The process of casting a spell consists of a series of steps that need to be followed in order. If at any point during this process a player is unable to perform one of these actions, the whole casting process is illegal and the game returns to the moment before that spell started to be […]
Author: bimmerbot
You don’t control the equipment or auras attached to a creature you steal with Traitorous Blood.
When you gain control of a creature, you aren’t gaining control of anything that’s attached to it. This can be important to know when the equipment or aura has an ability, as opposed to when it give the creature an ability. For example, Nancy has a 1/1 creature that is equipped with , and Adam […]
How to recognize an activated ability for Havengul Lich, Necrotic Ooze or Phyrexian Revoker
A common question that seems to pop up is how to tell the difference between Activated, Triggered and Static abilities. More specifically, what abilities will gain from dead creatures, what exactly can stop, and what abilities does get after you use him to do some necromancy. There’s an easy way to recognize different kinds of […]
The two other creatures you tap for Skirsdag High Priest can have summoning sickness
“Summoning Sickness” is a common phrase to describe a much wordier rule: A creature cannot attack or activate abilities with the Tap or Untap symbol unless it has been under your control continuously since the beginning of your most recent turn (unless it has haste). This is usually pretty clear-cut. For example, you can’t tap […]
Ratchet Bomb destroys most tokens, but not all of them.
Tokens created by a spell or triggered ability such as ’s golem token or ’ spirit tokens have no defined mana cost, and therefore have a converted mana cost (“CMC”) of zero. A activated with zero charge counters is more than adequate to wipe out a field of tokens generated in this manner. When a […]
The importance of proper shuffling.
Before the start of a game, it is very important to properly and sufficiently randomize (shuffle) your deck. To “randomize” means to shuffle the deck so that no player could have any knowledge about the approximate position of any particular card or the relative position of any group of cards. Usually, several mash shuffles is […]
A blocked creature stays blocked for the rest of combat, no matter what happens to the blocker.
The first thing that happens in the declare blockers step is that the defending player chooses which creatures will block and how they’re blocking. Once that happens, the blocks are locked in. Attackers that had a blocker declared become “blocked” creatures, and nothing can change that (aside from a few obscure effects that specifically say […]
Undying creatures and Black Sun’s Zenith.
Undying is a triggered ability that says “When this creature dies, if it didn’t have any +1/+1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter.” Most players know that +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters will cancel each other out if they’re on the same creature. This is a State-Based Action (“SBA”). […]
A creature that changes control is not “entering the battlefield.”
In a game of Magic, there are normally seven zones: library, hand, battlefield, graveyard, stack, exile, and command. Each player has his or her own library, hand and graveyard. The rest of the zones are shared by all players. If you use to steal your opponent’s , you don’t get to remove any other creature […]