Fathomless Descent

Keywords · intermediate

Fathomless descent is an ability word. It has no rules meaning of its own; it marks cards whose effect scales with the number of permanent cards sitting in your graveyard.

How it works

• The card counts the permanent cards (creatures, artifacts, enchantments, lands, planeswalkers, battles) in your graveyard and uses that number as X.
• That X can shrink an opponent's creature, set a creature's power and toughness, shrink every creature on the board, or cap the mana value of a permanent card you can return from your graveyard to the battlefield, depending on the card.
• The wiki's descend entry covers the related "descend N" ability words, which count total permanent cards in the graveyard for a threshold check rather than using the count directly as X; fathomless descent is a distinct ability word that uses the count as a variable instead.

Rules notes

• Only permanent cards in the graveyard count; instants and sorceries sitting there don't add to X.
• The count is taken when the ability resolves (or, for a static ability, is continuously recalculated), so milling or discarding more permanent cards into your graveyard after the fact can change the number for future fathomless descent effects but not one that already resolved.
• A bigger graveyard of permanent cards directly makes these effects bigger; there's no cap printed on any of the cards shown here beyond the size of your graveyard.

Rule reference

[207.2c]