Ah, the good old days of “Bolt your Jace as soon as he comes in”. See, priority is a funny thing, and it’s almost like magic (editor’s note: no pun intended?) to the people who aren’t well-versed in it. The short version of the story: Priority is the system of who can do what at […]
Strategy Week: Ordering Triggers for Fun and Profit!
While Triggered Abilities may seem confusing at first, there is profit to be made by understanding them! First, let’s review how to identify a triggered ability. Triggered abilities are identifiable using 3 key words: 1) When 2) Whenever 3) At If you see one of these words, you’re in trigger-town! If you can memorize these […]
Strategy Week: Wait to activate abilities until the end of your opponent’s turn.
When you play a card that has great potential, like , it’s sometimes tempting to activate its abilities right away. But remember the saying: “Patience is a virtue.” Or, in Magic terms, “Wait until the latest possible moment before playing anything.” There are a lot of steps and phases that can fly right by players […]
Strategy Week: Ask your opponent if they have effects BEFORE you turn your creatures sideways.
Something you’ll hear and see a lot in any competitive event [and even some FNMs and prereleases where competitive crowds hang out] will be players consistently asking their opponent for a response before attacks. This commonly manifests itself in the form of a very simple shortcut: the active player will simply ask “Moving to combat?” […]
Strategy Week: It’s often better to attack BEFORE you cast spells on your turn.
If you watch many pro players, you might notice something consistent about how they play: They attack BEFORE they cast spells. Why is that? What’s the point of waiting? Well, sometimes, it makes sense to cast spells before you attack, such as when you’re casting a creature with haste. Also, you’d probably never want to […]
Stuffy Doll doesn’t target anything, but you can respond to its damage-triggered ability.
A very common misconception by MANY players is “implicit targeting”. It’s a belief that anything that directly affects something, targets it. This is not the case, as rule 114.9a tells us. Just because something is being affected by a spell or ability doesn’t mean that it’s being targeted! The word ‘target’ needs to be used […]
‘Summoning Sickness’ only applies to creatures.
Pretty much everyone knows what Summoning Sickness is, even though it’s not a technical game term. It’s a common phrase used to abbreviate a much more wordy rule: “A creature cannot attack or use activated abilities with the Tap or Untap symbol in the cost unless that object has been under the its controller’s control […]
When you sacrifice Solemn Simulacrum to Birthing Pod, you always draw BEFORE you search.
There is a common confusion that comes up when you activate an ability that requires a sacrifice as a payment, and the sacrificed creature has an ability that triggers when it dies. Many people (mistakenly) think you can stack the order of the abilities so the activated ability resolves before the triggered ability. This is […]
What “Stalling” is and why it’s a Very Bad Thing.
Most people have heard of Slow Play and know what that means. However, some people think it’s the same thing as Stalling. While the two are often related, they are definitely independent problems with very different outcomes. Slow Play is, very simply, taking too long to make game decisions. This is difficult to quantify, and […]