Double whammy today, since Tuesday got taken up by the new Trigger rules. Today we finish our Return to Ravnica previews with the Izzet League’s Overload mechanic, and the Selesnya Conclave’s Populate mechanic.

First, the Izzet: mad scientists that act on equal parts whim, inspiration, and the wishes of their draconic patron Niv-Mizzet, these mages wouldn’t know subtlety or moderation if it bit them. Their mechanic reflects that very well: Overload lets you supercharge your spells.

All of their Overload spells, by default, target something. You can use the spell as-is, such as using Mizzium Mortars to blow up your opponent’s creature, or using Cyclonic Rift to bounce your opponent’s Jace. But Overload lets you supercharge those spells! Why bounce one permanent when you can bounce twenty? Why burn one Saproling when you can burn ALL of them? If you think that way, Overload is right up your alley. By paying the increased Ovearload cost rather than the ‘normal’ cost, you replace the word ‘target’ with the word ‘each’. So Mizzium Mortars goes from hitting TARGET creature you don’t control to hitting EACH creature you don’t control. Cyclonic Rift goes from bouncing TARGET nonland permanent you don’t control to EACH nonland permanent you don’t control. If that sounds like fun to you, hook up a Blistercoil and fire away.

The other mechanic we’re covering is the last one left: Populate! Selesnya (and G/W in general, honestly) has a long history of loving tokens. This time around, rather than turning their armies of Saprolings into living mana-batteries, they have ways to get tokens for free. Whenever a spell or ability tells you to Populate, you choose (without targeting) a single creature token you control and make another one of those, almost like Proliferation for tokens, except you can only get one at a time. That might not sound too scary at first; after all, who cares about slamming out an extra Saproling token or two? But the fun of this is in how many different kinds of tokens there are for you to populate. You could make Saprolings or Birds (Eyes in the Skies makes a Bird token which you can Populate with the same spell), you can make Centaurs… or for tons of fun, you can churn out big Slime tokens with Slime Molding and start populating 5/5, 6/6, maybe even 10/10 Slimes. Or you can make a big bad Elemental bruiser with Grove of the Guardian.

Side note: While the situations where you WOULDN’T want to populate are few and far between, creating a token is NOT optional if you control one when populate is resolving.

Suddenly, getting a free creature token seems a lot scarier, doesn’t it? Whether you’re summoning forth armies of vine and stone, or leveling entire city blocks for fun, represent your guild with pride, and I hope to see some of you at the prerelease tomorrow (or tonight)!

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