Vexing Sphinx Blue Card in Magic the Gathering

Series Summary

Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game introduced in 1994 that boasts an amazing 6 million plus players worldwide. The game is played by two or more players who use decks of cards (or libraries) to battle with magical spells, items, and fantastic creatures depicted on the cards. The game was derived from role playing games, but bares a closer resemblance to bridge or poker. The complex rules and card meanings will challenge even the most avid card-player. One of the most interesting aspects of Magic is the color of the different cards. White cards represent order, blue represent knowledge, black is the color of death, red represents chaos and green is the color of life in this card game.

In this free video series, watch as professional gamer Mike Lopez teaches how to play Magic the Gathering with blue cards, which are used for control and deception. Learn all the different card names and what they do in the game. Improve your knowledge of this mystical game so you can continue to enjoy it with friends all over the world.

Video Transcript

"MIKE LOPEZ: Hi. I'm Mike with Expert Village. And today, we're going to be discussing the blue block of magic from Magic: The Gathering by Wizards of the Coast. The blue block is all about control and deception. It is a basis for your control domination, which is your blue block decks, and it is also the basis for your bait and switch decks, which are usually blue and green, blue and black, or a combination of the two. And now, we're going to discuss Vexing Sphinx. This is a creature card from the Coldsnap block. It's common, as we could see by the low icon here, one colorless and two islands. This creature has flying, but it also has accumulative upkeep. The reason it has accumulative upkeep for age counters is because you're getting a 4/4 but only paying three mana. The accumulative upkeep is discarding a card. So at the beginning of your upkeep, you must discard a card or you must sacrifice Vexing Sphinx. Now, every time you do this, every time an upkeep comes around and you pay the accumulative upkeep cost, you will put an age counter on Vexing Sphinx. Now, for each age counter on it, you must then discard a card, the next upkeep, for every age counter. And down here, when Vexing Sphinx is put into a graveyard from play, draw a card for each age counter on it. So again, if you have four age counters on it, then you would draw four cards. But remember, you're paying twice the amount for the fact that this is a 4/4 flying creature that you only paid three for."