Can you counter artifacts

So they require a drawback, like coming into play tapped. Well the design team felt we have been making too many lands with this drawback in recent sets so they wanted to avoid using it again, plus they were just generally discontent with the way the cycle was working out. At some point in this process Mark Rosewater had the brainstorm: Rather than interacting with artifacts, couldn't they just be artifacts?!

The set was already chock full of cards that rewarded you for having artifacts in play so that might solve the puzzle perfectly. Story number two begins when the development team took control of the set. In the case of the artifact lands, these circumstances kept coming up. Can you Counterspell an artifact land? Do you draw a card from Vedalken Archmage when you play an artifact land?

Does playing an artifact land use the stack? Pretty early on in development, I called a meeting with everyone who works on card wordings to try to figure out if there was a way to do these. The first thing that emerged from those meetings was a very astute analysis of the problem: the rules for playing an artifact contradict the rules for playing a land. You just merge the rules for being an artifact with the rules for being a land, similar to the way Artifact Creatures merge the rules for artifacts and creature.

However, lands get from your hand into play in a way very different from artifacts. Each post is the personal opinion of the poster. These posts are not intended to substitute for medical, tax, legal, investment, accounting, or other professional advice. ORG does not endorse any opinion or any product or service mentioned mentioned in these posts.

A creature, enchantment, artifact, sorcery and instant are ALL spells, and can be countered by things that say "counter target spell". HE has defeated death, hell, and the grave forever also satan and all his demons. Your name or nickname: If you'd like to create a new account or access your existing account, put in your password here: Your answer:. You can't just move an Equipment off a creature, though — you have to move it onto a different creature you control.

The biggest difference between Equipment and local enchantments is that Equipment stays in play when the creature it's attached to leaves play. In fact, Equipment doesn't really care too much about what happens to the creature it's attached to.

The same is true if an equipped creature can no longer be equipped if it gains protection from artifacts, or stops being a creature, for example. Equipment can do a whole variety of different things. You'll find Equipment that do all the common things that creature enchantments do.

Plus, because Equipment stays in play when the equipped creature leaves play, you'll find some more interesting things that it can do. The Warhammer does three different things. It changes power and toughness, gives a keyword ability, and gives the creature a triggered ability. Equipment can't be attached to a creature with protection from artifacts. The equip ability can't target a Yavimaya Scion , because the ability is from an artifact source.

If you've equipped a Jeweled Spirit with the Warhammer, and you then play its ability to give itself protection from artifacts, the Warhammer will fall off back into play remember, Equipment doesn't go to the graveyard if it can't be attached to a creature. It won't reattach itself when the Spirit loses protection from artifacts at the end of the turn. You'll have to wait for the effect to end, and then play the equip ability again.

The equip ability can't target a Gigapede , because it can't be the target of spells and abilities. There's no real way around this, even though being untargetable wouldn't cause the equipment to fall off. If the Warhammer is equipping a Glimmering Angel , making the Angel untargetable won't make the Warhammer fall off.

You can attach the Warhammer to a Chimeric Idol as long as you animate the Idol before you play the equip ability. At the end of the turn, the Idol will stop being a creature, and the Warhammer will fall off back into play.

Most of the strange things that can happen in the Magic game don't have anything to do with Equipment. But there are a few more things about Equipment that you might not know yet.

An Equipment that becomes a creature can't be attached to a creature. If you play Karn's Touch on an attached Equipment, it becomes unattached and stays in play as a creature. Of course, you wouldn't be playing Karn's Touch in your deck, now would you? You can play the equip abilities of Equipment that are creatures, but that ability won't do anything at all when it resolves.