A lot of people have been playing Red/Green aggro decks after their strong showing recently, especially with the power behind . So you’re likely to into a situation where both players have a Huntmaster that’s trying to transform during the same upkeep. How do you handle this? For this, we have a simple rule called […]
Category: Abilities
Phantasmal Image will be sacrificed even if you counter the spell that targeted it.
The illusion creatures printed in Magic 2012— being the most notable—have a common characteristic. They share a triggered ability that reads: “When [this creature] becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it.” Once one of these creatures is targeted, its sacrifice ability will trigger and that ability will go on the stack before […]
When an undying creature dies, it returns under its owner’s control.
When a creature with undying dies (without any +1/+1 counters), it returns to the battlefield under its owner’s control, even if it changed controllers before it died. The “owner” of a card is the player who started the game with the card in his or her deck (the legal owner of the physical card is […]
You don’t control the equipment or auras attached to a creature you steal with Traitorous Blood.
When you gain control of a creature, you aren’t gaining control of anything that’s attached to it. This can be important to know when the equipment or aura has an ability, as opposed to when it give the creature an ability. For example, Nancy has a 1/1 creature that is equipped with , and Adam […]
The two other creatures you tap for Skirsdag High Priest can have summoning sickness
“Summoning Sickness” is a common phrase to describe a much wordier rule: A creature cannot attack or activate abilities with the Tap or Untap symbol unless it has been under your control continuously since the beginning of your most recent turn (unless it has haste). This is usually pretty clear-cut. For example, you can’t tap […]
A blocked creature stays blocked for the rest of combat, no matter what happens to the blocker.
The first thing that happens in the declare blockers step is that the defending player chooses which creatures will block and how they’re blocking. Once that happens, the blocks are locked in. Attackers that had a blocker declared become “blocked” creatures, and nothing can change that (aside from a few obscure effects that specifically say […]
Undying creatures and Black Sun’s Zenith.
Undying is a triggered ability that says “When this creature dies, if it didn’t have any +1/+1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter.” Most players know that +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters will cancel each other out if they’re on the same creature. This is a State-Based Action (“SBA”). […]
A creature that changes control is not “entering the battlefield.”
In a game of Magic, there are normally seven zones: library, hand, battlefield, graveyard, stack, exile, and command. Each player has his or her own library, hand and graveyard. The rest of the zones are shared by all players. If you use to steal your opponent’s , you don’t get to remove any other creature […]
What happens when two players control a Mimic Vat.
One of the most common situations regarding simultaneous triggers that comes up is two players controlling s, and who gets to imprint the creature when it dies. When two triggers go on the stack simultaneously, they are often controlled by one player, and it is fairly simple to handle. That player decides the order they […]