Although you may not have been lucky enough to open any rare dual lands at the Oath of the Gatewatch prerelease, that doesn’t mean you can’t get in on the land animating fun! Battle for Zendikar introduced the “awaken” mechanic, which puts +1/+1 counters on lands and turns them permanently into creatures. While Oath of the Gatewatch includes no cards with the mechanic, it does have a few nifty creatures with landfall abilities that can animate lands (including the one that just entered the battlefield). Embodiment of Insight also gives all your land creatures vigilance, letting them attack and tap for mana in the same turn. In fact, if you attack with a land creature and an Embodiment, it doesn’t matter if the Embodiment dies later; the creature is still untapped and attacking because it was allowed to declare an attack and stay untapped at the beginning of the declare attackers step. It doesn’t matter that it no longer has vigilance now, and even if it becomes tapped while attacking (perhaps because you cast a spell to pump it), it’s still an attacking creature.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Jen Wong