Skill Borrower
Current paper retail
Card Kingdom$0.49
Cardmarket€0.33
ManaPool$0.15
TCGplayer$0.34
Buylist (dealers pay)
Card Kingdom$0.05
MTGO (Cardhoarder)
retail$0.02 tix
90-day paper retail (USD)
3 providers
This printing
SetALA
Collector #56
Released2008-10-03
Rarityrare
ArtistShelly Wan
LanguageEN
Layoutnormal
ScryfallOpen ↗

Skill Borrower

RareColour IDMV 3
Artifact Creature — Human Wizard
Play with the top card of your library revealed.
As long as the top card of your library is an artifact or creature card, this creature has all activated abilities of that card. (If any of the abilities use that card's name, use this creature's name instead.)
1 / 3
Card capabilities
ArtifactCreature
Derived deterministically from card types, Oracle text and keywords. Not a strategic evaluation.
Format legality
Other printings
This is the only English printing.
Rulings (5)
wotc1 Oct 2008
If an effect tells you to draw several cards, reveal each one before you draw it. Skill Borrower will momentarily gain the activated abilities of artifact and creature cards revealed this way, but you won’t be able to activate those abilities while the effect is still happening.
wotc1 Oct 2008
Activated abilities contain a colon. They’re generally written “[Cost]: [Effect].” Some keywords are activated abilities; they have colons in their reminder text.
wotc1 Oct 2008
The only difference between a colored artifact and a colorless artifact is, obviously, its color. Unlike most artifacts, a colored artifact requires colored mana to cast. Also unlike most artifacts, a colored artifact has a color in all zones. It will interact with cards that care about color. Other than that, a colored artifact behaves just like any other artifact. It will interact as normal with any card that cares about artifacts, such as Shatter or Arcbound Ravager.
wotc1 Oct 2008
If the top card of your library changes while you’re activating one of Skill Borrower’s activated abilities gained from that card, the ability will still be activated and will resolve normally even though Skill Borrower has lost that ability.
wotc1 Oct 2008
Skill Borrower may gain activated abilities that it can’t use. For example, if the top card of your library is an artifact or creature card with cycling, Skill Borrower will have cycling. However, since cycling can’t be activated from the battlefield, this won’t have any significant benefit. The same is true for unearth.