A new block rotation always comes with a new set of planeswalkers, and the new Jace, Architect of Thought looks to be a fair bit more complicated than his predecessors.

Today we’ll be focusing on his +1 ability. When it’s activated, it sets up what’s known as a delayed triggered ability, meaning it’ll wait to be put onto the stack until a particular event happens. In this case, it’s whenever a creature attacks you or a planeswalker you control, and this event occurs at the beginning of the declare attackers step. After the attacking player has (as the name would suggest) indicated which creatures he or she wants to attack with, Jace’s ability will trigger that many times.

Where it gets a little tricky is when attacking creatures, like Geist of Saint Traft or Yore-Tiller Nephilim, can put creatures onto the battlefield “tapped and attacking.” In this case, those creatures won’t get -1/-0. They weren’t around at the beginning of the combat step, so they never “attacked” and it’s long past the time when Jace would have triggered. So if Jace is cast and uses his +1, and the next turn Geist of Saint Traft attacks him, the Geist will get -1/-0 but the Angel will come in afterwards at a full 4 power – enough to deal 5 damage to Jace and send him to the graveyard! Killing a planeswalker single-handedly…not bad for a 3 mana 2/2 creature, eh?

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Jen Wong