When initially introduced Lifelink was a triggered ability. If a permanent had multiple instances of lifelink, then each of these separate abilities would trigger independently ultimately causing the controller of of these abilities to gain more life than the damage dealt. However when the Magic 2010 base set was released how Lifelink works was changed. […]
Category: Abilities
Nested Ghoul’s ability triggers once per source of damage.
Some abilities in Magic care about specific amount of damage and others care about the sources of damage regardless of the amount. Abilities that prevent damage and redirect damage are obvious examples. For example, compare and . Shiledmate’s Blessing prevents a specific amount of damage and Auriok Replica’s ability prevents all damage from a specific […]
What Reflecting Pool can produce.
‘s ability allows it to produce any one mana of a type that another land that you control could produce. First of all, in order for this ability to produce any mana you must control at least one other land that is capable or producing mana. Controlling just another Reflecting Pool will not work, as […]
Who or what the Hero of Bladehold tokens are attacking.
In a previous tip it was pointed out that has two triggered abilities, the Battle Cry trigger and a trigger that puts two 1/1 white soldier tokens into play attacking. As mentioned in the previous tip, the order that these triggers go on the stack and therefore resolve matters. However Hero of Bladehold’s trigger that […]
A difference between Shroud and Protection.
Protection from a quality actually has four different effects. One of which deals with auras, which used to be called local enchantments. Permanents with protection from ‘X’ cannot have auras with with quality of ‘X’ attached to them. For example, a cannot be enchanted by a . Another aspect of Protection is that permanents with […]
What happens when multiple abilities trigger.
When two or more triggered abilities attempt to go on the stack at the same time they go on APNAP order. This stands for Active Player, Non-active Player. It means that those triggers that are controlled by the active player go on the stack in whatever order he or she wants, followed by those triggered […]
Cards only do what they specifically say, and not more.
Some cards grant keyword abilities to permanents in play, either to themselves or other permanents. Examples of cards with abilities like these would be and . These abilities can only grant the keyword abilities that they specifically reference. For example, neither of these two abilities can give the Infect keyword ability.
Everything before the colon, is a cost.
One way to recognize activated abilities by the format [cost]: [effect]. Activated abilities are the only ones that use a colon. Everything that appears before the colon is a cost of the ability and must be paid when the ability is played. Abilities that require that you tap the permanent with the ability will have […]
What is the source of the ability.
In most cases the source of an ability is the card itself that has the text that causes the game or players to take some action. Some examples of straight-forard situations like that would be the activated ability of , the triggered ability of or the static ability of . In all of these examples […]