Today we’re continuing with the Modern Rules Tips! Since day one of the format, people have been jamming artifacts together for highly efficient aggro. Whether you call it Affinity or Robots or Tin Man All Star Band, the deck remains the same: Lots of artifacts getting turned sideways. The deck doesn’t tend to have a lot of requirements for colored mana, but the requirements it DOES have are filled nicely by Mox Opal and Glimmervoid, a card that has basically no drawbacks in a deck that’ll constantly be choked with artifacts. But what happens if someone lands a well-timed Shatterstorm and wipes out your artifacts? Sure, you can animate Inkmoth Nexus, but what if your opponent has removal? They can kill it long before the end step and cost you TWO lands. Luckily, there’s a nifty trick you can use! Glimmervoid doesn’t trigger during every end step- the ability has what we call an “Intervening If” clause. Each time it would trigger, it checks to see IF that condition is true; if it is, the trigger fires, and if not it doesn’t. The fun thing about these triggers though, is they check that condition twice! Once when they would trigger, and again as they go to resolve. If you put an artifact on board (or turn something into an artifact, like Inkmoth Nexus) in response to the trigger, that can shut the trigger down entirely because the “if you control no artifacts” clause is no longer true. The trigger is removed from the stack and does nothing, and you’re free to begin your turn with all your lands intact!

Today’s Rules Tip was written by Trevor Nunez