This is an older ‘change’ than the Missed Trigger update a little while back, but it’s one we haven’t really covered. One of the toughest things for a Judge to figure out is a life total discrepancy; when Player A says he’s at one life total, and Player B insists that he’s at another. In […]
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 […]
Undying and Ash Zealot
tends to make Zombie decks and Flashback spells sad. However, it’s not a complete Graveyard hoser like is. Cage will stop creatures from coming back from the dead even if they’re reanimated some other way, like via a , or Undying. Ash Zealot only cares if something gets cast from the graveyard. She won’t trigger […]
Epic Experiment and Additional/Alternate Costs
If you cast a spell off of , you won’t be able to pay any alternate costs for it [such as Overloading a , or having your opponents gain life to cast ]. The reason for that is because Experiment is having you pay an alternate cost [of not paying at all!] when you cast […]
You Can’t Rush Your Opponent Past Steps
Back when my friends and I were first getting into Magic, we didn’t know how priority worked. You’d commonly hear “too late, I already ended my turn” in response to people wanting to cast spells at EOT, or “Too late, it already resolved” in response to an attempted counterspell. But as we know now, you […]
Redirecting a Detention Sphere Does Nothing
Much like the and Emrakul trickiness of Standard long past, this question deals with a common misunderstanding about when Oblivion Ring and actually target. While you can cast on any spell at all, it won’t actually DO anything unless that spell has targets for you to change. And neither Oblivion Ring nor its cousin Detention […]
If you control two Sublime Archangels, each has 2 Exalted abilities that can trigger.
There are many abilities where it makes no sense to have them more than once, because it’s just redundant. These include lifelink, trample, deathtouch, infect, first/double strike, among many others. However, with triggered abilities, each one is independent and can trigger separately, so it can actually be helpful to have multiple copies of that ability. […]
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 […]