“Can’t be countered…” You get a little tingly feeling inside when you cast a spell with such a phrase. It’s as if you had your old security blanket when you were 3, 6, … or in some cases, 12 years old. But like your security blanket, this phrase doesn’t mean that the spell will always […]
Category: Abilities
Gisela will prevent all instances of 1 damage
We already did a general overview of the legendary angel a while back when she was first released. But that general overview didn’t cover probably the most common question about her, especially in my Commander group: Whether or not she prevents 1 damage. Good old Gisela has two abilities (both are replacement effects) that make […]
Quirion Dryad Triggers Once Per Spell
was an old favorite card of one of my friends, so I’m used to dealing with it. But now that it’s Standard-legal again, and with all the 3 color decks kicking around, it’s seeing some play. So I’m gonna clear up a couple of little flubs that pop up around it! First one is in […]
Tournament Tuesday: Zone-Change Triggers
As we covered last week, there’s been a few changes in the Missed Trigger policy recently. Today we’re gonna cover one that’s had a little confusion even among judges: Zone-change triggers. First, I’ll start off with a link to Toby Elliot’s article about what the trigger changes mean for players, because you guys are players, […]
Tournament Tuesday: Triggers at Regular REL
As some of you may know, there was recently a little bit of an update to the Missed Trigger rules. Nothing so far-reaching as the last few; mainly, the new rules exist to clear up exactly WHEN a trigger is considered missed, because there were some that were kind of weird with the MT rules […]
Fathom Mage and Multiple Counters
While I’m a Gruul at heart (and an Azorious on the outside), I’ve always been intrigued by the Simic guild. I wasn’t very satisfied with Simic during their first appearance during Ravnica block, but there’s quiteb a few interesting cards in Simic this time around. One that intrigues me the most is . What does […]
Flickering Aurelia for Fun and Profit
As mentioned last week, the guild of Boros has this really great leader in . I mean, she has all the abilities one looks for when attacking: flying, to soar over the heads of her opponents; haste, so she can attack as soon as possible; and vigilance, to be there to defend the fort as […]
Cipher and Extort
Two of the new guild keyword abilities in Gatecrash work really well together . No, I’m not talking about battalion and bloodrush, I’m referring to the keywords of two of Esper’s favorite guilds, cipher and extort. Extort triggers off of any spell you cast, not just spells cast from your hand. And once you’ve encoded […]
Nightveil Specter lets you play the exiled card(s), but not for free.
Unlike an explosive card such as , which exiles a bunch of cards then lets you cast them right away for free, Nightveil Specter prefers to play a slower, more gradual game. When you exile a card with the Specter, you can play it… but only at a time you could normally play it from […]