In Aether Revolt, we got a neat cycle of spells that let you free-cast another spell as one of their effects, like Yahenni’s Expertise. As we covered during the prerelease week, you’ll pick the card from your hand to cast during the resolution of the Expertise, and then the spell you free-cast will resolve after that. It also needs to have a Converted Mana Cost lower than the Expertise, since all of them let you cast a spell with CMCs up to “1 lower than this spell”, effectively. But how can we double up the value on that? Easy- Split Cards! Split Cards are lots of fun with effects like this, because in zones other than the stack, they have two converted mana costs. When Yahenni’s Expertise asks “Is your CMC 3 or less?”, a Split card will give back an answer for each half; Boom has a CMC of 2 and will answer back ‘yes’, while Bust has a CMC of 6 and will answer back ‘no’. The fun part is that as long as it gets back at least one yes, Yahenni’s Expertise will let you cast the card- either half, even! So you can cast an Expertise into a split spell like Boom//Bust, where the cheap half qualifies it for the discount, and then free-cast the EXPENSIVE half.

But even better than that are the Fuse spells from Return to Ravnica block. Fuse is an ability present on some split cards that lets you cast both halves of the spell if you’re casting from your hand. This isn’t an alternate cost, either- which means it works with Expertise’s alternate cost of ‘free’. What that means is not only could a Baral’s Expertise cast Beck or Call from your hand, you could fuse them to cast Beck and Call without paying for anything but the Expertise! Talk about value.

Today’s Rules Tip was written by Trevor Nunez