The set’s mechanics with worked examples, then every word on the cards.
A reusable planeswalker token. Empower builds loyalty on your own Jace token. Loyalty is both its health and the resource you spend for its abilities.
Resolve Oculus: empower 4 creates Jace with four loyalty. Activate minus-three: Jace has one loyalty and you draw one when the ability resolves. More empower can refill it, but does not let that same Jace activate again this turn. A replacement token created after it dies is a new permanent.
In Two-Headed Giant: Each player controls their own Jace token. Empower adds loyalty only to a token you control. Each Jace permanent can normally use one loyalty ability during your team’s turn; two teammates cannot activate the same token twice.
CR 701.71 · CR 306.5 · CR 606.3 ↗
Creature now, extra spell later. Some creatures carry a small spell. Prepared means that spell is available to cast once; it does not mean the creature must tap or leave.
Cast Chronologist for 1 plus either white or blue. It enters prepared. In a main phase with an empty stack, pay 2 plus either white or blue for Peer Review. The bird stays. Peer Review makes a 2/2 Cadet and surveils 1. It is a noncreature spell, so casting it can trigger prowess.
Casting Voxmancer does not immediately prepare it. On your next upkeep, its trigger prepares it if it is unprepared. Vicious Verse is a sorcery costing either black or red; it deals 1 damage to one target opponent.
In Two-Headed Giant: Only the creature’s controller casts its prepared copy. A partner can help prepare it with an unrestricted target effect such as Hexhaven Dueling Arena, but cannot pay your spell costs or cast the copy for you.
A permanent red/green mana source. A Heartwood is an artifact token that taps for red or green mana and stays to do it again on later turns.
Cast Improviser and keep track of its prepared Soul Tether. Pay 2 plus red or green to cast Soul Tether and make a Heartwood. You can immediately tap that Heartwood for red or green, but it does not produce blue, black, or white.
In Two-Headed Giant: Mana belongs to the token’s controller. You cannot pool Heartwoods to pay your partner’s spells.
Choose future draws. Both inspect the top of your library. Surveil can send cards to the graveyard; scry can send them to the bottom. Neither is drawing a card.
Activate your Jace’s minus-one to surveil 1. Finish deciding where that card goes. Proft’s trigger can then let you pay 2 to give Proft a counter and draw. You draw after the surveil, not before.
Your first surveil/scry of the turn triggers its team pump. A second surveil that turn can improve your future draws, but Fateseer’s once-per-turn trigger does not fire again.
In Two-Headed Giant: Each library and each player’s triggers stay separate. Your partner cannot scry your deck unless a specific effect says so.
CR 701: Scry · CR 701: Surveil ↗
Seven cards in your graveyard. Threshold marks abilities that care about at least seven cards in your own graveyard. Read the particular card: some give a bonus, while others restrict an action.
At six graveyard cards, it has no threshold bonus. Resolve its Omit Variables to mill three: you can reach nine and gain the bonus. Later graveyard removal can drop the count below seven and remove that bonus.
With fewer than seven graveyard cards, you cannot cast Proft. You can still pay black and discard it for its separate minus-three/minus-one effect.
In Two-Headed Giant: Your teammate’s cards do not feed your threshold. If either teammate loses from drawing empty, both lose.
CR 207.2c · CR 104.3c · CR 810.8a ↗
Cast from the graveyard. Flashback lets you cast the card from your graveyard for its listed flashback cost. Afterwards it is exiled instead of going back to the graveyard.
Cast it normally to create a 4/4 Beast with trample. Later, pay 5 and green from your graveyard to create another Beast. The card is then exiled; it is not an endless source of Beasts.
In Two-Headed Giant: You cannot flash back cards from your partner’s graveyard.
New to Magic? A planeswalker is an ally that stays on the battlefield and gives you abilities to use. It is a different card type from a creature: it normally cannot attack or block. Jace tokens follow planeswalker rules too.
A planeswalker card’s bottom-right number is its starting loyalty. Put that many counters on it when it enters. The symbol beside each ability is a cost: change the loyalty immediately, then let players respond before the effect happens. You do not spend mana for these loyalty costs. These examples start at 3 loyalty:
Empower Jace N means add N loyalty to a Jace planeswalker token you control. If you have none, create one first. A new token starts at 0, then gets N counters before the game checks whether it has any loyalty.
Choose one of these abilities, not both. The token has no built-in + ability; other empower effects refill it. Empower adds to an existing Jace token if you have one, and cannot refill a nontoken Jace card.
Can I have more than one? Yes. Different planeswalkers can each activate once. If you control two legendary permanents with exactly the same name, you normally keep one and put the other into the graveyard. Different Jace card names can coexist. The empower Jace token is not legendary, although empower normally builds up one token rather than making a second.
What about text with no + or − symbol? A 0 symbol is still a loyalty ability. Other text—such as “Whenever…”—may be a triggered or ongoing ability and works as written, without using your one loyalty activation. An emblem is a separate lasting effect; removing the planeswalker does not remove its emblem.
Set-specific exceptions Sanctum Lurker can keep your planeswalker on the battlefield at zero loyalty. Jace’s Machinations changes when you can activate loyalty abilities, but not the one-activation limit. If an old Jace token leaves and you later create a new one, the new token can use its own ability that turn.
Two-Headed Giant Your planeswalker and your teammate’s are separate, with separate loyalty. Each of you can use your own planeswalkers during your shared main phase. Either teammate’s creatures can block attacks on your team’s planeswalkers. The shared turn does not give the same planeswalker two activations.
Wordings that look familiar and are not. Read them before your first game.
One creature at that destination. This new wording cares about a particular player being attacked. It can work while other creatures attack elsewhere.
Declare all attackers and identify their destinations.
For each player, count every creature declared attacking that player.
A creature attacking a player alone qualifies only if that count is one. Creatures attacking planeswalkers or battles are separate destinations.
Jiang Yanggu, Alone. In 2HG, attack opponent A with Jiang and opponent B with another creature. If your partner adds no creature at either of those players, each of your creatures attacks a player alone. If your partner adds a second attacker at A, Jiang no longer satisfies the condition.
Yuriko, Blade of the Mighty. Use combat tricks before the combat phase begins. While Yuriko is on the battlefield, no player may cast any spell or activate a nonmana ability during combat. Triggered abilities still work, including Yuriko’s double-strike trigger.
This is not the same as attacks alone, which means only one attacker overall. Your teammate’s attacker at the same player does count against the condition. Attacking a planeswalker is not attacking its controller.
In Two-Headed Giant: One eligible creature can attack each opponent alone at the same time. Explicitly announce the destinations.
Spell and ability damage, even during combat. Combat damage is the damage creatures assign in the combat-damage step. Damage from a spell or ability is noncombat damage, even if it happens during combat.
Look for an effect that specifically deals damage to an opponent.
Resolve that damage before relying on an ability that needs an opponent to have taken noncombat damage.
Life loss without damage does not satisfy that condition.
Screeching Soulbreaker. Declare it attacking. Its attack trigger deals 1 to each opponent before blockers. That ability’s damage is noncombat damage even though the turn is in combat. In 2HG, the opposing team loses 2 and you gain 1.
Whiplash Wordsmith. Cast its Vicious Verse in your main phase and deal 1 to a target opponent. The Wordsmith’s condition then gives it flying and haste for the rest of the turn. An opponent merely paying or losing life would not produce the same condition.
Damage to a creature or planeswalker is not damage to that permanent’s controller. An effect that says lose life is not dealing damage. An effect hitting both opponents can produce different trigger counts depending on whether the payoff says an opponent or one or more opponents.
In Two-Headed Giant: Each opponent means two affected players. Target opponent means choose one. Damage to your teammate does not meet an opponent requirement.
Show one you already have. To behold a Jace, choose a Jace you control on the battlefield or reveal a Jace card from your hand. It is proof of having a Jace, not a cost that sacrifices it.
Read whether beholding is an additional casting cost or part of an effect.
For Countersculpt’s cost, use an existing controlled Jace or reveal an appropriate card from hand; otherwise pay the extra generic mana.
Finish paying and casting before the spell can resolve and create any new Jace.
Countersculpt. With an existing token Jace, behold it and pay the two blue mana. Without a Jace to behold, pay two blue plus one generic. The Jace token that Countersculpt may create later cannot satisfy its own earlier cost.
Behold does not tap or sacrifice the chosen permanent. A partner’s Jace does not count as one you control. Beholding a nontoken Jace does not let empower put counters on it.
In Two-Headed Giant: A teammate may show you their hand, but their cards are not cards in your hand for behold.
In 2HG, a shared life total does not make two players a single controller. Small wording differences decide whether a card helps your partner or hits both opponents.
Identify who controls the spell or ability. You means that person.
Read whether a target is unrestricted, yours, an opponent’s, or a player.
Apply each opponent and each player separately to each qualifying person.
Extended Absence. Exile its legal creature or planeswalker target. It deals 1 to each opponent: the opposing team loses 2. You gain 1, so your team gains 1—not 2.
Cast Away Doubt. You draw two cards. Each of all four players takes 2 damage. Each team therefore loses 4 life.
Bloombrute. Your partner gains life and the shared total rises. That is not you gaining life, so your Bloombrute does not trigger.
A teammate’s creatures do not count toward creatures you control. Target player may allow a teammate; target opponent does not. Teammates cannot normally spend each other’s mana or pay each other’s sacrifice costs.
In Two-Headed Giant: Use this check before sharing engines between decks; both decks need their own enablers unless a card explicitly works across teammates.
Every word on the cards and in the deck plans, defined once. Find a term, read its wording, then see it on a card.
A +1/+1 counter adds one power and one toughness; a −1/−1 counter subtracts one of each. These counters stay until removed or the object changes zones.
Watch out: If a permanent has both kinds, matching pairs are removed as a state-based action. A temporary +1/+1 effect is not a counter.
Show a card of the specified kind from your hand, or choose a permanent of that kind you control.
Watch out: Beholding does not cast the card or sacrifice the permanent. Read the spell to see why the choice matters.
Ending an exchange with more usable cards or resources. One spell making several bodies can outlast repeated one-for-one answers.
These named counters track whatever the card’s abilities say. Their names alone do not give a universal bonus or penalty.
Watch out: For example, vanishing uses time counters as a countdown. Read the particular card before deciding what adding another counter will do.
While paying for this spell, each untapped creature you tap can cover one generic mana, or one mana of that creature’s color.
Watch out: You may tap a creature you just played. A colorless creature can cover only generic mana.
To counter a spell or ability is to remove it from the stack without its effects resolving. A countered spell normally goes to its owner’s graveyard.
Watch out: This use of “counter” is different from placing a marker such as a +1/+1 counter on a card.
How your spell costs are distributed. A good curve lets you spend mana usefully on successive turns.
From your hand, pay the cycling cost and discard this card to draw a card.
Watch out: Cycling is an activated ability, not casting the card. Typecycling searches for a specified kind of card instead.
Any positive amount of damage this source deals to a creature is enough to make that damage lethal.
Watch out: It works with a fight or other noncombat damage. Indestructible still prevents destruction.
This creature cannot attack.
Watch out: It can still block and use its abilities unless something else prevents that.
Move a permanent from the battlefield to its owner’s graveyard because an effect or lethal damage destroys it.
Watch out: Indestructible stops destruction. Sacrificing, exiling, and reducing toughness to 0 are different ways for a creature to leave.
Move a card from your hand to your graveyard.
Watch out: Discarding is not casting. It does not pay the card’s mana cost or produce its normal spell effect.
This label groups effects that count the basic land types among lands you control: Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest.
Watch out: Count types, not lands. A nonbasic land with a basic land type can count; a land with none of those types does not.
This creature deals combat damage in the first-strike damage step and again in the normal damage step if it is still in combat.
Watch out: If its blocker dies in the first step, a blocked attacker does not hit the player in the second step unless an ability such as trample allows it.
Two specific Reality Fracture cards linked by the set’s official partner list. Standard drafting gives no bonus for owning both. Reality Echoes adds a special pregame rule.
Choose a Jace planeswalker token you control and add the stated loyalty counters. If you have no Jace token, first create one with 0 loyalty and abilities costing −1 to surveil 1 and −3 to draw a card.
Watch out: It cannot add counters to a nontoken Jace. Empowering an existing token does not refresh its once-per-turn loyalty activation.
A card that makes another card work: a lifegain source enables a “whenever you gain life” reward.
An Aura’s enchant line tells you what it may be attached to.
Watch out: An Aura cast as a spell targets what it will enchant. If it later becomes illegally attached, it normally goes to the graveyard.
Pay the equip cost to attach this Equipment to a target creature you control. Normally, activate equip only in your main phase when the stack is empty.
Watch out: The Equipment usually stays on the battlefield when the creature leaves. Moving it to another creature normally costs another equip activation.
An ability that makes blocking harder, such as flying or menace.
Pay the listed cost to use this activated ability. That exhaust ability can be activated only once for that permanent.
Watch out: If it leaves and returns, it is a new permanent with a new allowance. Exhaust does not itself mean “only once each turn.”
Move the object to the exile zone. It is separate from the graveyard.
Watch out: A card in exile cannot normally be played. You need a rule or effect giving permission, such as a resolved Adventure.
The two creatures each deal damage equal to their power to the other at the same time.
Watch out: This is not combat. First strike and double strike do not add damage steps; deathtouch and lifelink still affect damage.
If a permanent with a finality counter would go from the battlefield to a graveyard, exile it instead.
Watch out: It does not die when this replacement sends it to exile, so ordinary “dies” abilities do not trigger.
This creature deals combat damage in an earlier step, before creatures without first strike or double strike.
Watch out: A creature killed in that early damage step usually cannot deal its normal combat damage.
You may cast this spell when you could cast an instant, including during another player’s turn when you have priority.
Watch out: Flash changes when you may cast it. It does not let you cast from a different zone or avoid its costs.
You may cast this instant or sorcery from your graveyard by paying its flashback cost.
Watch out: Follow its normal timing. A spell cast with flashback is exiled when it leaves the stack, even if it is countered.
How a card performs with little help versus when its ideal setup is present. Sealed often rewards a useful floor.
An attacking creature with flying can be blocked only by creatures with flying or reach.
Watch out: A flying creature can block a creature without flying.
An inexpensive or expendable permanent you can trade, block with or sacrifice.
Many small creatures versus a smaller number of large creatures. They need different ways to get through blockers.
This creature may attack and use abilities with the tap or untap symbol even if you have not controlled it since your turn began.
Watch out: It still needs to be untapped to attack or pay a tap cost.
A standard Heartwood token is a red and green artifact with a tap ability that adds one red or one green mana.
Watch out: You keep it after using its mana ability. It is not a land and does not need to be sacrificed like a Treasure.
A permanent with hexproof cannot be targeted by spells or abilities its controller’s opponents control.
Watch out: Its controller may target it. Effects that do not target can still affect it.
Each split mana symbol can be paid using either half. For example, {W/U} costs one white or one blue mana; {2/B} costs two mana of any type or one black mana.
Watch out: Choose separately for each symbol. A {W/U} card is both white and blue even if you use only one color to cast it.
This permanent cannot be destroyed by lethal damage or an effect that says “destroy.”
Watch out: It can still be exiled or sacrificed. A creature with toughness 0 or less still goes to the graveyard.
This label groups abilities that reward a land entering under your control. The rest of each card tells you its effect.
Watch out: A land entering from a spell can trigger landfall too. The label itself adds no rules; read the actual ability.
When this source deals damage, its controller gains that much life at the same time.
Watch out: This also works for noncombat damage. It uses the damage actually dealt, not simply the creature’s printed power.
A planeswalker’s loyalty is the number of loyalty counters on it. Its loyalty costs add or remove counters, and damage removes that much loyalty.
Watch out: A planeswalker with 0 loyalty goes to the graveyard. Adding more counters does not let you activate it a second time in the same turn.
A productive place to spend spare mana later, such as a repeatable ability or prepared spell.
This attacking creature cannot be blocked by just one creature; at least two blockers are needed.
Watch out: It can still go unblocked. Losing one blocker after blocks are declared does not undo the original block.
Put the stated number of cards from the top of the named player’s library into that player’s graveyard.
Watch out: Milling is not drawing. An empty library makes you lose when you must draw from it, not merely when its last card is milled.
The two cards chosen in one Pick-Two selection. Consider how their jobs, mana costs and support improve the deck together.
The reward for doing a thing. A lifegain payoff needs actual lifegain cards, not just other payoffs.
When its instruction makes a creature prepared, it gives you access to a copy of its separate prepare spell. You may cast that copy while the permanent remains prepared and on the battlefield.
Watch out: Pay the copy’s costs and obey instant or sorcery timing. Casting it unprepares the permanent; the creature itself remains. You cannot cast the prepare spell straight from your hand.
Choose any number of permanents or players that already have counters. Give each chosen one another counter of every kind it already has.
Watch out: You cannot add the first counter of a kind this way. If a chosen permanent has a harmful counter, that kind increases too.
Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until the turn ends.
Watch out: Lands are not spells. The prowess trigger can resolve even if the spell that triggered it is countered.
Both players attack while comparing who will deal lethal damage first. Lifegain and blockers can change the calculation.
This creature may block creatures with flying.
Watch out: Reach does not give it flying or make its own attacks harder to block.
Returning a card from the graveyard to hand or the battlefield.
Cards that disrupt threats or a plan. Destroying, exiling, countering, shrinking and bouncing are different tools with different limitations.
As you cast this spell, you may pay its replicate cost additional times. Its triggered ability makes one copy for each payment, with new targets if you want.
Watch out: The copies are not cast. Countering the original spell does not by itself remove the replicate ability or its copies.
Move a permanent you control from the battlefield to its owner’s graveyard.
Watch out: Sacrifice is not destruction: indestructible does not stop it. You cannot sacrifice a teammate’s permanent unless an effect specifically permits it.
Look at the stated number of cards from the top of your library. Put any number on the bottom and the rest back on top, choosing their order.
Watch out: Scry does not draw a card. Cards you move to the bottom do not go to the graveyard.
Useful cards arriving late can suggest that a color is less contested. Look for repeated clues, not one surprising card.
A small addition of another color for a few cards, supported by reliable mana.
While this spell is on the stack, players cannot cast other spells or activate abilities that are not mana abilities.
Watch out: Triggered abilities still trigger, and mana abilities and special actions are still allowed. Split second does not mean “cannot be countered.”
If a permanent with a stun counter would untap, remove one stun counter instead and leave it tapped.
Watch out: The counter does not tap an untapped permanent by itself. Several stun counters can stop several separate untaps.
Look at the stated number of cards from the top of your library. Put any number into your graveyard and the rest back on top in your chosen order.
Watch out: Surveil does not draw a card. Unlike scry, unwanted cards go to the graveyard instead of the bottom.
Tap means turn a permanent sideways; untap means return it upright. A tap symbol in a cost means you must tap that permanent to pay.
Watch out: Being tapped by another effect does not activate an ability or produce mana. Creatures normally cannot pay their own tap-symbol costs until you have controlled them since your turn began.
An advantage in time or board development. Returning a creature to hand can let you attack now, even though the opponent still has the card.
This label groups abilities that care about having seven or more cards in your graveyard.
Watch out: Count cards in your own graveyard. Read the ability to see when it checks the condition and what it changes.
An attacking creature can assign excess combat damage to what it is attacking after assigning lethal damage to every blocker.
Watch out: It does not automatically send all damage past a small blocker. Trample on a blocking creature does not send damage to the attacking player.
A standard Treasure token is an artifact you can tap and sacrifice to add one mana of any color.
Watch out: A Treasure is not a land. Using it spends the token; it does not remain for another turn.
Using one card to trade for two opposing cards, or getting two useful resources from one card.
From your hand, pay the listed cost and discard the card. Search your library for the named kind of card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.
Watch out: Basic landcycling finds a basic land. Mountaincycling finds a Mountain card; Halflingcycling finds a Halfling card. This does not put the found card onto the battlefield.
A repeatable way to gain resources. It is useful only if you can survive long enough to use it.
Vanishing N puts N time counters on the permanent as it enters. Remove one at the beginning of your upkeep; when the last time counter is removed, a triggered ability makes you sacrifice it.
Watch out: Extra time counters extend the clock. Vanishing without a number does not add initial counters.
Attacking does not tap this creature.
Watch out: It must still be untapped to be declared as an attacker. Vigilance does not remove summoning sickness.
When an opponent’s spell or ability targets this permanent, ward triggers. That spell or ability is countered unless the opponent pays the ward cost.
Watch out: Ward is not hexproof: the opponent can target it and choose whether to pay. An effect that does not target does not trigger ward.
A pack returns to you after the other players have picked. In a four-player paper Pick-Two pod, a 14-card pack returns with six cards. Arena pod size may differ.
Mindseeker Oculus
Jace, Reality Sculptor
The Theorist, Jace Beleren
Jiang Yanggu, Alone
Yuriko, Blade of the Mighty
Screeching Soulbreaker
Whiplash Wordsmith
Countersculpt
Extended Absence
Cast Away Doubt
Bloombrute
Ajani Resolute
Avatar of Burgeoning Echoes
Awaken the Inferno
Theorist's Sanctum
Flesh Duplicate
Gardenize
Winter, Team Player
Consign to Memory
Icy Reception
Apex Witchstalker
Hexhaven Battalion
Arcane Amphisbaena
Carnivorous Cultivator
Ferocity of the Hunt
Ghalta the Immovable
Surveillance Phantasm
Archive Arbiter
Austere Command
Budding Insurgent
Ajani Unrelenting
Arni, Humble Scribe
Fblthp, Knows the Way
Tetsuko Umezawa, Pursuer
Academic Ascent
Infinite Coursework
Puppet Crafting
Hunter's Axe
Lich's Relic
Medic's Kitesail
Liliana the Repentant
Afterthought Sentry
Bestial Incursion
Blazing Crescendo
Mind Meanderer
Vigorbloom Charm
Yoshimaru, Scrappy Stray
Grim Repriser
Proctor of Potential
Artifist Acumen
Charge the Sanctum
Danitha, Spear of Agony
Denzilore Fatehold
Divining Duelist
Edgar, Moonlit Sovereign
Generous Revival
Predictive Preparations
Aerid Konstrari
Chandra's Emberling
Craterclaw Colossus
Heartwood Crafter
Hungering Puppetbeast
Kiora of Salt and Sand
Liliana the Faultless
Blessed Ghoul
Blossom-Blessed Angel
Fateshaper Aspirant
Koth of the Homestead
Koth, the Geomancer
Enlightened Confidant
Edgar, Ancient Bloodlord
Gallia, Tragic Host
Dark Matter Manipulator
Paradox Shaper
Bloodline Recollector
Tam, the Possibility
Cryotheory Adept
Pompous Battlemage
Ruric Thar, Magecrusher
Sureshot Sower
Break Under Pressure
Diviner of Victory
Proft, Consulting Detective
Samut, Tyrant of Naktamun
Chandra, Chill of Compliance
Hapatra, the Desert Frost
Loot, the Anomaly
Null Summoner
Proft, Sinister Mastermind
Ajani's Anguish
Arni, Renowned Champion
Vraska, Soul of Stone
Vraska, the Cutting Glare
Emrakul, the Exigent Doom
Gideon the Oathless
Kwia Vigorbloom