To round out the week, we’ll take a look at , who isn’t the legendary werewolf creature players have been howling for, but is quite possibly the next best thing. Unlike her werewolf brethren (and precedential flip-walker, ), Arlinn is something special: she can control her transformation, and can even transform back and forth “at […]
Category: Activated Abilities
Sorin, Grim Nemesis’s +1 ability with X spells and Split Cards
Speaking of vampires that sparkle in the sunlight (if you missed Monday’s article, go check it out right now) we’re moving on to Sorin, Grim Nemesis, Innistrad’s resident planeswalker. Sorin’s +1 ability is something we’ve seen before, notably on Modern poster-boy Dark Confidant. Unlike that card, however, Sorin comes with a twist: you put the […]
SOI Prerelease Week! Investigate and Clues!
Welcome back! Today we’re going over the OTHER brand-new mechanic of Shadows over Innistrad: Investigate. There’s some super spooky stuff going down on Innistrad, and nobody’s quite sure what! Everyone’s digging around for answers, and to represent that within the cards we have the Investigate mechanic. Investigate is pretty simple: When told to “investigate”, you […]
Prerelease Week: The Return of DFC
Hello and welcome to Shadows Over Innistrad Prerelease Week! Today we’re covering the first of two returning mechanics in SOI: Double Faced Cards, or DFC. They were originally printed in Innstrad, and have been brought back by popular demand! First, a quick crash-course: every pack of SOI will have one of these double-faced cards in […]
Eldrazi Displacer – you can’t process the exiled card in the middle of the resolving ability.
Eldrazi Displacer's ability must resolve completely before anyone can do anything. You can't do anything to the exiled card in the middle of the resolving ability.
How best to kill a Wandering Fumarole with burn spells.
If you're going to try to kill Wandering Fumarole with a burn spell that does 1-3 damage, your best bet is to do it in response to them turning it into a 4/1.
Prerelease Week! Perhaps You’ve Met My Cohort?
Welcome back to the final day of the Oath of the Gatewatch Prerelease Week! Today we’re covering the final mechanic of the set, so you can go to your prereleases this weekend (or tonight, if there’s some midnight events in your area) armed with knowledge. Cohort is similar to Landfall and Constellation- it’s actually what […]
Hangarback Manifesto (a manifested Walker is not very good)
Turning a manifested Hangarback Walker face up doesn't put counters on it (you can't even pay mana for X), so it will generally die immediately after it turns face up, before you even get a chance to activate its ability.
Commander Week! Merieke and Mangara Tech
Welcome back to Commander Week! How about that card we got to spoil yesterday, huh? I’m already putting my deck together. However, today we’re going to be looking into a neat little tactic: Reading your cards! Crazy, right? We’ll start with an old favorite of mine, . Mangara is pretty neat- he can exile any […]