Yawgmoth's Will question

[LoA]

A situation came up today when I was playing Hyperion, I'm pretty sure of the answer after some thought, but I just wanted to be 100% sure.

You cast Yawgmoth's Will and have a Force of Will (but no other blue cards) in-hand.  Will resolves.  As you begin to play stuff from your graveyard, your opponent casts something.  Can you pitch a blue card in your graveyard to the Force of Will or is it still in a separate zone?

[Shock Wave]

A situation came up today when I was playing Hyperion, I'm pretty sure of the answer after some thought, but I just wanted to be 100% sure.

You cast Yawgmoth's Will and have a Force of Will (but no other blue cards) in-hand.  Will resolves.  As you begin to play stuff from your graveyard, your opponent casts something.  Can you pitch a blue card in your graveyard to the Force of Will or is it still in a separate zone?

Nope, you can't discard a card that is not in your hand. Similiarly, you can't cycle a card that is in your graveyard after having cast Will. However, if you cast Will and have FOW in your graveyard, you can pitch a card in your hand to play the FOW (although I assume you knew that much).

[Matt]

No. Force of Will requires you to remove a blue card from your hand; cards in your graveyard aren't in your hand. Yawgmoth's Will let's you play cards in your graveyard as though they were in your hand, but play is a special term in Magic emcompassing both the casting of a spell and the playing of a land. It does NOT mean "act as though cards in your graveyard are in your hand." It very specifically means "announcing a spell, choosing modes, paying costs, and putting it on the stack."

For all practical purposes, you can pretend Yawgmoth's Will says "You may cast spells in your graveyard as though they were in your hand. You may play lands in your graveyard as though they were in your hand." The distinction between "play" and "cast" is usually enough to remember how it works.

[Necrologia]

I thought cast wasn't a valid magic term anymore, that it'd been replaced by play.

[jpmeyer]

That's why he said "pretend"

[Necrologia]

I still think trying to use play and cast as different terms makes the card more confusing, not less. If you're required to discard a card from your hand, the cards in your graveyard simply don't qualify - they aren't in your hand. That's about all the explaination required.

[Matt]

The got rid of 'cast' so they could use the same verb for spells as for lands. The 'discard' thing may be all this particular question asked but if you pretend like I said, it also answers virtually every other question that ever comes up re:Will, like "If I have an Illusionary Mask in play, can I Mask a dead Naught?" and "Can I cycle cards from my graveyard?" and so on.