Welcome back to the Rules Tips Blog! This week we’ll be discussing the new mechanics from Battle for Zendikar, starting with Awaken today! Awaken is an alternate cost found on Instant and Sorcery spells, costing more than the ‘normal’ cost. If you cast the spell for the alternate “Awaken” cost, you get the added effect of animating one of your own lands as a creature! For example, Boiling Earth has Awaken 4. That means if you use the Awakening cost, you’ll target a land of yours, and it’ll become a 0/0 creature (that’s still a land) and then have 4 +1/+1 counters placed on it. Awaken 3 would mean 3 counters, Awaken 5 would mean 5, etc. Since these are counters being placed, things like Doubling Season will interact with Awaken. Awaken also gives the land haste, just in case you need to animate the land you played this turn. While it might be the right play to Awaken a whole army of lands, there’s also an alternate strategy: you can load ONE land up with a ton of counters! The land doesn’t have to be a non-creature; you could use Boiling Earth to awaken a land, then use another Boiling Earth the next turn to have an 8/8! You could even animate a “manland” like Lumbering Falls or Shambling Vent and Awaken it, so it’ll be even bigger! There’s a risk of your big bad land running face-first into removal this way, so Awaken carefully!

Today’s Rules Tip was written by Trevor Nunez