Ward is one of MTG's most prominent protective keywords. It grants your cards a layer of added protection that requires your opponent to pay a specified cost if they want to target the Warded card with either a spell or ability.

Ward acts not as an impenetrable shield for your permanents, but rather a way to tax your opponents' resources if they want to remove one of your Ward cards with either a targeted removal spell or an ability that they control.

What is Ward?

Ward is a Keyword Ability that reads, "Whenever this permanent becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter that spell or ability unless that player pays [cost]." The Ward cost varies card-to-card, but usually this cost is in the form of paying extra mana or life points to target the Warded permanent.

For example, Archive Dragon has a Ward ability, meaning that if you want to target this Creature with a spell or ability you control, you'll have to pay mana of any color in addition to all your other costs. If you don't pay the mana, your spell or ability will get countered and will not resolve.

Ward triggers also stack if there are multiple cards in play with Ward on them. If you use a targeted removal spell like Expose Evil to target a Rimeshield Frost Giant and a Spectral Snatcher, you'll inevitably have to both pay mana and discard a card if you want your spell to fully resolve.

For argument's sake, if you didn't have a card to discard to Spectral Snatcher in hand but could pay the extra three mana in this scenario, you would still be able to tap Rimeshield Frost Giant but not Spectral Snatcher. This is because Expose Evil has two targets, since one target is removed there is still one other target in play for this spell to resolve.

It's also worth noting that if a Creature you control has Ward, you can still target it with your own spells or abilities -- it only taxes your opponents' cards. Overall, Ward is a keyword that provides a bit of added insurance that pressures your opponents to commit more resources into removing your cards off of the battlefield.

How is Ward different from Hexproof?

Ward is very closely related to another keyword: Hexproof. Hexproof is a Keyword Ability that prevents your opponent from targeting your permanents with spells or abilities. While you can still target your own Hexproof permanents with spells and abilities, such as suiting up a Slipper Bogle with Ethereal Armor, your opponent can't target a Hexproofed permanent you control.

Ward, however, is worded differently. You can think of Ward as "Hexproof-lite." What I mean by this is that Ward is designed in a way where your opponent can get around it and target your permanent, but they'll have to do a little extra work to get there.

In recent MTG sets you can see the departure from Hexproof in favor of Ward. Since Ward isn't as impenetrable of an ability as Hexproof, it makes for better gameplay when your opponent can remove your haymaker. Hexproof is still around, but it's more suited to cards like Copper Host Crusher, which at least costs 8 mana to play.

As a Magic player you have to be mindful of how you sequence your removal spells around Ward permanents. If you have a Forum Necroscribe in play, your opponent can still cast a Murder to destroy it, but they'll need to have a card in their hand that they can discard to pay the Ward cost.

If Murder is their last card in hand, well they'll have to wait to kill your Necroscribe until they have an extra card in their hand to pitch.

How can you get around Ward?

Sometimes a Creature having Ward is just as bad as it having Hexproof. Take Tyrranax Rex, for example. When this card was legal in Standard it was very difficult for Blue-based Control strategies to deal with effectively.

Because this card can't be countered, and also had Trample, it meant that you had to cast a removal spell in addition to using four more mana, just to get around the Ward ability.

Tyrranax Rex also has Toxic 4, which means that if you didn't have 8 points or more of toughness in your Creatures that can block it and the Rex Trampled over for even one damage, you would still get four Poison Counters. Tyrranax Rex is a prime example of a card that would be way too busted if it had Hexproof; even with just its Ward ability, it's a hard card to remove.

However, there are actually some interesting tricks you can utilize to get around Ward abilities. Take a card like Void Render, which was legal at the time of Tyrranax Rex's printing in Standard:

Void Rend is an Instant that can destroy any nonland permanent, but it also has a very sneaky line of text: "this spell can't be countered." Because Ward abilities require your opponent to pay a cost in order to not get countered, spells that say they can't be countered get around Ward entirely.

This is why Void Rend was the perfect answer to Tyrranax Rex in its time; it was a way to completely bypass the Ward ability, because Void Rend's "can't be countered" clause trumps the cost of the Ward ability.

In addition to cards like Void Rend that are spells that directly target a permanent, you can utilize "sweeper" cards to bypass having to deal with a Warded permanent. For example, if your opponent has a Raffine, Scheming Seer in play, you can still freely remove this card with a "destroy all Creatures" effect like Day of Judgment.

Since Day of Judgment doesn't actually target any specific Creatures, it will destroy all Creatures in play. While a card like this can't actually kill a Creature with Indestructible, it still will not care about Ward and Hexproof, which care about being specifically targeted by spells and abilities.

Another important aspect of understanding Ward is that you can still utilize countermagic on the stack to counter a Ward Creature or other permanent before it even comes into play.

If your opponent casts a Sire of Seven Deaths, you can utilize good old fashioned Counterspell to deal with it before it even comes into play and without needing to pay its Ward cost.

Conclusion

Overall, Ward is an interesting Keyword Ability that grants your cards an extra layer of protection against your opponent's spells and abilities. Ward doesn't completely protect your permanents in the same fashion that Hexproof might, but it's still an added layer of security that can pressure your opponent's resources.

With Hexproof mostly phased out, Ward has become the premier protective keyword in the game. Understanding Ward and knowing how to get around it will help you better play against your opponent's threats, as well as help you better understand how to deploy your own Ward cards.