The combat phase normally has five steps: beginning of combat, declare attackers, declare blockers, combat damage, and end of combat (when first or double strike is involved, the combat damage step happens twice). Intuitively enough, when you declare a creature as an attacker, the game begins to consider it an “attacking creature.” In the same […]
Rakdos Shred-Freak can’t block Knight of Glory (an explanation of hybrid mana symbols).
“Hybrid mana” is incredibly flexible. Each hybrid mana symbol in a card’s cost lets you choose which color of mana you’ll use to pay for each hybrid mana symbol. For example, ‘s cost is {B/R}{B/R}, which can be paid with BB, BR, or RR. However, the Shred-Freak’s colors are always black and red, even if […]
Tournament Tuesday: Announcing Floating Mana
Your mana pool is arguably the most important concept in all of Magic — but most of the time, it’s completely invisible. If I tap four and three s for an , it’s pretty obvious what color of mana each of my Gardens is making, and whether the Vents are making red or blue usually […]
It That Betrays and Commanders
Om nom nom! is coming to get you — and your commander! For today’s tip, I want to talk about a cool interaction in Commander, the hugely-popular multiplayer format where each player chooses a legendary creature, called a “commander,” to lead his or her deck. In this format, each player’s commander is subject to a […]
Why Tarfire can never kill Tarmogoyf by itself.
For our second tip, we cover everyone’s favorite beater with confusing artwork, . Good old Goofy is a Legacy staple because he’s an astoundingly efficient creature for 2 mana, since this format tends to fill graveyards quickly and with a diverse range of card types. What some of you might not know is that killing […]
You can cast Krosan Grip targeting Standstill, but you won’t be happy about it.
More Double-Legacy days! I hope that many of you are safely in Denver, or on your way there for the event, and I hope you have fun and do well! On to the tips. is a lot of fun in Legacy and EDH both, because it’s very difficult to deal with. Since it has Split […]
Mishra’s Factory can pump itself when blocking, but only if it’s not sick.
When declaring blockers, the defending player can only use untapped creatures. Once blockers are declared, though, the game doesn’t care if the blocking creatures become tapped later! A useful application of this is , which has three abilities: (1) a mana ability, (2) an “animation” ability, and (3) a “pump” ability. You can use the […]
You can’t flashback Ancestral Vision, but you can cascade into it.
’s mana cost is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Actually, Ancestral Vision doesn’t have a mana cost at all. It’s not 0 — cards with a mana cost of 0 exist, and they actually have the number 0 in their upper corner, such as . Rather, just like a land, Vision’s mana cost simply […]
You can’t Burning Wish for exiled cards
When you wish upon a star Makes no difference who you are Anything your heart desires Will come to you But what can you Wish for in Magic? A card like Burning Wish tells you to choose a sorcery card from outside the game. So what’s outside of the game then? When the Wishes were […]