While the main MTG Avatar set has been dominating both the conversation and competitive play since it launched, its Jumpstart counterpart has plenty going on in its own right. There are a ton of great cards in this supplemental set, some of which are commanding hefty price tags already. That said, some bangers from this MTG set, like the overlooked Princess Yue, are flying under the radar at present.
It doesn’t look like much on the surface, but this new legend actually does something wholly unique for Magic. Thanks to some incredibly complex rulings regarding Clone effects, Yue allows you to turn creatures into lands, opening up countless avenues for shenanigans. Factor in some infinite combo potential, and this is a serious sleeper that more people should be playing.
Princess Yue MTG
At a base level, before you get fancy with it, Princess Yue is a fairly unique MTG card. It’s a decent creature for a Scry deck to start with, offering solid selection every turn. Once it dies, it returns as a colorless land called Moon, essentially making it blue ramp.
Even better, that Scry ability persists as Yue makes her ascent, meaning you now have a land that can Scry 2 for you every single turn. Decks running Matoya, Archon Elder or Planetarium of Wan Shi Tong will get a lot out of this alone.
Where things with Yue get really interesting, however, is when you add Clone effects into the mix. Copying Yue with a Clone effect will, as you’d expect, cause the new copy to die due to the legend rule. Before that, the Clone will gain Yue’s dies trigger, which means it’ll bounce right back into play as a land called Moon.
Notably, when this card returns to the battlefield, it will still be a Clone. This means you’ll be able to choose a new creature for it to copy as it enters. The end result will be a new land that features all the abilities of a creature of your choice.
The exact reasons this interaction works are incredibly complex, but videos, like those from Jollysaintclick, explain it in depth. For the most part, however, all you need to know is that it works. With Yue and Clones, you can create land versions of creatures in play, giving you access to their abilities in a much more resilient form.
Attack Of The Clones
The applications for this wacky interaction are nigh-endless. Naturally, you can use it in a Princess Yue Commander deck to keep some of your favorite effects around permanently. Adding the ridiculous card draw of Consecrated Sphinx to a land is a great example, and one that can net you a ton of unstoppable value. Alternatively, you can use it a pseudo-win condition. Turn Platinum Angel into a Moon, and your opponents will regret that “no land removal” policy real quick as they slowly watch you win.
Since Clones can typically target any creature in play, you can also use this interaction to permanently copy opposing creatures, including Commanders. This is more situational, of course, since you can’t control what your opponents play, but with how powerful modern Commanders are, it’d be hard not to get good value.
What’s really interesting about this Yue interaction is that it isn’t limited to just creatures. With the help of Clones that hit other card types, you can turn those into lands, too. With Phyrexian Metamorph, for example, you can put the abilities of artifacts on lands. This is particularly funny with Nevinyrral’s Disk, though probably not for your opponents.
Clever Impersonator opens things up even further, letting you nab land versions of enchantments and planeswalkers as well. Normally, planeswalkers are a tough sell in Commander, since they’re quite easy to remove, but as lands, you can tick them up every turn without fear. ‘Walkers like Teferi, Master of Time suddenly become very real threats in the format once they’re in this state, which adds a whole extra layer of usefulness to Yue.
That’s No Moon!
As you’d expect from an MTG card with so many weird interactions, Princess Yue also has an infinite combo or two up her sleeve. The easiest of these to pull off involves a pair of classic Judgment creatures, Wormfang Newt and Wormfang Turtle.
Both of these creatures exile a land you control on entry, then bring it back once they leave. If you create a land version of either with Yue and a Clone, you can have it exile itself on entry, before returning as a Clone again to repeat the loop. This will result in infinite Landfall triggers, as well as infinite enters triggers. With a Ruin Crab or Altar of the Brood in play, this can win you the game instantly. If you’re feeling more flashy than mean, you can pair this with Roil Elemental instead to seize control of everything on the board.
You can pull off a similar loop with Zuran Orb and a Persist creature like Glen Elendra Archmage. Persist still works even on noncreature permanents, so you can sacrifice the land version of Archmage to Orb to bring it right back as a Clone. This combo nets you infinite life, as well as infinite Landfall triggers to use as you see fit.
As cool as these combos and interactions are, they’re probably just the tip of the Princess Yue iceberg. This is an unprecedented effect in Magic, and one that will almost certainly reveal new, broken depths in the years to come. Even if Avatar Jumpstart wasn’t your bag, this is a legend well worth picking up for that reason alone.
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