Cantrip

Cantrip is a slang term used to refer to a spell that draws a card in addition to its other effects (usually minor) and can therefore be said to replace itself. Cantrips can be found in all colors.

Description

The term originated from a Scottish word for a magic spell or charm. The term entered the gaming lexicon through Dungeons & Dragons as slang for a spell with a minor effect and no cost. As such, cantrips in Magic are spells where the bulk of the power of the card is in the fact that it is cheap (two mana at most) and replaces itself. Cantrips are included in decks for varying reasons. A cantrip can effectively "thin" a deck, so more useful cards can be drawn faster, while at the same time not losing card advantage. It can also inexpensively increase the number of spells played in a turn, which is a key factor in some decks, most notably those using the Storm mechanic. However, the more focused a deck is, the less it wants cantrips, as adding them is using mana in a game and spell slots in a deck in a way that doesn't guarantee progressing one's game plan.

Blue cantrips have a special niche as their "filler" effect is often card selection, letting the caster rearrange or bypass unwanted cards. In contrast, other spells' cantrips are designed like Defiant Strike, Needle Drop, Cremate, and Abundant Growth: cards that aren't effective en masse. As such, filling a deck with blue cantrips can be used to reduce lands in deckbuilding and select lands during gameplay. Green's Commune effect is close, but its inability to select other copies of itself hinders adding more than a few copies.

Some cantrips have additional effects that can serve as an answer to an obstacle in play, but the more impactful it is, the less it is considered a cantrip so much as a card advantage spell.

Cantrips are considered to be deciduous.

Slowtrips

Cantrips were introduced in Ice Age, where the effect read "Draw a card at the beginning of next turn's upkeep." Starting with Weatherlight, the effect was changed to "Draw a card." The Ice Age cantrips were hence referred to as "slowtrips" because they are slower than drawing a card immediately. It also generated memory issues.

Slowtrips set up a delayed triggered ability that triggers at the beginning of the upkeep of the very next turn. It doesn't matter whose turn it is.

Impulse

Not to be confused with Impulsive draw.

Impulse is a R&D slang term used for "look at top X cards of your library, pick one and put the rest on the bottom of your library".

This impulse ability is named after the eponymous Impulse. Effectively, the card is a cantrip, but the card selection is often broad enough to warrant being two mana if the card sees more than one card (compare Sleight of Hand to Anticipate).

Commune

Commune is a naming convention used by Magic R&D to describe a mechanic that allows a player to look at the top few cards from one's library and take one of a particular subset. As such, it is a narrower version of Impulse. It started with the green Commune with Nature in Champions of Kamigawa. As it is often in green, the subset is a combination of creatures, lands, and a set-themed object.

Green

• Commune with Nature (Champions of Kamigawa)
• Commune with the Gods (Theros)
• Commune with Dinosaurs (Ixalan)
• Commune with Spirits (Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty)
• Commune with Beavers (Final Fantasy)

Black

• Commune with Evil (Duskmourn: House of Horror)

Red

• Commune with Lava (Forgotten Realms Commander)

Outside of the theme naming, all colors have Commune effects for various objects, though black and red have it rarest, and blue doesn't usually use subsets.

See also

• Card filtering
• Cycling