It’s a good week for burning things! To wrap up, we’re going to take a look at one of the “story moment” cards of Oath of the Gatewatch, Fall of the Titans. True to its artwork, this card causes two of your opponent’s creatures to die in a blaze of glory at once. You can remember this easier by looking at the double X in its cost – it’s just like two Blazes glued onto each other. However, if you have the assistance of a teammate (or just cast another spell this turn), you can get your Blaze and double it too by paying the surge cost, which reduces XX to a single X!

Bear in mind, however, that surge only reduces the amount of mana you pay, not the spell’s converted mana cost. So a counterspell like Disdainful Stroke that cares about converted mana cost will see any value of X as counting double toward converted mana cost, which means that it can counter Fall of the Titans for X=2 even if you only paid three mana for it! On the other hand, if you can amass a monstrous amount of mana behind your spell, that can make it much harder to counter by effects like Kozilek, the Great Distortion. Even Kozilek can’t stop a Fall of the Titans coming his way for any value of X that equals 8 or more, because there are no cards (at the time of this posting) with a converted mana cost of 17 or greater!

Today’s Rules Tip written by Jen Wong