Many cards in Magic ask you to “Name a card” as part of their effect, such as , , and . Whatever you pick has to be an actual Magic card legal in the format; calling “Pikachu” isn’t a legal choice, and neither is calling in Standard. Double-faced cards are a bit unusual. You’re restricted […]
Category: Resolving spells and abilities
Deathrite Shaman Won’t Make Mana Without a Target
is making a splash in Modern lately, and sees some play in Standard due to it helping to slow down reanimator-type strategies, as well as giving some Zombie decks an extra way to bleed their opponent for the last few points of mana. One of the reasons that it sees a good deal of play […]
Angel of Serenity “may” exile the targets if it’s killed before the trigger resolves.
has a somewhat unique ability, in that sometimes you target things that you wouldn’t mind being exiled forever at the same time that you target something you’d rather get back in your hand. So what happens if the Angel enters and you choose targets, but the Angel is ed before the ability resolves? The Angel’s […]
Epic Experiment and Reverberate
is a card you’re likely to see in a lot of builds, but it’s important to know what you can and cannot do with it. Because Epic Experiment has you cast the spells in whatever order you choose, you’re free to cast a non-Reverberate spell first, so that your Reverberate can target it. So if […]
You don’t have to pay for your opponent’s Soul Tithe if you control Sigarda.
If you control and your opponent enchants one of your other creatures with (obviously they can’t cast Soul Tithe targeting your Sigarda thanks to hexproof), then when Soul Tithe’s ability resolves it will ask, “Wanna pay this thing’s converted mana cost?” At that point, you can pay if you really want to, but when you […]
Guttersnipe will deal damage before the spell that triggered it resolves.
Quite a few cards in Return to Ravnica trigger when you cast a spell of some sort, and is one that a lot of people are rather excited to build around. He turns all of your spells into burn, and your burn into better burn. But when does he actually trigger? When does the damage […]
Wild Beastmaster can kill your other creatures if it has negative power when its ability resolves.
This question has come up a few times recently, because the answer doesn’t seem to make sense to everyone. What happens when you attack with a and your opponent responds to the trigger by casting or targeting the Beastmaster? Well the first thing to realize is that the Beastmaster’s power is only checked as its […]
What happens when you attack with two Wild Beastmasters.
is the kind of creature that mono-green decks love. She turns things like , single-target pump spells, into board-pumping game enders. But how do two of them work? The key thing here is when a card refers to itself by name in Magic, it does not mean ‘any object with this name’, it means ‘this […]
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 […]