I’ve got to say, I’m really liking the new Simic! You’ll be seeing a lot of their little mutations at the prerelease, and just like Batallion, it helps to know how it works before you head into the event so you don’t make a misplay. Evolve is another triggered ability. If you have a creature […]
Category: Abilities
Boros: How Battalion works.
With the prerelease bearing down on us just this Saturday, it’s time to kick off the Gatecrash week! This week I’ll be covering all 5 of the new mechanics, just like we did with RtR. Today we’ll be doing Battalion, followed by Evolve tomorrow, Extort on Wednesday, Bloodrush on Thursday, and Cipher finishing things up […]
Divine Deflection vs. Olivia Voldaren (a study in state-based actions).
Times are tough for your Olivia Voldaren. She came down right on schedule on Turn 4, but your opponent immediately stabbed her with , reducing her to a mere 1/1. Fortunately, your opponent has a juicy 1/1 Human token, ripe for the plucking (and the vamping)! You untap and immediately direct your vampire queen towards […]
Tournament Tuesday: Announcing Floating Mana
Your mana pool is arguably the most important concept in all of Magic — but most of the time, it’s completely invisible. If I tap four and three s for an , it’s pretty obvious what color of mana each of my Gardens is making, and whether the Vents are making red or blue usually […]
It That Betrays and Commanders
Om nom nom! is coming to get you — and your commander! For today’s tip, I want to talk about a cool interaction in Commander, the hugely-popular multiplayer format where each player chooses a legendary creature, called a “commander,” to lead his or her deck. In this format, each player’s commander is subject to a […]
You can cast Krosan Grip targeting Standstill, but you won’t be happy about it.
More Double-Legacy days! I hope that many of you are safely in Denver, or on your way there for the event, and I hope you have fun and do well! On to the tips. is a lot of fun in Legacy and EDH both, because it’s very difficult to deal with. Since it has Split […]
Mishra’s Factory can pump itself when blocking, but only if it’s not sick.
When declaring blockers, the defending player can only use untapped creatures. Once blockers are declared, though, the game doesn’t care if the blocking creatures become tapped later! A useful application of this is , which has three abilities: (1) a mana ability, (2) an “animation” ability, and (3) a “pump” ability. You can use the […]
All about Lion’s Eye Diamond (yes, it’s a mana ability, but it has a timing restriction)
So is kind of a weird card. Let’s start things off by looking at its current Gatherer text: Sacrifice Lion’s Eye Diamond, Discard your hand: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool. Activate this ability only any time you could cast an instant. So the main difference between the printed version […]
You can’t respond to Tombstalker’s Delve ability
Delve is an ability that was (so far) only printed in Future Sight, and as such most players aren’t very familiar with it. Here’s the relevant rules text for “Delve”: “As an additional cost to cast this spell, you may exile any number of cards from your graveyard. Each card exiled this way reduces the […]