…and knowing is half the battlefield
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 […]
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 […]
Evolve is a fun ability. Play out your evolve creatures, then play something big and POP! All those evolve creatures level up and get bigger. What’s not to like? I mean, a creature like should pretty much always cause your evolve abilities to trigger, since it ends up as an 8/8, right? Well, not quite. […]
This question cropped up an awful lot once Extort was first spoiled, and even weeks after the release of Gatecrash I still hear it fairly often: Does Extort automatically make a card B/W for the purposes of color identity? The answer to that question is a resounding ‘no’. While a card like will obviously be […]
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 […]
Finally for this week’s Gatecrash mechanics, we have House Dimir, the blue-black masters of stealth and subterfuge. Their mechanic this time around is called Cipher, and boy is it a doozy! I’ve gotten plenty of questions about Cipher, so I’ll answer some of them for you here. Cipher is a fun mechanic. When a spell […]
Keeping with their “bleed ‘em dry” theme from the old Ravnica, the Church of Deals has a new way to tax your opponent to death: Extort. Whenever you cast a spell while you control a permanent with Extort, you may pay W or B to cause your opponent to lose 1 life, and yourself to […]
I’ve got to say, I’m really liking the new Simic! You’ll be seeing a lot of their little mutations at the prerelease, and just like Batallion, it helps to know how it works before you head into the event so you don’t make a misplay. Evolve is another triggered ability. If you have a creature […]
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 […]