question that needs answering

[Jeorge]

ok well here is the situation:

I have a birchlore ranger, elvish pioneer, wirewood herald, and another elvish pioneer. Well i have a wellwisher in my hand so i tap my 4 elves to play it, and after i tap the 4 elves he says well i burn two of them ( he had a deal 4dmg divided as u choose ). I say i still get the 1 mana from tapping them but he says that he burns them before the effect goes off so i dont. Can some1 plz help?

[AKA:Battousai]

once a creature has used any activated ability killing removing the source or tapping it as a response does not stop its ability from being put on the stack

he could and should have done it during a phase where you could not use the mana to play a creature and if you did tap as a response you would have just taken mana burn

but you cannot counter an activated ability unless you specificly target the ability and not what made the ability happen.

and if your friend doesn't believe you... I copy and pasted this from a magic questions page.

It doesn't matter whether you destroy a Birds of Paradise in response to your opponent tapping it for mana, or whether you destroy a Prodigal Sorcerer in response to him tapping for one damage - the effect is already on the stack, and it's too late to do anything about it. Think of me, throwing a hand grenade at you; sure, you can shoot me, but that grenade is still coming towards you.

[MillMaster]

The funny thing is that NO plalyer will EVER get a chance to respond to birchlore OR a birds or ANY other ability that generates mana... these abilitys DONT use the stack at all. You use the ability, add the mana and retain priority, and they cant even respond :P

But yes, destruction of the source of an ability NEVER stops that ability from resolving.

[Ricohard1986]

the easiest way to remember this is the archer metaphor.
When an archer fires an arrow it doesn't matter what happens to the archer the arrow will still hit the target, as long as the target is still there