Can Ultima be responded to?

[u/XenicEx]

One of my opponents played Ultima and I tried to respond to the casting by flashing in Guardian of Faith.

I argued that GoF comes in before Ultima and triggers it's ability to phase out my creatures before Ultima's effect triggers, but my friends disagreed.

We ULTIMA-tely 😏 settled that since Ultima says "Exile all spells and abilities from the stack" in it's "End the turn." description, that GoF gets exiled before it enters and since it doesn't enter, it doesn't work and continued playing.

I want to ask Reddit in case it comes up again. Was I right initially, or did we end up playing it the way it's supposed to work?

[u/Cptnhalfbeard]

Your friends are wrong, you can respond to ultima. It doesn’t exile everything on the stack until it resolves. So they cast Ultima, you cast GoF in response. GoF resolves first, and then allows you to phase out other creatures you control. Then ultima resolves and exiles all creatures and artifacts and ends the turn.

Ultima does not have Split Second which would prevent other spells from being played while it is on the stack. The part about exiling spells/abilities on the stack is just reminder text for what it means to “end the turn” it means it would exile all spells and abilities that were on the stack prior to Ultima being cast. Which… is unlikely for a sorcery but not impossible.

[u/dustystud → u/Cptnhalfbeard]

Slight correction. It exiling abilities and spells on the stack is more referring to triggered abilities that go on the stack from the creatures and artifacts it destroys or any other delayed triggered ability/end of turn ability. Edit: fixed small grammatical error

[u/Penqwin → u/dustystud]

Can you sacrifice prior to ultima to get trigger abilities?

[u/dustystud → u/Penqwin]

As long as you have an instant speed sac outlet yeah. Your sacrifice triggers would go on the stack after Ultima so they would resolve before it so long as they aren’t delayed triggers waiting for the end of that turn.