Spirit of the Labyrinth provides a unique effect that we’ve never seen before: as long as the Spirit is in play, each player is limited to drawing at most one card each turn. If you’re the active player, this will normally just be the card you draw during your draw step. You can subvert this restriction if you have ways of drawing a card at instant speed on your opponent’s turn (like Azorius Charm), but even then, you’ll still be limited to just one card. This stern Spirit forces everyone to play fair.

If we delve a little deeper into how the Spirit works, it’s actually very straightforward: if you’ve already drawn a card for the turn, it’s now impossible for you to draw any more cards. You can’t get around this by trying to draw multiple cards all at the same time, like with a huge Sphinx’s Revelation for X=10 on your opponent’s turn. This is because the rules of Magic always split drawing multiple cards into a series of individual draws. When Sphinx’s Revelation resolves, you’ll gain 10 life and try to draw 10 cards. This gets split into 10 individual card draws. The Spirit will let the first of those through, then say “NO” to the other nine, so you’ll still only draw a single card.

For those who are more experienced with the rules, you may know that, if multiple effects are trying to replace the same event, the affected player gets to choose the order in which those effects apply. However, because the Spirit of the Labyrinth makes drawing more than one card per turn impossible, you actually aren’t permitted to apply replacement effects to those subsequent draws at all.

Confused yet?

Let’s illustrate this concept by talking about Blood Scrivener, the much-hyped (but ultimately disappointing) zombified cousin of Dark Confidant. Suppose it’s my turn, and I have both Blood Scrivener and Spirit of the Labyrinth in play, and I have zero cards in hand. I start to draw for my turn, but since I have no cards in hand, Blood Scrivener transforms this into drawing two cards and losing 1 life. Spirit of the Labyrinth then interjects, gives Blood Scrivener a stern look, and says “hey buddy, only one card per turn!” So I end up just drawing a single card. Unfortunately, Spirit of the Labyrinth’s stern glare doesn’t prevent any of the other effects from this modified event from occurring, so I still lose 1 life!

Continuing this example, let’s suppose the card I draw for the turn is a Scourgemark, which I immediately cast, targeting my Blood Scrivener. As Scourgemark’s enters-the-battlefield trigger resolves, Spirit of the Labyrinth gives Blood Scrivener a super stern glare. It’s now impossible for me to draw a card this turn at all, so Spirit of the Labyrinth completely blocks the Blood Scrivener from applying, since “can’t draw” means there’s nothing for Scrivener to replace. I won’t draw any cards at all, but at least I won’t lose any life.

Today’s Rules Tip Written by Paul Baranay