In case you haven’t seen it yet, the Hero has a heroic trigger: when you cast a spell targeting the Hero, you can pay some mana to put some counters on it. How many counters? Well, how much mana do you have? You can add as many counters as you want to the Hero, as long as you can pay X. Want to add just two counters? That’ll be two mana. How about ten counters? Well, if the game goes on long enough, you should have access to ten mana and can add that many counters.
Note that you don’t choose how many counters to add to the Hero (and pay the value of X) until the Hero’s heroic trigger resolves. It’s not a number you choose when you put the trigger on the stack. That means if your opponent is holding a Shock and you cast the Hero and then target it with some spell, they’ll have to cast their Shock before the heroic trigger resolves and they find out how many counters you want to add. This also means that if they do cast the Shock, you won’t lose out on the mana you would have spent on X. You can wait for the trigger to resolve before you start tapping lands and producing mana, so you won’t be left with a mana pool filled with excess mana because your opponent Shocked your Hero before the trigger resolves.
So keep this in mind next time you’re buffing your Hero. Let the trigger resolve before you tap your lands, just to keep things a mystery for a little bit longer.
Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long