Two of the new guild keyword abilities in Gatecrash work really well together . No, I’m not talking about battalion and bloodrush, I’m referring to the keywords of two of Esper’s favorite guilds, cipher and extort. Extort triggers off of any spell you cast, not just spells cast from your hand. And once you’ve encoded […]
Category: Copies
Pack Rat tokens won’t get any counters or P/T boosts the original has.
I control a . Then I target it with 4 s and 4 s. Then I put a +1/+1 counter on it and turn it blue somehow. You know, for good measure. Now I use ’s ability (don’t ask me how I cast 8 spells and still had another card to discard along with the […]
If you populate Geist of Saint Traft’s angel token, it’s not attacking but you get to keep it.
As usual, people are seeing if they can use the new token toys to make their even more fun. And like before it, the Populate mechanic gives you some new options with Geist. Unlike Parallel Lives, which makes Geist throw down two tokens, both swinging and temporary, Populate will simply give you another of the […]
You don’t have to sacrifice a creature when you copy Fling
Ah, good old . The most common question I hear about Fling is the one I’m answering now, and it always gets worse when Fling is around with good ways to copy stuff. provides a repeatable source of spell-copying, and also a repeatable souce of Fling questions. No, you do not have to sacrifice more […]
Return to Ravnica Preview Week: Overload and Populate
Double whammy today, since Tuesday got taken up by the new Trigger rules. Today we finish our Return to Ravnica previews with the Izzet League’s Overload mechanic, and the Selesnya Conclave’s Populate mechanic. First, the Izzet: mad scientists that act on equal parts whim, inspiration, and the wishes of their draconic patron Niv-Mizzet, these mages […]
Torpor Orb doesn’t stop Clone effects or other ʺas this entersʺ abilities.
As Scars of Mirrodin’s time in Standard is coming to a close, it seems fitting to give a final hurrah to one of the most confusing cards in the block: ! This confusion can be attributed mostly to the difficulty people have in understanding the difference between triggered and static abilities, but once you know […]
Can you respond to the choice of what to copy with Phantasmal Image? It depends!
This is a very common question with any kind of copy creature. The most important thing to note is that the static ability that lets you choose to copy something is NOT a triggered ability (if it was, pretty much every Clone-type creature would die for being 0/0 before you could choose to copy something!). […]
Sever the Bloodline will also exile clones of the targeted creature.
Cards like (with or without kicker) and that make a token copy of a card seem to be fairly intuitive to most players. What is that token? Well, it’s exactly the card that it copied! If you copy a with Cackling counterpart, the token created is still named Runeclaw Bear. On the surface, creature cards […]
Infinite Reflections always takes precedence over Clone effects.
So you may have read the Oracle rulings on and wondered, “Why does this always win over other copy effects? Can’t I choose the order to apply these effects?” Well, the answer is that you CAN choose the order, but you always get the same end result. Let’s say you control Infinite Reflection attached to […]