Players coming in from other trading card games might forget that Magic: The Gathering has a whole second main phase after combat during which you can play sorceries and permanents, as well as activate all of those abilities that say “activate only as a sorcery.”
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Even if you don’t have a Wrath of God to wipe out your opponent’s board post-attack, there are still a lot of things you can do, and the raid mechanic serves not only to remind you that there’s a second main phase, but also encourages you to attack.
What Is Raid?
Raid is an ability word that signals a beneficial effect if you attacked earlier in the turn. The effect itself can be virtually anything, as ability words like raid only show a common theme and have no direct rules associated with them.
Raid effects are notable because they only check to see if you declared an attack: They don’t care if the creature you attacked with survived, or if they dealt damage, or which player or planeswalker you declared the attack against. You can think of it like having a “raid switch” turned on when you attack, and only turning off when your turn ends.
Spells with raid, along with permanents with raid enter effects, encourage you to attack and then play during your second main phase for additional benefits, such as increased damage from burn spells, extra card draws, and token generation. Some permanents also have raid effects that trigger at the end of your turn.
How To Use Raid
Raid rewards you for attacking, and the simplest way to use it is to just attack before playing most raid cards. There isn’t much strategy to it (after all, three-quarters of all raid cards are mono-red), but there are a few nuances to keep in mind.
First, look for safe ways to attack. In two-player games, load up on evasive creatures with flying or menace so that you can attack with minimal risk. In multiplayer games like Commander, keep an eye out for an opponent without blockers, or with creatures that are too important to chump block your creatures.
Raid is exceptionally rare in green, but if you’re able to work it into a green deck, look for Fog effects that can remove combat damage whenever it doesn’t go your way. Raid abilities will still go into effect!
Creatures with recursive abilities that you can keep replaying, like Bloodsoaked Champion, are excellent options to include: If they die, you can just bring them right back and repeat on your next turn. The same is true for creatures with useful effects when they die, or when you sacrifice them.
If you can’t attack safely, look for opportunities to get extra value. Attacking with an expendable creature can be followed up by playing another creature, like Gorehorn Raider, which has a raid effect to deal direct damage to the blocker. Killing something they thought was safe without losing your battlefield presence can force them to think twice about blocking your small attackers later.
Raid is too situational of a mechanic to build around (except in limited formats like sealed), but it fits well into decks that are already combat-focused. Including several raid effects that trigger at the end of your turn can add additional payoffs to your attacks without forcing you into attacks that you don’t want to commit to.
Best Cards With Raid
The best raid cards tend to be the ones that are repeatable and that enable themselves, or synergize well with flexible mechanics.
Laura Croft, Tomb Raider
Laura Croft, Tomb Raider is the only green card with raid, so she provides a lot of utility as a Commander. Her raid ability passively generates Treasure tokens at the end of combat when you attack, but if you attack with her she exiles legendary lands and artifacts from graveyards so that you can play them again. First strike also makes attacking relatively safe, so you can swing to recover your legendary cards or steal them from your opponents.
This raid ability has the special feature that it triggers at the end of your combat step, but has no other restrictions. If you have multiple combat steps you can make multiple Treasure tokens, even if you don’t attack during those additional combat steps.
Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate
Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate doesn’t have access to green, but her raid ability allows you to return a creature from your graveyard to your battlefield every turn that you attack. With black’s ability to fill your graveyard, that’s a powerful mechanic limited only by her power, which grows every time she attacks herself.
Short-term buffs can make Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate’s raid ability better while keeping her safe: Alesha doesn’t need to attack personally for her raid ability to trigger, so chump-attacking with a Grizzly Bear and using one of red’s many cheap power increasing spells means you can get a big beater from your graveyard on a budget.
Rose, Cutthroat Raider
As a rule, raid doesn’t check for anything except that you attacked at least once. Rose, Cutthroat Raider, is an exception because she rewards you for attacking multiple opponents.
Junk tokens aren’t particularly useful, but Rose makes them act a little more like Treasure tokens with impulse draw attached, and they’re always good in decks that care more about the number of artifacts in play than the type.
While Rose, Cutthroat Raider is decent in a red artifacts matter deck, her real purpose is to turn Junk into slow, mono-red Treasure. Her final ability doesn’t specify which effect you need to sacrifice a Junk to, so you’ll get red mana as a byproduct of sacrificing it for another purpose, like feeding your Atog.
Midnight Snack
Black does surprisingly well with Food tokens, between the gingerbread houses of Eldraine, the Food and Fellowship precon, and Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar. Midnight Snack synergizes with all the preexisting black Food decks by creating Food every turn you attack, but also slots easily into Orzhov lifegain decks.
Lifegain has long been viewed as a weak mechanic, but it’s been getting stronger. Effects like Midnight Snack’s activated ability can turn big life gains into win conditions.
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