Hello all, and welcome to Magic Monday, where Avocados can magically gather and talk about Magic: The Gathering. Each week I’ll talk about something Magic-related that’s on my mind, highlight a card related to those thoughts, and offer a prompt for commenting. This week, we’re breaking out the correction fluid.
Game store employees around the world surely clocked out of last Friday’s shifts with pounding migraines after their Edge of Eternities prerelease events, during which they doubtless had to explain the same day-zero errata upwards of two thousand times due to a printing error on a new card in the set. The card in question is Diplomatic Relations, a green instant of common rarity that, as printed, has the following effect:
This one-sided variant of the fight mechanic is not an unusual effect for green, and at first glance, it looks like many other cards of a similar ilk. However, most such cards specify a target creature that you control performing that action. By just saying “Target creature,” Diplomatic Relations could in theory apply to an opponent’s creature, which you could then use to punch itself in the face, or even eliminate a third player’s potential threat. Besides being a very funny “stop hitting yourself” move and putting a mordant flavor spin on the card title, it would have represented a huge power leap for its particular effect archetype, which is why so many people were going bananas for it.
Wizards must have noticed the mistake after wondering why so many people were getting really excited about a run-of-the-mill piece of draft chaff, issuing a statement clarifying that it’s one of your creatures that gets +1/+0 and vigilance until end of turn, not anyone else’s. And so, down goes what could potentially have been the next great leap in common power levels, although it does get a nice footnote in Magic history, so that’s a consolation prize, I guess.
Due to the surgical precision of Magic rules text (which I love, and is part of what drew me to the game, and which I will write more about versus my loathing for old card wording someday), I have to wonder if somebody got fired for that blunder, or at the very least got written up. It would have to slide past multiple sets of eyes to make it onto a sold and printed card. I can’t say as I know much about the inner workings of a successful collectible card game company, but perhaps a likely factor is the inevitable slide in QC maybe caused by releasing a set every two months, thereby creating an eternal preview season that doesn’t give sets enough time to marinate or get a proper once-over. Or it could be something else, I guess.
Our Card of the Week is another card that temporarily featured a misprint, albeit perhaps not quite such an earth-shattering one: Corpse Knight, a 2/2 black and white Zombie Knight that pings each of your opponents for 1 life when a creature enters under your control, and which for a short time had a printed power/toughness of 2/3. Either way, it dies to a Bolt, so it’s not like it was a major issue.
COTW Value: Each week, the Card of the Week is rated on a scale of one to five dollar signs (see footnote for values).1 Often, misprints carry some value, though those tend to be more of a machine malfunction in nature, like uncentered card art, miscut sheets, or unrounded card edges. The incorrect 2/3 Corpse Knight is in fact the cheapest variant you can get, at a mere 38 cents. For some reason, the March of the Machines precon reprint is over two dollars. No matter which one you get, however, it’s not terribly expensive. $
Prompt: Do you own any cards that are more valuable because of a misprint (textual or mechanical)? If so, which?
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