When a creature with undying dies, the creature goes to the graveyard, and the undying trigger brings them back into play when the ability resolves. This means that because creatures go to the graveyard, both leaves-the-battlefield abilities and enters-the-battlefield abilities will trigger. For example, if you cast on a before it dies, two abilities trigger […]
Author: bimmerbot
What “Protection from [something]” really means.
Today we’re going over an old favorite: Protection! It’s a fairly common mechanic in Standard lately, between all the Swords kicking around and the Crusaders and what-have-you. So what does protection ‘stop’? A lot of people wonder why it is that can kill a , but can’t. Some people think protection from white will mean […]
You must have priority to cast Surgical Extraction on a card in the graveyard like Gravecrawler or Lingering Souls.
In a game of Magic, you need to have priority in order to cast spells, activate abilities or take special actions such as playing a land. During your turn, you receive priority at the beginning of most steps. You also receive priority after you cast a spell/activate an ability/take a special action or if your […]
Havengul Lich doesn’t let you cast creatures when you normally couldn’t.
Dark Ascension added two new cards that allow you to do some odd things having to do with casting spells. One allows you to cast creatures from an unusual zone, and one lets you cast a spell at an unusual time. The first one is , which has an activated ability that lets you cast […]
The combat shortcut: What it means when you say, “Declare attackers?”
Many players are unsure about how the combat shortcut works; when they tried to tap an attacker before their opponent swung, the opponent said, “You can’t tap it, I already attacked.” Whether that’s true or not depends on what was said before that. There is a default tournament shortcut that says, “A statement such as […]
When creatures “fight,” some abilities matter, and others don’t.
When a creature “fights” another creature, that means each of those creatures deals damage equal to its power to the other creature. It’s important to know that fighting isn’t considered combat damage and won’t trigger any abilities that look for combat damage being dealt. However, the creatures are still dealing the damage directly, so fighting […]
What happens if both players control a Huntmaster of the Fells and no spells were cast last turn.
A lot of people have been playing Red/Green aggro decks after their strong showing recently, especially with the power behind . So you’re likely to into a situation where both players have a Huntmaster that’s trying to transform during the same upkeep. How do you handle this? For this, we have a simple rule called […]
Phantasmal Image will be sacrificed even if you counter the spell that targeted it.
The illusion creatures printed in Magic 2012— being the most notable—have a common characteristic. They share a triggered ability that reads: “When [this creature] becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it.” Once one of these creatures is targeted, its sacrifice ability will trigger and that ability will go on the stack before […]
When an undying creature dies, it returns under its owner’s control.
When a creature with undying dies (without any +1/+1 counters), it returns to the battlefield under its owner’s control, even if it changed controllers before it died. The “owner” of a card is the player who started the game with the card in his or her deck (the legal owner of the physical card is […]