Dependent Continuous Effects

Another mtgsalvation-induced question (that site strongly challenges my
beliefs, lately )

CR, 418.5c:

418.5c An effect is said to “depend on” another if (a) it's applied in
the same layer (and, if applicable, sublayer) as the other effect (see
rule 418.5a) and (b) applying the other would change the text or the
existence of the first effect, what it applies to, or what it does to
any of the things it applies to. Otherwise, the effect is considered to
be independent of the other effect.

The dependence relies on the theoretical change brought by the effects,
or on the actual change? Or, to put it simply, if there are two
enchantments in play:

"All lands are artifacts"

and

"All artifacts are creatures"

the second effect is always dependent on the first, or it only is
dependent if there is at least a land in play?


--
Danilo Raineri

David DeLaney wrote:
> Zoe Stephenson <usenet.RemoveThis@daeghnao.com> wrote:
> >Danilo Raineri <danirain.RemoveThis@tin.it> sent:
> >> The dependence relies on the theoretical change brought by the effects,
> >> or on the actual change?
>
> Theoretical. Because...
>
> >There's been some discussion about this kind of thing, and we've tried
> >out lots of different ways of treating continuous effects, so this part
> >of my brain may be slightly mushy. I think, however, that we're still
> >going with "always" for this kind of thing. It makes sure that the
> >effects are always applied in the same order, and don't have to jump
> >about when different things are in play.
>
> ...trying to make it work dependent on what IS in play right now - when what
> you're trying to do is find an order to apply continuous effects in, so that
> you can see what exactly the things in play _look like_ to start with - gets
> you caught up in all sorts of mess. You don't know what's what in play until
> you apply continuous effects; you can't apply them right until you have an
> order for them; if the order for them depends on whether something's actually
> of a given type or whether you control an artifact, etc., you've just got stuck
> in a loop you can't get out of.
> So just looking at the effects themselves works better.
>
> (And so far it's -fairly- easy to see which continuous effects should depend
> directly on which others by looking at their wordings, too - the example
> given, "All artifacts are lands."/"All lands are creatures.", is pretty
> obvious, for example. Part of templating's job is keeping it that easy...)

I have an objection to this example.

It is my opinion that the effect "All lands are creatures" is not a
valid effect under the current MTG rules. In order for the effect to
be valid, power and toughness values must be assigned or a method to
generate them for the object that gains the type creature.

Something like "All lands are 1/1 creatures" or "All lands are
creatures with power equal to the number of lands you control and
toughness equal to the number of lands controlled by all opponents"
would be needed.