Welcome back to the Rules Blog! We’re still just going over a few specific cards from Amonkhet, but we’ll be returning to Standard tips on Monday, so look forward to more interactions! Today we’ll be going over the newest alt-win-con, Approach of the Second Sun. The first time you cast it, you’ll gain 7 life and put it back into your library, seventh from the top. That means it’ll be the seventh card down, so you’ll effectively pick up (but not look at!) the top 6 cards of your library, and put it underneath THAT pile as the new 7th card. If you’ve already cast a spell named Approach of the Second Sun that game, however, you’ll win instead! It doesn’t have to be the same card- if you have two copies, you could cast one, and then cast the other to win. The first one also doesn’t need to resolve; if you cast Approach and it gets hit with a counterspell, casting a second copy will win you the game (if it resolves, that is), because the condition is that you’ve CAST a spell with that name, not resolved one. You can even game that yourself by hitting it with Failure to re-cast the next turn, assuming you have the mana to pull that off. That said, the second one doesn’t win you the game until it resolves; it’s not a “cast and win” situation!

A couple of notes: A copy of a spell isn’t cast at all, so it won’t count for either of these. If you try to Twincast or Reverberate, all you’ll do is gain 7 extra life. The second Approach also has to be cast from your hand- no cascading into it, no flashing it back with Snapcaster Mage or anything like that (though the first one can be cast from wherever). Finally, if you have 5 or fewer cards in your library as your Approach resolves, you can’t put it seventh from the top, so you’ll just put it on the bottom of your depleted library.

Today’s Rules Tip was written by Trevor Nunez