I Know Magic: The Gathering "Shadow Nerfing" An OP Lorwyn…

I started playing Magic: The Gathering about 21–22 years ago, not sure about the exact time, but I was either 12 or 13, and I was opening Mirrodin block packs when I got a massive 11-mana 11/11 Darksteel Colossus and knew I would love to actually play the game. I actually started a little earlier than that, collecting cards and learning the rules on and off, as I distinctly remember owning cards from Onslaught, but the Mirrodin block is what made me start playing for real. By Kamigawa, I was drafting any time I could, and Ravnica was the best time ever for me in Magic: The Gathering, to the point I partook in tournaments and made my own decks.

While I took an extensive break when I was 19, I did come back to actively playing and collecting MTG a couple of years ago, right when Bloomburrow was announced. I saved up to buy all four Commander decks in Bloomburrow and got myself several other products, like a collector's booster display, a regular box, the starter decks, and a pre-release kit. I was hooked again, and Lorwyn Eclipsed has me over the moon already. All this to say that I have been active in or orbiting around Magic: The Gathering most of my life, and that's why it makes sense to me that WotC is "nerfing" Ashling, the Limitless, before it's released, but I also know this is just a symptom of a bigger problem.

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By Andrea Trama

MTG's Best Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander Explained

Ashling, the Limitless, is one of the new face commanders of the Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander decks in MTG, and she is arguably the most beloved by fans already. The card does the following:

It's a 3-CMC 2/3 elemental creature.
It gives evoke 4 generic to elemental spells you cast from your hand
It creates a token copy of any elemental non-token you sacrifice, giving it haste, and giving you the option not to sacrifice it at the end of your turn if you pay WUBRG

Now, Ashling is incredibly strong, which is reflected in the fact that it's the most popular Lorwyn Eclipsed commander in MTG across Eternal and main set cards. It can let you chain Impulsivity multiple times for devastating effects, for example. It can create incredible combos when paired with Yarok, the Desecrated, and when played alongside cards like Shriekmaw, Risen Reef, and MTG's iconic Mulldrifter. It's a WUBRG commander, meaning your color identity is all colors of Magic. It can foster a horde strategy to have a wide board. It can be a great cascade commander. I could go on.

How MTG is Nerfing Ashling, the Limitless Commander Decks

One potential caveat that some players noted was that Ashling says it gives evoke 4 to elemental spells, and that it creates tokens of elementals you sacrifice, but it didn't specify the word "permanents," meaning it could work with kindred instants or sorceries. To veteran MTG players, this can be implicit, as evoke has always worked with permanents exclusively anyway, so why would Ashling allow you to cast kindred instants and sorceries and then copy them if they are not permanents and don't need to be sacrificed? Hence, why MTG's errata comes into play, affecting Ashling before it releases, with a clause that mentions permanents explicitly.

MTG's Mechanics and Keywords Are Too Complex, Enabling Erratas

That's fine, and to be honest, it's probably for the best. However, it shows how dependent MTG has become on keywords, and there are too many of them, quite frankly. Some even do mostly the same thing, like Tarkir: Dragonstorm's mechanic flurry being the same as flurry of blows from the DnD set, which is just giving a name to something that has been in the game forever, or saddle being the exact same as crew. It also shows that the game can at times be quite complex, to the point that erratas are needed to simplify things.

A great example is how Rampaging Baloths in MTG was changed on MTG Arena to reduce the number of steps and clicks, even if this meant "nerfing" the card by limiting its options. This is a card that allowed you to choose whether you wanted to create a 4/4 creature token whenever a land entered the battlefield, whereas the errata removed the "may," so there are fewer clicks on Arena. This can create some rare scenarios where you don't want to create the token, but now you are forced to, because otherwise the game would be too complex, hard to keep track of, and harder still to micromanage.

Before it was banned in Standard, MTG's Vivi Ornitier was nerfed via errata on MTG Arena. This was a proper nerf rather than a rule clarification, but it still shows how frail and finicky the rule ecosystem of MTG is.

So, while I understand the decision behind adding the permanent clause to Ashling, even if it remains an OP Lorwyn Eclipsed card in MTG nonetheless, I think there needs to be a more structured approach to the rules and wording of each rule. Instead, the game has very obscure sections that even some longtime fans and players are unaware of, such as how layers exactly work and the permanence order for effects that modify the behavior of existing cards on the field. This is easier said than done, though, meaning that erratas are inevitable for the foreseeable future.

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