I think that first ability of The Chain Veil is pretty straightforward (if you didn’t activate at least one planeswalker loyalty ability this turn, you lose 2 life), so let’s focus on that second ability: “For each planeswalker you control, you may activate one of its loyalty abilities once this turn as though none of its loyalty abilities have been activated this turn.” There was some confusion about that ability when the card was original spoiled, so let’s see what this actually does.

Normally, you can only activate one loyalty of a permanent each turn. Each time you activate The Chain Veil’s ability, you can activate one additional ability of each planeswalker you control. For instance, if you have Chandra, Pyromaster on the battlefield and you activate The Chain Veil’s ability, you can now activate two of Chandra’s abilities. And they don’t have to be the same ability both times. You could activate the +1 ability, then activate the +1 ability again. Or you could activate the +0 ability, then activate the +1 ability. It’s all up to you (as long as you can pay the costs, of course).

And if you manage to untap The Chain Veil and activate it again? Well, then you can activate three loyalty abilities that turn! Yes, with certain planeswalkers, you could keep untapping The Chain Veil and producing four mana to keep activating The Chain Veil’s ability and keep gaining additional activations. We won’t go into those combos here, but I think you can figure those out for yourself.

And one final note: activating The Chain Veil’s ability on your opponent’s turn isn’t too useful. The Chain Veil changes how many times you can activate the ability, but it doesn’t change when you can play a loyalty ability. Since you can’t activate a loyalty ability on an opponent’s turn (or anytime you couldn’t normally cast a sorcery), activating The Chain Veil’s ability on an opponent’s turn is kind of pointless.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long