A good mechanic will make or break a Magic: The Gathering card. Some of these abilities are baked into the game, found across most sets and many different themes, while others are a bit rarer, only appearing in a set or two or in other products like Commander.
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Posts 4No matter what your favorite mechanic in the game is, some are without a doubt the best you can find. Between free spells, protection from your opponents, and rewarding gameplay, using cards with these mechanics will guarantee a fun time.
10 Haste
DON’T STOP
CloseOne of the worst feelings in Magic is when you commit your turn and mana to casting a creature, only to have it get utterly destroyed before you can do anything with it. This is especially true if it has a tap ability or some type of attack trigger.
That’s where haste comes in. An evergreen mechanic from some of Magic’s earliest days, Haste lets you either use abilities the turn that creature comes down on, or lets you swing in for some immediate damage. The downside is that lots of creatures with haste typically fall on the slightly weaker side, however.
9 Trample
Always Be Attacking
CloseAnother evergreen mechanic that is as old as the game, trample is a unique mechanic that makes it so any extra damage you deal to a creature rolls over to your opponent’s life total. More often than not, that extra damage will get dumped onto another creature as your opponent will want to try to soak up that damage with multiple blockers.
Trample is one of those somewhat underrated abilities that can have a huge impact on the battlefield, especially in formats like Commander, where you can easily give your commander trample to push damage.
8 Landfall
Bonus Rewards For Playing The Game
CloseOne of the more basic actions you can take in Magic is playing lands, but it's often relatively boring unless the land has some special effect. That’s where landfall comes in.
This mechanic from the 2009 set Zendikar triggers when a land comes into play under your control, giving you some sort of benefit like life gain or a +1/+1 counter on a creature. Since there are plenty of ways to get multiple lands into play in a single turn, you can trigger this effect several times in a row, letting you get lots of bonuses at once.
7 Hexproof
Can’t Touch This
CloseBeing able to tell one of your opponent’s ‘no’ in Magic is incredibly powerful, giving you control throughout the game. Hexproof lets you do that with little to no extra work. This mechanic makes it so your card can’t be targeted by your opponent’s spells or abilities, keeping them safe from all targeted removal.
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Posts 2This mechanic takes the cake over another similar ability shroud, since you can still target the card with other spells. You can equip or enchant a creature with hexproof safely, as your opponent won’t be able to do much to respond.
6 Annihilator
Only One Person Can Have Fun
CloseAnnihilator is an incredibly powerful and very fun mechanic for you and literally no one else you’re playing with. Found on a relatively small collection of cards given its incredible strength, annihilator makes it so whenever a creature with it attacks, your defending player has to sacrifice a number of permanents equal to its associated annihilator number.
This type of resource and card denial can lead to some very one-sided games, especially if you happen to land a creature with this effect early on in a match. Thankfully, there are not a ton of cards with this effect, but the cards with the mechanic tend to be very, very strong.
5 Ninjutsu
Sneaky Tricks
CloseThere are a lot of fun ways to utilize cards with ninjutsu, a very unique mechanic that rewards you for sneaking a little bit of damage through your opponent’s defenses with some potentially very large amounts of damage.
The way ninjutsu works is that if you have an unblocked attacker on the battlefield, you can bounce it back to your hand to replace it with your ninjutsu card tapped and attacking. This type of sneaky combat trick will leave your opponent guessing as to what new threat will be coming down next.
4 Adventure
Something Around Every Corner
CloseCards that give you choices on what you want to do are almost always better than anything else you can do in the game, and the adventure mechanic gives your cards tons of versatility. Adventure cards are instants and sorceries attached to permanents that exile themselves when you cast them.
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PostsFrom exile, you can cast the other side of the card, getting yourself a permanent, typically a few turns later, but not really putting yourself behind on cards. While thematically very fun, the idea of going on an adventure is something all would-be heroes dream of. The ability to keep your spells safely in exile for when you need them most makes for an interesting mechanic to build around.
3 Suspend
It’ll Come Back Around
CloseIn a similar vein to the adventure mechanic, suspend lets you take a spell and, for a cost, put it into exile with a number of time counters on it. Once all the time counters are removed from it, you get to cast that spell for free.
Suspend is a very strong mechanic, one that telegraphs to your opponents that something major is coming and that there is very little they can do about it. The neat thing about suspend is that any creature you suspend gains haste when it resolves, letting you swing in as soon as it comes into play.
2 Storm
There’s More On The Horizon
CloseThere’s a reason why the Storm Scale, an entire ranking system for how likely a mechanic is to return to the game, is named after this mechanic. It is simultaneously one of the most fun and most broken mechanics in the game.
Storm gives you extra copies of a spell, equal to the number of other spells that have been cast in the turn, not just your own spells. If you’ve never had the opportunity to spam out a dozen spells and then knock your opponent out of the game in a single turn, you should give it a go.
1 Cascade
Always Something New
CloseGetting something for free in Magic is always a good feeling, and with cascade, you get to turn all your spells into two-for-ones. Casting a spell with cascade lets you exile the top card of your library until you find yourself a nonland card that costs less mana. You then get to cast that spell for free, and the rest go on the bottom of your deck.
The unpredictable nature of the mechanic makes it hard to predict what you’re going to get next, but you can either control your deck’s average mana value to make sure you always hit the right card or revel in the chaos and just go with the flow.
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Like Follow FollowedMagic: The Gathering
7.0/10 Franchise Magic: The Gathering Original Release Date August 5, 1993 Publisher Wizards of the Coast Player Count 2+ Age Recommendation 13+ Length per Game Variable Expand Collapse
