How to search for activated abilities?

[shawnvalsean]

So, I just cannot seem to narrow it down, and I've tried searching vigorously through the forums and online but can't find anything.

All I need to do is search for activated abilities. Anything with a ":" or likewise. You might assume its as simple as searching for the character but when I do that, I'm not real[ly sure what exactly the results are. It brings up cards, but none of them even contain a colon character in their text.

Long story short, I need to search for cards that I can take advantage of with cards like Zirda the Dawnwaker, Training Grounds, or Rings of Brighthearth, but searching for mana costs individually is just not realistic.

Is there a resource somewhere that I missed that fully explains how the deckbuilder search function works? Or for this specific issue?

[boring39]

I'm not sure about the deckstats search, but scryfall's page for Zirda has two related searches which can help isolate on activated abilities. Training Grounds also has some filters linked on it's page.

https://scryfall.com/card/iko/233/zirda-the-dawnwaker
https://scryfall.com/card/mat/9/training-grounds

You should be able to tailor those with the format and other restrictions you're looking for and get what you need.

Due to how keywords and reminder text work in oracle, it's unfortunately not enough to just search for [fo:":"]. But the list provided looked comprehensive at first glance.

[shawnvalsean]

Is there a way to search only for creatures with power 2 or less, as many effects consider? Search every combination of P/T seems to be the only way to do it from my experimenting

Your suggestion of zirda's related search just or-ing every ability keyword also sort of worked but I'm not sure it accounts everything

[boring39]

You can add power<=2 to your query. If you have a card in mind that you think should be in your results that isn't showing up then you can post your query and expected result to try and get some help.

However, since we've moved past providing feedback to deckstats, I would suggest moving to Magic General if you need more help refining a Scryfall query.

[shawnvalsean]

well I meant search on deckstats this way (power<=2 doesnt work here) but either way, oh well. guess itll never get better