“Summoning Sickness” is a common phrase to describe a much wordier rule: A creature cannot attack or activate abilities with the Tap or Untap symbol unless it has been under your control continuously since the beginning of your most recent turn (unless it has haste). This is usually pretty clear-cut. For example, you can’t tap […]
Ratchet Bomb destroys most tokens, but not all of them.
Tokens created by a spell or triggered ability such as ’s golem token or ’ spirit tokens have no defined mana cost, and therefore have a converted mana cost (“CMC”) of zero. A activated with zero charge counters is more than adequate to wipe out a field of tokens generated in this manner. When a […]
The importance of proper shuffling.
Before the start of a game, it is very important to properly and sufficiently randomize (shuffle) your deck. To “randomize” means to shuffle the deck so that no player could have any knowledge about the approximate position of any particular card or the relative position of any group of cards. Usually, several mash shuffles is […]
A blocked creature stays blocked for the rest of combat, no matter what happens to the blocker.
The first thing that happens in the declare blockers step is that the defending player chooses which creatures will block and how they’re blocking. Once that happens, the blocks are locked in. Attackers that had a blocker declared become “blocked” creatures, and nothing can change that (aside from a few obscure effects that specifically say […]
Undying creatures and Black Sun’s Zenith.
Undying is a triggered ability that says “When this creature dies, if it didn’t have any +1/+1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter.” Most players know that +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters will cancel each other out if they’re on the same creature. This is a State-Based Action (“SBA”). […]
A creature that changes control is not “entering the battlefield.”
In a game of Magic, there are normally seven zones: library, hand, battlefield, graveyard, stack, exile, and command. Each player has his or her own library, hand and graveyard. The rest of the zones are shared by all players. If you use to steal your opponent’s , you don’t get to remove any other creature […]
What happens when two players control a Mimic Vat.
One of the most common situations regarding simultaneous triggers that comes up is two players controlling s, and who gets to imprint the creature when it dies. When two triggers go on the stack simultaneously, they are often controlled by one player, and it is fairly simple to handle. That player decides the order they […]
Don’t get in trouble for drawing extra cards. Keep your hand separate from the cards you’re looking at with Ponder.
When you cast , you look at the top 3 cards of your library, and you have the option of manipulating the order in which you would draw them. With that said, keep in mind that the cards you’re looking at are still a part of your library. Make sure that the cards in your […]
Tragic Slip checks for Morbid when it resolves, not when you cast it.
normally gives target creature -1/-1, but it gives that creature -13/-13 instead if a creature died this turn. This means that this can send just about any creature to the graveyard if a creature already died this turn. Note that Tragic Slip only checks whether a creature died this turn when it resolves, and not […]