With the prerelease bearing down on us just this Saturday, it’s time to kick off the Gatecrash week! This week I’ll be covering all 5 of the new mechanics, just like we did with RtR. Today we’ll be doing Battalion, followed by Evolve tomorrow, Extort on Wednesday, Bloodrush on Thursday, and Cipher finishing things up on Friday leading us into the prerelease.

So first up is the Boros Legion, and their Battalion mechanic. Boros is a very action-oriented guild, sort of a hotheaded counterpart to the Azorius. They don’t wait around for justice to happen, they bring it with them! Their Battalion mechanic shows off their tendency to fight, and fight in groups. Whenever a creature with Battalion and at least 2 other creatures are declared as attackers, the ability will trigger. So say you attack your opponent with three Boros Elite. All three of them will trigger, and each one will get +2/+2. Or say you attack with a Boros Elite, a Hellrider, and a Frontline Medic. Elite and Medic both trigger, so you’ll have 3 indestructible creatures attacking, one of which just got a +2/+2 boost. It also works very well in 2HG; since Battalion cares about the one guy ‘and at least two other creatures’ attacking, you don’t need to control all of the attackers. So feel free to swing with your lone Firemane Avenger if your buddy’s got a pair of Scuttlesharks, because your Avenger will still trigger as long as he’s swinging with his Fishcrabs.

Now, for those of you who want to OPPOSE the Boros Legion, you’ll need to know how to stop Battalion. Here’s the thing: once it triggers, you don’t. Once they swing with their creatures, it’s too late. You can’t stop the trigger from resolving by blowing up the source (though you can stop it from being as useful, such as destroying a creature BEFORE Frontline Medic makes it indestructible, or destroying the Elite with a burn spell BEFORE the trigger makes it too big). You also can’t off one of his creatures to ‘turn off’ Battalion; it doesn’t have an intervening-if! That said, your opponent also can’t just blitz ahead and not give you a chance to respond. If your opponent jumps straight to swinging without giving you a chance to respond to him moving into combat, ask him to back up. Magic isn’t a game of reflexes, remember!

As for Battalion interacting with cards in Standard, it requires that your creatures be declared as attackers. So just like Geist of Saint Traft still gets Exalted without his angel interfering, that angel also won’t count towards Battalion. So you can’t swing with just Geist and Medic and still make your creatures indestructible; the angel won’t count for the ability to trigger.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Trevor Nuñez