is a card that doesn’t seem to have immediate appeal in standard, but is already having an effect in formats like Modern and Legacy. It punishes players who wait for your turn to play a spell, and it replaces itself if and when it dies. But how big can those tokens get? Does it just […]
Category: Characteristics
Showstopper only affects creatures you control as it resolves.
It’s the end of another week here at the Rules Tips Blog, and we’re going out with a bang! It’s the hope that no heads will explode from adding this extra bit of knowledge about how works. This card is one of only a few in the entire game that cause creatures to actually gain […]
Scavenging Jace’s Phantasm with Varolz only gets you 1 counter (but Boneyard Wurm is different).
As a general rule, abilities of a creature only work when that creature’s on the battlefield, unless the rules text or common sense suggests that it works in another zone. , for example, has an ability that gives all creature cards in your graveyard scavenge. Scavenge wouldn’t make very much sense if it applied while […]
Duskmantle Seer is extra painful when revealing Fuse cards.
Split cards are great; it’s like getting two cards in one! You get two names, two (or three) colors, and two sets of rules text… and when you use the Fuse ability, you can even get both at the same time! Of course, one of the downsides of Fuse is that since your spell has […]
Plasm Capture vs. X spells
Let me tell you a little secret. X, if it’s not on the stack, is treated as 0. While an X spell is ON the stack, X stops being a variable and starts being a number (Note: the quality of the spell being considered an X spell doesn’t change; it’s still an X spell on […]
If you copy a creature that’s encoded with a Cipher card, the copy won’t be encoded.
It’s only fitting that the new guild keyword that caused the most confusion upon being released was Cipher, the signature mechanic of House Dimir. And because I most definitely am not a Dimir informant secretly reporting to my shadowy superior in a hidden base in Arizona that most definitely doesn’t exist, I believe I’m at […]
Biomass Mutation Tips and Tricks
After a brief break for Tournament Tuesday, we’re back in Simic-Land for another neat card, . Mutation is the Simic entrant in the rare X spells cycle from Gatecrash, and it can be devastating. For X mana, plus 2 in any combination of green and blue, all your creatures become X/X. So you pour 5 […]
Wayfaring Temple and Essence Backlash
You’re playing your Selesnya token deck, and you have five tokens on the board. Hoping to take advantage, you cast your Wayfaring Temple, hoping to start attacking with a large creature and creating a larger army. However, your opponent doesn’t like that idea very much, and they counter your Temple with Essence Backlash. Surprisingly, your […]
Rakdos Shred-Freak can’t block Knight of Glory (an explanation of hybrid mana symbols).
“Hybrid mana” is incredibly flexible. Each hybrid mana symbol in a card’s cost lets you choose which color of mana you’ll use to pay for each hybrid mana symbol. For example, ‘s cost is {B/R}{B/R}, which can be paid with BB, BR, or RR. However, the Shred-Freak’s colors are always black and red, even if […]