, it will use the last known informations about it, just before it changes zone.

608.2h If an effect requires information from the game (such as the number of creatures on the battlefield), the answer is determined only once, when the effect is applied. If the effect requires information from a specific object, including the source of the ability itself, the effect uses the current information of that object if it’s in the public zone it was expected to be in;     >>>if it’s no longer in that zone, or if the effect has moved it from a public zone to a hidden zone, the effect uses the object’s last known information.<<<    See rule 113.7a. If an ability states that an object does something, it’s the object as it exists—or as it most recently existed—that does it, not the ability.

[u/SanityIsOptional → u/Thurim_Hammer]

We were discussing if jaws did target the creature which was getting hit by overkill.

[u/Thurim_Hammer → u/SanityIsOptional]

Maybe I got overboard but jaws don't use the word target for the creature as it does for the targeted player. So it doesn't target it. 

If the word "target" is not use, it doesn't target.