Flow Costs and Destinations

Use the printed Flow cost instead of the ordinary base cost when playing it from Trash with that permission. Flow does not turn the spell into a Reaction: its usual play windows, valid choices and permission to be played still apply.

Dredge Up provides a simple anchor: its Flow cost is 2 Energy and its effect draws one card. If you play it from Trash using Flow, start the total-cost calculation with 2 Energy. You have not also paid its ordinary printed cost. Later stages of the cost calculation still apply, so 2 Energy is the starting cost, not a guarantee of the final amount.

Add mandatory additional costs, such as Deflect for each applicable target choice, and any optional additional costs you choose to pay. Apply the appropriate increases and reductions in the normal cost procedure. If you cannot pay the required total, Flow does not let you ignore the missing portion.

Illustrative calculation - A Flow spell starts at 2 Energy. You choose its separate optional Repeat cost of 1 Energy and it chooses an enemy unit with Deflect 2 once. Before other cost changes, the total is 3 Energy plus 2 Power of any Domain. You pay that total once to play the spell; Repeat then adds an execution rather than a second Flow play.

If a spell has multiple Flow instances with different costs, choose which one to use for the play. Do not add them together just because both appear on the spell. A Flow cost may require actions other than spending Energy or Power, such as discarding a card; you must be able to perform those required actions too.

Example - A spell has one Flow cost of 3 Energy and another of 1 Energy plus a specified discard. Choose one alternate base cost. If you choose the discard route, perform its required discard in addition to paying the Energy and any other applicable costs. Having enough Energy for that route does not compensate for being unable to perform the required discard.

Once a spell played for Flow is finalized, Flow supplies a replacement effect that waits for the spell to leave the Chain, then changes where it goes. Normal resolution followed by leaving the Chain sends it to Banishment. Countering sends it there too. An outside effect attempting to return it to hand does not bypass that replacement.

Worked sequence - Play the Flow spell from Trash → pay its costs and finalize it → Abandon resolves, countering it and attempting to return it to hand → Flow replaces that departure with banishment. The Flow spell never reaches hand. Its effect did not execute and its paid costs stay paid. Abandon continues its own remaining instructions normally.

If leaving the Chain is instructed by the Flow spell’s own execution, follow that instruction instead. This exception is about who instructed the departure, not simply whether departure happened during resolution.

Compare - A hypothetical Flow spell executes an instruction to return itself to its owner’s hand: its own execution directs that movement, so follow it. Abandon directing another Flow spell back to hand is an outside instruction, so that spell is banished. Without an explicit self-moving instruction, merely finishing resolution is the usual departure and is still replaced by Flow.