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 […]
Category: Static Abilities
Protection from creatures prevents targeting with Bloodrush.
To quickly remind yourself of what protection does, just think of the Orzhov guild’s favorite word: DEBT. D stands for dealing damage; E stands for enchanting/equipping; B stands for blocking; and T stands for targeting. While you might be most familiar with protection from a color, protection can also encompass a wide variety of other […]
The Gatecrash Guildmage cycle: Part 1
There are 5 more guildmages in Gatecrash that complete the new Guildmage cycle, some of these guildmages have abilities that ‘stack’ (not in terms of using the stack, because they all do that, but I’m trying to express the fact that their effects are cumulative). Let’s have a look at these abilities. Should be simple […]
Dimir: How Cipher works.
Finally for this week’s Gatecrash mechanics, we have House Dimir, the blue-black masters of stealth and subterfuge. Their mechanic this time around is called Cipher, and boy is it a doozy! I’ve gotten plenty of questions about Cipher, so I’ll answer some of them for you here. Cipher is a fun mechanic. When a spell […]
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 […]
Rootborn Defenses’ interaction with creatures changing control or entering later.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: This article has been updated as of the prerelease of Magic 2014 on July 13; Please refer to the revisions below. is a nifty common from Return to Ravnica that was made famous when it was (allegedly) accidentally included in a booster pack of Magic 2013. For us, it’s also interesting due to […]
You can search for Temple Garden with Farseek, but it will be tapped even if you pay 2 life.
Fun fact: The reprinting of led many people to (correctly) believe the ‘shocklands’ were coming back. Now, onto how they interact: Farseek nabs any Plains, Island, Mountain, or Swamp card you want out of your library and puts it onto the battlefield tapped. Prior to us Returning to Ravnica, you were only going to find […]
How Corpsejack Menace interacts with Unleash.
Even with the Guild Packs making it much easier that usual to go into your two preferred colors in Limited, there were a lot of people splashing a third color for some fun stuff. For example, some people ran Black/Red/Green to keep a Corpsejack Menace around for Unleash. But does that do anything? Unleash doesn’t […]
Prevention and Replacement Effects, Resolving spells and abilities, State-Based Actions, Static Abilities, Zones
The different ways Dryad Militant interacts with removal spells.
! This little tree-girl seems like lots of fun in Limited and Constructed both, but the most common question I’ve seen regarding her is how she works with removal. When does the spell go to the graveyard? Does she exile it or not? A spell does not go to the graveyard until it has fully […]