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 […]
Category: Abilities
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 […]
Abilities, Communication Policy, Missed Triggers, Resolving spells and abilities, Tournament Rules, Triggered Abilities
Tournament Tuesday: Changes to the Missed Trigger Policy
Taking a little break from the Return to Ravnica previews, we’ll do our normal Tournament Tuesday tip. NOTE: All of this only matters at Competitive REL and higher—stuff like PTQs and GPTs and GPs—and it won’t go into effect until October 1st. At your local FNM and at the Return to Ravnica prerelease this weekend, you’re […]
Return to Ravnica Preview Week: Unleash
This week, in celebration of our Return to the beloved plane of Ravnica, I’ll be previewing each of the new mechanics! Tuesday is Tournament day, so I’ll be cramming two abilities onto Friday’s post. Today, Unleash! Unleash is the Rakdos mechanic, and it really helps capture the hedonistic, thrillkilling attitude of the Cult of Rakdos. […]
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 […]
What happens between two spells or abilities on the stack resolving.
Magic is a game of playing spells and abilities, interacting with them, and dealing with the results of them. How does this all work, and what happens during this process? When played, spells and abilities go into a zone called the stack until they resolve. At this point, each player can respond to that spell […]
You have to name a color when you add “one mana of any color” to your mana pool.
If something instructs you to add ‘one mana of any color’ to your mana pool, you have exactly five options: the five colors of magic. You can pick White, Blue, Black, Red, or Green, and you must name a color when you add ‘one mana of any color’ to your mana pool. You cannot add […]
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 […]
Torpor Orb doesn’t stop Clone effects or other ʺas this entersʺ abilities.
As Scars of Mirrodin’s time in Standard is coming to a close, it seems fitting to give a final hurrah to one of the most confusing cards in the block: ! This confusion can be attributed mostly to the difficulty people have in understanding the difference between triggered and static abilities, but once you know […]