When you cast a spell, you must pay costs associated with playing a spell at that time. This will be before anyone will receive priority to play anything else or perform any other actions. Costs include the mana cost, and any additional costs. (Keep in mind that some costs are associated with keyword abilities. For […]
Category: Casting / playing a spell or ability
Putting a copy on the stack vs playing a copy of a card.
Going all the way back to , there have been many many ways to put a copy of another spell on the stack. Most often this is pretty simple, you just put another copy of the original target on the stack. You are generally allowed to change the targets for this copy but the copy […]
Meddling Mage’s ability does not counter spells.
‘s ability prevents the named spell from being cast. This means that it prevents a player from announcing spells with that name. This ability does not affect permanents in play at all or spells on the stack that have been legally played. If your opponent plays a spell, you cannot put a Meddling Mage into […]
The word ‘target’ means something targets.
Spells and ability that target are very different from those that do not. Targeting is a restriction, in that you must be able to choose legal targets of a spell or ability in order to play it. For example, you cannot play just to draw a card, there must be an artifact or enchantment in […]
Ethersworn Canonist can prevent spells from being cast via alternate methods
‘s ability prevents players from playing more than one non-artifact spell per turn. This limitation applies to playing spells via alternate means; such as Cascade or Hideaway. Even the triggered ability of can be interfered with by the Canonist’s ability. With Ethersworn Canonist and Knowledge Pool in play, if a player casts a non-artifact spell […]
Cards removed by Hideaway are cast.
Cards that have been removed from the game by the hideaway ability of one of the Hideaway lands form Lorwyn (for example, ) do end up getting played when their non-mana activated abilities resolve. This means that abilities that trigger when a spell is played will trigger. If was removed from play by a Hideaway […]
You can sacrifice Throne of Geth to its own ability.
When you pay the costs of an ability you must first generate any mana necessary, but you can then can pay all costs in any order. To activate ‘s ability you must tap it and sacrifice an artifact. Because you can pay costs in any order, you can choose to tap the Throne and then […]
Arc Trail needs two targets
text states refers to two separate targets. Normally you can target the same object or player for each instance of the word target in its text. However in the second instance in Arc Trail’s text is states ‘another target.’ This means you must have two different legal targets in order to play Arc Trail, you […]