Magecraft

Magecraft
Ability Word
Introduced	Strixhaven: School of Mages
Last used	Alchemy: Kamigawa
Typical Text	Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, ...
Statistics	27 cards 11.1% 18.5% 7.4% 3.7% 7.4% 11.1% 18.5% 7.4% 7.4% 7.4%
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keyword:"Magecraft"

Magecraft is an ability word introduced in Strixhaven: School of Mages that causes an effect whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell.

Description

Magecraft is written as "Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell..." and may appear in all colors. The previous, unkeyworded form of Magecraft without the copy clause, a cousin to the keyword Prowess, has been printed numerous times since the Izzet guild in Ravnica and is a popular blue-red draft archetype. Ral, Storm Conduit was the first card to hold this text before it was keyworded.

Magecraft highlights triggered abilities that give you some sort of benefit whenever you cast — or copy — an instant or sorcery spell. The effects are differentiated by Strixhaven college, though in practice some of these partitions were not so exclusive.

• Silverquill — creature pumping and evasion. Stacking multiple instants or sorceries on the same turn.
• Prismari — singular, less-stackable effects.
• Witherbloom — life gain.
• Lorehold — nominally graveyard effects; in practice, one Spirit tribal effect and one creature pump.
• Quandrix — +1/+1 counters and creating resources.

Rulings

• Each magecraft ability has a different effect, although they all have the same trigger condition, whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell.
• If an effect creates a copy of an instant or sorcery spell, this will also cause the magecraft ability to trigger.
• If an effect creates multiple copies of an instant or sorcery spell, magecraft abilities trigger once for each copy created by the effect.
• Some effects instruct you to copy an instant or sorcery card in a zone other than the stack. These copies do not cause magecraft abilities to trigger. However, most effects that do this also allow you to cast the copy, and casting the copy will cause magecraft abilities to trigger.

Examples

Example

Professor Onyx
Legendary Planeswalker - Liliana
Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, each opponent loses 2 life and you gain 2 life.

+1 You lose 1 life. Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.
-3 Each opponent sacrifices a creature with the greatest power among creatures that player controls.

-8 Each opponent may discard a card. If they don't, they lose 3 life. Repeat this process six more times.

Trivia

• Magecraft’s design name was "spellcast". Caring about copying was part of its design from the beginning.