These two artifacts look very similar, and both see play in the popular and successful “Eggs” deck in Modern. But since is also a very popular sideboard card, you should be careful to note the difference! is rather unique. It includes “Draw a card.” in the same ability as “Add one mana of any color […]
Category: Mana Abilities
Spreading Seas vs. the Urza’s lands.
So by now, most people are familiar with the “Urzatron” decks that are popular in Modern. They revolve around getting the three different Urza’s lands (Power Plant, Mine, and Tower) to cast large spells rather quickly, getting 7 colorless mana from just 3 lands. In an attempt to combat the deck, one trick people have […]
Abilities, Activated Abilities, Continuous Effects, Effects, Keywords, Mana Abilities, Triggered Abilities
Elvish Archdruid Won’t Trigger Gyre Sage
If there’s one thing Elves love [beyond having Hobbits do their dirty work, but that’s another plane entirely], it’s mana. Lots and lots of mana. Enormous, obscene piles of green mana, ready to be converted into an astoundingly large spell, or into many little elves, who will make even more mana. Continuing the trend of […]
Pithing Needle stops all of Deathrite Shaman’s abilities.
Before we go any further, we must ask ourselves… what is a mana ability? Well, that was semi-rhetorical, for those who didn’t snap answer the previous question. A Mana ability can exist as either an activated or triggered ability. For the activated ability form: 1) Does not have a target 2) It could put mana […]
Tournament Tuesday: Announcing Floating Mana
Your mana pool is arguably the most important concept in all of Magic — but most of the time, it’s completely invisible. If I tap four and three s for an , it’s pretty obvious what color of mana each of my Gardens is making, and whether the Vents are making red or blue usually […]
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 […]
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 […]
How Deathrite Shaman’s targeted abilities work.
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 […]