Times are tough for your Olivia Voldaren. She came down right on schedule on Turn 4, but your opponent immediately stabbed her with , reducing her to a mere 1/1. Fortunately, your opponent has a juicy 1/1 Human token, ripe for the plucking (and the vamping)! You untap and immediately direct your vampire queen towards […]
Category: Activated Abilities
Mishra’s Factory can pump itself when blocking, but only if it’s not sick.
When declaring blockers, the defending player can only use untapped creatures. Once blockers are declared, though, the game doesn’t care if the blocking creatures become tapped later! A useful application of this is , which has three abilities: (1) a mana ability, (2) an “animation” ability, and (3) a “pump” ability. You can use the […]
All about Lion’s Eye Diamond (yes, it’s a mana ability, but it has a timing restriction)
So is kind of a weird card. Let’s start things off by looking at its current Gatherer text: Sacrifice Lion’s Eye Diamond, Discard your hand: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool. Activate this ability only any time you could cast an instant. So the main difference between the printed version […]
You can respond to Stoneforge, Aether Vial or Miracle with Vendilion Clique
One of the strengths of is its versatility: you can surprise block an unsuspecting creature, cycle away a card in your hand, or take a peek at what your opponent is up to. Indeed, because it has flash, you can even cast it in response to an opponent’s activated or triggered ability. This is good […]
A Hellion Crucible can only put a counter on itself, not any other Hellion Crucible.
You are playing a game of standard and control two s, each with a counter. Can you use Hellion Crucible A to put a counter on Hellion Crucible B, so you can sacrifice Crucible B to make the 4/4 creature that turn? I’m afraid you can’t do that. When a Magic card states the name […]
Tournament Tuesday: An explanation of how “name a card” works.
Many cards in Magic ask you to “Name a card” as part of their effect, such as , , and . Whatever you pick has to be an actual Magic card legal in the format; calling “Pikachu” isn’t a legal choice, and neither is calling in Standard. Double-faced cards are a bit unusual. You’re restricted […]
Keyrunes Tips and Tricks
Reader suggestion time! Sort of. We got a submission from our Suggest a Rules Tip box about Keyrunes, and some of the tricky things about them. For example: You can throw down a Keyrune on turn 3 and immediately tap it for mana, just like you could a land, or another mana rock. As most […]
Deathrite Shaman Won’t Make Mana Without a Target
is making a splash in Modern lately, and sees some play in Standard due to it helping to slow down reanimator-type strategies, as well as giving some Zombie decks an extra way to bleed their opponent for the last few points of mana. One of the reasons that it sees a good deal of play […]
The new Jace’s +1 ability doesn’t affect Geist of Saint Traft’s Angel token.
A new block rotation always comes with a new set of planeswalkers, and the new looks to be a fair bit more complicated than his predecessors. Today we’ll be focusing on his +1 ability. When it’s activated, it sets up what’s known as a delayed triggered ability, meaning it’ll wait to be put onto the […]