Hello everyone, and welcome back to another installment of Magic Rules Tips! Now that M15 is in full swing, we’re seeing cards with rules that haven’t been in Standard for ages. Perhaps you’ve read Aggressive Mining and thought, “I can’t play lands? That seems pretty harsh.” The truth is, you can have lands enter the battlefield under your control, as long as the land was placed there by some spell or ability. Let’s look a little deeper:

Let’s say you have an Evolving Wilds in play and then cast an Aggressive Mining. You can still activate the Evolving Wilds’ ability (as long as you’re not sacrificing it to go Mining), search for a land, and place in on the battlefield. There are more opportunities like Burnished Hart, Font of Fertility, and Frenzied Tilling that will all still allow you to search out lands and place them on the battlefield.

Alas, there are some cards that won’t work as well as you would like. For example, Courser of Kruphix and Act on Impulse still depend on you to be able to play lands normally. If Aggressive Mining is on the field under your control, they won’t be helping you get lands into play.
So there you have it! If you are feeling an aggressive itch coming on, be sure to till with some frenzy or have a hart or two in your stables just to be on the safe side.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Daniel Clarke