Errata Notice: Aetherdrift

In early February, with the release of Aetherdrift, Gatherer introduced a series of Oracle changes now reflected on our site.

This was a very large sweep of errata, affecting a third of the cards in the game. We saw the following broad changes:

• Approximately 12,000 creatures, artifacts, and enchantments received errata to use “this [characteristic]” for self-references instead of the cardname: “When this creature enters”, “attach this Equipment”, etc. This errata first appeared in Foundations, but only appeared on cards actually released on that expansion. Now it’s rolled out to a lot more cards. (We’ll go into detail on this change below.)
• Hundreds of legendary creatures and planeswalkers received errata to use new shortnames in text. (We’ll go into detail further below.)
• The Affinity keyword was added to 16 cards that didn’t already have it. This introduced affinity for artifacts to several cards that previously spelled it out (e.g. Emry, Lurker of the Loch), as well as other flavors of affinity like affinity for Frogs.
• Revolt received a new reminder text template with a different way to phrase the left-the-battlefield condition.
• Devour also received new reminder text with “As this creature enters” phrasing.
• “Cast this spell only during your turn and only during combat” appears to have become “Cast this spell only during combat on your turn”, affecting two cards.

And we saw some single-card changes:

• Ghirapur’s plane type was changed from Kaladesh to Avishkar.
• Guidelight Pathmaker had its “Then shuffle.” instruction replaced with “If you search your library this way, shuffle.” This appears to be day zero errata and will save you some unnecessary shuffling.
• “Affinity for Food” became “Affinity for Foods”, as seen on Banquet Guests.
• A few cards had an ability word dropped in Foundations errata, then restored with Aetherdrift errata:
  • Surrak, the Hunt Caller had its Formidable ability word restored.
  • Venom Connoisseur had its Alliance ability word restored.
  • Battle Cry Goblin had its Pack tactics ability word restored.
• Aether Figment had its “can’t be blocked” ability moved to the last line, which makes sense.
• Niko, Light of Hope had “until the beginning of the next end step” replaced with “until the next end step”, continuing the rollout of what seems to be a relatively new template.
• Look at Me, I’m R&D received a significant template update.

“This [characteristic]” errata

We noticed the following patterns with these changes:

• Nonlegendary creatures and artifact creatures now use “this creature” for self-reference.
• Nonlegendary artifacts now use “this artifact”, or a subtype if one is available: “this Equipment”, “this Vehicle”, etc.
• Nonlegendary enchantments now use “this enchantment”, or a subtype: “this Aura”, “this Saga”.
• Nonlegendary lands use “this land”. This includes Dryad Arbor.
• Battles would use “this battle”, but all current battles are Sieges, so they say “this Siege”.
• Tokens use “this token”, unless they’re legendary (e.g. There and Back Again’s Smaug token), in which case the token uses its own name.
• Self-references in a non-battlefield zone use “this card”, e.g.: all leylines, “discard this card”, “exile this card from your graveyard”, “reveal this card from your hand”, “when you cycle this card”, etc. This applies even to legends like Squee.
• Some type-changing permanents use “this permanent”, e.g. Hidden Ancients, Haunted Plate Mail, and Erebos’s Emissary.

There are some exceptions that still use the cardname in full even when they might fit under the above rules:

• Characteristic-defining abilities, such as seen on Abominable Treefolk, still use the cardname.
• Transform triggers still use the cardname.
• “You can’t cast …” restrictions still use the cardname. This is separate from “Cast this spell only …” which just uses “this spell”.
• Cards like Rakdos Riteknife that have to refer back to themselves from another object will use the cardname.
• “If this would be put into a graveyard” effects still use the cardname. This can show up on the back side of Midnight Hunt MDFCs.

Self-references to “this spell” already existed and don’t appear to be affected. For example:

• Planes and phenomenons still refer to themselves by name.
• Instants and sorceries still refer to themselves by name in their spell effect, e.g. Lightning Axe. However, they may have been modified by “this card” errata: see Choking Tethers.

Now for some trivia:

• Atinlay Igpay now reads “acrificesay isthay eaturecray.”
• The Sojourners cycle had its template expanded Syr Konrad style: “When you cycle Grixis Sojourners or it dies” became “When you cycle this card and when this creature dies”.

Legendary shortname errata

First off—what’s a shortname? When a card like Arahbo, the First Fang says simply “Arahbo” in its rules text instead of writing out “Arahbo, the First Fang” in full, we call that a shortname. We only see this with legendary cards. (That hasn’t changed.)

Legendary creature cards already use shortnames all the time. However, prior to Aetherdrift, using a shortname was relatively rare, and it seemed like it was preferable to use the full card name at least once. Now errata has been issued to several hundred of these cards to make them use shortnames in their oracle text. This seems to indicate a new standard for Magic: the shortnames themselves aren’t new, but using them this frequently is.

Some examples:

• Cadira, Caller of the Small is now just “Cadira” in her oracle text.
• Edgar Markov is just “Edgar”.
• Elrond of the White Council is just “Elrond”.
• Chandra Ablaze is just “Chandra”.
• Kaito Shizuki is just “Kaito”.

Also notable is that Wizards seems to have standardised shortnames, so a very small number of cards lost a shortname they used previously:

• Rubinia Soulsinger is no longer shortened to just “Rubinia” in her second ability.
• Donna Noble is no longer just “Donna”.
• Ayesha Tanaka, Armorer is no longer just “Ayesha” the second and third time her name is mentioned.