Hideaway, originally from Lorwyn, appears only on six cards so far in Magic…and here they are!
It represents two abilities – the first, way more boring one, is that the permanent with Hideaway will enter the battlefield tapped. The second says that when the Hideaway permanent enters the battlefield, look at the top four cards of your library, then exile one of those face down with the Hideaway card and put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
And that’s it! I mean, yeah, kinda. That is technically all that Hideaway says. However, every Hideaway card has another ability on it – in the case of the lands, they have ability that, if you meet certain requirements, let you play the exiled card without paying its cost, while the creature lets you put it into your hand when the creature leaves the battlefield.
As always, rules notes:
- If you have less than four cards in your library, you look at what you do have and still exile one.
- You can play lands from Hideaway, but only when you could play one normally.
- For other card types, you do get to ignore normal timing restrictions.
- Hideaway is a may, so you can activate it and choose to not cast the card. If you do this, the card remains hidden away and you can try again later.
- This will also happen if you try to cast something hidden away and it has no legal targets.
This is an odd mechanic that lets you get a huge discount on mana, so it’s pretty unlikely to return – at least as it appeared on the Lorwyn lands. But it’s an interesting design that can be used in different ways, so don’t rule it out completely yet.
If you want to get up to some sneaky shenanigans, we’ve got you covered at cardkingdom.com!