Magic keywords: every keyword ability explained

A keyword is a shortcut. Instead of printing five lines of rules on every card, Magic prints one word, and that word always means the same thing. The problem shows up when you hit one you don’t know halfway through a game.

This is the list. It’s built to be scanned, not read front to back.

If what you want isn’t the list but how abilities work underneath — activated, triggered, static — that’s in abilities in Magic.

How to read a keyword

Three things that save arguments:

• The keyword isn’t the ability, it’s the name of the ability. When a card says “creatures you control lose flying”, they lose the whole thing.
• Repeating a keyword does nothing. A creature with flying twice flies the same. The exceptions are the ones with a number (ward, annihilator): those stack.
• Almost all of them are static: they work on their own, without you doing anything. The ones you have to activate come with a cost and a colon (equip {2}, cycling {1}).

Evergreen keywords

These show up in almost every set. If you only learn one block, learn this one.

Flying

Can only be blocked by creatures with flying or reach. It can block whoever it likes, though: flying restricts who blocks it, not who it blocks.

Reach

Can block creatures with flying. It doesn’t fly itself: it’s the archer or the spider that gets up there.

First strike

Deals its combat damage in a step before the normal one. If it kills the other creature first, that creature never hits back.

Double strike

Deals damage in the first-strike step and the normal one. Twice its power, if it survives the first.

Deathtouch

Any amount of damage it deals, even 1, is enough to destroy the creature taking it. It combines brutally with trample: you assign 1 to each blocker and everything else goes through.

Trample

When attacking, you assign lethal damage to the blockers and the excess goes to the player. If your 6/6 is blocked by a 2/2, 4 gets through.

Vigilance

Attacking doesn’t tap it. It attacks and is still there to block on your opponent’s turn.

Haste

Can attack and use tap ({T}) abilities the same turn it hits the battlefield. Without haste, you wait a full turn.

Defender

Can’t attack. That’s it. Usually walls with high toughness.

Flash

You can cast it any time you could cast an instant: on your opponent’s turn, in response to something, at the end of their turn.

Menace

Can’t be blocked except by two or more creatures. Against an opponent with a single blocker, it’s unblockable.

Lifelink

Damage it deals gains you that much life. All damage, not just combat damage.

Hexproof

Can’t be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control. You can still target it yourself.

Shroud

Can’t be targeted by anything, not even by you. It’s stricter than hexproof, which is why it’s essentially retired.

Ward N

When an opponent targets it with a spell or ability, that spell or ability is countered unless they pay the ward cost. It isn’t untouchable: it’s expensive to touch. The cost can be mana, life or a discard.

Protection from X

Four things at once, remembered as DEBT: it can’t be Damaged by X sources, can’t be Enchanted or equipped by X, can’t be Blocked by X, and can’t be Targeted by X. Careful: protection does not stop exile, sacrifice or -1/-1 counters.

Indestructible

Lethal damage doesn’t destroy it, and neither do effects that say “destroy”. What does kill it: sacrifice, exile, or its toughness dropping to 0.

Prowess

Gets +1/+1 until end of turn whenever you cast a noncreature spell. It triggers on every spell, so it stacks.

Enchant

Shows up on Auras and defines what they can attach to: “enchant creature”, “enchant land”. If the enchanted object stops being legal, the Aura goes to the graveyard.

Equip {cost}

An activated ability on Equipment: you pay the cost and attach it to a creature you control. Sorcery speed only, on your turn with an empty stack. Moving Equipment on your opponent’s turn is not a thing.

Keywords that come and go

Not in every set, but they come back often.

Scry N

Look at the top N cards of your library. Put any number on the bottom and the rest on top, in any order. You don’t draw anything: you’re just sorting.

Cycling {cost}

Discard the card by paying the cycling cost and draw a card. It keeps what doesn’t help you right now from being a dead card.

Flashback {cost}

You can cast the spell from your graveyard for its flashback cost instead of the normal one. It’s exiled as it resolves: a second time, not a third.

Convoke

You can tap creatures you control to help pay for the spell. Each tapped creature pays {1} or one mana of its colour.

Affinity for X

The generic cost goes down by {1} for each X you control. The classic version is affinity for artifacts.

Delve

You can exile cards from your graveyard as you cast the spell. Each exiled card pays {1}.

Madness {cost}

If you discard the card, instead of going to the graveyard it’s exiled and you may cast it for its madness cost. It turns a discard into an advantage.

Undying

When it dies, if it had no +1/+1 counter on it, it comes back to the battlefield with one.

Persist

When it dies, if it had no -1/-1 counter on it, it comes back with one. It’s undying in reverse: it comes back weaker.

Infect

Its damage doesn’t work like normal damage: creatures get -1/-1 counters, players get poison counters. Ten poison counters and you lose the game.

Storm

When you cast it, it’s copied once for each spell cast before it this turn, by any player. It is the most broken keyword in the history of the game.

Cascade

When you cast it, you exile cards off the top of your library until you hit a nonland that costs less, and you may cast that one for free.

Morph {cost}

You can cast the card face down for {3} as a 2/2 colourless creature with no name and no types. Later, at any time, you pay the morph cost and turn it face up.

Evoke

You can cast it for a cheaper alternative cost, but it’s sacrificed as soon as it enters the battlefield. It’s for keeping just the enters-the-battlefield ability.

Threshold

The card gains something as long as there are seven or more cards in your graveyard.

Fear

Can only be blocked by artifact creatures and by black creatures.

Intimidate

Can only be blocked by artifact creatures and by creatures that share a colour with it.

Keyword actions

These aren’t abilities a creature has: they’re verbs that show up inside card text.

Proliferate

Choose any number of permanents and players that already have at least one counter and give them one more of a kind they already had. It doesn’t put new counters where there weren’t any.

Explore

The creature reveals the top card of your library. If it’s a land, it goes to your hand. If not, the creature gets a +1/+1 counter and you decide whether that card stays on top or goes to the graveyard.

What almost nobody gets right

• Hexproof doesn’t protect against effects that don’t target. A “destroy all creatures” takes your hexproof creature with it, because it never targeted it.
• Indestructible isn’t immortality. A “sacrifice a creature” or a -3/-3 on a 2/2 still gets there.
• First strike and deathtouch together are genuinely lethal: it kills in the first step and the other creature never gets to swing back.
• Haste does nothing if the creature was already in play last turn. Only the turn it arrives matters.

Keeping it handy at the table

This list is meant to be pulled up mid-game on a phone. And if you’re also tracking life, poison and commander damage on paper, the life counter does that without the arguments.