Oracle Changes
Shark, Shark, Baby (Functional)
Our toothiest friends are all grins—with Ikoria, Shark becomes a real creature type! Since there are no cards pointing you toward a Fish-tribal deck, and since "Shark Fish" just sounds odd in English, Doug Beyer made the call that Shark replaces Fish on the affected creatures. The only card that makes a Fish token,
Affected Cards:
Voracious Greatshark: Fish -> Shark
Fowl Play (Functional)
With the release of Unsanctioned, we decided that while Chickens are funny, it's more fun in gameplay if Chickens have the creature type Bird. This was a very clean word replacement across the board—but pay close attention to
Dryad of the Dryad Dryad (Functional)
Stand or Fall (Functional)
As the rules around multiplayer evolved and settled over time,
Stand or Fall was:
At the beginning of combat on your turn, separate all creatures defending player controls into two piles. Only creatures in the pile of that player's choice can block this turn.
New text:
At the beginning of combat on your turn, for each defending player, separate all creatures that player controls into two piles and that player chooses one. Only creatures in the chosen piles can block this turn.
Cast All the Things (Non-Functional)
The adventurer card mechanic from Throne of Eldraine shed a lot of light on something we had been handwaving linguistically with rules backup. When
When the rules for bestow changed in Theros Beyond Death, it removed the last edge case where it made a difference whether you were looking at the spell or looking at the card plus the various modifiers. With that difference gone, we decided to switch to more honest, friendly words. This doesn't change the existing rules interactions, but it might make you realize something that you didn't know.
In cases where it's ambiguous or sounds too weird, or where space simply doesn't permit, we'll still use the older template (notably Haldan, Avid Arcanist in the Commander decks). This change affects just over 100 cards. For example:
Garruk's Horde was, in part:
You may cast the top card of your library if it's a creature card.
New text:
You may cast creature spells from the top of your library.
Raid-light Savings Time (Non-Functional)
Nightsquad Commando in Ikoria led us to question the raid template, and we found that we had created tools that coincidentally let us shorten it. We applied this shortening to the existing cards with raid; this isn't at all a functional change since you can't attack with anything but creatures. This affects every card with a raid ability, the reminder text for melee, and
Mardu Heart-Piercer was:
Raid — When
New text:
Raid — When
Activate the Shortening! (Non-Functional)
Here's another entirely stylistic change with zero functional difference—Zirda, the Dawnwaker shows off a new template for reducing costs where we don't let you hit zero. It reduces some redundant words to remove some redundancy. This change affects four cards:
Heartstone was:
Activated abilities of creatures cost {o} less to activate. This effect can't reduce the amount of mana an ability costs to activate to less than one mana.
New text:
Activated abilities of creatures cost {o} less to activate. This effect can't reduce the mana in that cost to less than one mana.
Any Clone Will Do (Non-Functional)
And one final "no, this changes nothing" change. I bring these up to reassure you that the change you see isn't functional, and this one's just cleaning up two valid templates to standardize their use. When you
Mirror Image was:
You may have
New text:
You may have
Introduction
Comprehensive Rules Changes
Oracle Changes