Commander Nexus
Glossary

Glossary

Every word on this site that a new player might not know, explained. These are the same definitions the app shows when you hover a term.

Ability Word: A word in italics at the start of an ability, such as Alliance or Landfall. It labels a group of similar cards; the rules text printed after it is what actually happens.
Activated Ability: An ability you choose to use by paying a cost. It is written as “cost: effect”, and you may use it as often as you can pay for it unless the card says otherwise.
Affinity: A keyword that makes a spell cheaper for each permanent of a given kind you control, most often artifacts.
Aristocrats: A play style that sacrifices your own creatures on purpose and profits from them dying, usually draining opponents' life a little at a time.
Board Wipe: A spell that destroys or removes most or all creatures at once, resetting the battlefield for everyone. Also called a sweeper or a wrath.
Bounce: Returning a permanent to its owner's hand. Nothing is destroyed, so it dodges effects that trigger on dying — but the owner can simply replay it.
Card Advantage: Ending up with more usable cards than your opponents. Drawing extra cards creates it; trading one of your cards for two of theirs creates it too.
Card Draw: Cards that put more options into your hand from your deck.
Changeling: A creature with changeling counts as every creature type at once, so it fits into any typal deck.
Channel: An ability on some lands and cards that lets you discard the card itself to get an effect, so a land can double as a spell when you do not need the land drop.
Color Fixing: Making sure you can produce the specific colors of mana your cards require. A five-color deck that only draws Forests cannot cast its blue spells, so fixing is what keeps a multicolored deck functional.
Command Zone: The area where your commander sits outside the game. It starts there, and returns there whenever it would die, be exiled, or go to your hand or deck — which is why neutralising a commander is often better than destroying it.
Conjure: A digital-only keyword action. To conjure a card is to create a brand new card from nothing and put it into the zone the effect names.
Convoke: You may tap your untapped creatures to help cast a spell with convoke. Each creature tapped this way pays for one generic mana, or one mana of its own color.
Counter: Two different things share this word. A counter is a small marker placed on a card, such as a +1/+1 counter. To counter a spell is to stop it resolving while it is still on the stack.
Curve: The distribution of your cards' mana costs. A "high curve" means you have too many expensive spells.
Deathtouch: Any amount of damage from a creature with deathtouch is enough to destroy the creature it damages, however high that creature's toughness is.
Edict: An effect that makes a player sacrifice a creature of their own choosing, rather than targeting one. It gets around protection and hexproof, because nothing is being targeted.
Energy: A resource written {E} that you collect and spend. Energy stays with you rather than sitting on a permanent, so it survives anything that destroys your board.
Engine: A combination of cards that generate continuous, repeatable value over time.
Enter the Battlefield: The moment a permanent arrives on the battlefield. Many cards have an ability that triggers right then, often written "when this enters". Players shorten it to "ETB".
Evasion: Any ability that makes a creature hard or impossible to block, such as flying, menace or "can't be blocked".
Exile: Removes a card from the game entirely rather than putting it in the graveyard. Exiled cards are much harder to get back, which is why exile is the strongest answer to recursion.
Extra Turns: Spells that grant you an additional turn. CHAINING means casting them repeatedly so opponents never get a turn back.
Fast Mana: Artifacts or spells that produce more mana than they cost to cast.
First Strike: A creature with first strike deals its combat damage before creatures without it. If that kills its blocker outright, it takes no damage back.
Flicker: Briefly exiling a permanent and returning it to the battlefield straight away. It re-triggers anything that happens when the permanent enters, and can rescue it from removal.
Game Changers: Cards that warp the game disproportionately around themselves, requiring immediate answers.
Glass Cannon: A deck built to win incredibly fast but lacks the protection or interaction to survive disruption.
Goad: A goaded creature must attack on its controller's next turn, and cannot attack you if it can attack somebody else. It turns an opponent's board against the rest of the table.
Goldfish: Playing a deck by yourself to see how fast it executes its game plan without opponents interacting.
Goldfishing: Playing a deck by yourself to see how fast it executes its game plan without opponents interacting.
Graveyard: The discard pile. Cards that are destroyed, discarded or used up go here — and in Commander plenty of cards bring them back, which is why graveyards are a resource rather than a bin.
Group Hug: A play style built on giving every player extra cards, mana or life. It buys goodwill and time, and pairs with cards that profit from everyone drawing.
Hexproof: A permanent with hexproof cannot be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control. It can still be hit by effects that do not target, such as a board wipe or an edict.
Historic: A card that is legendary, an artifact, or a Saga. Cards that reward you for historic spells count all three.
Infinite Combo: Two or more cards that loop endlessly to produce unbounded value, mana, or damage. An EARLY combo can win before turn six; a LATE combo needs significant setup first.
Instant Speed: Able to be used at any time, including during an opponent's turn or in the middle of combat — as opposed to sorcery speed, which is only on your own turn before you attack.
Landwalk: An evasion ability naming a land type — a creature with islandwalk cannot be blocked at all if the defending player controls an Island.
Madness: A keyword that lets you cast a card for a different cost at the moment you discard it, instead of it going to the graveyard.
Mana Rock: An artifact that taps to produce mana, such as Sol Ring or Arcane Signet. Called a "rock" to distinguish it from a creature that makes mana, which is a "mana dork".
Manland: A land that can turn itself into a creature. It attacks like a creature but sits safely as a land the rest of the time.
Mass Land Denial: Spells that destroy all lands, resetting the game's resource curve.
Maximum Hand Size: The number of cards you may keep in hand, normally seven. You only discard down to it during your own end step — not the moment you go over, so you can draw and spend freely on your turn.
Menace: A creature with menace cannot be blocked by only one creature. It takes two or more blockers to stop it.
Mulligan: Taking a new starting hand of cards, usually penalized by putting fewer cards in your hand.
Permanent: Any card that stays on the battlefield once it resolves — creatures, artifacts, enchantments, lands, planeswalkers and battles. Instants and sorceries are not permanents; they resolve and go to the graveyard.
Perpetually: A digital-only word. A perpetual change stays with a card for the rest of the game and in every zone, unlike most effects, which wear off.
Power: The first of the two numbers in a creature's bottom-right corner. It is how much damage that creature deals when it fights or attacks.
Priority: The right to act. After anything is cast or played, each player in turn gets priority — a chance to respond — before it actually happens. Nothing resolves while a player still wants to act.
Proliferate: Choose any number of players and permanents that already have a counter on them, and give each one more of a counter it already has. It adds to what is there; it cannot start something new.
Ramp: Cards that permanently increase the amount of mana you have access to each turn.
Removal: Spells or abilities that destroy, exile, or bounce your opponents' cards.
Resolve: What happens when a spell or ability finally takes effect, after every player has passed on responding to it. A countered spell never resolves.
Saga: An enchantment that does something different each turn. It gains a lore counter as it enters and again after your draw step, then is sacrificed after its last chapter.
Scry: Look at the top card or cards of your library and choose to keep each on top or move it to the bottom. It improves your next draw without drawing anything.
Seek: A digital-only keyword action. The game picks a card at random from your library matching what the effect describes and puts it into your hand. Nothing is searched or shuffled.
Sideboard: In tournament formats, extra cards you may swap in between games. Commander has no sideboard, so cards that fetch from "outside the game" only work if your playgroup agrees on where those cards come from.
Singleton: The rule that a Commander deck may contain only one copy of any card other than basic lands. It is why searching your deck for a specific card is so valuable.
Specialize: A digital-only keyword. Paying a specialize cost turns a creature into a stronger version of itself tied to a single color.
Spot Removal: Spells or abilities that destroy, exile, or bounce a single one of your opponents' cards.
Stack: The zone where spells and abilities wait to resolve. The last thing added is the first to resolve, so responses resolve before what they answer.
Stax: Cards that restrict game actions, tax resources, or prevent players from untapping permanents.
Summoning Sickness: A creature cannot attack, or use abilities with the tap symbol, unless you have controlled it since the start of your turn. Haste ignores this rule.
Surveil: Look at the top card or cards of your library and choose to keep each on top or put it into your graveyard — filtering that also fuels graveyard strategies.
Sweeper: Another name for a board wipe — a spell that clears most or all creatures at once.
Tapland: A land that enters the battlefield tapped, slowing down your ability to cast spells by a full turn.
Taplands: Lands that enter the battlefield tapped, slowing down your ability to cast spells by a full turn.
Target: A spell or ability that says “target” chooses what it affects when it is cast or activated. Anything with hexproof or protection from it cannot be chosen this way.
Toughness: The second of the two numbers in a creature's bottom-right corner. It is how much damage the creature can take in a turn before it dies. A creature whose toughness reaches zero dies immediately.
Trample: If a creature with trample is blocked, damage beyond what is needed to destroy its blockers spills over to the defending player.
Trigger: An ability that fires automatically when a specific event happens, usually written "when" or "whenever". You do not choose to use it; it happens on its own.
Tutor: A card that searches your library for another specific card, making your deck far more consistent.
Untap: Turning a tapped card upright so it can be used again. Cards normally untap once per turn during your untap step, so an effect that untaps something early gives you a second use of it.
Upkeep: A step near the start of every turn, before you draw. Many cards trigger there — some paying you, some charging you.
Vanilla: A creature with no abilities at all — just a name, a cost, and its power and toughness.
Vigilance: A creature with vigilance does not tap when it attacks, so it is still available to block on the way back.