Born of the Gods introduces Bile Blight, a powerful new removal spell that looks tailor-made for the Mono-Black Devotion deck. In particular, it has utility in wiping the board clear of everyone’s favorite scourge of the Return to Ravnica draft format: Pack Rat! Because a token copy of a creature has the same name as that creature, one Bile Blight will wipe out every Pack Rat on the field, as long as all of them are 3/3 or smaller.

If you don’t want this to happen to you, there’s a way you can save some of your Rats: Figure out which one of your Rats is the target of Bile Blight, and kill it off with some other means (e.g., Ultimate Price or even Devour Flesh targeting yourself) before the spell resolves. When Bile Blight goes to resolve, it’ll find that its target is no longer on the battlefield where it’s expected to be, and the entire spell will be countered for lack of a legal target. None of the spell’s effects will happen, so no Rats will receive -3/-3, and the rest of your swarm will live to annoy your opponent another turn.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Jen Wong