Murders at Karlov Manor is officially beginning to make its presence felt across all platforms. This weekend, players were able to partake in the Karlov Manor Prerelease events. Along with these events, players entering various paper tournaments were able to make use of the new cards. This comes after a change in policy last year that made cards tournament legal upon Prerelease.
Starting today, players were now able to play with Karlov Manor cards on MTG Arena and Magic Online. Well, as you may know, not everything runs as smoothly as we might hope upon the release of a new set, especially in a digital format. This is certainly the case with Magic Online, as we’ve already had a major bug occur that drastically affects the abilities of a strong Constructed card.
Funnily enough, the card is not associated with Murders at Karlov Manor in any way, but the associated error has caused the card to get temporarily banned on Magic Online. The card in question is none other than Shark Typhoon. Workers at Daybreak, the company that now oversees Magic Online, were quick to jump on to try to fix this bug, along with a couple other errors among cards that needed to be fixed. Let’s take a closer look at the issues associated with Shark Typhoon.
6/6s Galore!
The recurring issue that has been taking place on Magic Online has to do with the size of the tokens that Shark Typhoon creates. Shark Typhoon is a cool card that gives you the option to either hard cast it as a six-mana Enchantment or Cycle it, drawing a card and making a token with Flying with power and toughness dependent on how much mana you put in.
In the early game, it’s quite common to spend three or four mana to get a small token and draw a card, especially if you need to hit your Land drops. That’s exactly the scenario that Gabriel Nassif was in as shown above, but with one small difference. When he Cycled Shark Typhoon for X=1, he ended up with a 6/6 Flier in play instead!
This was not a unique issue for just Nassif, though, as other players were running into the same issue, even if they spent different amounts of mana to Cycle Shark Typhoon. As such, Shark Typhoon was temporarily banned, and players who entered Leagues with the card would be refunded as necessary.
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Issues with Karlov Manor Case
While the problem with Shark Typhoon is likely the most egregious and amusing, there are other problems that have originated since the recent update to implement the new set on Magic Online. For instance, Case of the Pilfered Proof is bugged in a pretty significant way that can drastically impact games of Limited.
The Cases are designed in an interesting way, providing you with an initial benefit, then additional benefits if you can Solve them. With Case of the Pilfered Proof on Magic Online specifically, though, players have run into the issue where any token producer comes with a Clue, even if the Case isn’t Solved yet. Given how many players will be drafting this set over time, this bug is definitely an important one to address.
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Important Fixes to Tishana’s Tidebinder
One notable change that was in the works before the Shark Typhoon debacle was making sure Tishana’s Tidebinder’s triggered ability worked correctly with permanents in other zones and on the stack. Tidebinder is a very powerful card that sees plenty of Modern play. It can counter activated abilities of Fetchlands, enters-the-battlefield effects from The One Ring, and even remove the abilities of a Planeswalker until it leaves play.
Where problems have arisen on Magic Online in the past is when someone casts a Creature with a cast trigger, such as Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. If your opponent casts Ulamog, you are absolutely able to counter the trigger with Tidebinder. However, because Ulamog isn’t on the battlefield when Tidebinder’s ability resolves, Ulamog should not lose its ability to force you to exile 20 cards from your library.
Similarly, players have ran into issues where countering the ability of Cauldron Familiar returning to play from the graveyard once causes this ability to be removed entirely. Now, these problems should be corrected. Tidebinder is still an elite card no doubt but is a little less game breaking on Magic Online.
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Containment Priest Fixes
Finally, a fix to Containment Priest was mentioned in the patch notes associated with today’s scheduled downtime on Magic Online. Containment Priest specifically affects Creatures that enter the battlefield and weren’t cast. Typically, Containment Priest is used as a way to effectively interact with Creature cards entering the battlefield from your graveyard or library, such as with cards like Reanimate or Collected Company.
However, in some cases, non-Creature cards can enter the battlefield as Creatures. One of the simplest ways for this to happen is by Manifesting the top card of your library. Even if a non-Creature card enters the battlefield as a Creature, it should still be exiled by Containment Priest’s ability. Before the fix, this wasn’t the case, but the card should be functioning correctly at this point.
Magic Online is certainly a nice platform to have access to, but it isn’t without its flaws. Hopefully these bugs continue to be dealt with in a timely manner.
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