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Magic: The Gathering is full of slang that can be incredibly off-putting to newcomers. Sometimes that slang becomes incorporated into the game as official terminology, like mill, while others remain in that weird space of being almost as widely used without being found on any cards.
A great example of the latter is flickering and blinking. Though the two phrases mean the exact same thing and are interchangeable, there is a surprising amount of debate as to what they actually mean. Here is everything you need to know about flickering and blinking in MTG.
What Are Flickering And Blinking?
Flickering and blinking are a kind of unofficial keyword that both Wizards of the Coast and the community use to explain a mechanic. It is not an official term found either on cards or within the rules, but is so ubiquitous that it may as well be.
Specifically, flickering and blinking refer to exiling a permanent, and then returning it to the battlefield. If a permanent goes through this, it is said to have either been “flickered” or “blinked”.
When something is flickered or blinked, it is treated the same way as any other permanent that is exiled. It is removed from the game and placed into the exile zone, where it loses all memory of its former state (any damage incurred that turn, enchantments, counters, equipment, whether it was the target of any spell or ability, and any other effect).
It is then returned to the battlefield in a condition similar to what it was when it was first cast – triggering any enters-the-battlefield triggers again and gaining summoning sickness if it was a creature. This does not count as the creature being cast again, which has implications for cards like Stonecoil Serpent or Phage, the Untouchable.
Keep in mind that other temporary exile effects, such as from a Banishing Light or Borrowed Time, is not considered a flicker or blink. For it to count, it must exile and return it to the battlefield under a single cost with no further action required.
How To Use Flickering And Blinking
There are three primary uses for flickering or blinking.
The first is to protect your permanents. This works because a permanent that is flickered or blinked is no longer treated as the same permanent as the one that was exiled. This means that, if an opponent is trying to target your permanent with a spell or ability, flickering or blinking will cause it to ‘fizzle’ and no longer resolve.
The second reason is that flickering and blinking re-trigger your enter the battlefield (ETB) abilities. Anything with a splashy ETB trigger is a perfect blink or flicker target, as you’ll get even more value out of it for relatively little effort. Cards like Mulldrifter are great flicker targets for their card draw, while others like Ravenous Chupacabra or Reclamation Sage will help remove your opponent’s permanents instead.
The final, and least common, reason for flickering is to target it at your opponent’s permanents. This could be to remove them as attackers or blockers in combat, or to give them summoning sickness and prevent them from attacking that turn. It could be a way to knock counters, enchantments, or equipment off of a creature, or even to stop your opponent from comboing off of a permanent by temporarily removing it from play.
Why Aren’t Flicker Or Blink Keywords?
As mentioned, sometimes keywords come from existing slang. The best example of this is ‘mill’, which meant to put cards from your library into your graveyard long before it was formally codified in Core Set 2021. So with “exile target permanent, and then return it to the battlefield under your control” being so lengthy, why hasn’t it been replaced with “flicker” or “blink” as an official keyword?
Despite sounding like a clear-cut definition, there is some disagreement as to what actually constitutes a flicker or a blink. This is because certain cards do essentially the same thing, but at different time scales:
- Some exile the permanent, and then return it to the battlefield straight away. This is the strictest definition of flickering and blinking, and can be found on cards like Acrobatic Maneuver, Flicker of Fate, and Ephemerate.
- Others exile the permanent, and then return it to the battlefield at the beginning of the next end step. This style is found on cards like Flickerwisp, Eerie Interlude, and Nezahal, Primal Tide. However, some argue this is different enough from the other style of flicker or blink to have its own term and is the primary reason why this mechanic has yet to be given an official keyword.
For a mechanic to be keyworded, it needs to be able to have the same action every single time you see it on a card. Regardless of what card it is on, mill always does the same thing – the same couldn’t be said for flicker or blink.
Some have proposed giving each speed of flicker or blink its own keyword – such as flickering being the quicker version, and blinking being the slower. The problem with this is it is introducing needless complexity – two keywords for two very similar mechanics would cause more confusion than simply writing the effect out in full on the card.