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 […]

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Mutilate’s -X/-X won’t apply to creatures that enter later in the same turn.

When a resolving effect modifies the characteristics of objects on the battlefield (such as power/toughness), the permanents that will be affected are “locked in” as the spell/ability resolves. So when you cast , it applies -X/-X to all creatures currently on the battlefield as the spell resolves, and that effect will last until the end […]

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You can use “good” spells on your opponent’s creatures (when it’s actually bad for them).

For the most part, players don’t need to read the Comprehensive Rules in order to figure out how to play their cards, especially at common and uncommon. If a card says “Enchant creature,” for example, it’s not a great leap of intuition to suppose that the card becomes attached to a creature, and from there […]

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Mental Misstep won’t stop a Miracle.

So, I’ve had some interesting questions come up regarding Miracles, but one that I’ve heard more than the others is what their converted mana cost (CMC) is. Usually it’s because of someone windmill slamming a topdecked , or , or for their Miracle cost, and someone else trying to stop it with . After all, […]

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The extra mana you pay because of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben doesn’t count for anything else.

Simple enough: Does increase the converted mana cost (“CMC”) of your spells because she makes them cost more? Easy answer: No! CMC -never- changes. The sum of all the symbols in the top right corner of a card is the CMC. The only time CMC can change is with X spells. Everywhere except the stack, […]

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Ratchet Bomb destroys most tokens, but not all of them.

Tokens created by a spell or triggered ability such as ’s golem token or ’ spirit tokens have no defined mana cost, and therefore have a converted mana cost (“CMC”) of zero. A activated with zero charge counters is more than adequate to wipe out a field of tokens generated in this manner. When a […]

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When in any zone other than in play, double-faced cards are treated as face-up.

There are many ways for the characteristics of a permanent in play to have its characteristics changed. Double-faced cards are just a new way of changing more than one of these characteristics at one time, and in a somewhat dramatic way. While on the battlefield, these cards have the chance to turn over completely and […]

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