This weekend, thousands upon thousands of Magic players the world over will be playing with Journey into Nyx cards for the first time- that’s right, it’s Prerelease Time! As we often do with prereleases, the Rules Tip Blog is going to cover the new mechanics (and go over some old ones from the previous sets in the block) so you’ll be armed and ready when you crack those packs and sleeve up this weekend.

First, we’ll start with a refresher- Journey into Nyx contains a lot of the same mechanics that Theros and Born of the Gods did, so we’ll cover those for players  who might not have gotten to play with those cards much yet. The first one we’ll cover is Devotion: it’s not a big thing in this set, but the Gods use it! Your Devotion to a color is equal to the total number of mana symbols of that color, among the mana costs of permanents you control. For example, if you controlled a Thassa, God of the Sea and no other permanents, your devotion to blue is just 1, from Thassa. The Gods all have static abilities constantly checking your Devotion, but most of the other cards just check it once- for example, your Gray Merchant of Asphodel will only check your devotion to black as the trigger resolves (so your opponent could kill your Merchant to lower your devotion and get drained for less!).

The next returning mechanic is Heroic- fairly straightforward. The Heroes of Theros shine brightest when they’re in the spotlight, so their Heroic abilities trigger when you cast a spell targeting your Heroic creature. Whether it’s an Instant, Sorcery, or an Aura (including Bestow, which we’ll get to!), it’ll trigger Heroic- note that Heroic only works with YOUR spells and YOUR creatures- using removal on your opponent’s Satyr Hoplite won’t make it bigger. Heroic triggers will also resolve separate from the spell that caused them, so your Heroes still get their boosts and boons even if your opponent counters the spell that triggered them!

Scry is fairly simple, and is itself a returning mechanic from the days of Mirrodin. Some spells and abilities will tell you to “Scry N”, where N is some number; for example, the Temple cycle asks you to Scry 1 when they enter the battlefield. To Scry 1, you look at the top 1 card of your library, and you can either put it back on top, or on the bottom- so if you know you’re low on lands, and your Scrying shows you another, you can keep it! On the flip side, if you’re flooded with lands and need to draw into some creatures, that same Scry could just tuck the land on bottom so you can try for something better. Scrying for 2 or more isn’t very complex, either- you just look at that many cards, and you can put any you want on the bottom. Whichever cards you DON’T put away, you put back on top in whatever order. So if you Scry 3 and all 3 cards are just super, you don’t have to ship any of them- you can keep all 3 on top, even putting them in the order you like best.

We’ll cover Monstrosity, Bestow, and the Gods in a little more detail on Wednesday- tune in tomorrow for some Tournament Tuesday tips on the prerelease!

Today’s Prerelease Tip written by Trevor Nunez