And welcome back to our last Rules Tip of the week (don’t worry, we’ll be back again on Monday)! Today we’ll be going over Gonti, Lord of Luxury. This Aetherborn Rogue will help you to whatever luxury you want… from the top of your opponent’s library, that is. When Gonti enters the battlefield, you get to look at the top four cards of an opponent’s library and pick the one you like the best. You’ll exile it face-down, then put the other three cards on the bottom of that opponent’s library in a random order (so just give them a little shuffle before you put them on the bottom). The card you picked is exiled face-down, but you’re allowed to look at it; this is just so your opponent doesn’t know what card you’ve chosen to squirrel away for yourself. As long as it’s exiled, you’re also allowed to cast it; note that Gonti specifically says “CAST”, rather than “PLAY” like Spark of Creativity, and this just means that if you hit a land, you won’t really have access to it because you can’t cast lands.

But what if your opponent is playing a totally different deck than yours, and you don’t have the right kind of mana? Well, Gonti’s got you covered; you can cast the card they exiled, and you can spend mana as if it was any type of mana to do so. Note that it says type rather than color, which means you can spend colored mana as if it were colorless for things like a Warping Wail, in addition to spending mana as if it were any color (so, for example, using your Swamps to cast a red spell!). You’re allowed to pay any optional additional costs you want (such as Kicker, or Escalate), you’re REQUIRED to pay mandatory extra costs (like discarding for Cathartic Reunion), and you may choose to pay alternate costs if you want (like Emerge). The duration that Gonti sets up for you is “For as long as that card remains exiled”; this means if your opponent kills Gonti before you get a chance to use the card they provided, you still have access to it! If someone steals your Gonti (like with Hijack they won’t be able to look at OR cast the exiled card, and you still will be. Once the card leaves exile (normally because you went ahead and cast it, but there are other means, like eating it with your own Eldrazi Processor), you lose the ability to cast it. It also resolves as it normally should once you DO cast it; if it’s a permanent spell (Creature, Artifact, Enchantment, Planeswalker), it’ll hit your side of the board as it resolves. If it was an Instant or Sorcery, it’ll do its thing, then go to the graveyard (or wherever it tells itself to go, like the bottom of the library for a Spell Crumple) as normal. Finally, if you use Gonti in a multiplayer game, things could get weird: if the player who Gonti “acquired” your card from leaves the game, their card leaves with them. If you haven’t cast it yet, you’ll lose your chance to, and if it were a permanent card that you already DID cast, it’ll just disappear with its owner. Conversely, if YOU leave the game (but the player you stole the card from is still in the game), the card will remain exiled face-down, and nobody will be able to look at it. Gonti never sells out a client!

Today’s Rules Tip was written by Trevor Nunez