Back when Zendikar block was still in standard, was one of my favorite cards. We may have that back, but we also have , which grants protection to just one of your creatures, but that creature needn’t be white (plus you get to Scry 1). Now, we’re also in a Standard heavy with Auras and […]
Category: Keywords
Bestow and Cost Modification
All right, the dust from Theros has more or less settled, and everyone’s got a pretty good feel for the mechanics. But there are some nitpicky things that might not come up often, that you’re unsure how to handle. For example, when does a spell cast for its Bestow cost ‘count’ as the appropriate kind […]
Monstrous Isn’t Linked to the Counters
While this didn’t come up much at the prerelease (since there’s no real way to get rid of their +1/+1 counters in Theros sealed!), I’ve seen and heard a few players thinking that “Monstrous” is linked to the counters themselves. For example, they think that if they remove the +1/+1 counters from their somehow (perhaps […]
Abilities, Activated Abilities, Characteristics, Continuous Effects, Effects, Interaction of Continuous Effects, Keywords, Static Abilities
Melira and Inkmoth Nexus
Infect! Quite the polarizing mechanic in most areas, it was either considered laughably bad or stupidly broken depending on who you were talking to. It’s gained some traction lately with eggs-in-one-basket rush decks, especially in Modern, and it’s possible you might run into a Pod deck running and you want to know how it interacts […]
Runner’s Bane will fall off a creature once its power is 4+.
This one came up quite a lot at our prerelease! is a solid common in Limited, locking down your opponent’s little dudes. It can clear a path for you to swing early on, or it can disable his utility guy. But there’s a deceptively easy way to get rid of it, and it involves hulking […]
Prerelease week: How Fuse works.
Split cards have always been a fan favorite. Probably for the same reason people love the Charms so much: they give you options. In the past, we had entwine, to let you cast all of the modes a spell has, and now, with Dragon’s Maze, we have Fuse, which lets us cast both sides of […]
Extort’s loss of life can’t hit a planeswalker.
Quick question: What’s the difference between damage and loss of life? As you can see from the cards above, whether an effect deals damage or just causes loss of life is dependent on the specific wording of the effect. When an effect “deals damage”, it causes loss of life (barring weird exceptions like infect), but […]
Abilities, Activated Abilities, Continuous Effects, Effects, Keywords, Mana Abilities, Triggered Abilities
Elvish Archdruid Won’t Trigger Gyre Sage
If there’s one thing Elves love [beyond having Hobbits do their dirty work, but that’s another plane entirely], it’s mana. Lots and lots of mana. Enormous, obscene piles of green mana, ready to be converted into an astoundingly large spell, or into many little elves, who will make even more mana. Continuing the trend of […]
Flinthoof Boar and Evolve
is part of a cycle in M13, and it’s a pretty neat cycle! They’re all uncommon mono-colored creatures that have an ability which requires an allied color of mana to activate, and they get +1/+1 if you control a corresponding basic. Flinthoof Boar is a 2/2 for 2 that gets +1/+1 if you control a […]