What happens when you counter an activated ability?

701.5a To counter a spell or ability means to cancel it, removing it from the stack. It doesn’t resolve and none of its effects occur. A countered spell is put into its owner’s graveyard. 701.5b The player who cast a countered spell or activated a countered ability doesn’t get a “refund” of any costs that were paid.

Is extort an activated ability?

702.101a Extort is a triggered ability. “Extort” means “Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay {W/B}. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain life equal to the total life lost this way.” 702.101b If a permanent has multiple instances of extort, each triggers separately.

Can you use a creature’s ability when it has summoning sickness?

Can I still use their abilities despite having summoning sickness? Yes, summoning sickness only applies to attacking, tap abilities and untap abilities. any other activated abilities are fine. Yes.

How many times can you extort a spell?

No, because it’s a triggered ability that only triggers once when you cast a spell. If you control multiple permanents with extort though, each one triggers separately and you can use it that many times.

Is extort damaged?

As mentioned, extort causes loss of life, it doesn’t deal damage.

Can you tap a creature for mana if it has summoning sickness?

Yeah, you can do that even if the creature has summoning sickness. Attacking and the actual tap symbol are what you can’t do with summoning sickness.

How does cipher work magic?

“Cipher” means “If this spell is represented by a card, you may exile this card encoded on a creature you control” and “As long as this card is encoded on that creature, that creature has ‘Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may copy this card and you may cast the copy without paying its mana …