Continuing the trend of fun one-drops that got a lot of questions, today we cover . Shaman’s got three abilities, and each one does something based on what you exile. Exiling sorceries and instants bleeds your opponent for 2; exiling creatures gains you 2 life; exiling lands makes mana. The problem here is, all three […]
Category: Activated Abilities
How Nivmagus Elemental’s ability really works.
As many of you know, this weekend marked the pre-release of the new set, Return to Ravnica. Many of us judged such events, and we managed to collect a few common questions that popped up a lot, so we can answer them for you guys here! One I saw happen quite a bit involved . […]
Return to Ravnica Preview Week: Scavenge
The Golgari Swarm are masters of life and death, and view the two of them as a constant cycle. Their mechanic, Scavenge, reflects this pretty well; I’ve heard it described as “Kind of like a Flashback for creatures”, and that’s not entirely wrong. It lets your dead creatures pull some weight and be useful as […]
Return to Ravnica Preview Week: Detain
Azorius! My personal favorite of the guilds, since it focuses on law and rules. This time around, the lawmasters of the Azorius Senate have a fun keyword called ‘Detain’. Put simply, Detain lets you lock something down for a while. Some of the cards detain creatures only, while others can Detain any nonland permanent your […]
Vedalken Shackles only checks power vs. islands on activation and resolution (not any time after that).
is one of the key board control cards in Mono Blue Faeries (as of the time of this writing) … but how does it work? First, when you activate it, you have to choose a target, and that target can’t have power greater than the number of Islands you control at that time. Then your […]
All about Captivating Vampire.
I see a fair number of questions about this card, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to simply answer them all in one place! If the Vampire dies, do I lose the creatures I took control of with him? No. The effect doesn’t state a duration (e.g., “as long as you control Captivating Vampire”), so […]
Strategy Week: Using priority to your benefit.
Ah, the good old days of “Bolt your Jace as soon as he comes in”. See, priority is a funny thing, and it’s almost like magic (editor’s note: no pun intended?) to the people who aren’t well-versed in it. The short version of the story: Priority is the system of who can do what at […]
Strategy Week: Wait to activate abilities until the end of your opponent’s turn.
When you play a card that has great potential, like , it’s sometimes tempting to activate its abilities right away. But remember the saying: “Patience is a virtue.” Or, in Magic terms, “Wait until the latest possible moment before playing anything.” There are a lot of steps and phases that can fly right by players […]
‘Summoning Sickness’ only applies to creatures.
Pretty much everyone knows what Summoning Sickness is, even though it’s not a technical game term. It’s a common phrase used to abbreviate a much more wordy rule: “A creature cannot attack or use activated abilities with the Tap or Untap symbol in the cost unless that object has been under the its controller’s control […]