Azorius! My personal favorite of the guilds, since it focuses on law and rules. This time around, the lawmasters of the Azorius Senate have a fun keyword called ‘Detain’. Put simply, Detain lets you lock something down for a while. Some of the cards detain creatures only, while others can Detain any nonland permanent your […]
Category: Triggered Abilities
Abilities, Communication Policy, Missed Triggers, Resolving spells and abilities, Tournament Rules, Triggered Abilities
Tournament Tuesday: Changes to the Missed Trigger Policy
Taking a little break from the Return to Ravnica previews, we’ll do our normal Tournament Tuesday tip. NOTE: All of this only matters at Competitive REL and higher—stuff like PTQs and GPTs and GPs—and it won’t go into effect until October 1st. At your local FNM and at the Return to Ravnica prerelease this weekend, you’re […]
What happens between two spells or abilities on the stack resolving.
Magic is a game of playing spells and abilities, interacting with them, and dealing with the results of them. How does this all work, and what happens during this process? When played, spells and abilities go into a zone called the stack until they resolve. At this point, each player can respond to that spell […]
Torpor Orb doesn’t stop Clone effects or other ʺas this entersʺ abilities.
As Scars of Mirrodin’s time in Standard is coming to a close, it seems fitting to give a final hurrah to one of the most confusing cards in the block: ! This confusion can be attributed mostly to the difficulty people have in understanding the difference between triggered and static abilities, but once you know […]
Multiplayer Monday: What happens when a player leaves the game.
Today, we’re covering what happens when a player leaves the game when the game consists of only individual players (not teams). This comes up most frequently in EDH/Commander and any other casual game with a bunch of players in a free-for-all. What happens when Susie is eliminated in the middle of the game, or even […]
Triggered abilities: The difference between “graveyard from the battlefield” and “graveyard from anywhere.”
Now you may be wondering why it is that you shuffle into your graveyard if you mill it, but you don’t get to draw a card if you mill your . It’s pretty simple; they’re a different breed of trigger. Simulacrum has a ‘graveyard from the battlefield’ trigger, meaning it only works if it goes […]
You control a trigger if you controlled its source when it triggered.
Does this work or not: You make the call! Active Player: “?” Non-Active Player: “Sure. After it resolves, I cast on my . I take your slime and use the trigger to destroy your !” Spells and abilities begin their time on the stack controlled by the player who puts them there, and triggered abilties […]
Triggers can trigger at any time, but wait to go on the stack until a player would get priority.
I cast while you control . What happens? After a creature spell resolves, a player receives priority. But it’s not as simple as that. Before priority can be received, first the game has to check for state-based actions (SBAs) – things like creatures with lethal damage dying, or +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters canceling each other […]
Sigarda won’t save you from sacrificing your own Phantasmal Image, even if an opponent targets it.
‘s ability is pretty cool. If an effect an opponent controls says “sacrifice a creature” Sigarda says, “No, I’d rather not.” So she keeps you safe from things like and . But what if the opponent targets your Phantasmal Image (copying something other than Sigarda) with ? On the surface, it almost looks like the […]