Pia Nalaar, Chief Mechanic

Pia Nalaar, Chief Mechanic Rulings

• Feb 7, 2025

  Energy counters are a kind of counter that a player may have. They’re not associated with any specific permanents.

• Feb 7, 2025

  Energy counters aren’t mana. They don’t go away as steps, phases, and turns end, and effects that add mana “of any type” can’t give you energy counters.

• Feb 7, 2025

  If an effect says you get one or more {E}, you get that many energy counters. To pay one or more {E}, you lose that many energy counters. You can’t pay more energy counters than you have. Any effects that interact with counters a player gets, has, or loses can interact with energy counters.

• Feb 7, 2025

  Keep track of how many energy counters each player has. Potential ways to track this include writing them down on paper or using dice, but any method that is clear and mutually agreeable is fine.

• Feb 7, 2025

  Some spells and abilities say that you “may pay” a certain amount of {E}, then describes an effect that happens “if you do.” In that case, no player may take actions to try to stop the ability’s effect after you make your choice. If the payment is instead followed by the phrase “when you do” followed by an effect, then after you choose to pay {E}, a new triggered ability called a reflexive trigger is put on the stack, and you choose targets for the reflexive trigger (if the effect asks for targets). Players may respond as normal to this new triggered ability. Once that reflexive trigger resolves, the effect will finally occur.