Enlist is a combat mechanic that involves two creatures. When a creature with it attacks, you may tap a non-attacking creature you control that has already gotten over its “summoning sickness.” In other words, a creature with haste or that you’ve controlled since at least when your turn began. When you tap a creature this way, the creature with Enlist gets +X/+0 until the end of the turn, where X is the enlisted (or tapped) creature’s power.
As always, even for a relatively simple mechanic like this, there’s a few notes.
- This is an optional cost of attacking. If you do choose to enlist a creature, then a triggered ability from the creature with Enlist goes on the stack.
- The bonus is applied once the triggered ability resolves.
- Any changes to the enlisted creatures power after this won’t affect the creature with Enlist.
- If the enlisted creature is killed in response to the trigger, the creature with Enlist still gets the bonus based on what the enlisted creature’s power was as it last existed on the battlefield.
- You can only tap one creature per creature with Enlist.
This is an interesting way to still get offense out of a smaller creature that can’t attack into blockers, or make some big threat with any kind of evasion or trample even scarier, or both! This is probably about as close as we’re ever going to get to a reprint of Banding, as this is somewhat similar while being a little easier to understand quickly.
If you want to Enlist some of this mechanic into your collection, visit cardkingdom.com!