Comprehending Keywords

Here’s a link to the Magic: the Gathering Comprehensive Rules. https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-formats/rules 

In PDF form, it’s 231 pages long, and getting longer with every new set released. That’s a lot to read (and I have). It’s an overwhelmingly large body of text for the new player, and much of it is not necessary to know - certainly not for Arena (you really don’t need to know how Banding an Phasing work). So where to start for the new Magic junkie - er, “player” to familiarize themselves with the rules? 

A good place to start is by learning all of the “Evergreen” keywords and understanding how they work. I actually discovered there’s a good bit more of them than I realized when I started to write this article. So I’m going to group them between “Game Actions” and “Creature Abilities” My source for this list is here https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Evergreen. This article includes links to the comprehensive rules for each of them. The “Game Actions” list contains words like “Cast” and “Counter”. Most of these are self explanatory, but I think a few of them are worth touching on. 

Game Actions

Cast/Play - It’s important to understand that you “Play” Lands, but “Playing” a Spell means Casting it. So if a Spell or Ability instructs you to “Play” a card, that means Lands or Spells, but if it instructs you to “Cast” a card, that’s only spells. 

Sacrifice - You can only Sacrifice a permanent that you control. But if you can take control of one of your Opponent’s creatures (with In Bolas’s Clutches, for example), you then control it and can sacrifice it. 

Search - If you are searching for a card with some specific properties, like “Search for a Creature” or “Search for a Black card”, then you can choose to not find a card which matches those properties, even if there’s one in your deck. This is often known as “Fail to Find”. 

Counters - +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters eliminate each other. So if your creature has two +1/+1 counters on it, and your opponent places a -1/-1 counter on it, then it’s left with just a single +1/+1 counter. 

Abilities 

Deathtouch - Any damage dealt by a Creature with Deathtouch is considered to be lethal. It’s important to understand that Deathtouch and Lifelink work in a similar way. Both of them occur as damage is being done, before State Based Actions are checked, or anyone gets Priority. They’re not triggered abilities. 

Defender - Creatures with Defender can’t attack. Pretty self explanatory. When Magic was originally released, the “Can’t Attack” restriction was linked to the creature subtype “Wall”. However, during one of the major revisions, they decided that they didn’t want rules text to be linked to creature types, so they created the keyword “Defender”. This also allowed them to open up design space, and put the keyword on creatures other than Walls. 

(why is Wall of Ice a Green card?)

First strike/Double strike - Understanding how these two abilities work is important. There are actually two separate Damage steps during the Combat Phase. However, for the most part, the First Strike Damage Step is “hidden”. Both creatures with First Strike and Double Strike do damage in the First Strike Damage Step. Creatures with Double Strike will then go on to do damage in the normal Combat Damage Step. This applies to both Attacking and Blocking Creatures. 

There’s a couple of subtle interactions to be aware of here.

First, if the Blocking Creature dies from the First Strike Damage of a Creature with Double Strike, then damage will not be done in the normal Damage Step. If the Attacking Creature has Lifelink, then no life will be gained in the normal Combat Damage Step. However, if the Attacking creature has Trample, then any Trample Damage will still occur during the normal Combat Damage Step. 

Second, If a Creature with Double Strike somehow loses that ability between the First Strike Damage Step, and the normal Combat Damage Step, then it will not do damage in the normal Combat Damage Step. Go figure. 

Fight - Fight simply means that some number of creatures (as specified by the card, typically two) each do damage to the other equal to their power. Lifelink and Deathtouch apply here, however First Strike and Double Strike do not. Those only apply to Combat Damage. 

Flash - Cards with Flash may be played anytime you could play an Instant. They’re “fast” abilities. This would probably be a good spot to talk about spell timing. 

Most spells, like Creatures, Planeswalkers, Enchantments, Artifacts, and Sorceries can only be cast at “Sorcery speed”. Also Lands can only be played at Sorcery speed. What this means in game terms is on your turn, when you have Priority, during one of your Main Phases, with an empty Stack (no other Spells or Abilities waiting to resolve). 

Instants and Spells with Flash can be played when you have Priority, on either player’s turn, on an empty Stack, or with other Spells and Abilities waiting to resolve. In Arena it’s easy to know when you have Priority, because the Gold bar under your Avatar will be lit. 

Flying - This is probably the most intuitive of all the keywords. If you fly, only flyers can block you. Makes sense. For some reason, in Alpha, they made Giant Spider able to block fliers, and ever since, spiders and a few other Green creatures have been able to block fliers (now keyworded as “Reach”). Fun bit of trivia, Giant Spider was the last card to survive from Alpha through all the Core Sets until 2012. 

Haste - Creatures with Haste can attack or use abilities requiring the “Tap” symbol the turn they enter the Battlefield. Creatures having to wait a turn after they enter is informally known as “Summoning Sickness”. Early in Magic’s history, Creature spells were actually “Summon” spells. 

An important distinction to be made here, is the fact when an ability uses the actual word “Tap” instead of the Tap Symbol, then Summoning Sickness doesn’t apply. 

Hexproof - Creatures with Hexproof can’t be the target of Spells or Abilities your opponent controls. “Target” is the important word here. If it doesn’t say “Target” then Hexproof doesn’t apply. “Sweepers” such as Cleansing Nova will still kill Hexproof creatures. There’s also some variations on this, such as “Hexproof from Black”. So that creature is only protected from Black spells, or Abilities from Black permanents. 

(yeah, I know I used it already, but it's SUCH a fun card! It does ALL the Things!)

Indestructible - Lethal Damage and Spells and Abilities which say “Destroy” won’t cause these permanents to be put in the Graveyard. Note that reducing an Indestructible Creature’s Toughness to 0 or less will still kill it. 

Lifelink - Whenever something with Lifelink deals any kind damage, you gain that much life. As with Deathtouch, this happens as the damage is done, and is not a triggered Ability. It’s important to know that during combat, if the creature blocking or being blocked by a creature with Lifelink is removed before the Combat Damage Step, then no life will be gained. 

Menace - Can only be blocked by two or more creatures. Pretty straight forward. Menace has replaced various forms of Evasion, especially on Black and Red creatures. Originally it was “Fear” (can only be blocked by Black or Artifact creatures). That later became “Intimidate”, which was basically Fear, but available to all the colors. They’ve settled on Menace being the most useful form of this type of evasion. 

Reach - Spiders be eatin’ birds, I guess. Reach Creatures can block flyers, but they don’t have flying. Yeah, it’s weird. Mostly seen in Green, which has the fewest number of flyers of all the colors. As in basically none, except for a few Dragons and Insects. 

Scry (N)- Again, one most of us will be familiar with right away. Look at the top (N) cards of your Library, and put any number of them either back on top, or on the bottom in any order. You get to do this every time you Mulligan. 

Just as a quick aside, whenever an ability can have different values, but those values are set in the rules text on the card, such as Scry, then in the rules it's represented by (N). When it's a variable that a player can choose, or is set by some condition of the game - such as Banefire, or Vigorspore Wurm, then it's represented by X. 

Trample - Any Damage from an Attacking Creature more than what’s lethal to a Blocking Creature is carried over to the defending player. Remember, this only applies to Attacking creatures. A few things of note here - If your attacking Creature has Deathtouch, 1 point of damage is lethal. If the blocking creature is removed from Combat before damage, then all the damage Tramples over. You must assign at least Lethal damage to the first Blocking creature, but you may choose to assign all the combat damage to the first blocking creature, and have nothing Trample over (although I don’t know why you would). *EDIT* If there are multiple blockers, there may be situations where you would not want to deal damage to any blocking creatures beyond the first. For example, if the second creature had Lifelink. 

Vigilance - Creatures with Vigilance don’t tap to attack. Super handy when you have a creature with a Tap ability on it, or to be able to attack and block. 

Well, that’s it for now. A quick review of the Evergreen Keywords. I tried to think of the most common questions and misunderstandings about how all of these work.