Threshold
This ability was originally written Threshold — ability. Whenever a player has seven or more cards in the graveyard, his or her cards gain any threshold abilities they might have. A player can't activate an ability tied to threshold unless he or she has seven or more cards in the graveyard. Threshold appears in Odyssey block and on some timeshifted cards in Time Spiral.
With the release of Time Spiral, Threshold ceased to be a keyworded mechanic. It was instead redefined to be an ability word with no rules meaning attached to it. For instance, Nomad Decoy was originally written:
- W, Tap: Tap target creature.
- Threshold — WW, Tap: Tap two target creatures. (You have Threshold as long as you have seven or more cards are in your graveyard.)
And was changed to:
- W, Tap: Tap target creature.
- Threshold — WW, Tap: Tap two target creatures. Activate this ability only if seven or more cards are in your graveyard.
Not all shifts were as simple as changing the reminder text to rules text; for example, Centaur Chieftain required more tinkering to preserve the original way the card worked.
Read more about this topic: List Of Magic: The Gathering Keywords, Ability Words
Famous quotes containing the word threshold:
“One could love reason like an Encyclopaedist and still be favorably inclined toward mysticism. Throughout the ages, up to the eyes of van Gogh, when he looked at a coffee pot or a garden path, mysticism has expanded the human realm by all sorts of threshold experiences.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)