Bestow is an alternate casting cost that appears on Enchantment Creatures, so we’re getting pretty specific already as those are somewhat uncommon to begin with. If you cast the Bestow creature for its normal mana cost, it enters the battlefield and behaves like any other creature spell. If you choose to cast it for its Bestow cost, it instead enters as an Aura enchanting a creature, getting whatever abilities and bonuses are granted according to the enchantment creature’s text box.
So it’s a way for a creature to be an Aura or a creature, making them into a kind of modal spell. Doesn’t seem too complicated, right? Well hold on.
- On the stack, a creature being cast using its Bestow ability is only an Aura, so it can’t be countered by Essence Scatter, but can be countered by Negate.
- If the targeted creature becomes an illegal target for any reason (like say, getting destroyed), then the card will simply enter the battlefield as a creature, even if it was cast for its Bestow cost.
- Likewise, if the enchanted creature gets destroyed with the enchantment creature card already on it, the Bestow card “falls off” that creature as its destroyed and becomes its own creature, which is pretty nifty. If that creature has been on the battlefield since the beginning of your turn, even as an Aura, it is unaffected by summoning sickness and can tap and activate tap abilities.
- You must have a legal target to enchant to cast a Bestow creature as an Aura.
- If the spell is being cast as an Aura and it gets copied, the copy is also an Aura and follows the same rules for Bestow.
- If the creature is on the battlefield as a creature, any text it has stating “Enchanted creature gets…” is simply ignored.
Enchantment creatures are not a mainstay of Magic, usually only showing in very specific planes, so Bestow returning already has that going against it. Add in some confusion around the rules, and the chances lower a little further. But there is still a chance it comes back someday.
If you want to Bestow your collection with some new cards, head over to cardkingdom.com!
Chris is the Marketing Communications Coordinator (and editor of the blog) at Card Kingdom. He would like to apologize to his son for not holding onto more cards from when he first started playing, as that likely would have paid for college. He enjoys pretty much all formats of Magic, but usually ends up playing decks that make other people dislike playing those formats with him.