Category: Type Changing

Abilities, Characteristics, Control / Controller, State-Based Actions, Static Abilities, Type Changing

Mind Control and Gods: Not a Great Idea

| tnunez

So your opponent is staring you down with an active , or maybe his is online and giving you the business. Your board is fairly barren, but you've got a nice little in your hand, and you're ready to turn that threat into an answer! Well, you shouldn't. Devotion is a static ability on the five Gods we have, and it's constantly checking itself. If you take over their god with your or , the chances are low that you'll get to keep it! As soon as the God switches over to your control, it'll check

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Combat Phase, Type Changing

When Bestow Creatures Can Attack

| tnunez

A misconception I've seen a lot of is players thinking that once a noncreature permanent becomes a creature, it gains summoning sickness until it's been a creature for a turn. That's simply not true! The rules don't care how long a permanent has been a creature, just how long you've controlled that specific permanent. So for example, if you put a onto one of your creatures at the end of your opponent's turn, and the creature dies before combat on your very next turn, the can attack! It's only been

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Abilities, Activated Abilities, Combat Phase, Tournament Rules, Turn Structure, Type & Subtypes, Type Changing

How to Attack with Mutavault

| tnunez

is back in town, and doing fun things! It swings for 2, it gets pumped by , it has the subtypes of Ninja Mutant Turtle- and it taps for mana! What a land. However, some people don't know how to properly attack with it! You see, to swing with your Mutavault, it has to be a creature when you start declaring attackers, which is the absolute first part of the Declare Attackers step. So, by-the-book, it needs to be a creature BEFORE that point. Your last chance to animate it so it can attack is during

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Abilities, Casting / playing a spell or ability, Continuous Effects, Effects, Mana Abilities, Resolving spells and abilities, Static Abilities, Triggered Abilities, Type & Subtypes, Type Changing

Devotion and Counterspells

| tnunez

By far the biggest chunk of questions I've gotten from my players and my threads the past week are all about the last mechanic we're covering this week (sorry, Scry): Devotion. Devotion is more or less a reworking of Chroma, an ability word from back in Lorwyn block. Put simply, "Devotion to COLOR" is measured by how many mana symbols of that color appear in the mana costs of your permanents. It doesn't matter how many black permanents total you have, for example, to find your Devotion to Black.

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Abilities, Activated Abilities, Continuous Effects, Effects, Mana Abilities, Type & Subtypes, Type Changing

Stony Silence and Artifact Lands

| tnunez

To finish out this week's Modern flair, let's talk about a deck called Robots (or back in my crotchety days, "Affinity"). It uses lots of artifacts to make your opponent and his life total very sad. The Legacy version (and the original Standard version) made delightful use of the artifact lands like and pulling double duty thanks to Affinity for Artifacts. While those particular little nasties aren't legal in Modern, they are in other formats where s pretty worthless since they can no longer tap

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Continuous Effects, Effects, Interaction of Continuous Effects, Type & Subtypes, Type Changing, Uncategorized

Blood Moon and Dryad Arbor

| tnunez

Modern Madness continues, if you hadn't caught onto this week's theme. Since the manabases in Modern can get greedy with their shocks and fetches and other color-providing wonder, is a common sideboard hate card to punish those greedy manabases. A whole board of colorfixing goodness, turned into nearly worthless Mountains for the low low price of 2R! But how does it interact with weird lands, like , the Forest whose bark IS its bite? Well, to find out, we look at the layers! Blood Moon does its

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Mana Abilities, Type & Subtypes, Type Changing

Spreading Seas vs. the Urza’s lands.

| bimmerbot

So by now, most people are familiar with the "Urzatron" decks that are popular in Modern. They revolve around getting the three different Urza's lands (Power Plant, Mine, and Tower) to cast large spells rather quickly, getting 7 colorless mana from just 3 lands. In an attempt to combat the deck, one trick people have been using is to include Spreading Seas in their decks or sideboards. They slap one on Urza's Tower, and suddenly it's an island! Now Urza's Mine and Urza's Power Plant don't see

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Abilities, Activated Abilities, Mana Abilities, Type Changing

Keyrunes Tips and Tricks

| tnunez

Reader suggestion time! Sort of. We got a submission from our Suggest a Rules Tip box about Keyrunes, and some of the tricky things about them. For example: You can throw down a Keyrune on turn 3 and immediately tap it for mana, just like you could a land, or another mana rock. As most of you know, 'summoning sickness' only applies to creatures. However, if you were to put a Keyrune onto the field and activate it in that same turn, it wouldn't be able to attack because it's now a creature you've

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Type Changing

Counters remain on permanents, even if they don’t do anything.

| krizriktr

If a non-creature permanent becomes a creature temporarily and receives a counter, that counter will remain even after this permanent stops being a creature. For example, if a is 'animated' by its activated ability and receives either +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters, those counters will remain on the Colonnade even after it stops being a creature. These counters will have no real effect while the Colonnade is not a creature. However, if the Colonnade were to become a creature again the counters on

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Interaction of Continuous Effects, Planeswalkers, Type Changing

How Inkmoth Nexus and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas interact.

| krizriktr

One area of player confusion is how multiple abilities that 'animate' a permanent interact. A very common interaction that has come up a lot lately deals with ' animation ability and the planeswalker second activated ability. In order to get this ball rolling, you must first use Inkmoth Nexus' ability to turn the Nexus into a 1/1 artifact creature land with both flying and infect. This Nexus will still have the normal abilities of an Inkmoth Nexus, the mana ability and the 'animation' activated

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