The Planeswalking Peddler

Magic: The Gathering - Tutorial Week 13

‘ll make this quick. Today’s tutorial is a bit of an epilogue and won’t cover nearly as much as what we have done in previous weeks.

This week, we’ll take a look at the mechanics in the newest Magic set, Mirrodin Besieged. Plus a little extra.

Battle cry. Each time a creature with battle cry attacks, all other attacking creatures get a power bonus. I stress the word ‘other’ since the battle crying creature doesn’t receive any bonus from itself. Multiple creatures with battle cry can attack and provide cumulative bonuses.

Two Accorder Paladins attack. Battle cry creatures doesn’t give the power bonuses to themselves, but all other attacking creatures happily receive it. This means that while an Accorder Paladin cannot make itself bigger, it can make other Accorder Paladins bigger.

The left Paladin gives a power bonus to the centre creature and the right creature. The centre Paladin gives a bonus to the left and right creatures. The blocking Paladin does nothing to increase or decrease these numbers. Battle cry only works when you are attacking.

Living weapon is an ability that appears only on artifact – equipment cards. What this means is that the weapon hits the battlefield attached to a simple creature. The weapon can attack and defend, and act as a living thing by itself as long as the simple creature remains alive. In other words, the weapon comes onto the battlefield carried by a soul and ready for action, instead of you needing another creature to attach the equipment to.

First strike, double strike, and protection. Let’s go through them one by one.

First strike: a creature with first strike hits the enemy creature first during combat. After that, if the enemy creature is still alive, it hits the first strike creature back.

A creature with first strike can easily kill an enemy creature in combat before the enemy can deliver its normal combat damage. If the first strike creature successfully kills the enemy creature with its ability, than the enemy creature would be too dead to hit back.

Double strike: a creature with double strike hits two times, the first time being first strike damage, the second time being normal combat damage.

Simple? Yup. Double strike essentially means that the creature has first strike and normal damage.

Protection: a creature with protection has DEBT

Let’s take Mirran Crusader’s protection from black ability. This means that the Crusader:

• Cannot be Damaged by black
• Cannot be Enchanted or Equipped by black
• Cannot be Blocked by black
• Cannot be Targeted by Black

Same rules apply when green goes up against the Crusader, which can’t touch the Crusader in those same four aspects.

And that’s it for this series of tutorial articles. I ended with a kind of limerick the last time. This time all I’m going to say is that it was an interesting journey thus far. Hopefully these articles have been of some help. This is Aihiave and I say good night, at least… until we once again meet.