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. […]
Category: Keywords
Extort and Commander
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 […]
Cipher and Extort
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 […]
Dimir: How Cipher works.
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 […]
Orzhov: How Extort works.
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 […]
Simic: How Evolve works.
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 […]
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 […]
Overloading in Two Headed Giant
Overload does weird things with 2HG. Some of you at the prerelease may have noticed that. See, all of the Overload spells that you aim at other people’s stuff work on everything of that sort you don’t control, if Overloaded. In a normal 2 man game, or a free-for-all, that means it hits your opponents’ […]
You can’t stop Eyes in the Skies by killing the new bird before populate happens.
If your opponent casts , your first instinct might be to kill all his token creatures in response so he can’t populate. However, it’s not quite as easy as that. Once Eyes in the Skies starts to resolve, it continues to resolve until all possible actions written on the card are taken, before being put […]