The Planeswalking Peddler

Magic: The Gathering - Tutorial Week 3

et’s see… we left off talking about one-shot cards like sorceries. Guess I’ll need to elaborate on that a bit.

But beforehand, a look at the battlefield as it is now.

As per usual, click on the image to see a larger version.

White just used up all his resources to play a sorcery. Sorceries happen once then go away. In this case the card Excommunicate made Red put one of his battle-hungry creatures back to the deck, and the sorcery, now used, currently resides in White’s graveyard.

Again the path is clear for White to attack, so he sends in his Lion. Red can’t block with his Goblin because the Goblin has already been used (has been turned sideways). He takes the damage and goes down from 18 life to 16 life.

On his turn, Red does his thing: straighten, draw, put down a resource (if he has one). Then he can choose to attack and / or put down other cards.

Sure enough, he sends the Goblin on its way. With no creatures to block, White accepts the two damage, falling to 22 life. For the second time Red plays his Fiery Hellhound, the creature previously put on top of his deck. The Hellhound has an ability which I will get to in a minute.

With no options left, Red decides to give the turn back to his opponent.

White straightens and draws, still without a fourth resource. He puts down another creature called Wild Griffin. It has the same power and toughness values as the Lion, but costs 1 resource more because the Griffin has an ability called “flying”.

Flying is mostly a combat-related ability. In combat, a creature that flies cannot be blocked by creatures that can’t fly. That means neither the Goblin nor the Hound can block the Griffin, even if both Red’s creatures were not sideways.

Another creature that flies can indeed block the Griffin. Also, creatures that fly can block both flying and non-flying creatures.

The Lion brings Red to 14 life (Red chooses not to block) and White passes the turn.

You may realise by now that when someone puts down a creature, it doesn’t start attacking on that turn. In Magic, creatures enter the battlefield with a one-turn disability that prevents them from attacking right away. This disability wears off when you start a new turn.

Back to the match, Red does his chores at the start of his turn, then thinks whether or not to attack. He says yes, and both the Goblin and the Hound turn sideways.

White contemplates the situation below.

For tutorial reasons, White declines sending his Griffin to block. Even though his Griffin can kill either creature in combat (the Griffin has 2 power and Red’s creatures can’t stand up to 2 power) he feels he wants to hang on to this creature. Also Red is rather low on life, almost half of White’s.

So White says he isn’t blocking. Something happens after he announces this decision. Before combat damage actually hits, players have the option to use abilities and certain spells. In this case, Red is going to use the ability of his Hellhound.

“: Fiery Hellhound gets +1/+0 until end of turn.”

Fiery Hellhound has 2 power. It’s ability says that you can spend 1 Red resource () to increase that power by 1 until the turn ends. In fact, you can spend as many Red as you want, as long as your Red resources a.k.a. Mountains are available. Notice that this ability adds 0 to the Hound’s toughness, essentially affecting only the creature’s power.

Given the circumstances, Red looks at his five straight Mountains and then uses them all. Committing 5 Red resources means his Hound gets +5 to its power, growing from a 2/2 creature to a 7/2 creature for a turn.

White already said he isn’t blocking. Well, that’s his lost. Unable to do anything, White takes it all; 2 from the Goblin and 7 from the Hound means he’s taking 9 damage this combat.

With satisfaction Red passes the turn back to White. The boost to the Hound’s power disappears as White starts his turn.

White holds back his Griffin, sending the Lion to do 2 more damage, then passes the turn.

Red gets another Mountain on his turn so he puts it onto the battlefield. He then pushes the offensive with his Goblin and Hound.

White thinks. Between sending his Griffin to block the Goblin or the Hound, he chooses the Hound. Both Griffin and Hound are 2/2 creatures (2 power / 2 toughness) so they will die together.

Before combat damage happens, both players again decide whether or not to do anything special. Red feels there’s no need to activate his Hound’s ability. The opponent’s Griffin will die whether or not the Hound is boosted, so chooses to preserve his Mountains. Similarly, White doesn’t do anything. Both creatures die simultaneously while the Goblin goes in for 2 more to White’s life.

Turn goes to White.

White finally gets his fourth Plains which he puts down onto the battlefield. He has a creature which he can play, but decides against it and doesn’t event attack. He passes the turn with 11 life remaining to Red’s 12 life.

Again Red puts down a Mountain and sends the Goblin into combat. White blocks with his Lion. Before damage happens, Red says he’s not doing anything. White reaches for two of his Plains, uses them, and plays a card.

First things first. Under the illustration the card is labelled as an “instant”. Instants are the same as sorceries in that they occur once, as one-shot cards. The only difference between instants and sorceries is the timing.

Sorceries:

• Can only be played during your turn.
• Cannot be played during combat.
• Can only be played during your two “main phases”. Your two main phases happen before combat and after combat.
• Cannot be played when you are starting a turn, which is before your first main phase.
• Cannot be played when you are ending a turn, which is after your second main phase.
• Cannot be played when there is another card or ability which has been played, but hasn’t actually happened. (Explanations on the way.)

The timing for instants is:

• Can be played practically anytime.

I’ll get our first instant out of the way, then see if there’s enough space to illustrate the timing on playing cards. Mighty Leap says:

“Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains flying until end of turn.”

This means that when you play this card, you need to aim it at a creature (“aim” as in you “target” the creature). Any creature “aimed” / “targeted” by this card will get a +2 bonus to power and a +2 bonus to toughness, as well as having the ability “flying”. As the card says, both effects will disappear at the end of the turn.

The combat scenario will now look a bit like this:

Doesn’t look good for the Goblin. The flying ability does nothing relevant here, so we can ignore that.

Note: The Lion had no abilities before. It only had story text, which I removed to make things easier. Giving an ability to a creature does not erase previous abilities. They all add up to make a more powerful creature.

What’s important is that we now have a 2/1 creature getting into a fight with a much larger 4/4 creature. Just like in normal combat, the creatures will damage each other, then what dies will die and what lives will live.

The Goblin takes 4 damage, way higher than its 1 toughness so it will go to the graveyard. The Lion will take 2 damage. Since 4 damage is needed to kill the Lion in its boosted body, the Lion lives.

In Magic, damage stays on a creature until the turn ends. At the end of each turn, all damage is cleared as though creatures have healed. This happens at the same time “until end of turn” bonuses disappear (a regular four-word expression seen on cards like Mighty Leap and Fiery Hellhound).

Basically it means that the Lion will lose its 2 damage (from the Goblin) at the same time it shrinks back to its original 2/2 body. The Lion will survive because when the +2/+2 bonus disappears, the damage no longer exists.

So it was Red’s turn to regret. After combat he plays another creature. Canyon Minotaur is a 3/3 with no abilities. The turn is handed over to White.

White draws a fifth Plains which he gladly puts down. He refuses to attack with his Lion because the Minotaur will just block and maul it with 3 power. The Minotaur itself will survive the Lion’s attack because 3 damage is needed to kill the thing.

In other words, attacking here does nothing other than make White lose a creature for free. If he had another Mighty Leap in his hand (remember, you can have up to 4 cards with the same name in your deck) then attacking would be worth something.

As it is, White uses up 4 Plains and plays the creature he had held on to since last turn. It’s like the Griffin, same flying ability, but with slightly higher power.

The Assault Griffin can take on the Minotaur. It has enough power to kill the other, though sadly its 2 toughness will make it die as well.

Thinking he has done all he can for now, White sees what Red is up to.

Red takes his turn and now has access to 7 Mountains. He looks at two of his opponent’s creatures, then considers the single creature on his side.

We are now back to the original battlefield position seen in the first tutorial.

The image below is the same as in Tutorial Week 1, but White’s Plains have been used. Life totals have been added.

Click to enlarge.

I was going to explain the timing regarding instants and sorceries here, but perhaps this is enough for a week. Next time, we’ll try to time it right with multiple cards being played per turn. Till then, I wish everyone a good day.