Mana Abilities

In order to play spells in Magic, you usually have to pay for them with mana, usually generated by using some kind of "mana ability." Island has a mana ability, Black Lotus has a mana ability, Skirge Familiar has a mana ability. In 1997, tourney hopeful David Mills was disqualified from the finals of Pro Tour: Los Angeles for announcing spells and then using the mana abilities to pay for them after, which isn't an uncommon practice. This led to history's only Magic riot, as a group of furious neckbeards stormed the stage during the awards ceremony and demanded justice for Mills. The judges relented and awarded Mills a second-place prize, and proceeded to change the rules so that it became legal to activate a mana ability while paying costs. Now the rules state that a player can't do anything in response to a mana ability, so nothing can disrupt said mana ability once it's started.

This brings us to Caged Sun, a card that doesn't really work. As hinted at with the prior examples, all mana abilities are activated (i.e. pay cost: do effect) with the sole exception of Caged Sun, which is triggered (i.e. when trigger, then effect.) The rulings on Caged Sun state that it does have a mana ability nonetheless, as otherwise this would create some awkwardness when playing spells with the Sun in play. In summary, Caged Sun has a mana ability that adds mana to your mana pool whenever a land adds mana to your mana pool. Okay, not too complex. The rules start to break down when Caged Sun itself becomes a land, however. This can be accomplished by combining a few cards...

March of the Machines makes all artifacts into creatures, so Caged Sun is now an artifact creature. (You starting to notice how often this card comes up in these articles?)
Artificial Evolution or Xenograft make your creatures into a chosen creature type, so Caged Sun can become an "Artifact Creature - Saproling."
Life and Limb makes all saprolings into lands, so Caged Sun is at last an "Artifact Creature Land - Saproling Forest."

So at this point, Caged Sun has a mana ability that effectively reads "Whenever Caged Sun adds mana to your mana pool, add one mana of that colour to your mana pool." Neither player is allowed to do anything until this loop completes, so the players sit there helplessly as the game repeats itself ad nauseum. At this point, the game is nothing less than a draw.

Caged Sun is a fun example of the problems potentially caused by type-changing effects, and also the looming threat of infinite loops. An infamous type-change conflict exists by combining Humility and Opalescence, which causes Humility to lose the ability that causes it to lose all abilities. But wait... then that would mean... yeah, things get kind of confused.

Dollar Menu Dynamite, Part 2

For as long as there have been Magic cards worth more than a buck each, people have had to pick and choose what they spend their hard-earned dosh on. Seeing as it is a collectible card game, however, some cards are more desirable than others, and as a result, those cards are generally going to be worth more than others. As the old adage goes, "you get what you pay for." Now, normally that's true when you're picking between the $25 pair of shoes and the $300 pair of shoes. The game of Magic has so many pieces, however, and all of them inevitably subject to format rotation, that it can be harder for this to remain entirely true. Often powerful cards from the past that have been forgotten writ large can end up being quite cheap, giving you a card that punches above its pay grade!

A couple weeks ago I started a new series called "Dollar Menu Dynamite," introducing you to these kinds of cards that you and your play group might be unfamiliar with, but come with tons of play potential. Powerful though they may be, however, any cards suggested in the article can be purchased for one dollar or less (at the time of writing.) Today I have another ten cards nominated - many of them not even Modern-legal, but all of them sure to make a splash in the casual playgroup.

Layers & Licids

Dominating Licid doesn't work. 

No big surprise, you may say - this kind of esoteric behaviour is basically par for the course for such an obtuse creature type. But really, think about that: you may read the card's oracle text and think you know what it does, but it doesn't actually work.

The reason why is sort of weird, but it boils down to this: the "you control enchanted creature" effect tries to take place before the "this is an enchantment" effect, and the rules say that "enchanted creature" on a card isn't an enchantment doesn't refer to anything. So it winds up being a creature enchantment that does... nothing. All the other licids work, since they provide abilities that are added after the type-changing effect of a licid. That said, everybody is going to play Dominating Licid with the intended effect anyway, whether they know this piece of minutiae or not, and let's be real - the rules manager doesn't feel like figuring out how to reword it since it would be clunky as hell.

Dollar Menu Dynamite

It can be easy to convince yourself nowadays that Magic has become a pay-to-win game. If two players sit down for the average game, victory will inevitably go towards whomever's deck is crammed with the most (purposefully) overpowered mythic rares, right? Well, if the dreaded sligh can upset the tournament scene with its bargain-bin bad boys, there's no reason you can't do the same in your playgroup. While everyone's knocking themselves out trying to get their hands on Hero of Bladehold and Karn Liberated, cards that have long since rotated out of Standard of course drop in price since their demand has plummeted. They may not have any place in organized events, but you can save your hard-earned pennies if you show up to your casual games with some of these underrated gems.

In keeping with a catchy name, all of the cards suggested here can be had for $1 or less (at the time of writing! Maybe my wisdom will pass down and some of these will become hot commodities, who knows.) They may not be the flashiest cards around, but it's hard to get more bang for your buck at a kitchen table game of Magic. I'd buy that for a dollar!

Monogreen Megapermission

You sit behind an unbreakable wall of countermagic. Your opponent eyes his handful of spells, knowing none of them will make it out of the stack. Finally he draws a Combust: well, fat lot of good that will do... all of your cards are green.

Wait, what?

Sound ridiculous? You might think only blue can do megapermission, but thanks to an obscure old sideboard piece and a more recent combo piece, you can counter every single spell your opponent ever plays with nothing but forests.

The trick is comboing the long-forgotten Lifeforce with Painter's Servant. So long as the Servant is out, all spells are black, and Lifeforce lets you counter any black spell for a paltry two mana, even multiple times in one turn. Assemble these two and your opponent will likely never resolve another card for the rest of the (soon-to-be-over) game. I guarantee nobody expects a megapermission lock once they see you play a Forest!


Creatures
4 Arbor Elf
4 Chameleon Colossus
4 Overgrown Battlement
4 Painter's Servant
4 Vine Trellis

Spells
4 Avoid Fate
3 Compost
4 Creeping Mold
2 Desert Twister
4 Lifeforce
1 Vernal Bloom
2 Worldly Tutor

Lands
22 Forest


Vine Trellis and Overgrown Battlement help hold the fort until your combo is assembled, then help feed mana into Lifeforce once you do. Creeping Mold and Desert Twister let you wipe out anything troublesome that was played before you got your lock down, and Chameleon Colossus makes for an easy win once it has Protection from everything.

Avoid Fate is another surprise against decks that seek to blow up one of your combo pieces (it admittedly got much more useful when it was errata'd to counter instants) and Compost can earn you card advantage that will make any blue mage green with envy - note that it counts any card put into a graveyard, even ones not from play, so that includes anything you counter. Worldly Tutor fetches your Servant if you need to set up, or a Colossus if you're primed for the kill.

Standard Issue

 

Standardize? As in make things... Standard? Hey, what other formats could there be a card for?

The Typeless Permanent

Neurok Transmuter seems like a fairly standard idea for cards-that-play-around-with-artifacts that one would expect in the Mirrodin setting. He can turn creatures into artifact creatures, or artifact creatures into nonartifact creatures... that's bound to have some strategic applications here and there. The thing is, that second ability is pretty unique. How often do you see a card that can remove a type from a permanent? Now, again, he can only target creatures - you can't remove the artifact type from your Sky Diamond or whatever - so you'll always be left with a nonartifact creature.

Or will you?

There are a number of artifacts that can temporarily turn into artifact creatures, making themselves valid targets for the Transmuter, but these effects generally end at the end of the turn, the same time the Transmuter's effect stops. There is one weird and classic exception, however:

The humble, pioneering Jade Statue can be turned into a creature only until end of combat, after which it reverts back to being a plain ol' artifact for your postcombat main phase. See where I'm going with this? During the combat phase, you can animate Jade Statue, then target it with Neurok Transmuter, turning it into a blue creature. Then, after combat ends, it stops being a creature... but wait, it also stopped being an artifact! So what is it? For the rest of the turn, you are the proud owner of a (blue) permanent that has no types. It's not an artifact, it's not a creature, it's... just there. Amusingly, being typeless makes it surprisingly resilient to removal - basically nothing short of Vindicate or Apocalypse can take out a typeless permanent.

Since we've already noted the abusiveness March of the Machines allows for twice in recent memory, I might as well point it out here as well: this headache-inducing enchantment likewise pairs with the Neurok Transmuter to produce typeless permanents. In order for March of the Machines to turn something into a creature, it must be an artifact in the first place. So if it turns an artifact into a creature, then the Transmuter makes it no longer an artifact for the turn, then the March will no longer make it a creature. You see? Typeless permanents on demand! Throw in Moonlace and they can be colorless as well as typeless. What you can actually do with these no-type wonders is up to you to figure out.