Whenever a creature dies, the game has to “look back in time” to see if any leaves-the-battlefield abilities triggered. Sometimes you’ll have an instance where multiple creatures die at the same time; when this occurs, all of them will “see” each other leave the battlefield. This can allow a creature like Requiem Angel to trigger […]
Category: Abilities
Two paired Stern Mentors can only mill a total of 4 cards each turn.
Ah, this one reminds me of when Slivers were Standard-legal! This one’s pretty easy, actually. If you pair a to something, both creatures gain the ability to tap to mill 2. So what happens when you pair two Mentors together? Well, not much. A lot of people might think that the abilities ‘combine’ to mill […]
Sun Titan can get auras onto your opponent’s hexproof creatures.
I know this blog mostly covers Standard and Limited, but I personally play a whole lot of Commander. One tricky thing that comes up there a lot is how you can slap Auras onto dudes with Hexproof or Shroud. The trick to it is that Auras only target when you cast them as spells. If […]
You can animate your Inkmoth Nexus in time to cast a miraculous Revenge of the Hunted on it.
More Miracles! A frequent question about Miracles with targets is WHEN they target. For today’s question, more specifically, we’ll look at and . I’ve heard a few people think that if you top-deck Revenge, you won’t have ‘time’ to animate Nexus to get the buff. However, this is incorrect. You don’t pick a target for […]
How your Consecrated Sphinx interacts with your opponent’s Miracle.
What happens when your opponent draws a card with miracle while control a ? If he or she chooses to reveal it, a couple things happen. Both the miracle ability and Consecrated Sphinx’s ability trigger, and they’re put on the stack in active player/nonactive player order (meaning the nonactive player’s ability goes on the stack […]
How Deadeye Navigator and Phantasmal Image interact.
A question that many judges hear nonstop is “Will X save my ?”. The answer to that is almost always no; countering the spell that was aimed at it, trying to bounce/blink your Image in response, giving it Hexproof in response, etc.; none of these things will save it from its own sacrifice trigger [or […]
Torpor Orb has no interaction with undying.
I hate zombies. Kill them once and they never seem to stay dead. One Zombie card that has been seeing some Standard play is , a 3/2 with undying that deals out 2 points of life loss every time it enters the battlefield. Luckily, there’s a rather unique card in Standard, , that can stop […]
You can pair a Phantasmal Image via Soulbond without sacrificing it.
So, seems like it’d be fun with Soulbond, right? Copy their best guy for 2 mana, and on top of that you get to give it Flying, or Deathtouch, or other assorted goodness. Some of you may be thinking the Image would die in this situation, since Soulbond targeted it… but you would be incorrect. […]
How Soulbond and Moonsilver Spear’s angel interact.
Soulbond is one of the coolest mechanics we’ve seen in a long time. Any ability or instant spell that puts creatures onto the battlefield is now a powerful combat trick. There are even some triggered abilities that can take advantage of the soulbond goodness, such as the ones on and . Let’s say that you […]