Changes For:Scars of Mirrodin Previous Set:Magic 2011
New Keywords Scars of Mirrodin introduced one new keyword ability (infect) and a new keyword action (proliferate). For more information on these keywords, see their entries in the Keyword FAQ.
Infect is an ability that is an ability that changes what damage does, both to creatures and to players. If a source that has infect deals damage to a creature, that damage is dealt in the form of -1/-1 counters. If it deals damage to a player, that damage is dealt in the form of poison counters. (A player with ten or more poison counters loses the game.) So not only does infect turn combat between creatures into a war of attrition, but it can potentially kill off your opponent much faster than normal damage.
Proliferating allows you to manipulate the board by give your permanents more beneficial counters, like charge counters, while adding negative -1/-1 counters to your opponent's permanents or even poison counters to your opponent himself! To proliferate, choose any number of permanents or players that already have at least one counter on them. Then, give each of those permanents or players an additional counter of the same kind. (If something has multiple different kinds of counters on it, choose one.)
Subtypes The list of legal creature and planeswalker types have been changed. For a full list of currently existing types, see this post.
Controlling Turns / Players The existing cards that said that you gained control of a player's turn have been reworded--you now instead control the player during their turn, not the turn itself. This doesn't change anything about how the existing such cards worked, but does allow things like controlling other players for periods of time less than a full turn.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know these. But in case you want to read about them, here they are.
An ability that restricts where the card it's on can be cast from works everywhere, even outside the game.
Rules have been added to handle a player whose life total can't change.
Loyalty abilities can't be mana abilities.
Abilities that trigger on something becoming attached to or unattached from something don't trigger if it phases in or out.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
Changes For:Mirrodin Besieged Previous Set:Scars of Mirrodin
New Keywords Mirrodin Besieged introduced two new keyword abilities, Battle cry and Living weapon. For more information on these keywords, see their entries in the Keyword FAQ.
Battle cry is a triggered ability that provides strength in numbers; it allows your attacking creatures to boost their fellow attackers. Whenever a creature with battle cry attacks, every other attacking creature gets +1/+0 until the end of the turn. These benefits are cumulative, so if you attack with three creatures with battle cry and a normal creature, the battle criers will get a total of +2/+0 each, and the regular creature will get a total of +3/+0.
Living weapon is a triggered ability that brings your Equipment cards to life. No creatures? No problem! When an Equipment with living weapon enters the battlefield, you create a 0/0 Germ token creature and attach that Equipment to it automatically, so you won't have to worry about having a creature before your Equipment becomes useful. And if the Germ dies later on? The Equipment stays behind, ready to boost whatever else you might want to attach it to.
"Poisoned" A new bit of Magic vocabulary for you: a player is "poisoned" if he or she has any poison counters. Pretty easy to understand, yes?
EDH --> Commander* The name of the Magic variant previously known as EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander) has been changed to Commander; a deck's 'general' is now known as its commander.
Color Identity A new concept has been introduced to make Commander (née EDH--see above)'s deckbuilding rules work a little more intuitively. Previously a quirk of the rules caused certain legendary creatures to forbid themselves from being in a deck they were the commander of...which was just plain weird. Now, a card's 'color identity' is the colors of all of the mana symbols in its rules text or mana cost (reminder text doesn't count), plus any colors defined by its abilities. The colors of a deck are defined by the color identity of the commander, and a card can only be included if its color identity doesn't include colors not in the deck.
Attacking / Blocking Costs - Reversal! Previously, if a creature was tapped or had unpaid costs to attack or block, it was completely exempt from things that would require it to attack or block. This made sense in theory, but led to a few weird corner cases, (especially with Masako the Humorless ) so it's been changed. Now, the creatures are not completely exempt, but you're never forced to pay costs to allow it to attack or block if you don't want to.
Partial copying - Reversal! If an effect copies something else except for certain characteristics that it either retains or defines for itself, it doesn't copy any characteristic-defining abilities of the thing being copied that would define that characteristic. So Quicksilver Gargantuan copying Maro will always be a 7/7.
Subtypes The list of legal creature types have been changed. For a full list of currently existing types, see this post.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know these. But in case you want to read about them, here they are.
The rules for ending the turn accidentally weren't compatible with emblems. Now they are.
The rules for the Equip ability were reworded to make clear that it can be used even if the thing it's on isn't an Equipment.
If a specific object would be shuffled into a library, but is instead moved to some other zone, the library isn't shuffled.
The rule that stops replacement effects from applying multiple times to the same event was strengthened to clarify that it still doesn't get another chance if the event is modified again somehow.
A clarification to the layering rules was made to clarify what happens if dependencies change during the process of applying effects. (Reevaluate dependencies after applying each effect.)
The rule that makes cards like Spreading Seas and Blood Moon work has been altered to say it applies to effects that "set" land types, not ones that "change" them, in order to clarify how they worked if those lands already had those types.
A rule about replacement effects that replace things with drawing multiple cards has been expanded to cover prevention effects as well, to cover an unintended oversight from an earlier change.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
Phyrexian Mana The New Phyrexia set introduced the concept of phyrexian mana, which is a mana cost you don't necessarily have to pay with actual mana. A cost represented by a phyrexian mana symbol () can be paid either with one mana of the appropriate color or with 2 life. So a player who wanted to cast Gitaxian Probe , for example, could do so either by paying or by paying 2 life. A player who wanted to cast Thundering Tanadon could do so by paying 4 mana of any type, plus either and no life, or and 2 life, or no mana at all and 4 life.
Restarting the Game The planeswalker Karn Liberated allows its controller to restart the game. In order to do so, all players currently in the game shuffle all cards they own into their libraries and start fresh. This is effectively an entirely new game; players' life totals are reset, their poison counters are removed, and any lingering continuous effects end. Players draw a new opening hand and may mulligan as normal before proceeding to the first turn. The player whose effect restarted the game goes first. (In a tournament setting, a restarted game is still the same game for purposes of match results.)
Subtypes The lists of legal creature and planeswalker types have been changed. For a full list of currently existing types, see this post.
Entering Public Zones If something is entering a public zone face-up, all players get to look at what it is to determine whether any replacement effects modify how it does so.
'Enchanted'/'Equipped'/'Fortified' If something that's not an Aura has an ability that tries to affect an "Enchanted {something}", that ability has no affect, because something that's not an Aura isn't 'enchanting' anything. The same goes for Equipment and Fortifications--something that's not an Equipment isn't 'equipping' anything, and something that's not a Fortification isn't 'fortifying' anything.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know these--most of them are just clarifications. But in case you want to read about them, here they are.
Abilities that say that permanents can't have counters placed on them apply both on the battlefield and while entering the battlefield.
A bunch of rules were added to clarify various issues centered around changing targets.
Drawing cards from a library with no cards in it causes you to lose the game even if there are things other than cards in the library.
Counters on something cease to exist when that something changes zones.
If a creature is put onto the battlefield attacking something that isn't there, the creature is put onto the battlefield but is never attacking.
If a restriction on casting a spell or using an ability states that you need to cast it before a certain step in combat, if combat is skipped you need to do it before the end of the first main phase.
Something that's entering the battlefield and has some replacement effect that moves cards out of the zone it's coming from can't move itself. (A Sutured Ghoul entering the battlefield from the graveyard can't exile itself.)
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
Changes For:Commander / Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 Previous Set:New Phyrexia
New Keyword This update introduced a new keyword for an old ability: Hexproof. Something you control that has hexproof cannot be the target of spells or abilities controlled by your opponents. For more information on Hexproof, see the Hexproof entry of the Keyword FAQ.
Old cards that had or used an unkeyworded version of this effect were given errata to have or grant hexproof where appropriate. Note, however, that in some cases the change to hexproof would have changed how a card worked if you used it on an opponent's creature (such as Vines of Vastwood ); in such cases the card was left as-is to avoid changing functionality.
"Dies" Also added to the rules was the fairly straightforward new vocabulary term "dies"; a creature "dies" when it's put into a graveyard from the battlefield. This is a cosmetic change that allows them to shorten the text of a lot of abilities that trigger when creatures, well, die; it introduces no functional changes, and won't be used when the thing going to the graveyard isn't a creature. Old cards have received errata to use this terminology where appropriate.
Poison in 2HG If either player on a Two-Headed Giant game cannot get poison counters, neither player can get them. This fixes a small oversight regarding the card Melira, Sylvok Outcast .
Commander If a card is exiled face-down from anywhere and someone can look at it, they must do so immediately; if it's a commander, it's turned face-up and put into the command zone.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know these--most of them are just clarifications. But in case you want to read about them, here they are.
P/T-modifying counters on a creature card that's not on the battlefield affect that card's P/T as normal. (This is an addition to allow a card exclusive to the Commander decks to work.)
When casting a spell or activating an ability with phyrexian mana symbols in its cost, you must specify whether you are going to pay the required cost in mana or in life at the same time you choose whether or not to pay optional costs.
The rules for Commander have been modified slightly to correct an error that, taken literally, would bar any card with a generic mana symbol from appearing in a colored commander deck.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
Changes For:Magic 2012 Previous Set:Commander / Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
Assigning Combat Damage The rules for how to assign combat damage have been modified, as previously they were slightly contradictory and unclear in cases where multiple creatures were each blocking overlapping sets of multiple attacking creatures. Admittedly that didn't happen often, but the problem's been resolved now anyway.
To summarize how things work now that it's all been straightened out, when assigning damage from attacking or blocking creatures in combat, figure out how you want all your creatures to assign combat damage, and don't worry about checking the legality of it until you're all done. Only then will you check to make sure the assignment as a whole is all nice and legal.
Planar Magic --> Planechase* The official name of the Planar Magic variant has been changed to Planechase, since that's what everyone kept calling it anyway.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know these--most of them are just clarifications. But in case you want to read about them, here they are.
The rule for players leaving in a multiplayer game could have technically resulted in the rules trying to make a card cease to exist, which wasn't supposed to happen. The exact wording of that particular rule was changed to eliminate the loophole that caused that.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
Double-Faced Cards Innistrad introduces a new kind of card: double-faced cards! These cards have a normal card face, but turn them over and you'll see that instead of having a normal card back, they have a second face. One face will have a sun symbol in the top left corner (the "day" side, or "front face"), and the other will have a moon symbol (the "night" side, or "back face"). A double-faced card is treated as though only the day side exists until it gets onto the battlefield--once on the battlefield, under certain conditions it will "transform", and the other side comes out to play.
There's a double-faced card in every pack of Innistrad, and most Innistrad packs also contain a special "checklist card" that's meant to be used with the double-faced cards; a checklist card has a normal card back, but not a normal face--instead it has a list of all the double-faced cards in the set.
If you want to use a double-faced card in your deck, you have two options. The first is to use the actual double-faced card itself, in which case you must also use opaque sleeves so it's impossible to tell the double-faced cards from the normal cards--when the card transforms on the battlefield, take it out of the sleeve and turn the other face up. The second option is to use the checklist cards. For each double-faced card you want to have in your deck, mark a checklist card to indicate it represents that specific card, and play with the checklist card in your deck as though it was the double-faced card. When the checklist card enters the battlefield, switch it out for the double-faced card it represents. (And when it leaves the battlefield, switch it back.)
New Keyword Innistrad introduces two new keyword actions.
The first is the new evergreen keyword action "fight", which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. When two creatures fight, each deals damage equal to its power to the other at the same time. (This isn't combat damage.)
A bunch of old cards that did exactly this were reworded to use the keyword, but a number of similar cards that did almost, but not quite the same thing weren't.
The second new keyword action is "transform", which is used on double-faced cards. When a double-faced card transforms, it changes to use its other face. Cards that aren't double-faced can't transform, so if something tries to transform them, nothing happens.
Color Indicator Introduced to make double-faced cards work correctly, color indicators are a way of defining a card to have one or more colors even when it doesn't have a mana cost--they appear as a colored circle just to the left of the card's type on the type line. Old cards that didn't have colored mana in their costs but previously used a characteristic-defining ability to give them a color have been given errata to use color indicators for the job instead. This changes a couple minor corner case interactions, but nothing of real significance.
Subtypes The lists of legal creature and enchantment types have been changed. For a full list of currently existing types, see this post.
Enters-the-Battlefield Replacements If two or more effects are trying to affect the way something enters the battlefield, apply ones that alter whose control it enters under first, then ones that make it a copy of something, and then any other applicable effects. This is a slight change to make Essence of the Wild work properly.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know these--most of them are just clarifications. But in case you want to read about them, here they are.
A token that has left play not only can't re-enter the battlefield, but it can't change zones at all. Previous rules didn't make this clear, mostly because it was thought to be impossible anyway. It's now been made explicit.
A rule was clarified to distinguish between a card referring to itself by name and referring to "a card named {this card's name}".
The rules for copy effects weren't clear about what happened when the copy effect tried to grant a subtype to the copy that it couldn't have. It's now been clarified--it doesn't get that subtype.
A small oversight that meant Jhoira of the Ghitu didn't technically work has been fixed.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
New Keyword Dark Ascension introduced the new keyword Undying, which makes your creatures into horror-movie villains--just when your opponent thinks he's killed them off, they come back even stronger. When a creature with undying dies, if it didn't have a +1/+1 counter on it already, it returns to the battlefield under its owner's control with a +1/+1 counter on it.
Control-changing In multiplayer, it's sometimes possible for things to attempt to revert to the control of a player who's no longer in the game. For example, Adam uses Rise from the Grave on a creature from Beth's graveyard. Carter then uses Act of Treason to take the creature and kills Adam with it. When the turn ends and Act of Treason 's effect wears off, what happens to the creature?
Previously, the creature would have stayed with Carter, but that was all sorts of weird and not really what was supposed to happen. Now, the creature will get exiled as soon as the Act of Treason's effect wears off, which should work better.
Entering the battlefield transformed Small addition here to the rules for double-faced cards: if something says to put the card onto the battlefield 'transformed', that means to put it onto the battlefield with the back face up.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know these--most of them are just clarifications. But in case you want to read about them, here they are.
An oversight that left the controller of an emblem undefined has been fixed.
Clarification: If something is making you 'gain 0 life', you're not actually gaining life, so things that trigger from you gaining life won't trigger.
If something copies something that has an ability that refers to a specific permanent, the ability of the copy refers to the same permanent. (So if you copy a Gutter Grime token, the copy references the same Gutter Grime.)
An Equipment or Aura can't be attached to more than one thing. If something tries to attach one to multiple objects at once, its controller picks one for it to be attached to.
Cards exiled face-down don't have any characteristics.
Something that exchanges a creature's power or toughness with some other value works by creating a continuous effect that sets the P/T to that value.
There was an oversight in the mulligan rules for Commander that made it seem as if the cards you exiled were face-up. They're not--they're face-down.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
New Keyword Avacyn Restored introduced the new keywords Miracle and Soulbond. Miracle allows you to cast the card it's on for a special reduced price as soon as you draw it, provided it was the first card you drew this turn, and soulbond allows your creatures to pair up with each other to get a power boost.
Subtypes The lists of legal planeswalker types has been changed. For a full list of currently existing types, see this post.
Ending Durations If an effect like Conjurer's Ban 's has a duration lasting until a player's next turn or some point in that turn, and that player leaves the game, the effect lasts until that player's turn would have begun if they were still in the game. It doesn't expire immediately, nor does it last indefinitely.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know these--most of them are just clarifications. But in case you want to read about them, here they are.
The rules defining the controller of a spell were a bit tautological; they've been reworded for clarity.
The effects for exchanging life totals didn't take into account that players could exchange their life totals with other things than another player--this has been corrected.
The rules for Auras have been altered slightly to make clear that the Enchant ability defines what an aura can be attached to--it doesn't restrict it. In other words, the default is that it can't be attached to anything, (and the enchant ability allows it to be attached to something), not that it can be attached to anything (and the enchant ability restricts what it can be attached to).
Characteristic-defining abilities can be dependent on other characteristic-defining abilities.
Something that attempts to attach something that isn't an Aura, Equipment, or Fortification to something fails and does nothing.
The game now properly defines what happens when a subgame of an Archenemy game ends.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
Phenomena* There's now a new type of card you can put into your planar decks for Planechase games: Phenomena. Phenomena represent the myriad hazards and anomalies one might encounter in the Blind Eternities while traveling in between planes. When you planeswalk to ('encounter') a phenomenon, it will trigger and cause something strange to happen to the game; once you've finished following the trigger's instructions, you'll move on and planeswalk again.
If at the start of the game you reveal a phenomenon card rather than a plane for the initial location, just keep going through the planar deck until you hit a plane--the game can't start on a phenomenon, only a plane. This doesn't trigger any abilities.
The total number of phenomena you can have in your planar deck is limited to two if each player has their own planar deck, or twice the number of players in the game if you're using a shared planar deck. You can still have only one card with any given name in your planar deck.
Turn Order By default, in a multiplayer game the turn order proceeds clockwise from the starting player. Oddly, this wasn't technically defined before, though most players did it this way anyway.
Rolling the Planar Die The special action of rolling the planar die costs more each time you do it on your turn. But there are now also cards that allow you to roll the planar die as part of their effect . Using these cards won't increase the cost of taking that special action, since they bypass the normal method entirely.
Subtypes The lists of legal plane types has been changed. For a full list of currently existing types, see this post.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know this. But in case you want to know:
Previously, the planeswalking ability was an inherent ability of every plane card; now it's an ability naturally inherent to planechase games--it doesn't have a source, it just exists.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
Devouring twice The rules have been tweaked to close a loophole that could allow you to devour the same creature with multiple different devour abilities at once in certain circumstances.
Really, really small things You will likely never need to know this. But in case you want to know:
If something replaces part of an event with one or more card draws, the unreplaced stuff happens first, then the draw; this rule already existed, but it was clarified to apply to just one card draw too, not just multiple card draws.
Damage prevention shields are not reduced if they can't prevent the damage.
When trying to cast a split card, you only check the side you're casting to see if the casting is legal.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
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