New cards breaking existing forms of play in Magic: the Gathering is not unusual. Leyline of the Guildpact came out of left field during Murders at Karlov Manor’s release weeks and completely took over the Modern format. Some players are worried that the aggressively powerful Slickshot Show-Off will do the same thing in Standard following multiple instances of turn three kills from the bird.
While these honest, or dishonest, power imbalances may have been oversights, new sets also break existing Magic gameplay in more literal ways. With every update comes a series of bugs, and Outlaws of Thunder Junction seems to be full of them.
Magic Online, the older MTG client taken over by Daybreak Games, seems to be having a particularly terrible time with bugs caused by the recent update. There are a lot of things going wrong with the client, and some cards have become unintentionally overtuned as a result. If you plan on testing out what Outlaws of Thunder Junction has to offer on Magic Online, do be aware of the bugs affecting these MTG cards.
Voice of Resurgence Temporarily Busted
Dragon’s Maze was infamously poorly received, but Voice of Resurgence was indeed a powerful card that came out of this set. Able to create a white Elemental creature token that scales to the number of creatures on your board, Voice of Resurgence discourages players from casting spells on your turn. Voice even creates one of these tokens when it dies, allowing it to trade well into removal and other creatures.
Magic Online’s latest update seems to have broken Voice of Resurgence. According to this Twitter post, Voice of Resurgence’s triggered ability now triggers on either player’s turn. This means if an opponent plays any spells at all, you’ll get a token.
Considering that players need to cast spells to win the game, Voice of Resurgence is going to create some tokens. Even if this card is dealt with immediately, the Voice will likely create two tokens bare minimum in its bugged state. For two mana, this is absolutely ludicrous.
In the words of some, Voice of Resurgence is temporarily the best card in the Pioneer format. Obviously, this is not an update to the card. Voice of Resurgence is instead bugged. Do try to avoid playing this card until Daybreak Games fixes it. If you play against this card to your detriment in the meantime, consider reaching out to customer support for compensation.
A few Problematic Cards
While Voice of Resurgence may ruin Pioneer for a little while should this bug be repeatable, Outlaws of Thunder Junction Limited appears to be having the roughest time of the formats on Magic Online. A few problematic cards have been reported on Magic Online’s official Twitter page, and a series of other problems that popped up at launch have already been fixed.
The first problem addressed was an accidental Standard rotation. It appears that the release of Thunder Junction accidentally rotated a few sets out of Standard temporarily on Magic Online. To be clear, rotation is scheduled to happen when Bloomburrow is released in August of this year. This was quickly addressed by Daybreak Games.
Following this, some problems popped up with players trying to Commit Crimes in Limited. It turns out MTGO players may have been a little too good at Crime sprees, as they were able to frame their opponents for their Crimes, essentially having Crimes apply to the wrong player. Jokes aside, this is incredibly detrimental for gameplay as triggering your Crime payoffs became quite difficult. Fortunately, Crimes appear to work as intended for the most part following some emergency fixes.
While the larger issues involving Crimes applying to the wrong player have been fixed, there are still seven known issues that were discovered yesterday that have not been fixed yet. Here are the cards that still need some tinkering before working properly on Magic Online:
- Oko, the Ringleader (+1 does not apply Crimes properly)
- Nimble Brigand
- Slickshot Vault-Buster
- Omenport Vigilante
- Seize the Secrets
- Take for a Ride
- Servant of the Stinger
These known issues should be fixed some time today according to this Twitter post.
Hopefully the End of the Bugs
Despite the release for Outlaws of Thunder Junction going worse than intended for Magic Online, a ton of positive changes to the platform are making this the best place to play online Magic. A new creator program, tons of new Challenge events, starter decks for new players and tons of additional loot for signing on to the platform has made Magic Online more enticing than ever. There are still some issues with Universes Beyond products not getting uploaded to the client, but Daybreak Games has been doing a lot to make this program easier to access for new players.
Magic Arena is not without its problems either. Big Score cards are notoriously difficult to open in packs on the client. They are so difficult to open that buying the expensive Mythic Rare wild cards is actually the cheapest way to collect a playset of the Big Score set.
There is a silver lining, as Big Score cards are easier to open for Drafters, but if you cannot go infinite in that format, or do not enjoy the time consuming process of playing a Draft out, this is hardly a good solution.
Hopefully, all of these issues will be addressed as soon as possible, and players will be able to play and collect Outlaws of Thunder Junction without any unintended hiccups.
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