May 2009 Update Bulletin
Posted on May 10, 2009
Filed Under Articles, V. Wedge | 4 Comments
Mark L. Gottlieb
Special to The Magic Lampoon
The team and I realized that last month’s Oracle update held a few key omissions. We apologize for our oversights and wish to correct them with the following additions.
Functional Changes
First up is Lightning Bolt, which will now deal two damage instead of three. It’s not that we’ve changed our policy against power-level errata. It’s just that we have an even stronger policy against cards doing what they say. We cannot allow that to happen on anything more recent than standard-legal sets.
Along those ends, we’re also changing a few more creature types. Erhnam Djinn will no longer be a Djinn but a Treefolk Shaman, and Goblin Assassin will no longer be a Goblin Assassin but a Goblin Warrior. Why? Because creature types are the puppets and we hold the strings, ha ha ha.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath will be getting a facelift. A lot of keywords have come out since its printing, and we didn’t want to leave any off. From now on, it will be getting Bushido, Exalted, Graft, Cascade, Ripple, Dredge 2, Basic landcycling, Lifelink, Poisonous 1, and Defender. And losing its current abilities to make room for the new ones.
Speaking of Akroma, you know what would be easier than printing a new version of Akroma every few sets? Just retroactively making a few old cards into Akroma. So from now on, every vanilla and french vanilla 6/6 creature will receive all of Akroma’s keywords. Come on, nobody was using Rootbreaker Wurm with its old Oracle text anyway.
Counsel of the Soratami will be changed from “Draw two cards” to “Target player draws two cards.” That way, the card can realize its full potential.
Squire’s casting cost will be changed from 1W to 2W, because, like Mark Rosewater is always saying, bad cards are good for the health of the game. And we figure, the worse the better. For that same reason, we’re actually going to change Lightning Bolt again, this time down to one damage instead of the previously mentioned two. And it can only target players.
Time Vault and Phyrexian Dreadnaught will change again, because why not.
Templating Changes
Currently, some cards say “to who” and some say “to whom.” That’s inconsistent! We’re changing all the cards that have “to who” to say “to whom,” because we want to be grammatically correct. Coversely, all cards that used to say “to whom” will now say “to who,” because we don’t want to seem uppity. We thought this solution was a nice balance between the two extremes.
All instances of the words “not” and “non” will be underlined, to make sure players don’t miss them. Magic players are stupid! Remember Book Burning?
Speaking of which, in the name of clarity, we’re changing the wording of Book Burning yet again. It will now read, “Deal two damage to target creature or player.” (That whole library stuff was confusing to begin with, and six damage by itself would have been excessive.)
Players are still reeling from the confusion caused by “bury” back in the day, so we’re going to simplify things even further. From now on, we will have cards that “destroy” creatures, cards that “super destroy” creatures, cards that “ultimate destroy times two” creatures, and cards that “destroy creatures without allowing them to regenerate.” Terror, for example, will fall into the second of those four categories.
Players are also confused by cards with no abilities, so we are going to keyword this as “Abilityless.” Unfortunately, that keyword is itself an ability, removing all functionality from Muraganda Petroglyphs, but all that card did was ruin people’s “strictly better” lists so we aren’t going to miss it. Also, look for our next banned/restricted list update, when we will announce the banning of Muraganda Petroglyphs from all DCI-sanctioned formats.
We are going to make all capital H’s lowercase. For nostalgia’s sake. Not just in the card titles this time, but in the rules texts and artists’ names too.
Another great way to invoke nostalgia is by changing all mana symbols back to capital letters, like that Alpha Force of Nature misprint. We haven’t yet decided what letters will represent snow and hybrid mana. Probably something simple like {SNOW} and {HYBRID:U-OR-G}.
Nonfunctional Changes
Kaboom! will be retitled to have a second, third, and fourth exclamation point. We have to cater to our Timmies.
Other Timmy cards will also be getting exclamation points. The rules text for Violent Ultimatum will now say, “Destroy three target permanents!!!” We’re talking to the art department about the possibility of putting exclamation points after the power and toughness of Fusion Elemental.
Form Of The Dragon will now include the reminder text “(This is one of Mark Rosewater’s favorite cards.)“, because not everyone reads his column and so hasn’t been exposed to that announcement a dozen times already. The same goes for Unstable Mutation, Lightning Helix, and Recoil.
Similarly, Remand will now have the reminder text “(This effectively Time Walks your opponent.)” So will Faith’s Fetters, Think Twice, and probably Ironclaw Orcs.
We’re changing an “it is” on some Portal card with horsemanship to “it’s.” Because if there’s one group of cards whose Oracle wordings are frequently scrutinized by tournament goers, it’s cards from Portal. With horsemanship.
Speaking of Portal, we miss how simple the term “intercept” was, so we’re going to bring that back. But only on one card, to test the waters before we change any others. We picked Fog Elemental to be the guinea pig. Good luck, Fog Elemental, we’re counting on you.
We only recently realized that, in all these years since we printed Fallen Empires, we still never got around to fixing Floral Spuzzem’s rules text! Its Oracle text is still identical to its original wording: “Floral Spuzzem may choose to destroy a target artifact.” How did we not notice that sooner? We’re finally righting this terrible wrong — from now on, the Oracle wording will be, “Floral Spuzzem is empowered to decide whether to destroy a target artifact.”
Morphling’s first and second abilities are going to switch order with each other, because we think the card will read better that way. But we will leave Torchling as is, because that sort of chaotic disregard for order really fits in with what it means to be red. No decision has yet been made on the green one, or on how we’ll handle the inevitable white and black ones. It’s not like anyone is still impressed or surprised by these anyway so there’s not a lot of pressure on us to get it right.
Comprehensive Rules Changes
We’re going to reverse the order of rules 310.2e and 310.2f. Oh man, that feels good to say. I’ve been lobbying for that change since I got this job. We’re also going to add a comma to 217.1c and remove one from 409.1d. I love. Tinkering. With the comprehensive. Rules.
Mark L. Gottlieb is the Magic: The Gathering rules manager.
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4 Responses to “May 2009 Update Bulletin”
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And you always laughed at me for never buying Bolts.
“…like Mark Rosewater is always saying, bad cards are good for the health of the game. And we figure, the worse the better.”
That and the entire Nonfunctional Changes bit just made my day. Awesome kudos to you, good sir.
I would like to publicly recognize “The Previous Poster” as having given me a few ideas for topics to include this article.
Thanks, The Previous Poster :D
ahahahahahahahahaha