How To Use Renew In Magic: The Gathering

Any time black and green work together in Magic: The Gathering, you can expect lots of interaction with the graveyard. The Sultai Clan in Tarkir: Dragonstorm is no exception; their necromantic powers are showcased through a brand-new card ability that lets you put the cycle of life and death to your own ends, called renew.

Magic The Gathering collage image of three Sultai Commanders

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Cards with renew aren’t designed to come shambling back from the graveyard onto the battlefield; instead, you can use them for powerful one-time effects after they meet their demise, giving you access to new sorceries that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Here’s how it works.

What Does Renew Do In Magic: The Gathering?

Renew is an ability that can be activated at any time you could play a sorcery. It can only be used when the card it’s printed on is in your graveyard, and as an additional cost to use the renew ability, you must exile the card from your graveyard.

Thus far, all the cards revealed that have renew have been creatures, but it would work the same way on any other card type.

A card’s renew ability doesn’t do anything until it’s activated from the graveyard by paying the ability’s mana cost and exiling the card. That means that in most cases, you’ll play a card for its casting cost, make use of it on the battlefield until it dies, then renew it for one final effect.

If you have to discard a card, you can always send cards with renew straight to the graveyard with the intention of activating their renew ability.

MTG Kotis, the Fangkeeper art with the card in front of it.

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Important Things To Know About Renew

The mana cost of activating renew is entirely separate from the card’s normal casting cost; the casting cost is to play the card from your hand normally, while the renew cost is specifically to exile the card from your graveyard for its renew effect.

If a card with renew is exiled from your graveyard by something other than paying its renew cost, you don’t get to pay the mana and activate the renew effect as it leaves.

Renew abilities can only be activated as a sorcery, so you can’t use them to respond to abilities on the stack.