With the large number of white cards in M13 and Avacyn Restored, I thought I’d briefly talk about Vigilance; it is a virtue, after all.

Vigilance is one of the older mechanics in Magic, originally introduced in the first set ever, Alpha. However, its ruling was simply written out prior to Champions of Kamigawa, where it was introduced as an actual keyword.

Vigilance was originally written (and the ruling is still written) as: Attacking doesn’t cause this creature to tap.

As seen here, this is a Serra Angel from Unlimited right next to a newer Serra Angel from M12, the last core set. These are the same card, but the original does not have the Vigilance keyword.

Vigilance is a very basic ability, but still very important. It’s present on many cards in our current format, such as Sun Titan.