Keeping with their “bleed ‘em dry” theme from the old Ravnica, the Church of Deals has a new way to tax your opponent to death: Extort. Whenever you cast a spell while you control a permanent with Extort, you may pay W or B to cause your opponent to lose 1 life, and yourself to gain 1 life. By and large the most common question I’ve gotten about Extort is whether or not you can pay as much as you like. The answer to that is a resounding ‘no’. When the trigger resolves, you can pay 1 mana, or 0. If you do pay, the opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. If you don’t pay, nothing happens. This is a binary system, boys and girls; you can’t feed 10 mana into one Extort trigger to bleed them for 10.

That said, you CAN pay for multiple extort triggers just fine. So say you control two Basilica Guards, a Blind Obedience, and a Thrull Parasite. If you cast a spell, you can pay for up to 4 Extort triggers to drain a total of 4 life. Or you can just drain 1, or 2, or 3, whatever you choose! And don’t forget that the shakedown isn’t just for one opponent; it’s for all of them. If you Extort in a 2HG match, both of your opponents will lose 1 life (causing the team to lose 2 life), and your team will gain 2. Double your debt, double your fun!

The other big question I hear a lot about Extort is “How does it work in Commander?”. People were worried that because of the hybrid symbol on the card’s text that it would only be usable in a deck that is both White and Black. Well, don’t forget: Reminder text has no rules meaning (in other words, that hybrid mana symbol isn’t treated like it exists on the card, but rather only in the Comprehensive Rules for Extort)! You can use a Thrull Parasite or a Crypt Ghast in a mono-black or a black-green or whatever non-white black deck you choose. Likewise, you can play Blind Obedience in non-black white decks.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Trevor Nuñez