This week, in celebration of our Return to the beloved plane of Ravnica, I’ll be previewing each of the new mechanics! Tuesday is Tournament day, so I’ll be cramming two abilities onto Friday’s post. Today, Unleash!

Unleash is the Rakdos mechanic, and it really helps capture the hedonistic, thrillkilling attitude of the Cult of Rakdos. Mechanically speaking, Unleash is a replacement effect, just like other creatures that enter the battlefield with +1/+1 counters. It replaces the event of “CARDNAME entering the battlefield” with “CARDNAME entering the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter”. It’s very simple in practice; creatures with Unleash have the option for you to have them enter the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on them. In exchange for this boost in power, creatures with Unleash cannot block as long as they have a +1/+1 counter on them [whether or not it came from Unleash; so you can put a +1/+1 counter on your opponent’s Unleashed guys to make them unable to block].

So basically, Unleash lets you pick between a slightly weaker creature that can block, or a stronger creature that’s only good on offense. There are even a few creatures that get an additional effect from being Unleashed: Chaos Imps gets Trample as long as it has a +1/+1 counter on it. So all you Rakdos thrillkillers, party hard this weekend!

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM