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A relevant part of the oracle text for Transmute Artifact does not match its original text.

Original text actions:

1) (simultaneously) Sacrifice an artifact and search your library for an artifact and put it onto the battlefield
2) Check the converted mana cost of the new artifact; if it is greater, pay the difference or sacrifice it.
3) Shuffle your library.

Oracle text actions:

1) Sacrifice an artifact.
2) If you do, search your library for an artifact.
3) If the new artifact's converted mana cost is less than or equal to the original's, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise you may pay X, where X is the difference, and put it onto the battlefield. If you don't pay X, put it into its owner's graveyard.
4) Shuffle your library.

The issue isn't with the templating "If you do" or "X" (which are nice reforms), but rather with the functional change to the action of putting the card onto the battlefield first, before checking its cost. If you are transmuting for a Wurmcoil Engine , under the original text, you will come out with 2 tokens even if the transmute fails, and under the new text, you will not - it's an example of power-level errata. (To use an Antiquities example, transmuting for a Su-Chi via Ornithopter would have added 4 to your mana pool - it does not do so today)

This would affect eternal formats, but in my opinion, not by a lot - just look at the case of Phyrexian Dreadnought .

Proposed wording:

Sacrifice an artifact. If you do, search your library for an artifact card and put it onto the battlefield. If that card's converted mana cost is greater than the sacrificed artifact's converted mana cost, you may pay {X}, where X is the difference. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard. Then shuffle your library.

Well, a few cards that interact in slightly scary ways with the proposed wording:
- Sharuum the Hegemon (essentially makes Transmute into a 5/5 for two mana that you can't cast without an artifact in play)
- Sundering Titan (the next best thing to Armageddon )
- Summoner's Egg (no more broken than Show and Tell , at least)

None of these are necessarily broken, but you never know what an artifact equivalent to Protean Hulk might  come out. Not that that should be an argument against changing it, really. Still, the effects might be stronger than you think.

Anyway, it's in ME4 so the change likely won't happen.

This feels like it should be "as an additional cost to cast CARDNAME, sacrifice an artifact," like goblin grenade .

In a card's text, you never "put" a permanent into its owner's graveyard. It's always "destroy" or "sacrifice".

I support restoring the printed functionality.

Feb 1, 2013 -- 1:02PM, EyeHunter wrote:

This feels like it should be "as an additional cost to cast CARDNAME, sacrifice an artifact," like goblin grenade .

It was, for a while, but that's much further away from the printed wording than what we have now.

Transmute Artifact 's current text is explained in the September 2010 Update Bulletin. Its appearance in ME4 greatly reduces the chances we'll be touching this card again.

I suppose it's a done deal then, but I really do feel like the fact that the card instructs you to "immediately place it in play" long before it talks about failing means it should always enter the battlefield.