Welcome back to Battle for Zendikar mechanics week! Today we’re covering one of the Eldrazi’s mechanics: Devoid. While there’s a fair few truly colorless Eldrazi in this set (such as or ), the majority of the “smaller” ones you’ll encounter in a Limited environment have colored mana costs, just like the original ones from Rise […]
Category: Abilities
All About Converge
Welcome back! For today’s Battle for Zendikar mechanic tip we’ll be covering Converge! Converge works very similarly to the Sunburst mechanic from Fifth Dawn- the more colors of mana you sink into the spell, the stronger it gets. For Sunburst that meant charge counters and +1/+1 counters; for Converge, it just means more of everything! […]
Multiple Thunderbreak Regents all trigger from one being targeted.
Don't forget that if you control 2 Thunderbreaks, each one will trigger anytime any dragon you control gets targeted by an opponent!
Thopter Spy Network draws only one card for multiple artifact creatures dealing damage at once.
Thopter Spy Network is good, but be careful to read it correctly! It triggers whenever "one or more artifact creatures deal damage to an opponent," NOT once for each creature dealing damage.
Liliana doesn’t transform if she dies at the same time as other creatures.
Because of the "if you do" clause, Liliana's trigger won't do anything unless it's able to exile her from the battlefield. If she's already in the graveyard, it can't find her to exile her, so you won't get a transformed planeswalker and you won't get a zombie.
Ugin’s -X ability vs. transformed planeswalkers
A card with no mana cost has CMC of 0, which includes the back face of double-faced cards like the new Planeswalkers from Magic Origins. They also have a color from their color indicator, so they will be exiled by Ugin's -X ability with any value chosen!
Skullcrack vs. Dragon’s Claw
Sideboard hate: it’s a time-honored tactic to fill your sideboard with narrow cards that totally hose specific decks to improve your matchups. Some are completely devastating ( or against a reanimation strategy, for example), while some are just really good at tripping the deck up. is such a card- part of a cycle commonly called […]
Searing Blaze and Only One Target on Resolution
Most of you should know that you can’t cast a spell (or activate an ability, or place a triggered ability onto the stack) without legal targets. You can’t throw a Doom Blade at nothing just to up your storm count, for example. However, that only applies to when you’re first selecting targets. It’s true that […]
Mana Leak and Delve
Even more Delve! Yesterday we learned that you can use Delve as a payment for an alternate cost such as Flashback, because Delve is a payment, not an alternate cost itself. So how does Delve interact with additional costs? Well, that depends! If there were a Delve spell with Kicker, you could use Delve to […]