Welcome back! For today’s Battle for Zendikar mechanic tip we’ll be covering Converge! Converge works very similarly to the Sunburst mechanic from Fifth Dawn- the more colors of mana you sink into the spell, the stronger it gets. For Sunburst that meant charge counters and +1/+1 counters; for Converge, it just means more of everything! […]
Category: Casting / playing a spell or ability
Awaken: One Land, or Many!
Welcome back to the Rules Tips Blog! This week we’ll be discussing the new mechanics from Battle for Zendikar, starting with Awaken today! Awaken is an alternate cost found on Instant and Sorcery spells, costing more than the ‘normal’ cost. If you cast the spell for the alternate “Awaken” cost, you get the added effect […]
Skullcrack vs. Dragon’s Claw
Sideboard hate: it’s a time-honored tactic to fill your sideboard with narrow cards that totally hose specific decks to improve your matchups. Some are completely devastating ( or against a reanimation strategy, for example), while some are just really good at tripping the deck up. is such a card- part of a cycle commonly called […]
Draconic Roar: Only One Target!
Yesterday we talked about , and how your opponent removing their own creature in response to your Blaze won’t save them from taking 3 damage. The reason for that, as we explained, is that the spell still has a legal target (your opponent!), and the game’s rules won’t counter it unless ALL the targets are […]
Searing Blaze and Only One Target on Resolution
Most of you should know that you can’t cast a spell (or activate an ability, or place a triggered ability onto the stack) without legal targets. You can’t throw a Doom Blade at nothing just to up your storm count, for example. However, that only applies to when you’re first selecting targets. It’s true that […]
Mana Leak and Delve
Even more Delve! Yesterday we learned that you can use Delve as a payment for an alternate cost such as Flashback, because Delve is a payment, not an alternate cost itself. So how does Delve interact with additional costs? Well, that depends! If there were a Delve spell with Kicker, you could use Delve to […]
Snapcaster Mage and Delve
Delve has been kicking around the older formats pretty much since day one- was an old favorite in some decks, and was infamously too good for Legacy! Even now, there’s still Delving going around in Legacy and in Modern- and more importantly for today, several of those cards are Instants and Sorceries. What that means […]
You should kill Polukranos before it becomes monstrous, not in response to the trigger.
Polukranos has an activated ability that makes it monstrous, and a triggered ability that triggers when it becomes monstrous. Kill it before you get to the second part to avoid having it deal damage.
Hangarback Walker vs. Eidolon of the Great Revel and Disdainful Stroke
The X's in a spells cost are counted as having the value chosen for it while that spell is on the stack. As such, Hangarback Walker for X=1 means a CMC of 1+1=2, and it would trigger Eidolon, while X=2 means CMC 2+2=4 to evade Eidolon's trigger.