And here we are, Friday! As I teased yesterday, we’re going to be talking about Commander’s favorite blue enchantment, Eye of the Storm. This is a reader question, asking for some help in some situation, but I figured let’s start with an overview of what exactly Eye of the Storm does.

When a player casts an instant or sorcery card, the Eye will trigger. When that trigger resolves, the spell that triggered it is exiled, then Eye of the Storm will make a copy of every instant or sorcery exiled by it (including the one that it just exiled). That player can choose to cast each copy without paying its mana cost. They have to cast all of the copies while the Eye of the Storm trigger is resolving: they can’t choose to cast a copy later in the turn.

Let’s look at an example. I have an Eye of the Storm with nothing exiled by it. I cast a Shock. The Eye triggers, and exiles the Shock. The Eye makes a copy of the Shock, and I can choose to cast it. Now I choose to cast a Doom Blade. The Eye triggers again, and Doom Blade is exiled. Now I have a copy of Doom Blade and Shock I can cast. After seeing the fun I’m having, you choose to cast an Inspiration. The Eye triggers, and your Inspiration is exiled. Now you can cast a copy of the Shock, Doom Blade, and Inspiration. You could just choose to cast the copies of the Shock and Inspiration if you wanted to (maybe because I control no nonblack creatures), and then the copy of Doom Blade will cease to exist.

So let’s look at the specific question that our reader wants us to look at. The first question is “If Eye of the Storm has exiled a Time Warp, can they cast an instant on my turn and cast the copy of Time Warp on my turn?” The answer is yes. Normally, you can only cast a sorcery during one of your main phases when the stack is empty. However, some cards (like Eye of the Storm) will let you cast sorcery spells at other times. So even if it’s not your turn, you’ll be able to cast a sorcery because of the Eye of the Storm. As a follow-up, if multiple players get an extra turn during the same turn, the most recently created turn will be taken first, so if you’re both trying to take the next turn, make sure your Time Warp resolves last!

The second is, “Do I have to announce and cast all of the copies before my opponent gets a chance to respond? The answer is yes. You choose which spells you want to cast and then cast them during the resolution of the Eye of the Storm trigger. By the time your opponent can respond again, you’ve chosen and cast all of the copies that you wanted. At that point, the stack resolves normally, so after each spell has finished resolving, all players get priority again before the next spell or ability resolves.

The third and final question is “How does Eye of the Storm interact with Mind’s Desire?” The answer is “very well”. Since you’re casting the copies made by the Eye, they will increase the storm count. However, storm only counts the spells that were cast before the storm spell was cast. It won’t count spells that were cast after the storm spell was cast but before the storm trigger resolves.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say I have two random spells already exiled by the Eye of the Storm, and there’s already been one spell cast this turn. I cast Mind’s Desire. This causes two things to trigger: the storm trigger from Mind’s Desire and the trigger from Eye of the Storm. While you get to choose the order those triggers are put on the stack, the storm trigger from Mind’s Desire will only make one copy no matter what happens. So let’s look at what happen with the Eye of the Storm trigger. First, we exile the Desire, then we can cast copies of the three spells (the Desire and the other two random spells). If you cast the Desire first, the storm trigger from the Desire will only make two copies, even if you cast the other two random spells, since those spells were cast after the Desire copy. However, if you cast the other two spells first, then the Desire, then the storm trigger from the copy of the Desire will make four copies. So, to maximize your storm count, be sure to cast your storm spell last with Eye of the Storm.

I’d like to thank reader Anthony Tran for submitting these question. Remember, if there’s a topic you’d like for us to cover, you can hit the “Submit a Rules Tip” button at the top of this page. Have a great weekend!

Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long