Many burn spells, like Mugging, will interact with Blaze Commando in an intuitive manner. They have a simple, clean effect–a specific amount of damage is dealt to a single object. You will get two soldiers from the triggered ability on Blaze Commando.
What about mass damage effects like Mizzium Mortars cast with Overload? Unfortunately, Mizzium Mortars creates only a single damage-dealing event; you’ll have to settle for destroying your opponent’s army and collecting two tokens.
What happens, though, when you change the wording of the effect a little bit? Punish the Enemy, an instant from Dragon’s Maze, “deals 3 damage to target player and 3 damage to target creature.” How many soldier tokens do you get? The key is in how the spell is worded. If you look closely, the word “deals” appears in the text of Punish the Enemy exactly once and it’s all a single sentence. This tells us that there is a single damage-dealing event from the spell. While it requires two targets and will deal damage to each, this is a single damage dealing event. Blaze Commando’s ability will trigger only once.
Let’s amp up the voltage a bit and cast Clan Defiance, choosing to use all three of its modes! Doing so, the effect of Clan Defiance reads “Clan Defiance deals X damage to target creature with flying. Clan Defiance deals X damage to target creature without flying. Clan Defiance deals X damage to target player.” Three times in its text, it deals damage. That’s three events, three triggers, and SIX tokens from Blaze Commando!
Finally, a note on the merits and limitations of playing Magic Online. Playing online is a great way to learn how things like triggers and the stack work. It’s a chance to learn what cards do, and you can enjoy playing Magic without having to be a rules guru. What Magic Online does is utterly amazing in terms of processing a couple hundred pages of game rules into a coherent game. That said, it’s not always perfect. If you control a Blaze Commando and manage to Punish the Enemy online, you may receive 4 tokens (unless this was already fixed). This question has come up in several forums already and may arise in a limited match, so be aware of the proper answer.
Remember: if you don’t know what should happen or are simply unsure of something, ask a judge! Similarly, in the unlikely event that something goes wrong in a Magic Online match, the nice people at Wizards of the Coast customer service are there to help. Contact them using their online form at http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/668/~/magic-online%3A-reimbursement-requests-and-bug-reporting and they’ll be glad to assist you.
Today’s Rules Tip written by David Hibbs, L3 from League City, Texas