If you’ve never faced an while you control a 28/28 fatty, let me tell you: it’s frustrating! Some effects, such as the Circles of Protection, prevent damage from ever occuring. Effects such as these use the word ʺpreventʺ in their rules text, making them easy to identify. Other effects, such as those you find on […]
Category: Prevention and Replacement Effects
How Rhox Faithmender works with Tree or Redemption or Elderscale Wurm.
has an ability that seems pretty straightforward at first, but what happens if I’m trying to switch my life with ‘s toughness? Is that Life gain? Well, sometimes. If an effect sets your life total to a certain number, like Tree of Redemption or , for example, you ʺgain or loseʺ the appropriate amount of […]
Two Rhox Faithmenders will make you gain 4x as much life.
Everyone loves BOGO! (That’s ʺBuy One, Get Oneʺ for those of you without a power shopper in your life.) Isn’t it great to pay for one thing, and get twice as much instead? seems like a good way to do that. Unlike that ʺBOGOʺ sign you see in a shopping mall, Magic rules strive to […]
If you cast and flicker Stonehorn Dignitary, the next two combat phases will be skipped.
Each time ‘s ability resolves, it sets up a replacement effect that is extremely patient. It does not immediately decide “It’s currently turn X, so that means you skip combat in turn X+1.” Instead, it sets up a delayed effect and waits for the next time the specified event would happen. Right before your opponent […]
How Gisela’s ability interacts with Divine Deflection.
Two of the more complicated cards from Avacyn Restored are and . When you combine the two, things get downright confusing. The complication comes from confusion about the interaction of replacement and/or prevention effects. The comprehensive rules say this: “If two or more replacement and/or prevention effects are attempting to modify the way an event […]
Divine Deflection only has one target: where the damage will be dealt.
is a card that suffers from “wall of text” syndrome. It does a few different things all at the same time, so it’s easy to get confused. The most important thing to remember is that Divine Deflection requires you to choose only one target. Don’t choose your own creature! (Unless you want it to die). […]
Divine Deflection prevents and deals a TOTAL of X damage.
With the new card , the wording can be a little misleading. While one might read it to mean that it prevents X damage to you AND X damage for each creature or planeswalker you control, then deals all that combined damage to whatever you targeted, it doesn’t quite work like that. When you cast […]
Parallel Lives doesn’t make any tokens. It causes other stuff to make extra tokens.
“If I make an Angel token with , and I have a out, why does the token made by Parallel Lives get exiled too?” Easy! Because Parallel Lives doesn’t make any tokens at all. What it does is create a replacement effect. Replacement effects do exactly what it sounds like they do: They take one […]
Prevention effects can only prevent the trample damage that is assigned to a creature.
There are many ways to prevent damage that would be dealt to or by a creature. Some effects specify a specific amount of damage (), some will prevent all damage from specific sources or types of damage (the portion of the protection ability of that prevents damage), and others will prevent all damage (). However, […]