Convoke in MTG: Rules, History, and Best Cards

Last updated on January 14, 2026

Chord of Calling | Illustration by Karl Kopinski

Almost every Magic player can agree that Ravnica sets have consistently been a clear display of successful design. Some aspects of the several returns to the plane have been hit or miss, but everyone agrees it’s a good plane with great designs.

And we all obviously know the 10 guilds of Ravnica. Today I’ll be talking about a mechanic that saw its origin as a guild mechanic for the Selesnya Conclave: convoke.

Let’s talk about that.

How Does Convoke Work?

Obelisk of Urd | Illustration by John Severin Brassel

Convoke is an ability that allows you to tap creatures to pay for a card’s mana cost. Every creature you tap counts as either one generic mana or one mana of one of that creature’s colors. This ability basically allows you to use your creatures as mana sources for the convoke spell, which greatly helps reduce costs if played right.

The History of Convoke in MTG

Convoke first appeared in Ravnica: City of Guilds, the first set in the original Ravnica block back in 2005. It was strictly associated with the Selesnya Conclave () which always had a strong theme of community, large armies, and collaboration between its members. It was printed on 15 cards from this set: Seven of them were green (like staple Chord of Calling), six were white, and the other two were multicolored.

The mechanic was later printed again in Future Sight and Guilds of Ravnica where it kept its focus on green and white. It was expanded on in Magic 2015 and Modern Horizons, bringing the ability to artifacts while adding black, blue, and red convoke spells. Convoke also had a big resurgence in March of the Machine and its Commander precons, adding some powerful cards to the Jeskai colors.

Convoke has made an appearance in several sets on one-of designs, including Duskmourn: House of Horror, Modern Horizons 3, and Marvel’s Spider-Man, as well as many Commander precon designs.

The ability also went through a subtle rules change in MOM. The original ruling said that tapping creatures allowed you to reduce the cost of the spell you were casting. With Magic 2015 the effect was changed to having the creatures you tap work as a way to pay for its regular cost.

Is Convoke an Activated Ability?

Convoke isn’t an activated ability, but a static ability. While it’s related to “paying costs” because of the effect, there is no cost associated with convoke.

When Do I Tap My Creatures for Convoke?

You declare the spell with convoke then tap your mana sources to show you pay the costs for that spell. This avoids confusion of tapping your permanents before showing what spell you're casting.

Do the Creatures I Tap for Convoke Need to Have Convoke?

They don’t. Creatures can be vanilla, and you can still tap them for convoke. The spell you cast is the only thing that needs to have the convoke ability.

Is Convoke an Additional Cost? An Alternate Cost?

Convoke is neither and additional nor alternate cost. It modifies how you're able to pay for the cost of a card, but doesn't actually change what that cost is.

If a card with convoke has an additional or alternate cost you can actually use convoke to pay for those costs.

What’s the Mana Value of a Spell Cast with Convoke?

The mana value for a convoke spell is its regular mana value. Tapping creatures to pay for a convoke spell doesn't change its mana value.

Can You Convoke with a Creature that Has Summoning Sickness?

You can use any untapped creatures that you control to convoke, even ones with summoning sickness. The creatures that you’re tapping are being tapped as an effect of the ability, not as a cost. So it’s not the creature tapping itself, but being tapped by the convoke ability.

Can I Use Tokens for Convoke?

You can use tokens for convoke as long as they’re creature tokens. You can’t tap a Food token to convoke a creature.

Can You Convoke Twice with the Same Creature?

You can’t use a single creature to convoke twice since convoke checks for untapped creatures when paying for the card's mana cost, not when generating that mana. Any untap effect you could use on a creature to make it pay for convoke can’t be activated since abilities like that need to be activated either before or after paying a spell’s mana cost.

Could I Convoke and Sacrifice a Creature?

You can. The act of convoking involves just tapping a creature to pay for part of the mana cost, and sacrificing a creature often doesn’t care if it’s untapped or tapped. You can tap and sacrifice a creature on the same turn, even if sacrificing the creature is an additional cost of casting a spell.

Does Convoke Target?

Convoke doesn’t target the creatures you're tapping to pay the cost. You tap the creatures to convoke the spell as an additional cost to cast the convoke spell.

Can Convoke Pay for Kicker?

Yes. When you cast a spell with kicker, it adds to the overall cost of the spell. If you manage to add convoke to a spell with kicker, or maybe kicker to a spell with convoke, as long as you’re casting it, you can convoke creatures to pay for the combined costs of the spell and its kicker ability. In fact, Kavu Primarch was designed with both of those mechanics on the same card.

Can Convoke Pay for Buyback?

It can. The most famous example is Sprout Swarm, a spell that has convoke and buyback. If you have enough creatures, you can use them to pay the mana cost and the buyback cost to effectively cast the spell for free, and it even comes back to your hand.

Can I Convoke a Suspended Creature? What About a Face-Down or Impending Creature?

Convoke only works if you cast a convoke spell from any zone. Impending and morph are mechanics that allow you to cast a creature for an alternate cost, so you can use convoke to pay for that cost. If you have a card that grants all your creature spells convoke, you can use the mechanic to pay for the impending cost or for the face-down cost for mechanics like morph or disguise. In morph’s case, you can’t use convoke to flip it up because that’s a special action, and you don’t “recast” the spell once it’s face-down on the battlefield.

Suspend, however, won’t work with convoke because the mechanic is worded in a different way. Let’s use Errant Ephemeron as an example. You could convoke this card to pay for its main cost, but you can’t convoke the cost. The reason is that suspend replaces the act of casting a card, and you can't convoke the alternate cost of exiling it from your hand.

What if a Spell Somehow Has Double Convoke?

Multiple instances of convoke are redundant and pointless. You only get to pay for 1 mana for each creature you tap and that’s it.

Having two or more Chief Engineers on the field won’t make convoke on your artifacts stack. The effect of the ability only applies once.

Convoke vs. Improvise

There aren’t all that many differences between convoke and improvise. Convoke lets you tap creatures while improvise lets you tap artifacts. What puts convoke in a higher position is that it allows you to pay for colored mana as well.

Improvise lets you use artifacts to pay for generic mana while convoke lets you pay for colored and generic mana. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if improvise was exclusive to artifacts or colorless cards, but it’s actually on plenty of colored cards.

I think the two abilities can coexist pretty well. They’re flavorful in the way they work and how they’re applied, and having cards with both improvise and convoke can make paying for some costs almost absurdly easy.

Convoke vs. Waterbending

Both abilities allow you to tap objects in play to reduce costs, but they work in different ways. Convoke only works when you cast convoke spells, and only to reduce the mana cost of the spell being cast.

Waterbending is a cost associated with permanents or spells, and it’s a cost that you have to pay to get a certain benefit. This cost is reduced by if you tap an artifact or creature, which includes noncreatures. You can tap creatures and Treasure tokens, for example.

Best Convoke Cards

Honorable Mention: Instants with Convoke

I’d like to call out pretty much every instant that can be paid with convoke because they make for great traps and battle tricks. I won’t deny that there are some that aren’t that great.

Meditation Puzzle wouldn’t be a very solid addition in most decks. But then there are things like Sundering Vitae, Devouring Light, and Ephemeral Shields that can all help you turn a combat around, and you can trick your opponent into lowering their guard if you don’t have any untapped lands when you play them. Then there are cards like Unexpected Assistance that turn blockers into card and mana advantage.

#10. Hour of Reckoning

Keeping in line with its original Selesnya theme, convoke is an ability that works best in a token-heavy deck. Using an absurd amount of almost useless creatures like Saprolings to cast spells without having to use lands can give you a huge advantage.

Hour of Reckoning is very clearly designed with that in mind. This card knows you’re gonna use tokens to cast it. So build a huge token army and use it to clear the board of any other creatures. Your opponents will have to rebuild their field while you still have a lot of creatures to swing with.

#9. March of the Multitudes

March of the Multitudes has a focus very much like that of Hour of Reckoning. You can play it in almost any deck that plays white and green, or you can use tokens to make it shine its brightest if you’re playing a strategy that puts a ton of them onto the battlefield.

Just tap every single creature and land you have and create a massive army of soliders with lifelink. But you better be sure you’re not gonna get board wiped right after.

#8. Knight-Errant of Eos

Knight-Errant of Eos made a mark in formats like Standard and Pioneer. It’s often a 4/4 creature for 1 mana or even less, and also grants you card advantage. Even if your board is wrathed, you get some value to keep on the offense.

#7. City on Fire + Collective Inferno

Rarely does a card allow you to ramp your damage three times permanently. City on Fire is an 8-mana Fiery Emancipation that can get a cost reduction. Decks that want to go wide and deal a lot of damage with tokens should think about adding this card. Collective Inferno costs less and does a little less multiplication, but most of the time I'll take any damage multiplication over none, then again, why not both?

#6. Obelisk of Urd

Obelisk of Urd is an amazing card for any typal deck. Most of these decks tend to play a reasonably large number of creatures and most of them have ways to create tokens, so paying for this card isn’t that hard. And giving +2/+2 to all the creatures of that type is always a massive advantage.

#5. Clever Concealment + Selfless Safewright

Clever Concealment is an interesting $5 replacement to EDH staple Teferi's Protection, and it’s not a Commander Game Changer. An ability that makes all your nonland permanents phase out is strong, and sometimes it’s even a free protection spell. Selfless Safewright could make a case for being more offensive and counting as a creature, but it also costs one more, and the reality is, you want both options in your go wide decks.

#4. Bloodline Bidding

Bloodline Bidding is easier-to-cast mass reanimation and brings a supremely powerful effects to lots of creature types.

#3. Harmonized Crescendo

Harmonized Crescendo is impressive card draw and one that scales up with your typal dedication.

#2. Winnowing

Winnowing makes for a mostly inexpensive one-sided board wipe, especially if you can choose their little mana dork or ETB creature that's now a vanilla creature without a relevant creature type.

#1. Chord of Calling

Chord of Calling is the best convoke card out there even with some great convoke cards released in recent years. Getting a bunch of creatures on the field in a green deck isn’t hard at all. And once you have them you can use this X-spell to cheat essentially anything you want onto the field. That can be absolutely devastating in a format like Commander.

Cards that Grant Convoke and Payoffs

• Chief Engineer
• Dazzling Theater // Prop Room
• Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn
• Fallaji Wayfarer
• Invasion of Segovia / Caetus, Sea Tyrant of Segovia
• Party Thrasher
• Peri Brown
• Wand of the Worldsoul
• We Ride at Dawn

On top of cards that either have or grant convoke, there's Joyful Stormsculptor and Saint Traft and Rem Karolus as cards with explicit convoke payoffs.

There are also two digital-only Alchemy creatures with convoke: Buxton, Decorated Host and Emmara, Voice of the Conclave. Emmara's spellbook consists of nine other cards with the convoke mechanic.

Wrap Up

March of the Multitudes | Illustration by Zack Stella

I personally like convoke. I think it plays right into Selesnya’s strengths by allowing you to use the myriad tokens you can create in innovative ways. I think the cards are well designed for the most part and they have a very flavorful feel to them.

I hope we get to see more of this mechanic, and that the new abilities are flavorful and consistent with what they represent and how they play.

But enough about me. What do you think? Do you think this is a fun mechanic, or is it so overdone it's one of your worst mechanics? Feel free to leave a comment, or find us on Twitter/X or the official Draftsim Discord.

That’s all from me for now. I’ll see you next time, have a good one!