ETERNALIZE

Eternalize – MTG Keywords Explained

Card KingdomStrategy

Modern Horizons sets breathe new life into the characters and mechanical themes of Magic‘s past. It’s only fitting, then, that Modern Horizons 2 includes a mechanic that gives creatures in the graveyard a new lease on life. Today, we’re explaining the nuances of Hour of Devastation‘s graveyard mechanic eternalize!

What is Eternalize?

Eternalize is an activated ability that appears on creature cards and functions when those creature are in the graveyard. Anytime you would cast a sorcery, you may pay the creature’s eternalize cost and exile it from your graveyard. Then, you put a token onto the battlefield that is a copy of that creature with a few specific attributes: it’s a 4/4, it’s black, and it’s a Zombie in addition to its other types.

An eternalized creature works just like any other token copy of a creature. It has all the same abilities as the original creature card, but since it’s a token, it ceases to exist if your opponent removes it from the battlefield.

The main thing to remember about your eternalized creature tokens is that they are 4/4 versions of those creatures. Thankfully, you can find token versions of every creature printed with the eternalize ability, which you can keep handy if you’re ever playing with them. If you manage to eternalize a creature through other means (such as using The Scarab God‘s ability), we recommend using a product like Dry Erase Tokens to represent them.

Eternalize lets you recycle your creatures, and they’ll often come back scarier than they were before. You can browse all the creatures with eternalize at Card Kingdom, and consider adding them to your decks!