Spider-Man preview season is now in full swing, pun intended, and there’s much to be excited about. Some of the cards from Friday’s debut stream look like legitimate contenders, and there’s a juicy Bonus Sheet to enjoy, too. Amid all of this flashy new content, Wizards snuck in something potentially even more impactful. As of Spider-Man’s release, MDFC cards in MTG will be getting a significant rules change.
This was revealed in the mechanics article for the set, released quietly around the time of the debut. It changes the way that MDFC cards relate to the transform mechanic in a major way. While only a few cards are affected right now, this is a change that will impact all future MDFCs as well. Rules wrinkles like this often unlock broken interactions, so it’s well worth paying attention to.
The MTG MDFC Rules Change
“Previously, a modal double-faced card couldn’t transform, but that rule is going away. In fact, any modal double-faced permanent that is instructed to transform now can, although only the new ones in this set come with built-in ways to make that happen.”
Matt Tabak, Wizards of the Coast
In order to fully understand the MDFC rules change, you first need to understand the difference between DFCs and MDFCs in MTG. DFCs, or double-faced cards, were the first implementation of the idea. They were introduced in Innistrad, and were all cards played on one side that later transformed into the other. Sometimes they changed back, in the case of Werewolves, but this was the general idea.
MDFCs, or modal double-faced cards, are very different. While they also have two sides, there’s no real interplay between the two. You pick one as you play/cast it, and that’s the side the card sticks to while it’s in play. Rather than being cards that changed during gameplay, these were cards that gave you a choice in the hand. As the quote above confirms, they were never intended, or able, to transform once in play.
With the advent of Spider-Man, however, this is no longer the case. The set includes a number of mythic rare MDFCs that can transform, via activated abilities on their front sides. This makes them incredibly flexible, as you can either cast the front face and transform it later, or straight-up cast the back face later in the game.
In order to support these cards, Wizards is changing the rules on MDFC cards so that they can all transform. This applies retroactively, too, to the many MDFC cards printed before now. As they point out in the article, only the new Spider-Man ones have built-in ways to trigger said transformations. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways we can take, mind you.
Shiny New Lines?
Pre-Spider-Man, there are 88 MDFCs in Magic: The Gathering. Of these, 44 are permanents on both sides, and could therefore benefit from this rules change. Not all of these work as planned, however, since some flip into planeswalkers. Transforming a Valki or Will/Rowan will kill the other side instantly, for example, since it needs to enter to receive its starting loyalty counters.
This leaves 42 cards that you could theoretically transform after Spider-Man hits. Unfortunately, there are two major problems that prevent this from really being notable. Chief among these is the nature of the cards themselves. A lot of current MDFCs have lands on the back, which makes transforming them fairly low-impact at best. Even those that have real cards on the back don’t tend to have big mana value differences between them, so the benefit for transforming isn’t massive.
The other issue is that triggering these extra-curricular transformations is hard work. In some cases, like Witch Enchanter, Moonmist can do the job just fine. The majority of the time, however, you’ll need to resort to more convoluted tactics. Giving an MDFC creature a transform ability via something like Agatha’s Soul Cauldron is your only real route here, and that introduces a whole host of limitations.
Not only are you only able to transform creatures and not other permanent types, but you need to run creatures with transform abilities to facilitate it at all. Players have attempted combo decks relying on this interaction in the past, but ultimately it’s proven too clunky. Sadly, I think this will still be true for all the MTG cards affected by this new MDFC rules change. Even if there was a market for flipping the Strixhaven deans over, the current tools we have make it too cumbersome to really bother with.
Future Implications
That said, it’s never a good idea to disregard a change like this completely. Now that it’s enshrined in the rules, every MDFC that Wizards prints from now on will be able to transform. This leaves the door open for some potentially busted shenanigans at a later date.
Given how much Wizards seems to be enjoying using DFCs and MDFCs in Universes Beyond sets, this could well happen sooner rather than later. These cards are a great fit for Universes Beyond, since they allow for the exploration of character arcs without branching onto multiple cards. Wizards attempted that approach recently in Edge of Eternities and got a lot of backlash, so the two-side method looks like it’ll be the norm going forward. The more MDFCs we see, the more likely we’ll get some that really benefit from cheating their transform conditions.
More DFCs and MDFCs also means we’ll likely see more activated transform abilities. Right now, one of the biggest things holding back abusing transform is that it’s pricey to do it. The cheapest options are creatures from March of the Machine, such as Blightreaper Thallid, which can transform for three generic and one phyrexian mana. If we see one of these abilities for two or even one mana, the viability of the Cauldron interaction will go way up. At a certain point it may even be worth using with regular DFCs.
While this MDFC rules change doesn’t mean much for MTG right now, that could easily change any time. We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for spicy interactions in each future set.
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