It’s only fitting that the new guild keyword that caused the most confusion upon being released was Cipher, the signature mechanic of House Dimir. And because I most definitely am not a Dimir informant secretly reporting to my shadowy superior in a hidden base in Arizona that most definitely doesn’t exist, I believe I’m at liberty to share with you the following vital information.

Take a card like Stolen Identity, which makes a token copy of a creature. By and large, you can follow the rule that the copy’s characteristics are “what’s printed on the card”: name, mana cost, types, rules text, power, and toughness. All other effects on the copied creature, such as counters and abilities it gained from other sources, won’t be copied. That applies to the ability it gains from cipher as well. So let’s say I control an Invisible Stalker with Stolen Identity encoded onto it. My Stalker deals combat damage to my opponent (as unblockable creatures so often do) and I use the cipher ability to make another Stalker token. That new Stalker won’t be encoded with anything. It’ll be just a normal, typical, not-secretly-a-Dimir-agent-at-all Invisible Stalker…at least until I encode a different card with cipher onto it. Muahahaha…

Today’s Rules Tip written by Jen Wong