#mdfcs

[magicjudge]

If I control the gitrog monster and I have the land side of bala ged recovery (mdfc) in play. Gitrog triggers and I sacrifice the mdfc land, does gitrog trigger to draw a card since mdfc are only their front side in all zones except hand?

No, it won't trigger and you won't draw a card.

This is because of how Gitrog's card draw trigger is worded. Abilities that look for cards to go to the graveyard "from anywhere" look at those cards as they appear in the graveyard. They don't look back in time like "from the battlefield" triggers do and so your MDFC is back to being a sorcery card once it's in the graveyard.

[aethernalstars]

I spent more time on this than i should have, but here, an image to summon Apollo's dodgeball upon myself!

Viz has Destroy All Humans licensed, and in the past also published the MtG art books. They also published the physical homestuck comics.

You see my vision, I needn't say more.

[markrosewater]

Is there a reason why there has been no Legendary Creature that is also an MDFC Land? Would that cause too large of an issue in Commander?

There are lots of things we could do, that we haven't. I do think the flavor for such a thing is tricky.

[dailymtgflavortext]

I had to search stores all over the country, but I completed my set of Modern Horizons 3 MDFC lands!

Look, I love the idea of MDFC lands. I think they're really cool, and having a slightly sub-par spell on one side of a slightly sub-par land leads to some interesting deck decisions. But some of these ones seem a little too good. Especially since the mono-colored ones can come in untapped by paying life (previously a feature of the mythic rare cycle). There's not a whole lot of reason not to play these.

Like, a lot of these are removal. Or card-draw. Or recursion. Really good effects! Why wouldn't you want them stapled to a land just in case?

Maybe worth noting, I'm speaking purely from the perspective of someone who plays Commander. Y'know, the target audience of Modern Horizons 3.

[niuttuc]

My Favorite Cards of 2024: Modern Horizons 3

The year is pretty close to over, so let’s go back over the sets released this year (with new cards at least), and go through a few of my favorite cards from that release. I’ll group together stuff released together, in this case it’ll be Modern Horizons 3 and its commander cards. I’ll probably go through one set a day for the next week, though I might skip some days for personal reasons.

With Modern Horizons 3 being as pushed and full of sweet designs as it is, this will be a long post, I apologize in advance.

To get them out of the way: Yes, more MDFC lands is very nice. We got some pretty universal ones in this batch of them, as well as some more niche, but all of them give more options for manabase and allow decks to comfortably go up to 40 lands or more while maintaining a good amount of action.

I recommend Chthonian Nightmare for basically every black deck with creatures in commander at this point. It's a powerful card and a fun card all in one, and it fixes the most egregious parts of Recurring Nightmare, the uninteractability first among them. I love Chthonian Nightmare and hope it remains reprinted and cheap forever.

Phelia is a good dog! The ability to blink away blockers, your own cards every turn on a two drop, any nonland, or to politic by giving an opponent an etb trigger again, all of that in one package with flash, makes this card both very powerful and very versatile. I love having options, and Phelia comes with a bunch of them.

In a format like commander where the vast majority of the Commanders decks are built around are multicolored, giving Null Elemental Blast to every deck that'll reliably have colorless mana is pretty great! Allows some stack interaction to mostly monocolor decks that wouldn't have it, or efficient removal of commanders. Beyond that, it's a good option to exist, even though other formats don't have multicolored cards as everpresent.

Six has made its way into many of my green commander decks since MH3 released. The ability to reuse permanents infinitely as long as you have lands, on a card that fills the graveyard and digs for lands, is just very good for three mana. Yet it doesn't seem to bring too much anger from a table when it is around, at least compared to other powerful cards in the format.

Phlage had a really difficult job, to live up to Kroxa and Uro but without breaking everything. For now, it seems to have succeeded. Maybe a bit too well, it might yet get to the "breaking everything" part in Modern as it's seeing a LOT of play, but it's for the most part a fair card even if it's powerful.

Repeatable ramp for free on three mana is excellent, and Rampant Frogantua provides just that. It's a bit higher variance and slower than something like a Wood Elves, you do need to untap with it and mill lands, but three cards is enough that it typically works out, and it doesn't take much for this to outperform those. I will say, despite putting it in several decks, I've yet to see it in action much because I simply haven't drawn it most games. We'll see longer term!

Proliferating is one of the most versatile mechanics in Magic, and Metastatic Evangel completes the trio of creatures that allow you to proliferate easily, in green, blue and now white. Doing counter stuff is generally very fun! And the nontoken restriction ensure it doesn't go infinite trivially (it can go infinite, but you need to put in some effort.)

Speaking of going infinite with Metastatic Evangel! In the proud lineage of Eternal Witness, Evolution Witness is pretty low, only getting permanents and requiring five mana to do so. That is, in any deck that doesn't have synergy with it! If you are a deck that cares or can manipulate counters, suddenly Evolution Witness becomes an engine by itself. Great cards at common that only power up select archetypes are a great place to be.

Overlapping a bit with Six, and Frogantua, and Evolution Witness, and... But Barrowgoyf stands on its own as a great creature from its body alone, often being a three mana 4/5 deathtouch lifelink. And then it starts drawing you a card every turn while fueling any graveyard card. This one is VERY powerful and has shown up in competitive formats it's legal in as well! Getting more variations on Tarmogoyf was a fun thing in that deck.

Some cards are just here because they're funny. Is Hope-Ender Coatl the best counterspell, or even the best counterspell on a body? Definitely not. But the Force Spike text is always entertaining because it finds somewhere to work and makes the opponent feel very silly for lacking that one precious mana.

Also a very powerful card across format, Springheart Nantuko is not just a very efficient version of the landfall token effect, but also a way to create token copies of a creature at a playable rate! Copies are always fun to play with, and that lets me overlook all the Nadu crimes this Nantuko has wrought. Let's be honest, it's Nadu's fault.

Of this entire land cycle, Arena of Glory is my favorite. Getting haste at no immediate mana cost on anything you want from the mana base on a land that'll usually enter untapped is just excellent, and allows "slower" effects like attack triggers and tap abilities to be viable in a world of ETBs and required immediate Value. Using it to escape Phlage in Modern is the cherry on top.

Of all the Flares, Flare of Malice gets my top spot (followed closely by Flare of Duplication). Free spells that are powerful but not cheesy or oppressive are hard to do, and Flare of Malice is the one that takes advantage of its alternate cost the best. Not only is black the color that will mind saccing a creature the least, but since this Flare is an instant, you can negate that cost even further by saccing a creature an opponent just tried to remove in response to their removal, making flare essentially completely free by negating the card disadvantage from the sacrifice. Flare of Duplication can also do something similar by saccing to copy said removal, but it's dependent on it being an instant or sorcery removal. Blue and White flares do it less well, given that you ideally want them to protect what you're doing, so there's more of a cost to giving up the thing you'd want to protect, and the green one is a sorcery.

Notably, all the flares except the blue ones are currently available at around $1 or $2, and that's pretty sweet for free spells.

Neither a Birthing Pod nor a bad card, Birthing Ritual just gets you a bit of free value every turn. Or if it doesn't, it doesn't cost you anything. It's a sweet card to play around with in creature decks, and after the initial hype, it fell down to reasonable prices, which is always a plus.

I was waiting for them to release a colored 3 mana rock in white that was exciting, and this one I've found myself going back to a few times since. It's just a nice bit of late game upside in basically any deck, and doesn't require much effort to use. It's not an all time high mana rock for me, because it's a pretty bad draw late in the game, but it's solid enough to get onto this list!

Wight of the Reliquary is both a neat callback and a really good card. Free ramp every turn as long as you have fodder would already be absurdly good on a two drop, but it's ALSO a giant threat with vigilance AND it tutors your deck for nonbasic lands, not just basics. This is a bit too much if you ask me, and it should have been three mana like its counterpart. But it hasn't broken anything yet, so I give it a pass for now, and a spot in basically all my decks that can run it.

Finally, some reprints I loved to see in the set. Cursed Mirror is my favorite red card in commander period, and even if it wasn't expensive or anything, I always love to see it in more places, and this introduced it to Modern and Arena. It always has something good to do, and it's always something different.

Recruiter of the Guard was in dire need of a reprint, and this one did its job, crashing its price by over three quarters to under $5. It's also a really fun card to play in any creatury deck in white, even if you don't specifically build around it, be it to use once, blink, reanimate with a sun titan or more. It's also in a better color for it in competitive formats than the red of Imperial Recruiter, so adding it to Modern alongside Imperial Recruiter adds a new fun option for the format for white creature decks.

[fnord888]

I mean, I wasn't literally claiming that spree is least "kicker" mechanic it's possible for someone to memeingly call kicker. If someone, somewhere claims "Adventures are just kicker because you can pay additional mana for an additional effect" I'm not going to stand here and say adventures are more like kicker than spree is.

But the point is, while some mechanics, like bargain, really are just kicker in the sense that you could cleanly replace them with just kicker*, spree really isn't. Even though you technically could implement it with kicker, you'd need to do add stuff like "CARDNAME must be kicked at least once" (because, as I noted, it's not optional).

*Which is, to be clear, not a criticism of the decision to keyword them separately.

so did wizards just like. flat run out of new mechanics or like. what's going on with thunder junction and all the keywords being reheated lasagna.

[goqmir]

(trying to explain plurality to a magic player) okay so like if i was a card i'd be a MDFC

have we ever explored the idea that these two bitches inhabit the same body ...

[danco110]

“Needledeep! What are you doing!”

“Just giving a practical demonstration of my final project, Dean Imbraham!”

“On the QUAD?”

“On the…oh.”

The treefolk student looked around sheepishly at the trampled turf of the once-pristine field. Turning back, he glanced past his towering fractal in the shape of a boar, and gave the owlin Quandrix dean an apologetic grin.

“Ah, sir, I can explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain,” Imbraham hooted furiously. “Dispel it at once.”

“Not so fast!”

Imbraham and Needledeep looked over to see a smirking elf in teacher’s robes sauntering towards them. Imbraham’s expression brightened immediately, while Needledeep’s soured.

“Ah, Dean Kianne!” Imbraham grinned. “Glad you’re here to assist me. Needledeep here has just-”

“That was quite an impressive display!” Kianne chimed to the treefolk. Needledeep and Imbraham quickly swapped expressions.

“Well, yeah! I told you my final project would be my biggest one yet!”

“That you did…” Kianne’s smirk grew conspiratorial, and she leaned in to whisper. “Say, how would you like to test its combat capabilities, for some bonus points?”

“Yeah, count me in!” Needledeep nodded. Meanwhile, Imbraham, who had overheard the whispering with his sharp senses, gasped in horror and protest.

“Kianne! You’re a nature mage!”

“The grass will grow back!” laughed the other dean. “Besides, the field’s already torn to shreds. What’s a few more divots?”

Though grumbling, Imbraham reluctantly flew off to the side.

���All right,” Kianne nodded. “Now, like I said, prove your project can fight.”

“Sure…! Against who?”

“Why, my summon, of course!”

Kianne waved her hand, raising a second mana construct across the quad from Needledeep’s fractal. Papers and scrolls swirled around the new arrival as it flourished its many arms at the fractal.

“Ready?”

“Yeah, for sure!”

The sound of the constructs’ clashing, and the cheers from the students that had gathered to watch, easily drowned out Imbraham’s disgruntled muttering.

[Headcanon: being both flipsides of MDFC’s and enemy colors, the two deans of each Strixhaven college butt heads all the time. Embrose and Shaile are almost certainly the worst offenders, but they all still manage to keep Strixhaven running.]

[sombramainexe]

Woe, custom magic cards be upon ye. Im not sure how much I'll do this, or how much I'll show of the custom frames I've developed (I actually made stuff like MDFC Frames and Adventure frames for when I use those.)

As for the card, it basically says symmetrically no instant speed interaction, unless you have basics. Probably too strong at one mana, but for a playtest card I thought the idea was interesting enough to write out.

Let me know your thoughts, I'm a massive nerd about this stuff so I'd love to hear about how this accidentally goes infinite in commander with 7 other cards.

[theunwellkingdom]

Design Deep-Dive #6: Lands Week - Discard/Sac Lands

I'll be the first to admit I'm playing with fire with this one. I've designed several cards in this set with "Discard or Sacrifice" activated abilities, including today's cycle of mono-colored lands! Most real Magic cards stick to one or the other, but these have the versatility to do both. They can be played out as (slow) lands and later cashed in if the game goes late enough that land count matters less than some action, or they can be discarded straight from hand as pseudo-sorceries!

To account for this flexibility, I aimed for lands with 3-mana effects that would feel about right if they were standalone 2-mana sorcery-speed cards... Time and testing will tell if this is a fair tradeoff. The abilities themselves should be fairly familiar for each color, so let's dive into how I landed on the current text for each one.

White - Eldoris

Eldoris is a simple blink effect a la Flickerwisp. While the set doesn't have a ton of "enters the battlefield" triggers in white to double up, there are several synergistic cards that care about, say, other enchantments entering or leaving. Beyond that, it can also disrupt an opponent's board by removing a key blocker for the turn or making quick work of a token.

Blue - Loam

Loam is a blue, single-use Rogue's Passage, inviting you to either find that perfect moment to strike, or find ways to get lands back from your graveyard to do it turn after turn.

Black - The Indigo

The Indigo is a reanimate effect with a fun condition: instead of limiting a creature based on mana cost, this one only cares about its power! (Can you tell my first-ever commander deck was Nethroi?) This meant I could print some key signpost cards in Black/Red and Black/White with high costs, low power, and strong effects. This particularly synergizes well with many of Red's Inspire cards, as they quickly offset natural low stats with Inspiration buffs.

Red - Frosttip Peaks

The distant northern mountains known as the Frosttip Peaks are rumored to contain untold treasures, guarded by fierce and powerful monsters! Here, you can ramp the way Red knows best: impulsively, making as many Treasure tokens as possible!

Green - Memnos, the Giantwood

Lastly, I expect Memnos, the Giantwood is the strongest of this batch. While cards like Atraxa's Fall have proven that this is a 2-mana effect at sorcery speed, it's some powerful conditional removal. Beyond that, Green naturally has the most ways to take advantage of a land, either through graveyard recursion or simply by ramping enough that sacrificing a land won't really set you back. I first tested this one at instant speed and it immediately stood out as an oppressive card!

Final Considerations

These lands are difficult to assess. They behave almost like MDFCs that don't ask you to choose up front between land or effect, so I'm curious to see how players work them into their mana bases when deckbuilding.

Also, alarm bells may have been ringing when I compared these to sorcery spells -- "Hold on! It's much easier to interact with a sorcery than an ability!" Fret not, there are enough abilities like this in the set that the Unwell Kingdom has several counterspells and other effects which can target activated abilities as well... Players won't get to fire these off risk-free.

Tomorrow on Lands Week: Utility Lands

UWK Lands Week Designing the Illusory Palace The Tri-Lands >Discard/Sac Lands Utility Lands Back to Basics

[jasper-the-menace]

I feel like, from a mechanical perspective, Jaren and Ritter would be MDFCs.

Ritter's two sides would be "Ritter, Skyknight of Aurelia" [Red White] and "Ritter, Son of Rakdos" [Black Red].

Jaren's sides would be "Jaren the Geomancer" [Red Green White] and "Jaren the Guildless" [Colorless] or "Jaren of the Found" [Green White] at this point in his character arc.

Mathias would have to have several cards. The first would be "Mathias the Songbird" [Green White Blue] for the first chunk of his arc, and then when he's later compleated he would be "Mathias, Orthodoxy Soloist" [mono White] as a second card. As of this point in Blood and Songbirds, his new card would be "Mathias, Fallen Silent" and probably still be mono White or White-Blue.

[littjara-mirrorlake]

7, 8, and 85?

7. Most underrated card(s)?

Maybe it's just the MtG players I hang out with, but people tend to sleep on MDFC lands (both land-land and spell-land). I can believe that maybe they're not the best for every deck, but I love them and run them in every deck I own.

8. Best mechanic?

Proliferate, hands down. It is so versatile, both offensive and defensive, value-building, and applicable to pretty much every strategy I could dream of playing since I love counters. Bonus: it's affiliated with both my favorite tribe (Phyrexians) and guild (Simic)!

[markrosewater]

I was just reading The History of Two-In-Ones, Part 2, and while reading about the design evolutions of Double-Faced Cards, the idea of a Transforming Modal Double-Faced Card occurred to me. Later in the article you covered the Transformers cards that basically did this through the More Than Meets the Eye keyword mechanic. Is there a rules reason that they were executed with a keyword mechanic to enable casting either face, rather than both faces having mana costs like a true MDFC while still being able to transform from one face to the other? Wouldn't that have been a more elegant execution of TMDFCs?

There are a bunch of rule issues that caused us to use More Than Meets The Eye.

[the-absolute-worst]

Dear WotC,

When do I get to play a land as my commander? When will you print an MDFC that is a legendary creature on one side and a land on the other? It doesn't even have to be good. I just want a full 100 card deck where every card is a land. Right now I have to settle for 99.

[dravidious]

Tumblr on the last ask apparently

-

lol apparently. They were a few minutes apart so I assumed you sent one and thought it didn’t go through so you sent another but maybe tumblr is just a digital vortex of chaos.

Anyway, I wanted to make an Etrian Odyssey set but then I realized there weren’t enough Things to make into themes and mechanics so I just made some standalone cards.

I also went overboard and made 10 (20?) MDFCs of the EO5 classes’ Legendary Titles.

The classes’ main colors happened to line up into 2 of each color and I wanted so badly to have exactly 2 of each color pair but it just didn’t work out :’(

[niuttuc]

Do you have an cool tech for The War Doctor + Clara Oswald? I want to run Mardu, and the goal is to use Cascade and Discover type effects to put a bunch of time counters on The War Doctor. Exile synergy in general is gonna be a big theme

If you're planning on using Cascade and Discover like that, and your plan is to exile as many cards as possible, while also having some cast from exile synergy and impulse draw, I'll focus down on one specific type of cards: Split cards!

It is a known trick that Split Cards while cascading have the combined mana value of both halves, which allows you to keep going when you don't want to hit them. This is good enough on its own, but in your specific case, this also means something else: they'll actually be affordable to cast when you exile them and have a time limit to do so! To get a specific example, I'll bring up Insult to Injury, which works particularly well with the War Doctor when you do cast the front half.

Similarly, some Adventures or MDFCs cost quite a few mana on the "front" side that is seen while cascading, but are affordable on the other half, and can as such be included as castable spells from impulse draw while not tripping cascade as fast. The virtues are great for this, and there's a few more options.