In 2006, after taking a few years to visit new planes like Mirrodin, Kamigawa and Ravnica, Magic: the Gathering would make its return to the classic plane of Dominaria in the Time Spiral block. These three sets played around with time, both flavorfully and mechanically, and one of the new mechanics created for this block was Suspend.

Suspend is a different way to cast spells that rewards patience and careful planning. Essentially, instead of casting a spell with Suspend, you can exile it from your hand by paying its Suspend cost, putting a number of time counters on that spell equal to its Suspend number. At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, you remove a time counter from that card, and when it has no time counters you may cast the spell for free. If it's a creature spell, it also gains haste until end of turn.

There are a couple of rule quirks to keep in mind while playing with the mechanic though. For one, when you finally remove the last counter from a suspended spell, you cast it from exile. This can be a big upside if you're playing a deck like Prosper that cares about casting spells from anywhere other than your hand, but if your opponent throws down a Drannith Magistrate you'll be in big trouble. You also cast the suspended spells during your upkeep, so try not to get hosed by cards like Teferi, Time Raveler, which only let you cast spells at sorcery speed. Finally, although the mechanic uses a type of counter to track it, the cards are in exile, not the battlefield. This means you can't mess with your opponents' suspended spells with Proliferate shenanigans, as funny as that would be.

Of the original cards with Suspend, five stand above the rest in terms of power level. These were a cycle of cards that, unlike many other cards with Suspend, have no regular mana cost, so the only way to play them is through Suspend. They were a reference to five very powerful cards from Magic's history: Restore Balance was Balance, Ancestral Vision was Ancestral Recall, Living End was Living Death, Wheel of Fate was Wheel of Fortune and Hypergenesis was Eureka.

In a vacuum, these cards seem like fun references that are a big step down from the originals in power level thanks to Suspend. Just a few sets later though, in Alara Reborn, Wizards would introduce Cascade. This mechanic is notorious for comboing with Suspend, as it is a mechanic that allows you to play random cards off the top of your deck if they have a lower mana value than the card with Cascade. As it turns out, if you cascade into a Suspend spell with no mana cost, you just get to cast it immediately for free. This led to players running decks with 0-cost Suspend cards, 3-mana value Cascade cards, an no other spells that cost two mana or less. This guaranteed that the free Suspend spells would be cast while cascading, making those decks incredibly fast and consistent. Living Death was a Modern staple for years, allowing players to bring big creatures back from the grave very quickly, and Hypergenesis was banned for being too powerful when played in the early game. Lotus Bloom was another early Suspend card that saw quite a bit of play, being a Black Lotus that you need to wait three turns to get. It is still popular in Storm and Oops All Spells decks, where it can make a lot of free mana for patient players. Rift Bolt also saw heavy play in Modern burn decks for years, acting as another four copies of Lightning Bolt with the only downside being the one turn wait. Finally, if you've been playing Commander for a while, you probably remember Jhoira of the Ghitu. This card was one of the scariest commanders in the format's early days, letting you cast the biggest spells in Magic just by paying two mana and waiting four turns.

After its debut in Time Spiral, it would take more than ten years for the mechanic to appear on new cards. In the first Modern Horizons, three new cards were printed. One of these was Crashing Footfalls, a card that would later become the backbone of a very strong Modern deck that aimed to use it to make 4/4 rhinos at instant speed thanks once again to Suspend's interaction with Cascade. After the first Modern Horizons, Suspend showed up multiple times as a one-off mechanic in supplementary sets like New Capenna Commander, Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate and Murders at Karlov Manor Commander. It also appeared as a main mechanic in Universes Beyond: Doctor Who, where the Timey Wimey precon made heavy use of it along with a new related mechanic: Time Travel. Time Travel allows you to add or remove time counters from your suspended cards, letting you cast them sooner or delay them a little longer.

That's all for this Mechanics Overview, but if you want to see Suspend in action, check out this article on the new Taigam from Tarkir: Dragonstorm.