Finally for this week\u2019s Gatecrash mechanics, we have House Dimir, the blue-black masters of stealth and subterfuge. Their mechanic this time around is called Cipher, and boy is it a doozy! I\u2019ve gotten plenty of questions about Cipher, so I\u2019ll answer some of them for you here.<\/p>\n
Cipher is a fun mechanic. When a spell with Cipher resolves, you have the option to exile the card \u2018encoded\u2019 on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to an opponent, you can cast a copy of the encoded spell, for free! This lets you double, triple, even quadruple your fun by getting to use the same spell over and over as many times as your creature can connect. Unlike most copy effects [think Reverberate<\/a> or Twincast<\/a>], Cipher has you create a copy of the card in exile and cast that, so it\u2019ll trigger things that care about a spell being cast. Big question number one: No, you can\u2019t encode the copies onto a creature. The rules for Cipher say that you only get the option to Encode it if the spell is represented by an actual card, while the copy is not.<\/p>\n Big question number two: Yes, you can and should be encoding as many spells as possible onto your Dimir Keyrune<\/a>s. The rules for Cipher also tell us that the duration is \u2018as long as the card with cipher remains exiled and the creature remains on the battlefield\u2019, and that it doesn\u2019t matter if that creature stops being a creature for a while. So you can slap a Last Thoughts<\/a> on your keyrune and draw a card every single time it connects.<\/p>\n And yes, if your encoded creature has double strike, you get to cast the encoded spell once for each combat damage step! That means double casting your cipher spell each time your double-striker goes unblocked! However, remember that cipher only triggers on combat damage, so you can’t draw free cards with Last Thoughts on your Bomber Corps when it’s battalion ability deals damage.<\/p>\n Today’s Rules Tip written by Trevor Nu\u00f1ez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Finally for this week\u2019s Gatecrash mechanics, we have House Dimir, the blue-black masters of stealth and subterfuge. Their mechanic this time around is called Cipher, and boy is it a doozy! I\u2019ve gotten plenty of questions about Cipher, so I\u2019ll answer some of them for you here. Cipher is a fun mechanic. When a spell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,17,8],"tags":[892],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-2957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-keywords","category-staticabilities","category-triggeredabilities","tag-cipher","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2958,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions\/2958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}