Quick question: What’s the difference between damage and loss of life? As you can see from the cards above, whether an effect deals damage or just causes loss of life is dependent on the specific wording of the effect. When an effect “deals damage”, it causes loss of life (barring weird exceptions like infect), but […]
Category: Abilities
You can’t take 4 for Vexing Devil if there’s a Torpor Orb around.
is a strange and unique card. It makes things that normally happen simply not happen. So abilities that you might really want to trigger from a creature entering the battlefield… won’t. It will shut down your life gain from (but doesn’t stop persist) or your card draw from . But it also works the other […]
“Eggs” vs. Rest in Peace – Know when NOT to draw.
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 […]
How Blood Moon works with Shocklands.
creates a very simple effect: all non-basic lands on the battlefield become mountains. The “Shockland” effect of entering play tapped unless you pay 2 life is not a trigger (you can tell since it doesn’t contain “When ~ enters the battlefield”). Rather, it modifies how the land enters the battlefield in the first place. This […]
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 […]
Flinthoof Boar and Evolve
is part of a cycle in M13, and it’s a pretty neat cycle! They’re all uncommon mono-colored creatures that have an ability which requires an allied color of mana to activate, and they get +1/+1 if you control a corresponding basic. Flinthoof Boar is a 2/2 for 2 that gets +1/+1 if you control a […]
Miracle doesn’t work when a card is revealed for Duskmantle Seer or Dark Confidant.
Cards, cards, cards, cards, cards, cards, everybody! Everyone loves drawing cards, right? And it’s even better when these cards are miracles! Miracles are a special group of cards from the Avacyn Restored set that you can sometimes cast for a reduced cost. However, Avacyn is very particular about how she hands out her blessings. In […]
Adding a +1/+1 counter to an unleash creature after it blocks won’t remove it from combat.
Unleash is a static ability from Return to Ravnica that has two effects. First, it lets you put an extra +1/+1 counter on a creature as it enters the battlefield — yay, bigger creatures! Second, it says that as long as the creature with unleash has one or more +1/+1 counters on it, it can’t […]