Oh, the possibilities! Possibility Storm is already a favorite of mine because of the sheer hilarity and chaos it can cause. It’s also seeing play in several EDH decks for that same reason, and even made an appearance at the most recent Pro Tour due to its ability to blank Sphinx’s Revelation in some matchups. So with the possibility that you’ll run into this card on the rise, let’s go over some weird stuff that can happen. First off: the reason it blanked those Revelations! What happens if you flip into an X spell, like Revelation? The rules tell us that if you’re casting a spell without paying the mana cost, you must declare X to be 0. It doesn’t matter if you’d rather pay than get it for free, you don’t have that option!

What do you do if there are no other cards of the type (for example, you only have one Jace in your deck and it triggers the Storm)? Simple: you flip through the whole entire deck, and then you just shuffle up the ‘exiled cards’ (which currently consists of your deck + the original spell) and put it all back. Pseudo-Hinder! And what happens if the original spell is countered before the Possibility Storm trigger resolves, or if you control 2 Possibility Storms? Fun happens, is what. The trigger doesn’t actually need the card to be present to work, so if the original spell is countered somehow before the Storm trigger, you’ll still flip through the deck using the last-known information about the spell. Ditto if you have two Storms: the first will flip through until you hit an appropriate card, and you’ll put the original spell and the other cards back on the bottom in a random order, and cast the revealed card. Then the second trigger resolves, and you flip through to get another spell (which could very well be the spell that triggered your Storms in the first place!)

Lastly, double-types. You’ll mostly see this with Artifact Creatures, but you may also see it with some Tribal cards from Lorwyn, or with Lucent Liminid in some wacky decks; the types don’t need to match exactly. If a Storm triggers off my Solemn Simulacrum, I don’t have to keep going until I hit an Artifact Creature; just until I find an Artifact OR a Creature. Ditto for the Tribals; a Bitterblossom can Storm me into a Pacifism or into an All is Dust. Speaking of dual-types, your artifact lands and your Dryad Arbors will not trigger Storm (as they aren’t spells!) and since Storm uses the “cast” wording rather than “play”, you won’t be able to play them if you reveal them off of an Artifact or Creature spell, respectively. In fact, while Storm lets you dodge some timing restrictions (such as turning a flash-creature such as Snapcaster Mage into a non-flash creature like Delver of Secrets during someone else’s turn), it won’t let you ignore restrictions like the one on Master Warcraft telling you when it’s okay to cast the spell. In a case where the revealed card can’t be cast for whatever reason, you just put it back like the original spell and the other exiled cards, and then you frown.

So, there’s some common things that could easily crop up with your Possibility Storms, and now you guys know how to deal with it! And knowing is half the battlefield.

Today’s rules tip written by Trevor Nunez