“How many times can I use my creature’s ability? Just once?” I’ve heard that one a lot, especially among newer players; they want to know how many times they can activate a given ability per turn. The answer is pretty simple: As many times as you can pay for it! The vast majority of activated […]
Category: Casting / playing a spell or ability
Putting Prossh, Jeleva, or Marath onto the battlefield without casting them isn’t that great.
If you’re not casting Prossh, Jeleva, or Marath, their cast/enter the battlefield abilities won’t do anything.
Daxos of Meletis and Lands
Around here, two or three different people have gotten infected with Daxos fever. There’s multiple commander decks kicking around, and he’s a fun card to play with. He can’t be blocked by bigger creatures, so unless your opponent has chumps to throw his way he’ll get through unimpeded. Once he does, you get to exile […]
Heroic and Cipher Interactions
Cipher is the mechanic associated with House Dimir from the recent Return to Ravnica block: spells with Cipher allow you to ‘encode’ them onto a creature, and cast a copy of the spell for free every time the creature connects with an opponent. Heroic is one of the mechanics from the more-recent Theros set, which […]
Bestow and Cost Modification
All right, the dust from Theros has more or less settled, and everyone’s got a pretty good feel for the mechanics. But there are some nitpicky things that might not come up often, that you’re unsure how to handle. For example, when does a spell cast for its Bestow cost ‘count’ as the appropriate kind […]
Ashiok can’t be killed by Lightning Strike if Ashiok’s controller uses the +2 ability right away.
The active player gets priority after a spell resolves, and can use that priority to activate a loyalty ability (adding counters as a cost) before the opponent can cast an instant.
A bestow creature can’t enter as an aura unless you cast it that way.
An enchantment creature entering from anywhere other than the stack where you paid the bestow cost will always enter as an unattached creature (never an aura).
Cloning/Mimicing your heroic creatures won’t trigger their heroic abilities.
s (cards that copy something as they enter the battlefield), such as , don’t target. No matter how hard you try, when you choose a heroic creature with clones such as these, the heroic trigger’s requirements (1. That it’s a spell you cast, 2. That it targets this creature), won’t be satisfied because why? It’s […]
Annul can counter an enchantment spell that’s also a creature.
While a card can't be both a creature and a "noncreature," it CAN be a creature and another type often associated with noncreatures. In Theros, every Enchantment Creature is a valid target for Annul.