Split cards have always been a fan favorite. Probably for the same reason people love the Charms so much: they give you options. In the past, we had entwine, to let you cast all of the modes a spell has, and now, with Dragon’s Maze, we have Fuse, which lets us cast both sides of a split card.

Alright, let’s examine fuse. First off, fuse only works if you’re casting the split card from your hand. You don’t get the option if you’re casting it because of cascade or if you’re casting it from your graveyard. It only works from your hand.

So, what’s the cost to fuse them? As you might think, it’s the mana cost of both halves of the split card. If you have Toil // Trouble and you want to fuse them, you’ll need to pay a total of 4BR.

Usually, when a split card is on the stack, we ignore the side that we didn’t cast. But if we fuse them, we don’t do that. If Toil // Trouble is fused and on the stack, then we treat it as a red and black spell, with a converted mana cost of 6 (3 and 3 = 6). And what if you want to copy a fused card with something like Reverberate? Well, good news for you. If you make a copy of the fused card, the copy will also be fused.

Alright, so we’re finally to the point where the spell resolves. Which part happens first? The text on the left side of the card will happen before the text on the right side of the card. This is usually to some benefit. For instance, with Toil // Trouble, you could target your opponent with both halves: first, they’d draw two cards and lose two life, then they’d take damage equal to the number of cards in their hand (including those two they just drew). The fused spell is still one spell, not two, so no one gets priority between the two halves resolving: you go from Toil directly into Trouble.

Split cards have been fun to use in the past, and it looks like the newest cycle of split cards will continue that tradition.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long