What happens when you get a bunch of Thopter tokens together? Why, they form a Thopter Spy Network, of course! Although it’s not an artifact itself, this card is great at supporting artifacts, being able to deploy a new addition to your ranks each turn (assuming you already have one…and if you’re playing the Network in your deck, you do have one, don’t you?), and also drawing you a bunch of cards.

That second ability warrants further investigation, though. As great as it would be if the Network upgraded all your Thopters into Thieving Magpies, that’s sadly not the case. Rather, the Network will trigger once for each time that “one or more artifact creatures you control deal combat damage to a player…” and since all attacking creatures deal combat damage at the same time, no matter whether you’re attacking with one, two, or twenty Thopters, you’re only going to get to draw one card off spying on your opponent.

Worry not, though, for there are ways around this card-drawing restriction… such as by spying on multiple opponents at once. For example, in Two-Headed Giant (which you may have played at your last prerelease), although both heads share a life total, they’re still two separate players. This means that if you attack with two Thopters, you can assign one Thopter’s damage to Head A, assign the other’s damage to Head B, and draw two cards. You can do the same in a free-for-all multiplayer game by attacking two different players. Even in a duel, if you can get your artifact creatures to deal damage at different times, such as by giving some of them first strike or double strike, you’ll get two corresponding card-draw triggers.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Jen Wong