Published on 10/21/2024
This is a (Play)test
By Carsten Haese, Nathan Long, and Justin Hovdenes
This Article from: Nathan Long
Cranial Translation
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I know some people who are very
excited about this card.
excited about this card.
One important thing to note with Playtest cards is that, similar to silver border or Acorn cards, we have to do a little handwaving and assume that they work as intended. They haven't undergone the rules scrutiny that most Magic cards have gone through, so if you have further questions, Wizards has also put out Release Notes to cover some of the situations you could encounter.
And if you have questions about anything in Mystery Booster 2 or any other set, feel free to reach out to us. We'll send an answer back, and we may use your question in a future article. If you have a short question, you can find us at @CranialTweet, but if you have a longer question, you can send us an e-mail at moko@cranialinsertion.com .
Q: So what exactly does Abbot of the Sacred Meeple's ability do?
A: Effectively, nothing. This is a reference to various board games, but nothing in the text box is anything that happens in Magic (as of right now, of course). You can effectively treat this as a 2/2 with no other relevant abilities.
Q: Do I have to choose unique names for each of the Dog tokens created by A Girl and Her Dogs?
A: Well, you don't have to - but you probably should. Her triggered ability makes a legendary Dog token, but luckily, you get to choose a name for each token - that way, you get to control multiple legendary Dog tokens since they'll all have different names (and will let her attack trigger work better).
Q: How does the rebound ability on Jeskai Baller work?
A: When the Baller resolves after being cast from your hand, it would normally enter the battlefield. But because it has rebound, instead of entering the battlefield, it exiles itself and during your next upkeep, you can cast the Baller from exile without paying its mana cost. This time, when it resolves, since it wasn't cast from your hand, it will enter the battlefield (and you'll have those two Athlete tokens from casting the Baller twice).
Q: If I can't have Can't Quite Recall in my starting deck, how am I supposed to cast it?
A: That's the trick, right? How do you cast something that can't start in your starting deck? Well, the most common way is probably going to be to use an effect like Wish (which is also in Mystery Booster 2) or Cunning Wish to either bring Can't Quite Recall into the game or let you cast it from outside the game. That gets around the Forbidden restriction by giving you access to the card since it didn't start in your starting deck.
Q: What exactly does Heart of a Duelist do? Do I just get to look through my deck and choose what I want to draw each time?
A: No, it doesn't work like that. Normally, when we draw cards, we're drawing off of the top of the library. But with Heart of a Duelist in play, if you believe that the card you need to draw is the ninth card from the top, you can draw that card instead of the one that's on top of your library. You don't get to look at the cards in your library, but if you happen to know the position of a card in your library — for example, you know what you scried to the bottom of your library with Opt, or you cast Approach of the Second Sun last turn — you can use that to your advantage and make sure you draw it when you need to.
Or, you can channel your inner Yugi, believe in the Heart of the Cards, and draw the perfect card from your deck to finish your opponent.
Q: What's the benefit of No-Regrets Egret? If I can't change the order of the cards, why would I want to do that?
A: Have you ever kept a sketchy hand, with two lands and a bunch of three drops, and just hoping you can hit that third land in time? No-Regrets Egret will help you out. While you're resolving mulligans, if No-Regrets Egret is in your hand, you'll able to look at the top two cards of your library while deciding if you want to keep your hand. In the above example, if you see that there's not two lands on top of your library, that might convince you that you should probably mulligan that hand. But if you see two lands on top, you'll know that you should keep it since you'll be hitting your land drops on curve. No-Regrets Egret just gives you a little bit more information when you're resolving mulligans.
Q: If there are two Magus of the Chains in play, what happens if I cast an Obsessive Search?
A: Oh hey, it's everyone's favorite Chains of Mephistopheles in creature form! Perfect for copying.
As for the question, if you have two in play, each one applies to any draw you would make (besides your normal draw for the turn). In this case, in order to draw one card from the Search, you need to discard a total of two cards because of the two Maguses. If you only have one card in hand, you will instead discard that card and mill a card and you won't draw at all. If you have zero cards in hand, you will just mill a single card and you don't draw.
See, not that hard, right?
Live picture of me, after seeing
some of the playtest cards.
some of the playtest cards.
Q: How does multicleave work?
A: It's a combination of mutltikicker and cleave. Normally, cleave lets you pay a different cost to remove the bracketed text from a card. But multicleave is an additional cost to casting your spell. You can pay the multicleave cost multiple times, and each time you do, you remove one instance of bracketed text from the card. There's six sets of bracketed text in the rules text of Cleaver Blow, so to reduce it to the fewest words, you'll want to multicleave it six times. And that means that there's 64 different ways in which you can cast Cleave Blow, depending on how many times it's multicleaved and which bits of text you choose to ignore.
Q: How exactly do I pay the D cost when playing with Boulder Jockey?
A: It's kind of a weird thing to give up, to be honest, but if you're familiar with the old card Rock Jockey, it'll help.
Normally, you can only play one land each turn. If you want to cast Boulder Jockey, you'll have to pay three mana plus give up one of your land drops for the turn. That means you'll be able to play one less land that turn, and you can't play it if you've already used up all of your land drops for the turn.
Q: I've taught one of my creatures to cast Pyromancy 101. When I cast and copy Pyromancy 101, can I teach it to another one of my creatures?
A: No, that doesn't work, even in Mystery Booster. The copy of Pyromancy 101 will cease to exist once it leaves the stack. So while you could teach it to a creature when the copy resolves, the copy will cease to exist and won't be in exile anymore. And since the copy doesn't exist anymore, it's not in exile, and the new creature won't have the ability to copy Pyromancy 101.
Q: Can you go over how tantrum works on Toddler's Rage?
A: Sure. You know how if you attack with a creature with trample and it's blocked by a smaller creature, you can assign the extra damage to the opponent? This is the same thing, except it works while your creature is blocking instead.
So let's say I have a 5/5 with tantrum. You attack me with a 3/3 and I block with my 5/5. Normally, my 5/5 deals 5 damage to your 3/3. But since my creature has tantrum, I can assign 3 damage to your 3/3 and the remaining 2 damage to you (the attacking player), and I get to punish you for attacking with your tiny creature into my tantrum creature.
Q: My opponent has a Built Bear in play, and they've chosen for it to have deathtouch, reach, ward 2, and +1/+1. If I copy their Built Bear with Clone, what does my copy look like?
A: It looks just like their Built Bear, with all of the choices they made and the +1/+1 bonus. The circled abilities on the card are part of the Bear's copiable characteristics, so your Clone copy of their Built Bear has all of the same abilities and choices your opponent made for their Built Bear before the game began.
Q: What does a Questing Role token do?
A: Years ago, we used to play the Cryptic Command game, where you challenged someone to remember all of the modes of Cryptic Command. Recently, that game has been replaced with trying to remember all of the abilities of Questing Beast, and this card will help you out with that game.
The Questing Role is a new type of Role Aura token. The Questing Role token gives the creature all of the abilities that Questing Beast has. There's quite a few abilities, so I'd recommend taking a look at the card itself, because you probably forgot at least one of its abilities — like the ability to deal damage to a planeswalker when it deals combat damage to a player — so be sure to keep a copy handy just in case.
...I'm going to sell the five milk counters to the
Grocery Store for 15 Dairy Dollars...
Grocery Store for 15 Dairy Dollars...
Q: I don't understand Spuzzem Strategist - what choices would my Spuzzems be making?
A: Ah, this is a reference to an old card called Floral Spuzzem. It was infamously printed with the text "...then Floral Spuzzem may choose to destroy a target artifact ...", so it sounds like your creature should be choosing whether or not to destroy the artifact and not you (the controller of the creature). It's since been errataed, but if you ever find yourself in a game where your Floral Spuzzem needs to make a choice, Spuzzem Strategist will help you get out of it.
Q: I've been asking around - can you please explain banding to me?
A: Sure, you've wandered into the right place. Banding is two abilities - one that works while it's attacking, and one that works while it's blocking.
When you attack, as part of declaring attackers, you can choose to band together any number of creatures with banding, plus up to one without banding. For the rest of combat, those creatures are banded together. They don't share any abilities with the other creatures in the band (so banding a creature with flying with a creature without flying doesn't give the other creature flying), but if one creature is a band is blocked, the entire band is blocked. Now, this may seem like a bad thing, but here's where things get better - if your band is blocked, you (the attacking player) gets to choose how the blocking creature assigns damage to the creatures in your band - and you can assign damage however you want among the creatures in the band. So if I attack with a 2/2 and a 0/3 in a band and you block with a 3/3, I could have your 3/3 assign 1 damage to my 2/2 and 2 damage to my 0/3, so everything in my band survives.
But what about when blocking? Well, if you block with a creature with banding, you get to choose how the attacking creature assigns its damage. You don't form a band while blocking (you can already block with multiple creatures), but as long as you block with at least one creature with banding, you choose how damage is assigned. This is most useful when blocking a creature with trample, since you can choose to have the trampler assign all of its damage to the blocker with banding and take no damage yourself.
Ok, that's a lot of words, so let's do a tl;dr - on attacks, you can make a Katamari Damaci ball. On blocks, you turn off trample from the attacker.
Q: I control a Dreampod Druid with three +1/+1 counters on it, and my opponent controls Narod, the Beige Flower. How much damage will my Dreampod Druid deal in combat?
A: Only 2 damage. With Narod in play, instead of dealing damage equal to its power in combat, creatures deal damage equal to their mana value. The Druid's mana value is 2, so the Druid will deal 2 damage in combat, no matter what its current power (including bonuses from counters) is. But those counters will still boost the Druid's toughness, so at least it can block something with a mana value of 4 or less and survive.
Q: How does Narod, the Beige Flower interact with a creature token?
A: That depends. If the creature token is a copy of a creature, then it has the mana cost (and thus mana value) as the original creature, so the token deals damage equal to its mana value like the original creature. But if the token isn't a copy of something - say, a Squirrel token - that token doesn't have a mana cost and thus has a mana value of 0. That token will deal 0 damage in combat. It's a pretty weird way to shut down an opponent's Marit Lage token.
Q: Will Terry Pin, Turboturtle let me activate the last ability of Feasting Troll King on my opponent's turn?
A: It will not. Terry Pin's ability only applies to activated abilities with the exact phrase "activate only as a sorcery". It won't apply to any other restrictions. Terry Pin won't let you activate Feasting Troll King's ability on your opponent's turn, only on your turn.
Q: What exactly does making an artifact "mono" and "continuous" with Orb of Origin mean?
A: Time for another history lesson. If you look at artifacts from the early days of Magic (like Alpha/Beta/Unlimited), on noncreature artifacts, you'll see that there's extra words on the type line: "mono", "poly", and "continuous". A "mono" artifact meant that you had to tap the artifact to use its activated ability. A "poly" artifact is an artifact that has an activated ability, but you didn't have to tap to use it. Finally, a "continuous" artifact has a static ability, but that ability would turn off if the artifact became tapped.
So what does the Orb do? If your noncreature artifact has an activated ability that doesn't use the tap symbol, then you'll have to tap the artifact to activate the ability. And if a noncreature artifact becomes tapped, it will turn off and lose all of its abilities until it untaps.
Q: When exactly do I have to pay
if I want to play Glade of the Pump Spells?A: A land with a mana cost? Weird.
As part of the special action that you take to play the Glade, you'll also be paying
. This isn't a triggered ability (so you can't play the Glade and then tap it to pay for that cost), it's a cost that you'll have to pay alongside playing the land itself if you want it to enter. But just like how if you're using Elvish Piper to put a creature onto the battlefield, if you use something like Walking Atlas to put the Glade onto the battlefield, you don't have to worry about paying since it's put onto the battlefield instead of being played.That's it for this week. Perhaps we'll run into each other at MagicCon: Las Vegas this week. If not, we'll see you all again next week!
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