#fatblunt69

I don't know about water bug life cycles, but do they not pupate like caterpie, weedle, etc.?

They do not! I looked into this when working on Scarridae, and learned a bit about water striders and their life cycle: upon hatching they undergo "incomplete metamorphosis" where the nymph stage pretty much resembles adults, only smaller. They go through five instar stages by molting, and the final molt produces an adult that is sexually mature.

When you cast a spell with hybrid or Phyrexian mana in its mana cost, you choose what you’ll be paying for each of those mana symbols if you’re not paying an alternate cost. This happens before any cost increase or cost reduction effects are applied, so if you choose to pay generic mana for a “twobrid” mana symbol, that cost can be reduced.

For example, if you cast Beseech the Queen while Arcane Melee is on the battlefield, Arcane Melee will reduce the total cost of Beseech the Queen by 2 as long as you choose generic mana for at least one of the three twobrid symbols. This means that you can pay a total cost of 4, 2B, BB, or BBB depending on the choices you make.

Conspire is an additional cost you pay when you cast the spell. You can only conspire a given spell once by tapping two creatures that share a color with it. The copy of the spell created by the conspire ability isn’t cast and thus it can’t itself be conspired. This combo doesn’t work.

When Reverse the Sands resolves, you’ll basically take the life totals of any number of players and then assign one of those life totals to each of those players.

For example, you cast Reverse the Sands in a duel. You have 5 life and your opponent has 20 life. As the spell resolves, you can choose to switch your life total with your opponent so that you’ll have 20 life and your opponent will have 5 life.

What’s happening on a technical level is that any player who goes to a higher life total gains the appropriate amount of life to reach that life total and anyone going to a lower life total loses enough life to reach that life total. In the example above, you’ll gain 15 life to go to 20 and your opponent will lose 15 life to go to 5.

It gets more complicated in multiplayer, but just remember that for each of the individual life totals of players you choose to switch around has to end up on a player. For example, you have 20 life, A has 5 life, and B has 30 life. You can choose to not affect yourself and put A to 30 life and B to 5 life, or you could put yourself to 30 life, A to 20 life, and B to 5 life, or any of the other possible permutations.

I hope that makes more sense now?