Craft is a double-faced card transforming mechanic that’s first appearing in Lost Caverns of Ixalan. While it could theoretically appear on any permanent type, for now (as of the time of me writing this script), it appears solely on artifacts.
Like most double-faced transforming cards, cards with craft will normally enter on their front face – which in this case is the side with the ability. It will be written as “Craft with” something, and then a mana cost. The “something” here can be most anything – we so far have cards that craft with artifact, cave, various creature types, nonland permanents with activated abilities, and just straight up cards in general. Those cards you’re crafting with can come from either the battlefield or your graveyard.
At sorcery speed (during your main phase with nothing on the stack), you may activate a craft ability by paying the mana cost, exiling the card with the ability that you’re activating, and exiling the additional resources specified by the ability (again, either from the battlefield or your graveyard). Once the ability resolves, the Crafted card returns to the battlefield transformed, or with its back face now showing.
So that’s a lot up front, but the good news is that there’s not a lot else you need to know:
- You can exile tokens that fit the requirements in order to craft, but keep in mind that some craft cards have abilities on their backside that use the cards exiled to craft it as a source of some kind, and that if you exile tokens to craft, they simply cease to exist in the game, and so won’t contribute anything to the back side’s abilities.
- Exiling the card and the other required resources are part of the activation cost of the ability, so once you activate it, those things are no longer around for an opponent to try to remove in response.
Craft is an odd ability, requiring a decent amount of resources to use. We’ll see how it’s received in Lost Caverns of Ixalan, but there’s plenty of room for design tweaks and different ways to implement it if it ever makes a comeback.
Craft your collection however you want over at cardkingdom.com!