Sprout

Sprout モヤシ (Moyashi)

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Sprout is a Destruction Replacement effect that returns a creature to its owners hand instead of being destroyed.

Details

It is mostly seen in the Water Civilization, but is also seen in the Light or Darkness civilizations.

3 Aqua Soldier
Water / Creature Liquid People 1000
■ When this creature would be destroyed, return it to your hand instead.

4 Chilias, the Oracle
Light / Creature Light Bringer 2500
■ When this creature would be destroyed, put it into your hand instead.

4 Gigastand
Darkness / Creature Chimera 3000
■ When this creature would be put into your graveyard from the battle zone, you may return it to your hand instead. If you do, discard a card from your hand.

It was first represented by Aqua Soldier.

Even if they attacked and destroyed, you can continually return to your hand instead of being destroyed.

In addition, while is resistant to removal, it is weak against Card Discard and other removal that puts it into other zones such as Miraculous Snare.

Some creatures with this ability have others such as Blocker and Shield Trigger; Aqua Skydiver, or on Jasper, the Stubborn used in Jack Valdy beatdown.

Rules

Sprout is a kind of Substitution Effect.
- When the creature is destroyed by Ganveet Blaster, it is returned to the hand after the ability of spell resolves. Therefore, it can be discarded by the second ability.
- If it would be destroyed by a substitution effect such as Skull Moon, the Enlightened or Rumble Lecter, Terror Awakened, it can't be used as you can't apply 2 substitution effects to the same event.
When the effect is used, no creature is considered to be destroyed, so the ability of Super Trash Train, Fuuma Devil won't trigger, as well as any other Put Into Graveyard abilities. These cards require them to actually go into the graveyard.
If you destroy a creature that has a sprout ability by a card such as Zabi Mira, the Reviving Shaman or Dark Soul Creation, the cards are returned to your hand and not considered to be destroyed. However, their abilities trigger as it was used as a cost, even though the event was replaced by a substitution effect.
Crystal Jouster and Trigram, Zero-order Dragon Formula are evolution creatures with the spout ability. When they would be destroyed, the Evolution Source is also returned to your hand.

When an evolution evolution is destroyed, the remainder of the stack of cards is also put into the graveyard. Therefore, when a removal card such as Pouch Shell or Hero Mystery, Burning Galaxy only removes the top card of an evolution creatures, the sprout ability doesn't trigger. The evolution source remains in the battle zone and the evolution creatures are put into the graveyard.

Other

This ability can be added by Spiral Aura or Ophanis, Unified Five Elemental.
It was developed into a keyword of Eternal Omega that also covered any other methods a creature would be removed, not just being destroyed. This was only seen on heavyweight colorless cards such as Zenith and Rave Diabolos, Holy Damned Festival.
The term comes from the flavor text of Aqua Soldier attributed to Brawler Zyler (もやし野郎のくせに、根性だけはたいしたもんだ) "What a spirit for such a skinny little thing.". It uses "Sprout" to represent a creature of "thing and poor physique" but notes that it has a strong spirit.