Witchstalker is becoming popular in the Bant Hexproof decks these days, mostly because it has hexproof! However, it has another ability that some players may care about, especially when playing against decks that like to cast blue or black spells on other players’ turns. Anytime your opponent casts a spell that is blue and/or black during your turn, the Witchstalker gets one +1/+1 counter. So if they counter one of your creature spells with Essence Scatter, Witchstalker gets bigger.

But what if they counter something with Psychic Strike? Since the spell is both blue AND black, does that trigger the Witchstalker twice for two counters? I’m afraid not. Witchstalker just has a single triggered ability, and it’s looking for the opponent to cast a spell that’s blue or black. The spell is only cast once, so even though it has both colors, it can’t trigger that ability more than once.

To work differently, Witchstalker would have to have two independent triggered abilities like this:
Whenever an opponent casts a blue spell during your turn, put a +1/+1 counter on Witchstalker.
Whenever an opponent casts a black spell during your turn, put a +1/+1 counter on Witchstalker.

That way a single spell could trigger both abilities, similar to the Shadowmoor cards that have two abilities very much like that! However, Witchstalker is not so lucky, so it only gets one counter per spell, no matter what.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Josh Stansfield