We Have to Go Deeper Ep.2 - An Orgg by Any Other Name

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TheRedMage

9 December 2015

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Hello everybody, and welcome to a new installment of We Have to Go Deeper, where I attempt to waste everybody's time by examining all possible details of obscure interactions and rules corner cases. For those of you that were not tuned in last week, here is how this works: whenever I find a question in the Q&A section that puts me in a writing mood, I will use it as a jumping-off point to talk about the answer. At least for now, there is no schedule, I will just write whenever I find something that tickles my fancy. Articles usually include some generic rules discussion and/or interactions between sets of cards that I consider fascinating, weird, or both.

This episode will be probably short and hopefully sweet. Let's just get to the jumping-off point.

The Jumping-off Point

^{Leaping Master - art by Anastasia Ovchinnikova}

The question that sparked this article looks very innocent, and I did not suspect it would get my creative juices flowing until I remembered something that I heard in a podcast some time ago (it was either The Third Power or The Command Zone - I can’t quite remember). The question itself was asked around a month ago by sliver____king:

Can Nevermore name a creature type?

I have a friend who believes that Nevermore can name a creature type, I just need a reference to prove him wrong.

The short version of the answer was given by site admin (and fellow frequent Q&A question answerer) Epochalyptik:

Cards do exactly what they say. Nevermore says "name a nonland card." It doesn't say anything about naming a type or subtype.

Not much to say here. Cards say what they do and do what they say. Nevermore tells you to name a card, and you have to name a card (incidentally, you have to name a card that is both a real, existent magic card and legal in whatever format you are playing).

Well, kind of. Cards usually say what they do, and always do what their Oracle text says. The rules of Magic are a beautiful machinery made of many interlocking parts that are designed to treat tens of thousands of different cards consistently, and allow room for many thousands to come. It took some time to get them there, and some old cards just "speak" a different language than the rules..... Their functionality was preserved (so in a way they still "do what they say") but in order for the card to work as intended by whoever designed it, the Oracle text of those cards now needs to be incredibly long, very different to what was originally printed on the card, and rather convoluted.

Camouflage and Raging River are probably my favorite example of cards that got the short end of the stick when they were "standardized" to be templated like all other cards. Not that old designs need the help, obviously - if you have read Ice Cauldron, you know that some cards became convoluted, but others were just born that way.

Thankfully in the case of Nevermore, its Oracle text and printed text are the same (at least at the time I am writing this article), and the card works exactly as advertised.

It’s all in the name

Well, usually. There is a small set of creature subtypes which can be named for Nevermore… Because they are also the name of a Magic Card! Alphabetically: Assembly-Worker, Atog, Cockatrice, Illusion / Reality, Juggernaut, Leviathan, Lhurgoyf, Masticore (but not Manticore), Nightmare, Orgg, Phelddagrif, Shapeshifter. Worth mentioning that I could not find an already compiled list of these, so I just had to read the list of creature types from rule 205.3m and try to research which of those were also cards. It is possible I missed a few - write in the comments if that's the case!

So... What's going on here? Most of these creatures just happen to be the first of a line. R&D did not expect there would be more than one Atog, but people liked the card. WotC started printing more Atogs and Atog became a recognized creature type when the Grand Creature Type Update happened (I am not making stuff up - the Grand Creature Type Update was a real thing that happened in 2007). Almost all of these cards have a similar story, although in some cases there might be only two cards with that type (looking at you, Phelddagrif).

Two cards from the list don't exactly fit this mold. Assembly-Worker was the type that Mishra's Factory gained when it became animated. The actual Assembly-Worker card was printed in time spiral as an homage to the man-land of old, together with Urza's Factory.

The other one is Illusion / Reality. Not only is Illusion by far the most common of these types (77 cards have the subtype illusion at this time), but the actual card Illusion / Reality is not a creature at all! Or a card, really - more like half of one, but that means you can still name it to things like Nevermore.

Not that it matters. I can still cast Deathgaze Cockatrice if my opponent has a Nevermore that named Cockatrice, I simply cannot cast literal Cockatrice. I can still cast Phantasmal Bear if my opponent named Illusion / Reality and so on. Once again, Nevermore just says that "cards with the chosen name can't be cast" and, as we discussed earlier, their subtype(s) has no bearing on this.

That doesn't mean we can't have fun with this. Since I went through the pain of making this list, we might as well go ahead and try to use it to make the game do something it is not supposed to.

Hidden Agendas

^{Muzzio's Preparations - art by Karl Kopinski}

Many things in magic care about the name of a card. Let's hop in our wayback machines, and travel back to... Not that far in the past: summer 2014.

In summer 2014 Wizards printed Conspiracy, a set that had three distinctions:

First, it was the first to contain cards that affect the drafting process. Note that in order to explain how these cards work the IPG had to be expanded to include a short section on how you are supposed to draft, since that sort of information would usually be the purview of another document entirely: the Magic Tournament Rules. But we will talk about that another time.
Second, this was the first and so far only paper printing of Dack Fayden, who, as we all know, is the best thief in the multiverse.
Third, it contained a new card type, conspiracies. Conspiracies are kind of like anthems that you get to start your game with and they mess with a few different things. Some affect deck construction (Advantageous Proclamation) or reward you for building your deck in some way (Worldknit); some affect the start-of-game procedure (Power Play), etc, etc.

There is however a subset of conspiracies that are more pertinent to what we are talking about - those with hidden agenda.

702.105a Hidden agenda is a static ability that functions as a conspiracy card with hidden agenda is put into the command zone. “Hidden agenda” means “As you put this conspiracy card into the command zone, turn it face down and secretly name a card.”

702.105c Any time you have priority, you may turn a face-down conspiracy card you control in the command zone face up. This is a special action. Doing so will reveal the chosen name. See rule 115.2g.

Now - there is a subtlety here. The Hidden Agenda ability, same as cards like Nevermore, specify that you have to name a card. Now, unless the ability that makes a token specifies a name for it (the token made by Dark Depths is named “Marit Lage” because the card specifically says so), or the token is a copy (the tokens made by Pack Rat are all named “Pack Rat” because they are copies) the name of a token is the same as it’s subtype: the token made by Ambassador Oak has the subtypes Elf and Warrior, and its name is "Elf Warrior". As discussed earlier, that is not an actual card name! Obviously, tokens are not cast, so Nevermore and similar effects that prevent a card from being cast are not particularly relevant for this. But it does mean you can't stop a Bitterblossom from killing you using a Runed Halo, for example.

Much to my own dismay, that also meant that I couldn’t name "Spirit" to Muzzio's Preparations and just murder everybody with an army of flying 2/2s that one draft I ended up with four copies of Rousing of Souls. I was pretty sad about that.

Illusions of Grandeur (not actual Illusions of Grandeur)

^{Illusions of Grandeur - art by Quinton Hoover}

You probably see where I am going with this. Out of the list of cards that are also subtypes, are there any that appear on tokens? As it turns out, yes:

• Urza's Factory makes Assembly-Worker tokens (Mishra's Factory acquires the type Assembly-Worker when animated, but its name remains Mishra's Factory)
• Crib Swap makes a Shapeshifter token
• Meloku the Clouded Mirror and Summoner's Bane make Illusion tokens

Obviously none of this cards appear in Conspiracy (I like thinking that this is intentional, but to be fair these are only four cards and it is likely they didn't even come up during design), but conveniently enough conspiracy had Lore Seeker in it. And, in case you felt the need to make your Meloku the Clouded Mirror an even more absurd limited bomb after you open it from a pack of Modern Masters, you can absolutely name Illusion / Reality for Muzzio's Preparations and achieve my dream of creating an unstoppable force of free Wind Drakes.

Name a card. Any card.

And that's it for today! At a certain point we kind of devolved from being about weird rules to being a weird trivia column, but I hope my rambling was still fun.

If you found a Q&A question that looks spicy, you just want to suggest a topic, or you just liked this article, you can leave a comment below or tweet @TheR3dMage. If you didn’t like this article, you should also write a comment below or tweet @TheR3dMage! I am always willing to listen to feedback and your input can help make this article series better. And if you just read the article and don't feel like commenting, I thank you still for taking the time to read my nonsense.

This is as deep as we can go for this time. But next time, we are going even deeper. I'll see you then!