But let’s say I’m casting Divination, which lets me draw two cards. How does that interact with Blood Scrivener?
You actually don’t draw both cards at the same time. You draw cards one at a time. Divination tells you to draw two cards, but what actually happens is that you draw a card, then you draw a card. So, let’s slip the Scrivener in there. I have the Scrivener on the battlefield, and I cast the last card in my hand, Divination. My Divination resolves, and, noting what I said above, we go to draw our first card. Since my hand is empty, the Scrivener steps in and instead of drawing one card, I draw two cards and lose one life. We’re done with that draw, so we move on to the second draw. At this point, I have two cards in my hand, so the Scrivener doesn’t apply, so I draw like normal. The net result is that I drew three cards and I lost one life.
Let’s bump the difficulty up just one more notch. Let’s say I have two Blood Scriveners on the battlefield, and cast Divination. Divination resolves, and I go to draw a card. Both Scriveners want to apply, so we apply the first one (we’ll call him Scrivener A). Scrivener A replaces that draw with drawing two cards and losing a life. However, since I’m still drawing a card, and I still have no cards in hand, Scrivener B gets to apply, and replaces the first draw of that with drawing two cards and losing a life. Scrivener A has already applied to this draw, so it doesn’t get to apply again. So the first draw ends up with me drawing three cards and losing two life, then I draw the second card from Divination like normal. So the net result from that interaction is that I’ve drawing a total of four cards and lost two life.
Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long