Failing to Comply: Priority and Aftermath cards

Welcome back to the Rules Tips Blog! As of today, Amonkhet is legal for Standard (and Modern and Legacy), so next week we're going to be going back to dealing with Standard questions and tips, but for today we'll generally be covering the new Split cards from Amonkhet, all of which have Aftermath. As with the old split cards, these little beauties have two "spells" printed on them; UNLIKE the old ones, only one of those sides at a time is usually available to you. The 'top' half is what you can cast

Read more.

Aetherflux Reservoir Management Procedures

Welcome back! For today's Kaladesh-based tip, we'll be talking about the newest addition to my lifegain EDH deck: . It gains life and shoots giant life-total-powered doom lasers; what's not to love? The first ability seems straightforward; every time you cast a spell, you gain life equal to the number of spells you've cast this turn. So your first spell would gain you 1 life, your second would gain you 2, etc, etc, to help you gain up over the 50 mark so you can fire the doom laser (not to be confused

Read more.

Selfless Spirit and Kozilek’s Return

Welcome back to the Rules Tip Blog! Today we'll be going over the interaction between and . Spirit is a sort of update on an old favorite, ; a creature you can pop to save the rest of your team if needed- but this time at half the cost. A lot of the time it's straightforward; you can sacrifice it in response to your opponent's targeted removal to save one specific creature, or you could sacrifice it in response to a board wipe like to save your whole team; you lose some surprise factor having it

Read more.

How to Use Geier Reach Sanitarium

Drawing cards is fun, right? Lands that draw cards are even more fun, right? Well, is a fun card! It's pretty simple on the surface: You can tap it for a colorless mana to cast spells and pay for various things (as is normal for most lands), but you can also use it to spread the love and let everyone do some looting. So how does that work, especially in a Standard with Madness? Who draws first? Can you cast the spell you draw? Let's break it down. The Sanitarium tells each player to draw a card,

Read more.

Exploit Week: Exploiting Opponents for Fun and Profit

And to close out Exploit week, we finish with possibly the wackiest interaction you'll run into during a Dragons of Tarkir involved Limited event: what happens if you steal your opponent's creature in response to Exploit! It won't come up much, because the majority of creature-theft is in the form of sorcery effects like , or the ability of a creature like , not happening in response to things. But mucks things up pretty well there, since it'll trigger during your opponent's turn quite often! So,

Read more.