Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Rules Tip Blog. Today, we’re going to talk about Polukranos, World Eater. Specifically, when you want to kill Polukranos to prevent your creatures from being dealt damage.

A lot of players seem to think that Polukranos has a single ability: pay XXG, add some counters to Polukranos, and deal some damage. But Polukranos actually has two abilities: one activated ability that makes Polukranos monstrous and adds X +1/+1 counters on it, and a second triggered ability that triggers when Polukranos becomes monstrous. While most players will shortcut this process (“I’ll monstrous Polukranos with X=2, and kill your two 1/1 tokens”), you can interrupt their shortcut.

If you’re holding a Murder, and your opponent tries this, you can back them up to having the monstrosity activated ability on the stack. Then you cast Murder on Polukranos. Your Murder resolves first, and Polukranos is destroyed. Then the monstrosity ability resolves, but it doesn’t do anything since Polukranos is no longer on the battlefield. Since Polukranos did not become monstrous, Polukranos’ second ability won’t trigger and your creatures won’t take any damage. Just be sure to communicate clearly with your opponent, to clarify that you want to respond with the activated ability on the stack, not the triggered ability.

That’s all I have for today. I’ll see you tomorrow!

Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long