Assimilate

Keywords · intermediate

Assimilate is a reanimation action that also rebuilds what it reanimates: it puts a creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control with a +1/+1 counter, as a Borg artifact creature that loses all its other creature types.

How it works

• Assimilate targets a creature card in a graveyard. The card that uses it specifies whose graveyard — an opponent's, in the printing that exists today.
• The card is put onto the battlefield under your control, not its owner's, and it arrives with a +1/+1 counter already on it.
• It becomes a Borg artifact creature and loses all other creature types. Its other characteristics are unchanged.

Rules notes

• Assimilating is not casting. The creature is put onto the battlefield directly, so its enters-the-battlefield abilities trigger but its cast triggers do not, and it can't be answered by a counterspell.
• The type change cuts both ways. Becoming an artifact creature switches on your artifact-matters payoffs, but losing all other creature types switches the creature off for tribal effects — an assimilated Elf stops being an Elf.
• Because it enters as an artifact, it also becomes vulnerable to artifact removal it would otherwise dodge.
• Assimilate has no Comprehensive Rules entry yet; the reminder text on the card is the authority for now.