To be born of the gods, you must have knowledge of the gods.

Here we are going to talk about some the mechanics that you will see during this weekend.  You should be familiar with the abilities from Theros: Bestow, Monstrosity, and Heroic.  Within Born of the Gods, there are two new mechanics that I feel that need to be explained so that you can play for effective: Inspired and Tribute. So lets begin.

Inspired

Inspired is a new triggered ability that creatures will have in it's card text which contains the words "When *creature* becomes untapped." For example, Pain Seer has the ability Inspired, and when it becomes untapped, you reveal the top card of your deck, lose life to the card's converted mana cost (aka: total cost of the card) and then put that card into your hand.

The ruling that WotC( Wizards of the Coast), the company who created Magic: The Gathering,  has put into place is probably one that will be asked most often. At the beginning of my turn, when do I get to use the ability of inspired?

And the answer is.....at the beginning of your turn, during the untap step, you untap your creatures, if they do possess the Inspired ability, the trigger or triggers off of Inspired will go on the stack at the beginning of upkeep.  If there are multiple triggers of Inspired, you chose which ones go onto the stack first.

This ruling that WotC has put into place does makes sense.  In the game of Magic, at the beginning of the turn, you would first have your "Untap Step".  During this step, the only thing that will happen will be untapping all permanents you control, unless stated otherwise. Thats it!  Nobody gets the right to do anything, get priority, or do some other shenanigans.  The game will recognize the Inspired trigger at the beginning of the next step which we call "Upkeep."  After that is all said and done and both players pass priority, then follow what the text says.

So, just by looking at this ability, you're asking yourself, so the only way to try and get the value of this ability is by attacking right? Yes and no. Sure, the most common way for trying to trigger Inspired is by attacking.But, there are different ways to tap creatures. for example there is a reprint card in this card called Springleaf Drum.  This card states that you can tap an untapped creature to add one mana of any color to your mana pool.  This is just one of many ways to get value of your Inspired abilities without attacking  with the creature.

Tribute

Tribute is a new ability that goes along with the flavor of this set.  This ability states "Tribute X(As this creature enters the battlefield, an opponent of your choice may place X +1/+1 Counters on it.)"  Well, why would WotC give us a card that says that an opponent may place  +1/+1 counters
on my creature? It doesn't make sense at all!  Well read the rest of the card that has this ability on it.

If the opponent you chose can't or don't want to pay the Tribute to that said creatures, some bad things can happen to them for example: Pharagax Giant states that if tribue wasn't paid, deal 5 damage to each opponent.  That can be a big deal!  Like I said, BAD THINGS CAN HAPPEN!  So, be aware of this.  If you can play around it, great, if not, hopefully you don't get to punished and play it out.

These are the new mechanics that are being introduced in Born of the Gods, hopefully by now you have all the knowledge that we have passed down to you to become the champion of your Born of the Gods Prerelease events.

What are some other topics that you want us to talk about or some videos you want to see happen. You can contact us at mtgplaymatt@gmail.com and be sure to follow us on Twitter @mtgPlayMatt and our PlayMatt Facebook site.