We’re continuing with the Theros mechanic theme this week, and today we’re covering Heroic (or at least one aspect of it!). The Heroic mechanic is a lot like Batallion, Landfall, Threshold, Morbid, etc. All of these things aren’t actually keywords like Flying and Trample; they have no actual inherent rules meaning. In fact, if you look at the cards, you’ll see Heroic- It’s in italics, just like reminder text and flavor text. Those of you who have some rules-knowledge already may know what that means: ‘this has no rules meaning’! These are what we call “ability words”. They exist to thematically link similar abilities. For example, Morbid worked differently on different cards; some had abilities that couldn’t be activated at all until you had Morbid going (like Skirsdag High Priest). Some simply did additional or better things if you had Morbid (like Brimstone Volley). With Metalcraft, we even had a spell that cost less if you had 3 artifacts out. The only thing linking all the Morbid abilities is that they care whether or not a creature died, somehow. The only thing linking all the Metalcraft abilities is that they care whether or not you have 3 artifacts, somehow. The only thing linking the Heroic abilities is that they care whether or not you’ve cast a spell targeting your creature with Heroic, etc.

So, onto the actual mechanic itself. As I said, the one common link between all the Heroic cards is that all of them trigger when you cast a spell that targets them. It doesn’t have to be a beneficial spell (but it MUST be a spell! Abilities won’t trigger Heroic), either; you could use Murder on your own Agent of the Fates to make your opponent sacrifice their indestructible creature, for example. Or you could use Spark Jolt on your Anax and Cymede to trigger their Heroic ability to boost your team and give them trample. But a question I heard a lot of: “What resolves first? The spell, or Heroic?”. The answer is fairly simple: Heroic! It’s a trigger that doesn’t try to go onto the stack until the spell that targeted your creature has been fully cast and is on the stack. What that means is when you put your Anax and Cymede or your Agent of the Fates or your whatever-hero-in-question trigger onto the stack, it’ll go onto the stack ABOVE the spell that triggered it. It’ll resolve first, and then the spell resolves. If you’ve used a spell to target multiple heroes at once (for example, Coordinated Assault), you’ll put those multiple Heroic triggers onto the stack in whatever order you like, but they’ll all resolve before the spell that triggered them.