If you’ve ever played Magic Online, sooner or later you’re going to experience the frustration of clicking too rapidly through an X spell, like , and ending up casting it for X=0. Luckily, in the real world we’re a little more forgiving. If you cast an X spell without announcing the value for X, the […]
Category: Shortcuts
Feeling of Dread can only stop attackers if cast before the declare attackers step.
A question that I’ve been asked a lot is, “When is the last time I can tap a creature to prevent it from attacking?” So today, let’s use as our example card. When is the last time I can cast the Dread to prevent a creature or creatures from attacking? The last chance you’ll get […]
How Nivmagus Elemental’s ability really works.
As many of you know, this weekend marked the pre-release of the new set, Return to Ravnica. Many of us judged such events, and we managed to collect a few common questions that popped up a lot, so we can answer them for you guys here! One I saw happen quite a bit involved . […]
Can you respond to the choice of what to copy with Phantasmal Image? It depends!
This is a very common question with any kind of copy creature. The most important thing to note is that the static ability that lets you choose to copy something is NOT a triggered ability (if it was, pretty much every Clone-type creature would die for being 0/0 before you could choose to copy something!). […]
How the Heartless Summoning + Havengul Lich combo works.
As you might have guessed by now, we’re doing a special Combo Week this week! I got saddled with (in my opinion) the most hilarious combo in Standard right now: Heartless Lich. But how does it work? First, you need to control and a . You also need a (either in the graveyard or in […]
How loop shortcuts work.
So now you’ve assembled your and two s, and are ready to make infinite mana… but you don’t want to sit there tapping and untapping them ad nauseam. Luckily, you don’t have to, thanks to the magic of loop shortcuts. Once you’ve assembled your combo, you can propose a loop shortcut. Demonstrate the combo once, […]
The combat shortcut: What it means when you say, “Declare attackers?”
Many players are unsure about how the combat shortcut works; when they tried to tap an attacker before their opponent swung, the opponent said, “You can’t tap it, I already attacked.” Whether that’s true or not depends on what was said before that. There is a default tournament shortcut that says, “A statement such as […]
Wrapping up Shortcuts
The final two official shortcuts are.. – In a 2HG game, a creature that’s attacking a team and not one of their planeswalkers is assigns its combat damage to the primary player on the defending team, unless its controller states otherwise. For example, if an unblocked creature you control is equipped with in a 2HG […]
Shortcutting to Resolution
Three of the official shortcuts deal with announcing or asking about choices before those choices need to be made. If you cast a spell or activate an ability and declare choices that aren’t normally made until that spell or ability resolves, you have to abide by those declared choices unless another player responds to that […]