Summary
Magic: The Gatheringhas tens of thousands of cards, and the ways they all interact make it one of the most complex games ever made. Not even judges can be expected to know everything about the game, and that can result in some incredible things happening in a game.
But Reddit has decided to take that a bit further by posing what sounds like a simple question: what would happen if every single permanent in the game entered the battlefield at the same time? The answer is perhaps less impressive than you might think.
In Magic, a permanent is any card that remains on the battlefield. Creatures, artifacts, enchantments, lands, planeswalkers, and battles are all permanents, and together they add up to almost 21,340 cards as of the launch of Duskmourn: House Of Horror.
Thousands of cards have effects that trigger when they enter the battlefield, or trigger when other permanents enter. You could have infinite blink loops, infinite waves of token creatures, infinite damage, infinite mana, all of it going off all at once.Reddit had theorieswhere everything became 2/2 Bears thanks to Kudo, King Among Bears, or Mountains thanks to Blood Moon.
There were also brief questions about cards like Platinum Angel that can stop you from losing the game, or things like Phage the Untouchable that cause you to lose if you didn’t cast it from your hand.
Eventually, the problem was cracked, and the answer is somewhat disappointing. What happens if all 21,340 cards enter together actually only comes down to a few specific cards: Dress Down, Enchanted Evening, Mycosynth Lattice, March of the Machines, Humility, Opalescence, and Lich.
Everything would turn into a 1/1 artifact enchantment creature with no abilities, and then you would lose immediately.
This is because of oneof the most complex rules in Magic: layers. Layers define ongoing replacement effects and the orders you apply them in. Some cards, like March of the Machine, change types, which is applied before effects that change abilities, like Dress Down’s and Humility’s.
For something to be atriggered ability, it specifically has to say “when” or “if”.
And Then You Lose To Lich
As pointed out byTechnomagus Primein a lengthy explanation of what would happen, Lich has a “static effect” that happensasit enters the battlefield. This isn’t a triggered ability, so it isn’t shut down by the other cards.
As it enters, you lose all your life. It then gets turned into an enchantment artifact creature with no abilities, turning off the only bit of the card that stops you from losing from having zero life.
So if you want to win your next game of Magic, the answer isn’t to find a way to throw every single permanent onto the battlefield simultaneously. Not only would your deck by 21,000 cards big, you’d just end up taking yourself out of the game in the process.
Magic: The Gathering
Created by Richard Garfield in 1993, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) has become one of the biggest tabletop collectible card games in the world. Taking on the role of a Planeswalker, players build decks of cards and do battle with other players. In excess of 100 additional sets have added new cards to the library, while the brand has expanded into video games, comics, and more.
