The use of faerie macabre

[elmarfud]

I've been playing full english breakfast for a month now and I have a small, but rather important problem.
I play 3 faerie macabres main and I was wondering if you could use the faerie's ability to remove itself from your graveyard.

for example:

I have a volrath's shapeshifter in play.

my graveyard:

1. dreadnought
2. mox ruby

In this situation, my shapeshifter would simply be a 0/1 because the top card is a mox. Can I discard faerie macabre to remove itself and the mox so my shapeshifter would become a dreadnought?

Thanks in advance

Elmar fud

[Eddie]

No, cause it is still in your hand when selecting targets.

Q: Faerie Macabre's ability indicates that you discard it to remove two cards from a graveyard. Is it possible to use the ability to remove another card and itself?

A: No. When you play this ability, the card has not yet left your hand when you choose the targeted cards in a graveyard. When you play a spell or ability, you choose all targets before you pay any costs. Keep in mind that you can target up to two target cards, so you can choose to target zero or one cards in a graveyard. Also, these two cards do not have to be in the same graveyard.

[elmarfud]

I thought it was possible, because the discarding is part of the cost. You also have to pay 2 life with a vampiric tutor or sacrifice an artifact with tinker before you can search your library. Since discarding comes first, I assumed the faerie was already in the graveyard and could be a legal target for it's own ability ...

elmar fud

[Harlequin]

Annouce spell/ability
Declare targets (and mode)
Calculate and lock costs
Pay Cost
Put on stack
-Priority-
Then -> make "choices" durring resolution.

Above is a basic summary of the steps for playing and paying for abilites.  Looking a spell like Thrive or an ability like Candlabra of Twanos, the number of targets is critical information to calculating the cost of the ability. 

This also explanes why you can:
- Have wasteland destroy itself
- Have Mog fanatic shoot itself
- Cast Rack and Rune if only your lotus and 1 other artifact is in play, and then use Lotus to pay for RnR. 

[Nefarias]

I thought it was possible, because the discarding is part of the cost. You also have to pay 2 life with a vampiric tutor or sacrifice an artifact with tinker before you can search your library.

Just wanted to note that while you are correct about Tinker, Vampiric Tutor's life loss is actually an effect of the spell, not part of the cost. So if Tinker is countered the artifact is still sacrificed, whereas if VT is countered you don't lose the life.

Oracle:
Search your library for a card, then shuffle your library and put that card on top of it. You lose 2 life.

[Dante]

I thought it was possible, because the discarding is part of the cost. You also have to pay 2 life with a vampiric tutor or sacrifice an artifact with tinker before you can search your library.

Just wanted to note that while you are correct about Tinker, Vampiric Tutor's life loss is actually an effect of the spell, not part of the cost. So if Tinker is countered the artifact is still sacrificed, whereas if VT is countered you don't lose the life.

Oracle:
Search your library for a card, then shuffle your library and put that card on top of it. You lose 2 life.

For those who weren't aware, the original wording of VT was different (check out a Visions VT), but was errata'd and changed in later printings to the wording mentioned above.  That's why many are confused by it.  Good example to always check the Oracle text, especially on older cards.