Magic The Gathering / Gameplay Tropes J To Q

These pages are for tropes that apply to Magic: The Gathering's gameplay and mechanics. Tropes which apply to the flavor and story should be placed here instead: Flavor and Story Tropes. (Some tropes may warrant placement on both, but please be judicious.)

Main Page | Tropes A-I | Tropes J-Q | Tropes R-Z

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J

• Jack of All Trades:
  • A five-color deck will have a less reliable mana base than a one- or two-color deck, but it'll have access to all the different tools each color offers.
  • Obelisk of Alara is an artifact which grants up to five different abilities depending on the color of mana used to power it.
• Jekyll & Hyde: Civilized Scholar is a double-faced card that that transforms into the much most powerful "Homicidal Brute" when its ability causes a creature to be discarded. It was actually named "Jekyll and Hyde" as a placeholder in the early designs for the set.
• Joke Character: Each block typically contains at least one entirely awful card, deliberately put there just for the people who love to try and make it work. (The game is such that they usually can.) Prominent examples include:
  • Norin the Wary, a creature that "runs away" whenever any creature does anything. Since "any creature" includes Norin itself, it looks like a useless joke card at first glance, but it can be extremely powerful when combined with effects that trigger whenever a creature comes into play, especially Confusion in the Ranks. And because of how easy it is to trigger his ability, he's notoriously difficult to deal with permanently.
  • Wood Elemental is one of the worst rated cards in the entire series, which spans some 20+ years and tens of thousands of cards. It requires you to sacrifice untapped forests to power up. Destroying lands sets you back hard. Destroying unused lands sets you back harder. Destroying unused lands to power a 4-mana cost creature (by only +1/+1, and it starts from 0/0) that can be destroyed by any cheap removal card and has no other abilities is beyond idiotic. To make it even less useful, you can't even use this power-up ability after the card is in play; only while it's being summoned.
• Joke Item: The cards from the various Un- explansions (Unglued, Unhinged, Unstable, and Unsanctioned) exist purely for fun. They aren't legal in any serious tournament, include both grossly overpowered and hilariously weak cards, and include mechanics that are far cries from standard gameplay (such as a card requiring you to tear it up, sneaking cards onto the battlefield, cards which don't work if you bend your elbows to play them, etc.)
• Junk Rare: There are a lot of these, usually on purpose. Mark Rosewater, the head designer, wrote a lengthy justification^note not to be confused with a Justified Trope, which is a different thing entirely of the practice titled "Rare, but Well Done", in which he discusses in great detail why this trope exists. invoked

K

• Kansas City Shuffle: A huge part of the metagame. A significant amount of the difference between a good player and a pro is not in their deck construction, but in their ability to play mind games like this. A common example is a player leaving enough untapped lands in order to play a Counterspell they don't actually have in hand.
• Keystone Army: Many creatures which generate tokens qualify. In many cases, such as Master of Waves, the tokens disappear when the generating creature is destroyed.
• Kick Them While They Are Down:
  • Memory Lapse and Lapse of Certainty not only block an incoming spell, but places it on top of that player's library, ensuring that they'll draw it again on the next turn and not something more valuable.
• Kill and Replace: Dimir Doppelganger exiles a target creature and becomes a copy of it.
• Killer Rabbit: There are a number of "cute" creatures who boast power enough to be playable, with some even appearing at the tournament level:
  • Deranged Hermit summons four 1/1 squirrel tokens when it enters play.
  • Squirrel Nest enchants a land so that when you tap it, you put a 1/1 squirrel token into play. Not a bad way to ensure that you always have a chump blocker ready to play.
  • Jackalope Herd is a 4/5 creature for a mere 4 mana, but has the drawback of being returned to your hand if you play a spell. Naturally, clever players have found a way to turn this into an advantage — if it gets hit with removal, just cast whatever utility spell you have handy to snatch it back to your hand. Alternatively, use its "drawback" in conjunction with post-attack spellcasting to give it a sort of jury-rigged "vigilance" ability.
  • Vizzedrix is a bunny/piranha. Though a 6/6 creature, its high mana cost and lack of an ability make it pretty impractical. Still, it can defeat most dragons and angels in a straight up fight.
• A Kind of One: It was common in the game's early days for creatures to have unique creature types based on their names, leading to types like "Aladdin" or "Uncle Istvan". Most of them are now defunct, but a couple of these odd one-of types had the honor of later being upgraded into their own races: notably, Atog and Lhurgoyf.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • A specialty of Red magic. From the classic, simple Fireball to Firestorm to Fireblast, they dish out a ton of direct damage with fire.
  • Unsurprisingly a specialty of the Red-aligned Planeswalker Chandra Nalaar. Her ultimate ability is one of the biggest direct damage explosions seen in the game.
• Kill Sat: A number of White cards have this effect, crossed over Bolt of Divine Retribution and Holy Hand Grenade. Smite the Monstrous is a notable example which specifically targets large creatures.
• Kill the God: The aptly named Deicide, which doesn't specifically kill Gods but is especially good at it.
• Kingmaker Scenario: Frequently crops up in multiplayer games when Bob's position is too weak to win the game, but strong enough to pick a side and swing the game in favor of either Alice or Carl at his whim. Perhaps Bob is a turn away from an inevitable elimination, but can choose to deal some damage to either Alice or Carl with his final bit of mana, essentially giving the other a major advantage after Bob is eliminated.
• Klingon Promotion: A downplayed example with the Monarch mechanic from Conspiracy: Take the Crown. After a player is crowned the monarch through a specific set of card effects, the next player to deal any amount of combat damage to them, be it Scratch Damage or lethal amounts, becomes the new monarch. This doesn't stop the previous monarch from trying to take it back if they're still in the game.
• Knighting: Dub is an enchantment which gives the target creature +2/+2, First Strike, and adds "Knight" to its type.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Any player may concede the game at any time, often due to the belief that one will soon or ultimately lose. This can happen during competitive tournament play, when a player may forfeit so they can play other games during their match in the time allotted. This rule even trumps cards whose ability prevents a player from winning or losing in a given situation (such as Abyssal Persecutor or Angel's Grace).
• Kraken and Leviathan: Two typically large creature types associated with Blue. Kiora is a Blue-aligned Planeswalker whose ultimate ability summons a 9/9 Kraken token.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Several keywords and abilities are present on creatures which make them immune to certain things. To note:
  • Indestructible permanents can't be harmed by damage or 'destroy' effects.
  • Those with Protection from X can't be damaged, enchanted, equipped, blocked, or targeted by whatever 'X' is, leading to the abbreviation DEBT. There are still ways to destroy them, like with global spells.
  • As long as an Unblockable creature's attacking, your creatures can't block it.
  • Hexproof things can't be targeted by any spells or abilities from its controller's opponents. There is also the earlier (now deprecated) shroud, which works similarly but makes it immune to any targeted effects, including its controller's.

L

• Lampshade Hanging:
  • The Magic 2010 reprint of Lightning Bolt (A very popular card that hadn't seen print for a decade) has flavor text about a wizard who is surprised to have called upon such power as he hadn't seen since his youth.
  • "The specimen seems to be broken." (That thing on the table is the head of a Masticore, a famously powerful creature.)
  • Many cards from the parody Unglued and Unhinged sets use this for humor, including Granny's Payback, Duh, Ow, and When Fluffy Bunnies Attack.
  • Giant Spider was crowned the winner of the long-running "Core Set Survivor". As of Magic 2012, it's the one card that's been in every single core set since Alpha ^note It did not make the jump to Magic 2013 though.. Its flavor text for the printing that sealed the deal:
    "The wild is always changing, but it does have a few constants." —Garruk Wildspeaker
• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • Jace, the Mind Sculptor's ultimate ability wipes the target's mind clean by deleting their entire library and temporarily blocking access to their hand.
  • Cards like Surgical Extraction and Memoricide. The latter allows you to name a card and exile all of your opponent's copies of that card—out of their hand, graveyard, and library. The former allows you to do the same with a card already in that player's graveyard.
  • Amnesia discards all the spells in your opponent's hand.
  • Lobotomy lets you choose a card in your opponent's hand other than a basic land. The you search your opponent's graveyard and library for cards with the same name and exile them all.
• Last Stand:
  • The eponymous Last Stand is a spell which requires one of every color of mana to play, but gives you a host of potentially tide-turning effects in line with each of those colors. (For example, you get to draw cards for each Island you control, you gain life for every Plains, etc.)
  • The "Fateful Hour" mechanic grants special bonuses once your life total is below five.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: After 2016, the block model of three sets that had been used for 20 years got scrapped in favour of every new set being stand-alone-
• Law of Chromatic Superiority:
  • While the five colors are presented as equal, and the metagame is always being tweaked with an eye on preserving that balance, certain colors tend to be superior during different time periods. Red was dominant in the game's earliest days, where the term "Red Deck Wins" emerged. Rule changes Nerfed the "40 Lightning Bolt Special", after which Blue took over and began a decades-long run as the most dominant color. Years of intentional de-powering brought Blue back down into line and the "superior" color tends to vary from set to set.
  • When it comes to card rarity, there is a clear hierarchal order. On the bottom is Common, with a black symbol. The next step up is Uncommon, which is silver. Then comes Rare, which is gold. Finally, there is Mythic Rare, which has a reddish/bronzish color.
• Lazy Dragon: Slumbering Dragon enters play unable to attack and can only do so after the opposing player attacks with a creature card they control, symbolizing the dragon only waking up after being attacked first.
• Leaking Can of Evil: Urborg, the place where the original franchise Big Bad Yawgmoth was defeated, is still tainted by the presence of his corpse. Mechanically, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is legendary land that which makes every other land into a Swamp in addition to its original type, allowing you to draw Black mana from it.
• Leeroy Jenkins:
  • There are a few dozen creatures who must "attack this turn if able". Similarly, there are creatures that "cannot block", giving you little incentive to not attack with them every turn.
  • Lust for War forces an opponent's creature to attack every turn if able, as well as deal 3 damage to them when it taps.
  • A Red Burn deck has this concept as its entire strategy. It essentially is filled up with direct damage spells, and the hope is that you draw enough of them to kill the opponent with sheer quantity. The problem with this deck is, no matter what, the game will likely end on Turn 6; either they kill the opponent with their spells or die from the inevitable counter attack, since burn decks seldom have any creatures to actually defend the player.
• Legacy Board Game:
  • The now-abandoned ante mechanic made cards permanently change ownership depending on what happened in the games.
  • Two Mystery Booster test cards feature the "Legacy" keyword as a nod to legacy games. The cards using it have to be permanently modified to be used. One is a land that can make one of any color of mana, but this ability can only be used five times ever. The other is a creature that you write a property on before the game starts.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Due to the Exponential Potential of the tens of thousands of cards in the game, certain combinations of otherwise non-lethal cards can be used to destroy your opponent. To note:
  • "Mill deck" is a catch all term used to describe a deck that negates damage and forces the opponent to discard cards from their deck. This is their entire win strategy. Generally speaking, both of these are viable tactics, but are used to hinder the opponent rather then outright destroy them. Combined, however, these effects quickly deplete your opponents deck to zero (which is an automatic loss) all the while countering, negating, and generally obstructing all sources of damage they attempt to put out. Only certain cards can even hinder this strategy in any form and most decks won't be running those since they are so situational. Made even more terrifying by the fact that being "milled" canonically equates to being Mind Raped into an Empty Shell — what with lovely spells like Glimpse the Unthinkable and Traumatize, and the Eldritch Abomination Nemesis of Reason.
  • Many "instant win" decks revolve around drawing several specific cards and using them to essentially nuke your opponent before the match even begins. Needless to say the key cards tend to be pretty unassuming at a glance. One infamous example is the "Vault Deck" — a combo which uses Protean Hulk (which summons creatures from your deck when it dies) and Flash (a cheap spell which summons creatures that instantly die if you don't pay a reduced cost). You Flash the Hulk, let it die, then use its ability to summon up four Disciple of the Vault, four Shifting Wall, and four Phyrexian Marauder. Since you're paying 0 mana, the Walls and Marauders become eight 0/0 artifact creatures. The 0/0s die immediately due to having 0 toughness which causes each of the Disciples to deal 8 damage to the enemy for 32 damage (starting hp is 20) killing the opponent instantly. With the right back up cards this can be done on "turn 0" (essentially the setup phase before the fight begins) ensuring your enemy can't even respond to it.
  • Destroying your own creatures over and over again isn't directly harmful on its own, but doing so with the right combination of cards can lead to an instant defeat for your opponent. Take, for example, the combination of Blowfly Infestation and Nest of Scarabs. Blowfly Infestation lets you place a new -1/-1 counter on another creature if a creature with said counter died. Nest of Scarabs creates a 1/1 Insect whenever you place a -1/-1 counter. So, by first killing a 1-toughness creature with a -1/-1 counter, you create a 1/1 Insect, and then get to place a new -1/-1 counter on that Insect. This lets you create a new 1/1 Insect and place a -1/-1 counter on it when the previous Insect dies, creating a loop until you choose to target something else. This is an infinite number of enter-the-battlefield and death triggers which can turn into lethal damage through outlets such as Blood Artist and Impact Tremors.
• Lethal Joke Character: Completely awful cards can turn into Game Breakers with later releases:
  • Lion's Eye Diamond was originally designed to be a Black Lotus that was watered down to the point of unplayability. Not only is it playable, but it's now banned or restricted in almost every format.
  • Grindstone started as an oddball Millstone variant that saw little to no serious play. Many years later, Wizards printed Painter's Servant, and a turn-one Vintage or turn-two Legacy combo-kill was born.
  • Dark Depths saw little play when it was originally released. In the Zendikar expansion, Vampire Hexmage was printed and within weeks, Vintage and Legacy players discovered the combo that netted a player an inexpensive, indestructible, flying 20/20 creature that could win the game for them the following turn.
  • Tarmogoyf was printed in Future Sight so that its reminder text could be used as Foreshadowing for the then-unreleased Planeswalker and Tribal card types. However, it turned out to be so effective that it's now the most expensive card printed in the last ten years.
  • Norin the Wary, a creature that's exiled until the end of the turn whenever anyone casts a spell and whenever any creature attacks. Since "any creature" includes Norin itself, it looks like a useless joke card at first glance, but it can be extremely powerful when combined with effects that trigger whenever a creature comes into play, especially Confusion in the Ranks. And because of how easy it is to trigger his ability, he's notoriously difficult to deal with permanently.
  • Illusions of Grandeur was originally an expensive and mostly-useless stalling card; it gives you twenty life when it comes into play, but has a cumulative upkeep and costs you twenty life when it leaves play, so it didn't do much. Then Wizards printed Donate, which let you give the card to your opponent, saddling them with the upkeep and making them lose twenty life (and usually the game) when they fail to pay it.
  • The unplayable Hunted Wumpus is a solid 6/6 creature for four mana, but comes with the obscene drawback of allowing each other player, typically opponent(s) in a standard match or three-way, to play any creature from their hand free of charge. However, the "Emperor" format pits two teams of three against eachother, with the "middle" player on each team being the "Emperor" whose actions are restricted. Under "Gent's Rules", the most restrictive version, the Emperor can only interact directly with (or be interacted with) their teammates. Enter the Hunted Wumpus, which quickly becomes broken to the highest degree. The result was a variant with only one strategy allowed: the two flankers would help the Emperor ramp up his mana, and then he'd play the Wumpus to help them cheat out big monsters to send at the other team. Since you couldn't stop the other team, it was purely a race to see who could do it first.
  • Cards from the silly, silver-bordered sets Unglued, Unhinged, and Unstable aren't tournament-legal, but can be surprisingly effective at the kitchen table.
• Ley Line: Numerous examples. Their shared unique mechanic is that, if you have it in your opening hand, you can play it right away for free.
• Life Drain:
  • Common in Black spells, which typically reduce an opposing creature's toughness or your opponent's life by a certain amount, and then add it to your own life total. Drain Life and Consume Spirit are classic examples.
  • Defiant Bloodlord is an Inversion. Instead of draining life to add it to your own, any life gains you get from any source drain that same amount from the opponent.
• Light 'em Up:
  • A specialty of White, frequently crossing over with Holy Hand Grenade and Bolt of Divine Retribution. The classic Wrath of God is a prominent example.
  • Red gets a few as well, typically with an incendiary flavor, such as Cleansing Beam.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Anything big with haste. Consider Predator Dragon, Hellkite Charger, and Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund for three draconic examples. (Admittedly, the "lightning" part only applies on the first turn you summon it, but the "bruiser" will remain indefinitely.)
  • Alternatively anything big with first strike also qualifies, such as Akroma, Angel of Wrath. (Though she has haste too, so she fits by either metric.)
• Lightning Lash: Livewire Lash is a whip that lets the creature using it to repeatedly damage an opponent.
• Lilliputian Warriors: The plane of Segovia is only 1/100 the size of everywhere else. Mechanically, it provides much weaker versions of typically humongous creatures, such as the Segovian Leviathan and Segovian Angel.
• Limit Break: Zig-zagged with the ultimate ability of Planeswalker cards can only be used after spending a number of turns building up "loyalty" to them. These abilities are very powerful, typically winning the game within a turn of being used. However, as a planeswalker's loyalty also serves as their health, damaging a planeswalker is actually the best way to stop them from using their ultimate ability.
• Limited Move Arsenal:
  • Each color represents a philosophy or ideology and thus specializes in particular things. Life gain tends to be a specialty of White, direct damage of Red, deck manipulation of Blue, etc. However, this leaves monocolor decks predictable and easy to counter. While it is possible to run a deck with all five colors, the result is Cool, but Inefficient, as the colors of mana you have on table will rarely match the color of the spells you have in hand. The balance most players tend to strike is for a two or sometimes three colored deck, easing the limitations while still giving you good odds of getting the color of mana you need when you need it.
  • Technically Averted when it comes to deck construction. There is no upper limit to the number of cards you an have in a deck, save that you must be able to thoroughly shuffle it in a reasonable amount of time. For all practical purposes, however, most decks are constructed to meet the minimum card limit with as many copies of each non-standard land as is allowed for the sake of efficiency.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards:
  • In a metagame sense, this is present in with regards to the color system. For casual players, the five colors are more or less equally good. At the competitive level, for much of the game's history, Blue (the color most associated with magic and "wizards") was typically viewed as the best color while Green (the color most associated with creatures and hence, "warriors") was typically viewed as the worst. By the mid-2010s, following years of deliberate nerfs to Blue and buffs to Green by WotC with an eye toward balance, the colors have started to even out and even inverse. For example, on the 2019 tournament scene, Green was considered one of the better colors in the Standard format, with several very powerful cards (some of them even had to be banned). White has largely taken Green's former place as the weakest color.
  • Played relatively straight in terms of creature cards themselves. "Warrior" creatures typically cost less mana to summon than "wizard" creatures of relative power and toughness. However, the "wizards" often have abilities or effects beyond simply power/toughness which make them more powerful. "Warriors" are much more likely to have limited abilities, or may not have them at all. Compare, for instance, Grizzly Bears, a staple two mana green 2/2 "warrior", and Academy Journeymage, a five mana 3/2 "wizard" with the added ability to return a creature to their controller's hand.
  • In a meta-sense, the players themselves are "Planeswalkers," wizards who have grown so powerful they can travel the multiverse, cast all these spells that do sometimes reality- (and game-) breaking things, and summon "warriors" who are vastly less powerful than they are.
• Literally Shattered Lives: The case for Frozen Solid and Crystallization. Affected creatures are unable to attack or block (implying that they are frozen solid) and any damage destroys them.
• Literal Wild Card:
  • Basic lands only produce one color of mana. However, there are also lands that can produce all five colors, or another subset of them. These come with drawbacks such as entering the battlefield tapped (which means you can't use them the turn you play them) or damaging you when you use them.^note The sole exception is the "original duals" from early in the game's history. Certain creatures and artifacts can also make mana of any color.
  • Several cards have effects that go something like "you may spend this mana as though it were mana of any color", which turns that mana into a wildcard.
• Living on Borrowed Time: The keywords Fading and Vanishing. Creatures with "Fading X" enter player with X number of fade counters. Each turn, its controller removes one fade counter or sacrifices it. Vanishing is similar, with the main difference being only once the last time counter is removed, the card is sacrificed. Uses for this vary from "make a creature cheaper" to actually tying removing counters to its ability.
• Living Weapon:
  • The "Living Weapon" mechanic.
  • Ensouled Scimitar and Dancing Scimitar
• Loads and Loads of Loading:
  • The Magic Online client takes a while to start up if there's an update to download, and still has a substantial loading screen otherwise.
  • If you count shuffling as a loading screen, the paper game has its share as well, especially if using a deck (usually blue) with a lot of "Pull X from your library and then shuffle it" cards.
• Loads and Loads of Rules:
  • The game rules themselves. The Comprehensive Rulebook is available for download from Wizards of the Coast in PDF form. The document is 185 pages long and grows a little with each new set released.
  • Some cards really, really stretch the limit of readability with complicated one-off abilities. Like Tempest Efreet and Ice Cauldron.
  • The infamous Mindslaver card created a whole new section of the rulebook dictating how to handle taking control of your opponent's turn. To date, only it, Sorin Markov, Worst Fears, Emrakul, the Promised End, Word of Command and Cruel Entertainment use said rules.
  • Time Stop has an effect that uses three words: "End the turn." The rest of the card is filled with reminder text on what this actually entails and how it interacts with unresolved actions.
  • Parodied with the Bureaucracy card in Unglued, though it's probably easier to understand than any of the ones above.
  • Wizards generally has complexity increase with rarity (but not power), so casual players playing each other won't be exposed to so many such cards.
• Lobotomy:
  • The aptly named Lobotomy, which allows you to choose a non-land card from your opponent's hand, and then exile every copy of that card they have in the game. Essentially, you make them "forget" that card exists.
  • Pick the Brain is similar, though it only exiles the card in hand itself.
  • Invasive Surgery is also similar, though it only works if there are four or more card types in the graveyard.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Some of the more creative strategies border on or flat-out are this. Most infamously, and maybe apocryphally, the player who multiplied the effect of Chaos Orb by ripping it into pieces and scattering it over his opponents side.
  • Or the player who brought to a tournament a deck based around Wall of Roots, whose ability you can activate only once per turn... and convinced the judges that he could use it infinite times by activating it between turns.
  • The staple White Power Limiter Oblivion Ring exiles a card when it enters play, and returns that card to play when it leaves. As the entry itself states, "If Oblivion Ring leaves the battlefield before its first ability has resolved, its second ability will trigger and do nothing. Then its first ability will resolve and exile the targeted nonland permanent forever." Therefore, if you could contrive to make your O Ring leave the battlefield before that first ability had resolved — say, by using a second O Ring on it — your opponent's critical card was Lost Forever. This was problematic enough that they designed an Obvious Rule Patch version called Banishing Light, and used that card's wording for most subsequent similar cards.
  • Lich's Mirror causes you to, on death, shuffle everything you own into your library and start over from scratch at 20 life with a fresh hand. If you control someone else's Mirror, though, it's not a permanent you own and so you actually keep the Mirror when you "start over". It's not foolproof, though: while you do become unkillable, there's nothing stopping your opponent from milling you out. That, and the fact that you start over with nothing while your opponent keeps their board makes it harder to stage a comeback.
• Lost in Translation:
  • The Japanese version of Yawgmoth's Agenda was mistakenly translated as Yawgmoth's Day Planner.
  • The Spanish version of M10's Jackal Familiar mistranslated "Jackal Familiar can't attack or block alone" as "Jackal Familiar can't attack or block." That would make the card significantly worse, wouldn't it?
  • The Spanish version of the M11 card Disentomb mistranslated "Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand" as "Return target creature card from your graveyard to play", making the card significantly more powerful.
  • The Portuguese version of Stoic Rebuttal does... well, nothing. Stoic Rebuttal is a simple counterspell that costs 1 less mana to cast if you have 3 or more Artifacts. Too bad when they translated it, they forgot the whole "counter a spell" part. Ooops.
  • Luckily, cards use their English oracle text, no matter what is printed on the actual card.
• Lovecraftian Superpower:
  • Unstable Mutation gives a massive initial +3/+3 boost to a creature, but then adds -1/-1 counters each turn after until it dies. The card art really drives the point of turning into a grotesque, tentacled monster home.
  • Fallen Angel can be pumped up by sacrificing other creatures.
  • Eldrazi Conscription turns the target creature into a full blown Eldritch Abomination with +10/+10, Trample, and Annihilator.
  • Brisela, Voice of Nightmares is the Body Horror forced merger of two angels into a powerful Eldritch monstrosity.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me:
  • Shield of Kaldra is the big daddy, an indestructible shield that makes the bearer indestructible as well. Lesser shields and shield-wielders include but are not limited to Shield of the Righteous, Accorder's Shield, Burrenton Shield-Bearers, Haazda Shield Mate, and Stalwart Shield-Bearers.
  • Inverted with Pariah's Shield, which magically draws all attacks to its bearer.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
  • Krark's Thumb and Goblin Bookie allow you to re-flip a coin if you lose the flip.
  • Rearranging the top few cards of your library is a staple ability that appears most commonly on blue cards (like Sage Owl). Related abilities include Scry, Fateseal, and Clash.
  • Sensei's Divining Top has one that's so good (and slowed down games so much with constant rearranging and shuffling), it was banned in multiple formats.
  • Unstable includes a slew of cards that involve die rolls. Naturally, there are several cards that let you reroll dice and pick the result you want, and others that add to the roll result, which can end in rolls going higher than 6.
  • The entire concept of "cantrips" is a form of deck thinning. These are cards that usually cost a small amount of mana (usually just 1 or 2), have a small effect, and end with "Draw a Card". Unlike other "Draw" cards which usually only occur in Blue, Cantrips can come in any color (and in a few cases, on artifacts). The idea is you can fire so many of them off and use their first ability to hamper the opponent a bit while you try and speed through your own deck for that last piece of the combo.

M

• Machete Mayhem: Trusty Machete, a simple artifact which gives a +2/+1 boost.
• Mad Artist: Blood Artist, whose ability gives you one life and takes one life away from your opponent each time a creature dies. The implication is that it is painting in that creature's blood.
• Made of Indestructium: Anything made of Darksteel metal has Indestructible as an ability. However, Darksteel items can still be exiled, rendered incapable of doing anything, sacrificed, and destroyed via effects like "Wither".
• Magic A Is Magic A:
  • The game bases everything around its Golden Rule: when a card contradicts the rules, the card takes precedence. This makes sense, since the players are Planeswalkers, beings explicitly stated to be able to violate a particular plane's magical laws by nature. So while the basic rules of the game and its universe are in a constant flux, the reasoning behind it is consistent.
  • They also attempt to keep each color with fairly consistent mechanical themes, even if the execution varies and they occasionally permit a degree of "bleeding" (most notable in New Phyrexia, which had cards with Black mechanics in all colors, and the Time Spiral block, which utilized no fewer than 3 separate versions of the color pie, none of which quite matched up with the then-current one). White, for example, has the most answers, but most of those answers can themselves be answered (such as Oblivion Ring, which can remove any permanent from the game — until it's destroyed, returning the permanent), and it doesn't have the card draw to take advantage of it. Blue gets to mess with minds by hijacking creatures, countering spells and going after the mage's long-term memory, and has the majority of cloning effects, but it rarely gets to interfere with hands and doesn't get many answers to permanents beyond bouncing them to counter them later. Black is good at killing creatures and lands, draining life from creatures and players, looking through its deck for something, very occasional planeswalker removal and ripping cards out of hands, but it has trouble with artifacts and enchantments. Red is good at swift attacks, fast but temporary mana, smashing artifacts and lands and dealing direct damage with fire and lightning, but it only really gets good flying creatures when they're dragons, can't do anything to enchantments, has trouble with large creatures and the majority of its other effects wear off after a turn — it gets temporary cloning and card draw instead of blue's more standard ones, for example. Green excels in mana acceleration, creature enhancement, artifact/enchantment destruction, flyer kill and big stompy monsters, but it tends to get little in the way of flying itself and can only kill creatures by having its own creatures kick the snot out of them. They try and keep these effects relatively consistent — when you get an extra-lands ramp card it may be Rampant Growth (one tapped land to the field, two mana), Cultivate (one tapped land to the field and one to the hand, three mana), Harrow (instant speed, two untapped lands to the field, three mana and sacrificing another land), Explosive Vegetation (two tapped lands to the field, four mana), or Journey of Discovery (two lands from the deck to your hand or from your hand to the field, three mana, six if you want to do both), but it's pretty much a guarantee that the card will be green.
• Magic Carpet: Flying Carpet is an artifact which temporarily grants Flying.
• Magic Is Mental: How the game mechanics translate to the actual idea of a "wizard duel". The library and your hand full of spells represent your mind and knowledge, and cards which affect them (discarding, drawing, searching, etc.) are implied to be affecting your mind directly. The graveyard is your memory, and spells which affect it (bringing things back from it, exiling, etc.) are implied to be affecting your memory.
• Magic Staff: Numerous artifact examples. To note some of the more prominent:
  • Staff of Domination has no less than five abilities, depending on how much mana you choose to put into it.
  • The Staff of the ____ Magus are a series of six artifacts, five of which restore Life every time you play a land or cast a spell of the associated color. The sixth, Staff of the Letter Magus, is from the non-tournament-legal Unhinged set and restores life depending on the number of certain letters in the spells that are played.
• Magikarp Power:
  • The Kamigawa block had a number of "flip cards" which are fairly weak, relatively useless creatures when first summoned, but can be "flipped" (rotated 180 degrees) when certain conditions are met, generally becoming a powerful legendary creature. The conditions required to flip these cards are sometimes quite easy. Student of Elements, for example, becomes Tobita, Master of Winds as soon as it gains flying, a task fairly easily accomplished with blue spells. Others are considerably more difficult to flip, but the results are worth it. For instance, Bushi Tenderfoot must first contribute to the death of another creature to flip, but as a puny 1/1 it isn't likely to kill much of anything without help, and will surely die if sent into combat without some sort of outside boost or protection. However, if you do manage this feat, that puny Tenderfoot becomes the immensely powerful Kenzo the Hardhearted, who is capable of dishing out a whopping 10 damage to an enemy creature in combat.^note To put it into perspective: a normal non-magical human with a sword hits for 1. A grizzly bear hits for 2. A hill giant hits for 3. Most dragons hit for 5 and up. So a creature dealing 10 damage by itself is like two dragons mauling something at once.
  • The Eldrazi set has brought along creatures that gain 'Level Counters' when ever you pay to do so. Their stats increase takes a while and it takes up resources that could be put toward other uses instead, but some of them get REALLY good powers at max level. For example, take Lord of Shatterskull Pass. Leveling it to max requires spending mana on it for 6 turns, and the levels between level 1 (which grants +3/+3) and level 6 don't add anything.
  • The Innistrad set introduces double-faced cards and the transform mechanic. Most of them are werewolves but one in particular, Ludevic's Test Subject, is an egg. It has zero attack power, and is in fact completely unable to attack. However, once you use its ability to give it five "hatch" counters, it becomes Ludevic's Abomination, a 13/13 creature with trample, which is much better for attacking.
  • The Theros block adds the Heroic mechanic. Heroic creatures gain a special effect when you target them with a spell, usually placing +1/+1 counters on them. It is quite easy to turn a 1/2 Favored Hoplite into a Juggernaut that simply doesn't take damage and can bulldoze through enemy defenses.
  • The Serra Ascendant starts out as a 1/1 with lifelink. If you manage to get your life total >= 30 (you start with 20) and keep it that high, the Serra Ascendant becomes a 6/6 creature with flying and lifelink. Naturally, Serra Ascendant is a solid addition to any deck that specializes in life gain.
  • Jace's Phantasm is normally a puny 1/1 flyer. It becomes a respectable 5/5 flyer (making it as powerful as the average dragon) if an opponent has ten or more cards in his or her graveyard. Conveniently, a lot of blue cards (especially those related to Jace Beleren like the Phantasm) force players to discard cards.
  • Tuktuk the Explorer starts out as a measly 1/1 with haste that costs three mana to summon. If he dies, he is replaced by a legendary 5/5 goblin golem artifact creature called "Tuktuk the Returned". Since the opponent probably isn't going to be in any hurry to kill Tuktuk for you, you'll need to find a way to hasten his demise yourself.
  • Primordial Hydra starts out relatively weak, with power and toughness equal to the X value when summoning it, which could conceivably be as low as 1. Every turn, though, it doubles its power and toughness, which, through the power of exponents, can make it unstoppable in, at most, 5 turns, and even less if extra mana is used when summoning it.
  • In a metagame sense, this applies to numerous decks. Multi-color decks have extremely slow early games since most of the lands they rely on for their mana base enter tapped. Then, when they have those lands out, they start casting multi-colored spells, which are usually more powerful than equivalently costed monocolor spells as a balancing effect for their requiring multiple colors of mana. Delve decks, which have underwhelming early games since delve cards are very expensive to hardcast, but once they've spent the early game filling their graveyard, they can start exiling those cards to pay the colorless part of delve spells' costs, letting them cast multiple otherwise expensive spells in a turn.
• Magitek: Many artifacts qualify, especially artifact creatures. Colossi, Golems, Clockwork creatures, and many Phyrexian creatures are common examples. They are essentially inanimate objects given life through magic. They typically have higher mana costs than non-artifact creatures of relative power, but that is offset by them very rarely requiring specific types of mana, so they are playable in any deck.
• Magnetic Hero:
  • Captain Sisay is a four mana 2/2 whose ability allows you to search your deck for another legendary creature and add them to your hand. An interesting mechanic, but nothing particularly special, especially for her mana cost, in the standard game. However, she makes for particularly formidable commander in the Commander format. Load up your deck with Green and White legendary creatures, use her ability, and because you get to select the specific card you want, it ensures you always have something suitable to play. Green and White also provide access to several counter-negating effects, helping you safely utilize your legendary creatures without worrying about being countered.
  • In a similar vein, Kaalia of the Vast allows you to put an Angel, Demon, or Dragon creature card from your hand onto the battlefield tapped and attacking. Along with some form of protection for her, her ability is a great way to gimmick strong creatures onto the battlefield without paying their mana costs. Additionally, her three colors (White, Black, Red) offer great balance and variety.
• Make a Wish: There are several "Wish" cards which bring one or more cards "you own from outside the game" into your hand. In a casual game, a card you choose from outside the game comes from your personal collection. In a tournament event, a card you choose from outside the game must come from your sideboard.
• Make Them Rot: There are spells like Putrefy, Decompose, Krovikan Rot, Abrupt Decay, Brainspoil and Rapid Decay, among others.
• Making a Splash:
  • Blue, being the color associated with water, has numerous spells in this vein. Hydroblast is a classic example.
  • Jokulhaups, one of the earliest "clear the field" cards in the game, implies wiping everything away in a flood. Unusually, it requires Mountains, the source of Red mana. The reason? Jokulhlaups are the result of melting glaciers, which would require a lot of Red mana.
• Mammoths Mean Ice Age: Naturally, the Ice Age block includes Woolly Mammoths, big creatures who gain Trample as long as you control a snow-covered land.
• Mana: The entire game runs on it. There are five distinct types ("colors") generated from basic lands, each color can only fuel certain kinds of spells, and many require more than one type.
• Mana Burn:
  • It's possible to destroy your opponent's lands, denying them their mana.
  • The "Mana burn" mechanic that left the game with the Magic 2010 rules changes is, ironically, not an example.
  • Obsidian Fireheart puts a twist on this trope by allowing the controller of Obsidian Fireheart to put "burn counters" on a target land. That counter has a built in ability stating that that land deals one damage to its controller at the beginning of their upkeep, even if Obsidian Fireheart is no longer in play.
• Mana Drain: Mana Drain, Drain Power, and Mana Short, among others.
• Man-Eating Plant: Numerous examples, especially in Green. To note:
  • Carnivorous Plant is a classic. Being a 4/5, it can dine on not only humans with ease, but many larger creatures as well.
  • Phytohydras are a cross between this and Hydra Problem. It starts off as a 1/1, but gains counters every time it would normally be dealt damage.
  • Bramblesnaps are humanoid versions which can be beefed up by tapping other creatures.
• Manipulating the Opponent's Deck:
  • One of the general Blue specializations is deck destruction, through use of cards depicting Mind Rape actions such as Thought Scour and Traumatize. Sometimes it's combined with Black's ability to control the board and the opponent's hand to make for a devious Blue-Black mill strategy — Glimpse the Unthinkable, for instance, which forces the opponent to discard ten of their cards.
  • Black cards often have the ability to manipulate and remove cards from the opposing player's hand, instead of their deck. Thoughtseize, for instance, lets you pick a non-land card from your opponent's hand to be discarded, although it damages you slightly when you use it. Other cards give similar abilities, but restrict what you can remove in this manner (Duress only allows non-creature and non-land cards, while Despise and Harsh Scrutiny only allow the removal of creatures).
  • Another specialty of Black is its knack for stealing cards right out of the opponent's Deck, usually placing them in exile face-down so your opponent won't immediately know what they lost and allowing you to use mana of any color to cast that card. See cards like Gonti, for instance.
  • The rarely-seen fateseal mechanic lets you look at the top few cards of an opponent's deck and decide if you want any of them placed on the bottom, thereby affecting their next draw(s).
  • Lantern of Insight forces all players to play with the top card of their deck revealed. It also has an ability to force all players to shuffle. There exists a "Lantern Control" deck focused on knowing and manipulating the opponent's next draws.
  • The joke card Letter Bomb sets a trap in target player's deck that, when drawn, deals 19½ damage.
  • Winds of Change forces all players to reshuffle their hands into their decks and draw an equal amount of new cards.
  • Cursed Rack reduces the opponent's maximum hand size from seven cards to four, usually forcing them to discard cards until they only have four remaining.
• Man of Kryptonite: Happens on the metagame level when it comes to deck builds. Sometimes, you'll run into an opponent whose deck is perfectly built to defeat yours, often leading to a Curb-Stomp Battle. Creature-based decks against many cards that wipe the entire board, combo decks against a seemingly endless array of counterspells, extreme life gain against an opponent that plans to win without ever dealing damage to you, etc. During tournaments, the existence of sideboards in most formats means you can lessen or heighten the impact of this (depending on whether you're on the advantaged side of the problem, of course), but it's still something that is just going to crop up from time to time.
• Marathon Boss: In the very first Magic: The Gathering PC Licensed Game, Big Bad Arzakon has a whopping 400 life when you duel him. (Standard games start with each player having 20 life.) However, he uses a five-color deck with almost no mana fixing, so it's entirely possible that, even at 400 life, you're staring at just land on the other side of the table for most of the battle.
• Mass Card Removal: There have been many limited boardwipers, with targets ranging from all creatures, all nonland permanents, then there's the ones that aim for absolutely everything, and effects ranging from destruction, bouncing, sacrificing, or even exiling:
  • Tries to clear the board:
    • Worldfire: Resets the board to empty, except the Exile zone.
    • Balance forces all players to discard cards and sacrifice creatures and lands until they control the same number as the player with the least amount of cards in hand/creatures/lands, which can be 0. But it has no effect on artifacts or enchantments.
    • Oblivion Stone: Destroy everything on the board except specially marked things on the board, marks that only it can generate, at a 4 mana cost and disabling the card for the turn or until reenabled, whichever happens first.
  • "Destroy all artifacts, creatures, and lands":
    • Jokulhaups does just that.
    • "Obliterate" can't be countered.
  • Nevinyrral's Disk: Destroy all artifacts, creatures, and enchantments.
  • Fracturing Gust removes all artifacts and enchantments.
  • Creature-killers:
    • Wrath of God / Damnation, an orb of white / black that's floating above a few or many people being Reduced to Dust, respectively, and costing 2 of any mana and two mana of the aforementioned colors. They destroys all creatures and prevents them from regenerating.
    • Flamebreak: Flamebreak deals 3 damage to each creature without flying and each player.
    • Pyroclasm deals 2 damage to each creature.
    • Starstorm:
      Starstorm deals X damage to each creature.
  • Actifact-focused:
    • Shatterstorm destroys everyone's Artifacts.
    • Furnace Dragon will exile every artifact if summoned from the hand.
  • Tranquility destroys everyone's Enchantments
  • Only affects lands:
    • Armageddon: Destroy everyone's lands
    • Ajani Vengeant: Destroy all of someone's lands.
  • Aether Flash only removes all Token Creatures and Counters from permanents.
  • Mana Value Seeking wipers:
    • Pernicious Deed: Sacrifice Pernicious Deed: Destroy each artifact, creature, and enchantment with mana value X or less.
    • Engineered Explosives can only affect cards of typically 5 or less mana value, unless an effect to add more charge counters to it applies, since "This enters the battlefield with a charge counter on it for each color of mana spent to cast it." and there's only 5 colors.
      Sacrifice Engineered Explosives: Destroy each nonland permanent with mana value equal to the number of charge counters on Engineered Explosives.
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game: Magic: The Gathering Online is a straight port of the card game where the "Massive Multiplayer Online" part is the lobby where you connect with other players.
• Mass Teleportation: A specialty of the Blue (sometimes Blue/White) Planeswalker Teferi. In story, he has teleported entire continents in this way. Mechanically, his cards tend to phase or exile target creatures, with the implication being that that he is teleporting them away (temporarily for the former and permanently in the latter).
• Master of All:
  • The closest to the spirit of the trope is Progenitus, which at 10/10 is among the largest naturally-occurring creatures and has Protection from Everything. (Protection effects are usually limited to a single color or creature type.) Fittingly, it costs two of every mana type to play, requiring the player to be something of a Master of All just to get it on the field.
  • Several of the Big Bad-level bosses in the video game versions play decks of all five colors. They typically have additional advantages that get them around the mana inefficiencies that normally make those decks Awesome, but Impractical, such as Arzakon from the Micropose game starting the battle with a whopping 400 life.
• Master of Disguise:
  • Sakashima the Imposter enters play as a copy of any other card on the battlefield. It would take quite the master to disguise as a massive dragon or leviathan...
  • The Ninjutsu mechanic allows attacking creatures to be replaced by a creature with Ninjutsu mid-attack. A possible explanation is that they're retroactively assumed to have been perfectly disguised as the creature they replace.
• Master of Illusion: A specialty of Blue magic. Illusory creatures are typically cheaper to summon than comparible creatures, but the illusion is shattered if the creature is targeted by some effect. Lord of the Unreal gives a significant boost to Illusion creatures and makes them hexproof, so they're harder to shatter.
• Mathematician's Answer: In order to avoid giving accidental advice or information, Judges are required to answer rules questions this way during tournaments, which can sometimes result in dangerously misleading responses if you word your question carelessly. The classic example is asking if you can target an indestructible creature with a spell intended to destroy it. The judge will say that yes, you can do so (since, taken literally, it is possible to take that action if you really want to do so), and will not be allowed to tell you that the spell will be wasted and won't accomplish anything.
• Maximum HP Reduction: Creatures with the Wither or Infect abilities deal damage to other creatures in the from of -1/-1 counters. Unlike regular damage, which creatures heal from at the end of each turn, -1/-1 counters represent a permanent reduction in both power and toughness (having toughness reduced to 0 will kill a creature) for as long as the creature is in play.
• Meatgrinder Surgery: Goblin Chirurgeon can sacrifice a Goblin in order to regenerate another creature, implying that he uses parts from the sacrificed Goblin to save the life of the other creature. The card art really drives it home.
• Mechanical Horse: Numerous examples, going back to the classic Bronze Horse.
• Metamorphosis: Delver of Secrets/Insectile Aberration. Starts as a human scientist, morphs into an insectile aberration. According to Word of God, it was inspired by The Fly (1986).
• Mega Maelstrom: Vortex Elemental, which takes the form of a giant Maelstrom. Its abilities combine as form of removal, forcing an opposing creature to block it and then "swallowing" it by removing them both from the battlefield.
• Mêlée à Trois: The Multiplayer Chaos format has three or more players battle at the same time, last man standing, winner take all, with no predetermined alliances.
• Memory Gambit: Induced Amnesia, an enchantment which exiles all cards the target player's hand, allows them to draw an equal number of new cards, then returns them when Induced Amensia leaves the battlefield. The "gambit" portion comes into play in that you can choose to use it on yourself, if for example, none of the cards in your hand help you and you want to draw an entirely new hand.
• Mentor Archetype: Ajani, Mentor of Heroes. Mechanically, one of his abilities beefs up other creatures under your control.
• Metagame: An incredibly popular and important part of the game. Just walking in with a good deck won't be enough to win; your deck needs to be able to handle the decks you expect other players to have. Decks that dominate one tournament can get curbstomped in the next due to metagame changes and adaptations.
• Meta Mecha: The "Vehicle" artifact type. Each has power and toughness, but they aren't "creatures" unless crewed. It is possible to have one "crewed" vehicle crew a different vehicle. For example, you place a creature into Sky Skiff, and then use the Sky Skiff to crew the Skysovereign.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: There are a number of spells of this sort, which depict Flaming Meteors either alone or in swarms and are always Red (the color of brute force, natural disasters and the fury of raw, untamed elements). In practice, they tend to either deal damage to a wide number of creatures at once, representing a hail of meteors scouring the battlefield (Comet Storm, Meteor Blast, Meteor Shower, Meteor Swarm), deal a tremendous amount of damage to a single creature (Shivan Meteor), deal damage in exchange for destroying some of your own cards (Meteor Storm), or destroy one or multiple land cards (Molten Rain, Stone Rain). In the context of the game, due to the player taking the role of a planeswalker summoning the creatures or casting the spells represented by the cards, all of these are intended to represent active spells cast against one's foes.
• Mexican Standoff:
  • Very common in duels, where either play making a move would give the other an opportunity to win. These are typically broken by a lucky draw for the exact card needed to win. Anything else just continues the stalemate.
  • Invoked by the card Standstill. If a player casts a spell, all of his or her opponents draw three cards. The effect is all the more devastating, and the trope most invoked, the more players there are in the game. It often literally ends up in a standoff, with all players waiting to see who will cast the first spell.
• Microtransactions: Later Duels games let you pay money for things like full deck unlocks or turning cards into foil versions. The free-to-play Magic Duels lets you buy in-game currency with real money.
• Mind-Control Device: Helm of Possession and Vedalken Shackles for creatures, and Mindslaver for players.
• Mind Probe: Several cards exist with this idea. Each tends to involve looking at and/or reordering a deck, since the deck represents the player's "memory" of spells. Psychogenic Probe is a prominent example.
• Mind Rape: Given that the card game represents a duel between two wizards, and their decks/hands represent their spells in memory, anything which forces them to discard against their will is essentially mind raping them. Blue and Black easily have the most of these at their disposal, such as Mind Sculpt and Mind Shatter. Similarly, if a player cannot draw a card because his/her library (Magic-speak for a player's deck while in a game) is empty, he/she immediately loses, described in-universe as that planeswalker going insane and being unable to continue fighting. The classic Millstone, which put cards directly from your opponent's library into their graveyard, is essentially magically-aided brain torture through loud and repetitive noises.
• Mini Mook:
  • The Segovian Leviathan and Segovian Angel are a 3/3 and 1/1, respectively. Typical Leviathans and Angels are at least 3-4 times stronger than that. Why is this? Well, Segovia is a plane where everything is tiny, about 1/100 scale of the rest of the multiverse. The Segovian Leviathan is only the size of an elephant while the Segovian Angel is about the size of a gnat.
  • Amrou Kithkin is so explicitly tiny that it can't be blocked by anything with more than 2 power.
• The Minion Master:
  • Weenie decks turn you into one of these. A Fragile Speedster in deck form, they typically focus around getting as many low mana cost creatures into play as fast as you can in order to Zerg Rush your opponent. Particularly effective against "Control" decks, as their reliance on blocking and removal spells can't keep up with the sheer amount of creatures you're throwing at them. Weak against Aggro decks, however, as their fewer-but-stronger creatures will annihilate your weenies (or trample over them) with ease.
  • Token decks are another form of this. Tokens are creatures not represented by an actual card in your deck, but are generated by numerous cards (including other creatures). There are also numerous spells and creature abilities which further strengthen tokens as well. The various Black-White Token decks are some of the most famous.
• Mirror Boss: Riku of Two Reflections is a boss in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015 who uses your exact deck against you. 15 is also notably the first in the series which allows you to build your own deck instead of choosing from pre-built ones.
• Mirror Match: Extremely common in high-level play in the Metagame. Most sets end up with just a small number of dominant decks in use at tournaments, and it is highly likely that two players using these decks will face off. Most players in these circumstances keep "silver bullet" cards strong against their own deck in their side-deck for just such matchups.
• Misère Game: Normally, your deck running completely out of cards is a losing condition known as Milling Out; as soon as you try to draw from the empty deck, you lose. If this happens while you have Laboratory Maniac out, however, you instantly win instead. This has led to entire decks whose strategy is to burn down as fast as possible by deliberately savaging your deck with draws and normally-costly cards (and if you can trick the enemy into attacking it with effects all the better), then slapping down Laboratory Maniac when it's too late to stop.
• Missing Secret: In the very first set, Alpha, the cards Volcanic Island and Circle of Protection: Black weren't printed due to an error, which meant there was a Circle of Protection for each color but black and a dual land for each two-color combination but blue/red. This was fixed in the next set, Beta.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: In Unstable, Crossbreed Labs features the host and augment mechanic, where you can splice an augment onto a host, creating a bizarre combination of both cards' abilities and creature types. From the same set (but not the same faction), Grusilda, Monster Masher combines any two creatures into one, resulting in even more complex results.
• Monster Whale: Crop up as large Blue creatures, though less powerful than Leviathans. Great Whale is a classic example which can untap lands as it enters play, while Colossal Whale can exile creatures until it leaves play (implying that it swallows them, biblical style).
• Mook Commander: Two major types:
  • There is a general type of creature informally referred to by both creators and players as a "Lord". Typically, the name applies to a creature that grants a bonus to the power and toughness (attack and defense) of all creatures of its own race or class (but not to itself), as well as granting an additional ability that varies from Lord to Lord. For instance, Knight Exemplar grants a P/T boost to all other Knights, and also makes them indestructible. Variations exist; for instance, Lord of the Unreal is a human, but functions as an Illusion Lord, as he gives a P/T boost to Illusions and also makes them immune to their opponents' spells and abilities.
  • The Slivers could be considered an entire species of Lords/Mook Commanders that recursively enhance each other; with incredibly rare exceptions, every Sliver grants bonuses to all other Slivers.
• Mook Maker: A staple effect where one card produces "tokens" of a given creature. Sometimes it's every turn, sometimes it depends on the mana spent, sometimes it depends on other cards entering play, etc. Green has the lion's share but it's certainly not exclusive. Examples include but are definitely not limited to: Breeding Pit, Kjeldoran Outpost, Thallid, The Hive, Riptide Replicator, Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII, Myr Turbine, and many, many more.
• Mooks: Creature tokens, which are creatures who aren't even worth having their own card. By default, creature tokens' names are also their creature type, and if they leave play they simply cease to exist. They rarely have abilities, and those they do have are typically simple keyword abilities like "Flying". They are also typically created in large numbers, either via a one shot deal creating two or more, or by a repeatable effect squeezing out one each turn. Creature tokens didn't have any sort of official representation until Magic Online needed some standardized way to represent them, and then they weren't printed in paper for years afterward. Each color also has their own standard token Mooks — Green has Saprolings (formerly squirrels), Black has Zombies, Red has Goblins, White has Soldiers, and Blue has... whatever is assigned as Blue creatures in the given setting.
• Mooks Ate My Equipment:
  • Acid Web Spider can destroy Artifacts as they enter the field.
  • Manic Vandal can destroy Artifacts as it enters the battlefield.
• Moral Guardians:
  • A major reason the "ante" rule was dropped in the game's early days, in addition to it simply not being very popular (players didn't want to risk losing their cards), was because it could be construed as a form of gambling by moral guardians.
  • As part of the game's Early-Installment Weirdness, it included many references to the real world, classical mythology, and/or religion, including flat out bible quotes. This faded partly because of a devotion to their own world-building and intellectual property, but also to placate Moral Guardians who didn't like religious references.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: The minds behind Magic R&D have actually created three psychographic profiles — "Johnny/Jenny", "Timmy/Tammy", and "Spike" — representing three different demographics for the game. See Timmy, Johnny and Spike Revisited. Simply put: Timmies/Tammies love to play cool cards, Johnnies/Jennies love to design cool decks, and Spikes love to win. Since then, the flavor gurus created two more profiles — "Vorthos", who likes the flavor aspect of a card, and "Mel/Melvin/Melanie", who likes the mechanical aspect of a card.
• Mummy: Pop up as typically Black creatures, and were a major part of the Egyptian-themed Amonkhet block. They often possess abilities which allow them to deal damage when they die, such as Festering Mummy which places a -1/-1 counter when it dies or Tattered Mummy which deals 2 damage to each opponent.
• Mundane Utility: Inverted in the case of several equipment cards from Innistrad block, which are everyday tools and farming implements used by the otherwise helpless peasantry to defend themselves from the setting's zombies, werewolves, and vampires. As an added bonus, these equipment cards become stronger when wielded by humans.
• Mutagenic Goo: Experiment Kraj is a massive "Ooze Mutant" creature who can hand out +1/+1 counters and then use the abilities of any creature with one of those counters. It is heavily favored for its utility in countless combos.
• My Defense Need Not Protect Me Forever: It's common for slower strategies to establish defenses in the early game just to buy time to reach the later stages.
• My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: Common in the game with heaping doses of Loophole Abuse, even during tournament matches where official judges are present. Being able to convince the judge that a move is legal (or an opponent's move is illegal) has helped tournament winners over the years. Once a situation like this occurs, Wizards quickly issues official "Rulings" governing that situation headed forward.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Time Spiral set consisted entirely of cards that referenced other cards printed earlier. For an comprehensive list to (most of?) the call-backs check: Here, here and here.
  • The Class enchantments from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms all incorporate the class logos from the Player's Handbook◊ in their artwork, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously.

N

• Named Weapons: Many, typically as artifact equipment cards. To note some of the more notable:
  • Blackblade Reforged was the sword of Dakkon Blackblade, which adds +1/+1 to the equipping creature for each land under its owner's control.
  • Worldslayer, as the name may imply, destroys everything but itself when the equipped creature attacks.
  • Unscythe, Killer of Kings gives the equipped creature +3/+3, First Strike, and turns anything it kills into zombies.
  • Godsend gives the equipped creature +3/+3 and can exile creatures which attempt to block its wielder, along with any copies of that creature your opponent has.
• Nature Hero: Extremely common among Green-aligned heroes and the nicer Green planeswalkers. Summoning token creatures, beefing up creatures, and gaining power/toughness/extra abilities depending on the number of Forests you control are some of the ways this power manifests. Garruk Wildspeaker is a classic planeswalker example.
• Necessary Drawback: An explicit design rule per Mark Rosewater. A card can have only two of the following: a low mana cost, high power, or no drawback. Cards which get around the drawback tend to be very unbalanced and quickly banned/Nerfed.
• Neck Snap: Is a card. It's a rather overpriced removal spell which can only be used on attacking/blocking creatures.
• Necromancer: An extremely common Black creature type, which typically possess abilities that allow them to bring creatures back to the graveyard through various means. Doomed Necromancer is a prominent example which sacrifices itself in order to bring another, typically much more powerful, creature back from the graveyard.
• Negated Moment of Awesome:
  • Common in Blue spells which neuter your opponent's attempts to cast anything. Counterspell is a class which has been around since the very beginning, with Cancel and Mana Leak as its similar but weaker siblings. Unable to negate your opponent's massively damaging spell? Redirect it back at them instead. Your opponent manages to get a big, powerful creature onto the field? Mind Control it and use it yourself. Blue exists to negate epic moments.
  • Black has a few cards in his vein as well, which typically immediately destroy a target creature. Terror, Dark Banishing, and Doom Blade are classic examples.
  • White has "removal" spells in this vein as well. Instead of just blocking you from casting a spell like Blue or killing your creatures like Black, White's spells tend to erase the spell/creature from existence entirely via exile such as Path to Exile. They can also completely neuter a creature with something like Pacifism or the classic Swords to Plowshares. Not good enough? White can destroy every creature on the battlefield with something like Wrath of God.
• Nerf: Cards which prove to be too overpowered are banned or limited. In the past, Wizards would also use errata to curb the power of problematic cards, until they decided to exclusively use this to clarify what a card is supposed to do. A list of various nerfs can be found on the trope page.
• Nested Story: Shahrazad is a card from the Arabian Nights expansion which forces each player to play a sub-game of Magic within the current game. Since each player could have up to four of these cards, this could lead to some very long games... Naturally, they are banned in all official tournaments.
• Never Mess with Granny: Lambholt Elder is a 1/2 human creature depicted as an old lady. If no spells are cast in the previous turn, she transforms into a 4/5 Silverpelt Werewolf.
• Never Say "Die": Played Straight through Magic 2012, where seemingly every other word possible was used for creatures instead of "die" — destroyed, removed, exiled, sent to the graveyard, etc. Since 2012, creatures are said to "die", Reversing the trope.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Both played straight and averted. Played straight because each player can only have one copy of the same legend or one version of a particular planeswalker at once. Averted because each player can have their own copy. Some characters like Nicol Bolas allow a single player to avert this due to being printed both as a legendary creature and a planeswalker.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The case for players, who are all-powerful, god-like wizards having a magical duel. They can cast anything in their library, with some cards even allowing them to cast their opponent's cards or cards from outside of the game entirely.
• New Rules as the Plot Demands:
  • This is actually embraced as a core gameplay element. Official manuals stress that when the rules and a card effect conflict, the card takes priority, and basically any rule in the manual can be violated by some combination of cards. This includes cards that prevent you from playing cards, attacking your opponent, or even winning the game. This does mean that some combinations can create infinite loops or bizarre interactions which most players will have no chance of properly understanding. As a result official tournaments have long lists of specific rulings for many cards which explain their functionality in common strange interactions, as well as three levels of Judges who deal with rules disputes at tournaments.
  • This happens during playtesting of soon-to-be-released sets. One notable example of this is Reaper from the Abyss, who was about to destroy itself due to its "Morbid" ability. The designer playing it added "non-Demon" to the playtest version of the card during the game.
  • This was in part the purpose of the oddball Future Sight expansion, which included mechanics and card types not previously seen, such as enchanting a card that wasn't in play, referencing a card type that didn't exist yet, and counting individual Mana symbols on cards. The set and its precursors, Time Spiral (which brought back cards/mechanics from the past) and Planar Chaos (which used alternate versions of cards) were so difficult to parse (especially for new players) that they directly inspired a massive change to the way sets were designed, particularly in regards to restricting more complex cards to higher rarity while making common cards significantly more straight forward.
• Nightmare Weaver: The aptly named Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver is a Blue/Black aligned Planeswalker whose power manifests as exiling creatures. Since exiling represents the act of removing them from existence, it's quite nightmarish indeed.
• Night of the Living Mooks: Army of the Damned creates a whopping 13 Black zombie tokens, then comes back to do so again if you have the mana for it. There is very little in the game that 26 creatures at once can't overcome.
• Ninja: A creature type who have the ability (known, of course, as Ninjutsu) to pop into play by replacing an attacking unblocked creature on their side plus a variety of follow-up abilities that trigger off of their dealing combat damage to a player. Higure, the Still Wind and Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni are prominent examples.
• Noble Bird of Prey: Common White-aligned small flyers. Eagle of the Watch is one such example.
• Noble Wolf: Green has a few as smaller creatures. They tend emphasize cunning and teamwork (such as by a wolf card gaining abilities if there are other wolf cards in play, or having the ability to pull more wolves from your library and put them in play). Sacred Wolf is a prominent example, which also has an ability that makes it immune to magical attacks. Red has some Wolves as well, but they tend to fit the Savage Wolves trope better.
• Non-Elemental: The vast majority of Artifacts are colourless, as they are innanimate objects with no soul, and therefore no philosophical leanings. The Eldrazi are the only non-Artifact creatures to be colourless, in their case because they are Eldritch Abominations that live in the void between planes, and therefore have no connection to any of the forces of nature.
• Non-Health Damage: Gnat Misers, when played damage maximum hand size:
  Each opponent's maximum hand size is reduced by one.
• Nonstandard Game Over: The standard way to lose a game is to have your life total fall to zero. However, there are other ways:
  • Decking. If you are unable to draw a card when required to, you lose.
  • Creatures with the "Infect" ability, rather than dealing life damage to a player, inflicts that player with poison counters. A player with ten poison counters loses the game.
  • Certain cards cause you to win or lose in unusual circumstances; for instance, Near-Death Experience, which allows you to win if you have exactly 1 life remaining in your upkeep step.
  • Door to Nothingness is an artifact which, when sacrificed along with paying two of every color of mana, automatically causes a target player to lose the game. It's very expensive mana cost puts it into the Awesome, but Impractical category, but as they are apt to do, Magic players have found plenty of ways to make it work. (Such as by using it with Mycosynth Lattice. You'll still need 10 mana, but it can be of any color.)
• No Ontological Inertia:
  • The rules state that when a player loses the game, everything that player owns disappears. This can be very important in multiplayer games, where it may be unwise to finish off another player if you control something that belongs to them, like if you Mind Controled or used Animate Dead on one of their creatures. This is primarily so that a losing player doesn't have to stick around until the end of the game just to get their cards back.
  • Many white removal spells (such as Oblivion Ring and Journey to Nowhere) work like this on a smaller scale, only functioning for as long as the removal card itself stays in play.
  • The effects of static abilities disappear the instant that their source leaves the battlefield. In contrast, once an activated ability has been activated or a triggered ability has been triggered, they exist independently from their source, and killing the source will do absolutely nothing to prevent the ability from resolving. This is mostly so that Death Activated Superpowers work the way you would expect them to.
• No Saving Throw: Spells with "Split Second" prevent almost all possible responses from even being attempted, so anything you could normally do to save the target doesn't work.
• No Self-Buffs: "Lord" creatures are those which buff each other creature of their same type, except themselves. For example, Lord of the Dead does this for Zombie type creatures.
• No-Sell:
  • Anything with "Indestructable" means the card can't be destroyed by damage or by effects that say "destroy". Other ways of affecting it still matter, though, as does, in the case of creatures, reducing toughness to zero.
  • "Protection from X" means that a creature cannot be damaged by anything with property X, blocked by anything with property X, or targeted by anything with property X.
  • Several cards allow the player to No Sell hitting zero life points, which is normally an instant loss:
    • Lich sets your life total to zero, and instead has you pay life by discarding cards from your deck. You can only lose by decking at this point.
    • Lich's Mirror allows you to basically restart the game with everything shuffled back into your deck and 20 new life if you should lose. However, your opponent gets to keep everything they have...
    • Platinum Angel prevents its controller from losing the game for as long as it is in play.
• Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Cheatyface from the Unhinged set allows you to play it for free if you can get it onto the battlefield without your opponent noticing.
• Not Completely Useless: Every set includes some Joke Character cards which are intended to be completely useless. Magic players are incredibly fond of finding ways to make them useful, and quite often do. Some notable examples:
  • One With Nothing is a spell whose entire effect is "discard your hand" and provides the page image for Junk Rare on This Very Wiki. It was completely useless until a competitive deck came out that relied on giving the opponent a stream of cards and using spells that dealt damage based on the number of cards in an opponent's hand compared to yours.
  • Lifegain cards have typically been ignored or outright disregarded by competitive players throughout the game's history, especially since Critical Existence Failure is in full effect and only the last life point matters. Then Wizards started to print specific cards that let you win the game if your life total raises above a certain amount, such as Felidar Sovereign. Suddenly, Lifegain focused decks started popping up.
  • Pick any card that's the centerpiece of a Combo deck. Chances are that card is broken in half in the context of that deck, but completely useless anywhere else. Some of the best combo decks take two otherwise useless cards (for example, Donate and Illusions of Grandeur) and turn them into a dominating win condition.
  • Dralnu, Lich Lord:
    • Largely dismissed as junk when Time Spiral was released, Wizards even featured it as part of a "reject rare" creative deckbuilding article where even they declared it "mechanically interesting but competitively useless. Then the French pro Guillaume Wafo-Tapa used Dralnu in a highly successful Blue/Black control deck dubbed "Dralnu Du Louvre" that became a fixture of Time Spiral-era Standard. Dralnu picked up some serious respect for briefly seeing top-level play.
    • When Commander became an official format in 2011, Dranlu saw renewed life and use thanks to his second ability giving any Instant or Sorcery card "Flashback". Given the format's strict "one copy of a card per deck" rule, being able to cast the same spell twice is extremely useful. Further, it synergizes with "discard" effects as you can essentially use your graveyard as a potentially massive holding area for spells to be cast at any time. With the release of the "strictly better" Kess, Dissident Mage in 2017, which has the same ability, lacks Dralnu's negative first ability, has one more toughness, costs one less overall mana, and has an extra color (Red), Dralnu was relegated back to the land of "reject rare" once again.
• Not the Intended Use: Rampant. Destroying your own creatures, countering your own spells, giving your opponent life points... On rare occasions a player will use a harmful spell on themselves or helpful spell on their opponent because the game has reached a weird point so they actually want to do what would normally be bad. Very often, players will cast spells just for side effects that are normally minor, but happen to be incredibly important at the time. Although one can debate over which examples qualify as "not intended" vs simply "not obvious"; the developers do fully intend for players to come up with card combinations they didn't see themselves and simply hope that they won't miss any that break the game, while in some cases they're aware of the unorthodox use and go ahead anyway. Some prominent specific examples:
  • Using War Barge on your opponents' creatures and then destroying the barge to kill the creatures.
  • Ripping up your Chaos Orb before you activate it in order to best spread its destruction over your opponent's side of the field. Similarly, dropping it onto their lands, their graveyard, or their entire library...
  • Dark Depths and Vampire Hexmage: The Hexmage was meant to remove beneficial counters from permanents and as a way for black to deal with planeswalkers. But with Dark Depths, you can remove all the counters to get a 20/20 flying indestructible creature on turn 3.
  • Cascade cards and Hypergenesis: You're supposed to suspend Hypergenesis, but cascade lets you search it out of your deck and cast it for free. This also works with other cards with no mana cost, such as Living End.
  • Grove of the Burnwillows and Punishing Fire: The Grove is supposed to be a dual land that fights against red and green's aggressive nature, but it lets you get back Punishing Fire instead.
  • Lion's Eye Diamond was intended to be a watered down, unplayable Black Lotus. Instead you can toss your hand into your graveyard as a beneficial effect for Yawgmoth's Will (often used while a tutor for Yawgmoth's Will (or Yawgmoth's Will itself) is on the stack, doubly stupid because you can then recast it from the graveyard and get more mana with no drawback whatsoever), dredge cards, or madness cards. Another extremely powerful trick with it is to use it while a draw-7 spell (which generally cause you to discard your hand and draw a new one) is on the stack, so that it again has no drawback, or while a reanimation spell which does not need to declare a target is being cast, so as to put the card in question into your graveyard for ready reanimation.
  • Wizards of the Coast is infamously bad at making a "bad" Black Lotus; Lotus Petal, a Black Lotus which only produced one mana instead of three, came out shortly thereafter, and was restricted shortly thereafter. When they made Lotus Bloom later on (a black lotus which took three turns to come into play), it yet again caused problems by allowing Dragonstorm decks (itself a previous Junk Rare, reprinted because it was theoretically a bad storm card due to costing too much mana) to get a bunch of extra spells cast on the fourth turn for free. Combined with Rite of Flame and Seething Song (attempts to create "fair" Dark Rituals), along with Gigadrowse, a card intended for limited but actually useful for tapping all of your opponent's lands during their endstep to prevent them from interfering with your plans (and nearly uncounterable due to its own ability to replicate itself into multiple spells), the deck created a rather terrifyingly powerful combo deck which regularly "went off" on turn four and instantly killed the opponent via Bogardan Hellkites.
  • Another "bad" Lotus attempt was Lotus Vale, which required you to sacrifice two lands in order to keep it with the end result of getting three mana out of one land. Unfortunately, how it was initially worded caused it to be able to tap for mana in response to its own sacrifice requirement, making it essentially a one-a-turn Black Lotus. This was errataed, however, and no longer works that way.
  • Illusions of Grandeur and Donate: Two quirky junk rares for casual players that combined to become one of the most famous kill conditions in the competitive Magic history. It didn't help that Illusions of Grandeur has the text "gain 20 life" on it, which, with Necropotence in play, reads an awful lot like "draw 20 cards".
  • Waylay: Meant as a way to get temporary blockers, but a rules change made it into "White Lightning," a way to get hasty attackers for a turn. It was errated to only work as intended.
  • Flash: Meant as a way to play creatures at times you're normally not allowed to, it does this by letting you put a creature card from your hand into play, but you have to sacrifice it unless you pay its mana cost reduced by 2 (where 2 is the cost of Flash itself). What this actually means is that for 2 mana you can get the "when this comes into play" and/or "when this dies" effect of an arbitrarily expensive creature, some of which are powerful enough to instantly win the game with the right support. It was errata'd the first time this abuse was discovered with Academy Rector, then un-errata'd due to a policy change to minimize the use of errata, and promptly banned or restricted in all the formats it was still legal in thanks to an instant-win combo with Protean Hulk.
  • Boomerang existed for years as a cheap and fairly versatile blue bounce spell; it seemed fair enough, so printing a worse version in Eye of Nowhere seemed safe enough. At the same time, the long-time classic Howling Mine was in print, a card which historically was sometimes used with artifact tapping abilities to give card advantage, but was typically viewed as a weak combo piece. Kami of the Crescent Moon was a generally worse Howling Mine, a weak creature which could blow low-powered creatures but which was fairly easily killed. While alone, some of these cards were alright, in concert, combined with more powerful delaying cards like Remand and Exhaustion, both of which also helped to keep the opponent's hand full without letting them actually play any spells, the deck would rather quickly bounce the opponent's lands back into their hand while preventing them from casting any spells, putting various card draw spells into play which would cause the opponent to draw so many cards that they had to discard the excess cards, something which almost never happens in tournament play. Worse still, Ebony Owl Netsuke and Sudden Impact had been printed as a means of punishing decks which took advantage of the Kamigawa block mechanic which encouraged players to keep their hands full, a nearly useless mechanic due to the fact that it meant that the player wasn't casting spells, and as such, spells designed to punish cards that no one ever used were pretty useless. But in this deck, it simply punished absolutely everyone for daring to sit down at the table. A very powerful deck, it was quite good at completely destroying control decks, but had absolutely no ability to win games against aggressive decks which played lots of cheap, powerful creatures and burn spells, which the deck only gave further fuel to.
  • Another example from the same time period was the Eminent Domain deck, so-named because it used Annex, Dream Leash, and Confiscate to steal their opponent's lands, Icy Manipulator to hold creatures at bay and tap down more lands, Stone Rain to destroy what lands it couldn't steal, and finally Wildfire to destroy all of the lands the opponent had left, along with whatever creatures they'd managed to play, while leaving them with excess lands due to their own stealing and artifact mana, which was untouched by the wildfire; if the opponent DID manage to cast some good creature, then they'd just steal it with Dream Leash or Confiscate themselves. While Wildfire was known to be a very powerful card, Annex had been thought of as a means of punishing players for playing certain kinds of lands, not as a means of allowing a player to steal their opponent's lands and cast a wildfire with a two-land advantage, possibly as early as turn four. The sheer number of permanent stealing spells made the deck extremely versatile, as it could steal anything the opponent used to fight with — lands if they needed mana to cast powerful cards, creatures if they were a threat, and even valuable artifacts — and set the world on fire with a huge advantage on its side. As a result, land-stealing spells became much harder to come by afterwards.
  • Even some of the official WotC staff have gotten in on this. Back before he became Rules Manager and thus devoted himself to curtailing this sort of madness (whether or not this is a good thing depends on your perspective), Mark Gottlieb ran the House of Cards, a weekly column devoted to creating insane decks and combos, the most infamous of which was turning a subpar creature-producing artifact into a repeatable board-clearing engine of destruction. He even paraphrases the trope's name when describing the combo!
  • Grindstone was an artifact from Tempest that discarded the top two cards from a player's library, and repeated the process if their colors matched. Because about a third of an average deck is lands, which have no colors to match against, it was considered a Junk Rare and quickly forgotten. Over ten years later, Shadowmoor came out and had a "color matters" sub theme, so they printed Painter's Servant, which made all cards in the game count as any of the five colors. When the two are played together, you can destroy your opponent's entire deck on turn 3.
  • For a more comical version, there's Humility (enchantment: all creatures are 1/1 with no effects) and Opalescence (all enchantments are creatures, keeping their effects). Intended use: leveling the playing field and giving you an extra hitter, respectively. Memetic use: making your opponent's head explode as he tries to figure out how they're supposed to interact with each other.
  • Most 'Return card from the graveyard' spells return the card in question to your hand. A few, though (eg. Bond of Revival or the activated ability of Gravewaker) return it straight to the battlefield instead, as an efficiency boost. A side effect of this is that doing so means you don't have to pay the card's mana cost. With the right set-up, you can effectively use the graveyard as a holding bay of cards whose mana cost you never intend to pay in the first place. For best result, Finale of Eternity has the potential to return every creature in your graveyard to the field at once.
  • One of the funnier cases was the Clone-killer strategy. There was a rule for a while that if two Legendary Creatures with the same name existed in play, both got destroyed. The intention of this rule was to stop people from packing their decks with nothing but the incredibly powerful Legendary Creatures, since you could only have one of a given Creature at a time. Players, though, realized that this meant a possible counter strategy to your opponent having a Legendary Creature was to play one of your own. Or, in a more general sense, you could play Clone, which turns into a copy of one of your opponent's cards, like their Legendary Creature, at which point they'd both die. Cheesy stuff like this caused Wizards to change the rule so that it only affected your side of the board.
• Not Using The D Word: References to demons were removed after a few Moral Guardians complained; this carried on for a while with cards being called "horror" or "beast," before demons started appearing again (Mark Rosewater goes into more detail about this here). This is why the Unglued card "Infernal Spawn of Evil" has the text "Summon Demon" with "Demon" struck out and replaced with "Beast" and vice versa for the Unhinged card "Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil."
• No Zombie Cannibals: Averted with cards like the eponymous Zombie Cannibal.

O

• Oathbound Power: The Cycle of Pacts, one for each color. Pacts are spells that can be cast for free. However, the caster must pay a cost at the beginning of their next turn, or else they immediately lose the game.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat:
  • The Azorius Senate can be seen as an entire guild of such characters in Ravnica. Exemplified by the cards Droning Bureaucrats, obstructs creatures from attacking or blocking, and Minister of Impediments, which taps target creatures for the same basic effect.
  • Aysen Bureaucrats obstructs by tapping weak creatures with power no greater than 2.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo:
  • The Portal expansion was followed by Portal Second Age and Portal: Three Kingdoms.
  • Head Designer Mark Rosewater has a little fun with it here, with a fake announcement for Homelands 2: Grandmother's Return. He also laments that his suggestion for Portal 2: Electric Boogaloo was rejected.
  • The cancelled sequel to Unglued was tentatively named Unglued 2: the Obligatory Sequel.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: Makeshift Mannequin works like this, reviving a creature with a mannequin counter, which causes it to die when it gets targeted, exposing the ruse.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Literally with the famous Cruel Ultimatum, which essentially forces one of these onto your opponent. They lose 5 life, discard 3 cards, and sacrifice one creature while you gain 5 life, draw 3 cards, and get a creature back from the graveyard.
• Official Game Variant: While Standard is the "main" way of playing Magic, there are several other official formats with varying card pools.
• Old Save Bonus: The Duels of the Planeswalkers games from 2013 onwards give you a small bonus, like a deck unlock key or premium booster pack, if you played the previous year's game.
• Olympus Mons:
  • Progenitus, referred to as the "Soul of the World", is a 10/10 with Protection from Everything which requires two of ever mana type to get into play.
  • Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is an Eldritch Abomination 15/15 for 15 mana, whose abilities pretty much guarantee its controller a win within a turn of being played.
  • The Theros set brought with it the creature type of "God". Heliod, Thassa, Erebos, Purphoros, and Nylea are somewhat literal examples, being based on the Olympian gods of Ancient Greece.
• One-Hit Kill: Even a single point of damage can destroy a creature if the source of that damage has the Deathtouch keyword. For example, even a 1/2 Deadly Recluse can bring down the 15/15 Eldritch Abomination Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.
• One Size Fits All: Equipment cards have no size restrictions when it comes to the creatures equipping them. Those Swiftfoot Boots can be equipped to any creature card, ranging from humans to elves to snakes to fish to spiders to dragons... Giant battle axes can be wielded by tiny birds, armor can be applied to giant walls, gloves can be equipped to creatures without hands... Justified in the meta sense since printing rules on each card about what creature types can and can't use a piece of equipment would overwhelm a single card.
• Orcus on His Throne: Oloro, Ageless Ascetic is designed to be this. He sits in the Command Zone, gaining you life, all game long. Most decks that play Oloro consider casting him very low on their priorities list, especially as it leaves his signature life gain ability more vulnerable to being taken out of play.
• Overly Long Name:
  • Parodied in this Unhinged card whose name wraps around the entire card's border.
  • A couple of cards quote Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar, author of the Underworld Cookbook. Modern Horizons 2 makes her into an actual card, and her name is so long that it crowds out the top of the card and she doesn't have a casting cost!
• Overrated and Underleveled: Any cards with too high of a mana cost relative to their abilities/powers qualify. Planeswalker cards can be notorious for this, such as Chandra Ablaze and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. It's not that can't be impressive if you get them into place, it's just that there are more effective ways to spend that mana (such as Cruel Ultimatum for Bolas).

P-Q

• Padded Sumo Gameplay:
  • Averted by most Standard format games, as well as most other one-on-one formats. Most decks are built to get a select few cards into play as quickly as possible, with most games ending on or around turn six.
  • Certain decks Invoke this, however. Control decks are designed for this type of game, negating everything the opponent attempts to do while digging up their own combo, pinging them with small amounts of damage, and/or milling the opponent until they deck out. If two such decks face one another in a Mirror Match, the game can easily last an hour or more. This is similarly the case if two Weenie decks face off, the objective of which is typically for the player to defend themselves and build up a large number of small creatures until they have enough creatures to overrun their opponent, or a "buff everything" spell that suddenly turns all those tiny creatures into powerhouses.
  • The Commander format is explicitly designed for this. You have double the usual starting life, a 100-card minimum deck size, a limit of one copy of any non-basic land card per deck, board-sweeping effects are encouraged due to the need to address multiple opponents, and games last an hour on average. The longer games create a place where normally Awesome, but Impractical cards get a place to flourish and bizarre scenarios are more likely to happen.
• Painting the Medium: A popular gag in both Unglued and Unhinged. For example, Frazzled Editor is making corrections to his own rules text, and Latin Pig's card is written entirely in Pig Latin.
• Paper Tiger: The Paper Tiger card ironically averts the trope, though it does provide the page image.
• Pegasus: Pegasi are a lesser White creature type. They naturally have Flying, as well as frequently other abilities which empower their fellow creatures, such as by temporarily giving them Flying as well.
• Pendulum of Death: Razor Pendulum, an artifact which deals extra damage to opponents who are already near death.
• Perfect Pacifist People: The idea behind the classic Swords to Plowshares. It exiles a target creature while giving its owner life points equal to the creature's power, with the idea being that they've been forced into agricultural retirement.
• Phlebotinum Muncher: The Atog eats magical artifacts, and its various relatives eat other magic-related things: the Auratog eats enchantments, the Chronatog eats time (you can give it a big stat boost by skipping your next turn), and the Atogatog eats other Atogs.
• Physical God:
  • You, the player, represent a Reality Warping god-like wizard summoning creatures, objects, and magical spells into existence while hopping from one plane of existence to the next.
  • The card-type Planeswalker represents lesser mages who can be called on to fight for you, and while not as "powerful" as you, they still possess abilities that can approach Game-Breaker levels with a little push. Since the power of a Planeswalker card in play is measured in "loyalty" counters, which can be removed by dealing damage to it, the card could be interpreted as the player calling in a favor from an ally who may get annoyed and run off after a few decent hits, or after you ask them for particularly taxing favors.
  • The Theros expansion introduces "God" as a creature type, defining deities as enchantments that also become creatures when you control a certain amount of permanents with that color's mana symbol. Much like classical Greek deities, they regularly interact with the physical world and can be killed — although it takes a lot of power, far more than most mortals can ever muster, to do so. Amonkhet features gods of its own, which are far more physical than Theros' enchantment-gods and live among mortals as, essentially, giant, superpowered, and animal-headed people.
  • Many of the more powerful legendary creatures qualify even if they aren't explicitly called "gods". Included are Progenitus, the "Soul of the World" with Protection from Everything, and the Eldritch Abomination Eldrazi.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: The Kithkin from Lorwyn and Shadowmoor are inspired by Hobbits, standing under four feet tall. However, are incredibly tenacious in a fight. In fact, the most common "classes" for them are Knight and Soldier.
• Pit Trap: Is both an artifact and a spell. Both destroy attacking creatures without Flying.
• Place of Power:
  • Downplayed with the idea behind the basic lands of Plains, Mountains, Swamps, Islands, and Forests. Each produces a specific type of mana (White, Red, Black, Blue, and Green, respeectively) that a Planeswalker can use to cast spells. Downplayed because, to anyone else, these are simply locations with no apparent magical power.
  • Non-Basic lands provide a greater range of powers. Some, such as dual lands, can produce mana of multiple types. Others, such as "Manlands", can generate creatures. Some even change how other lands function, such as the famous Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
• Plaguemaster:
  • Prominent in Black, which is associated with inflicting disease. Phyrexian Plaguelord is a classic example.
  • Theros adds Pharika, God of Afflication, who exiles cards from the graveyard in order to summon snake tokens with Deathtouch.
• Played for Laughs:
  • Some cards, while still useful, have the ability to cause some much-needed hilarity amid all of the chaos and destruction. For example, Turn To Frog.
  • There's also Goatnapper. In addition to being silly, it had the perplexing quality of being able to target only two cards in the whole game... until you remember that the new Changeling creatures released in the same set count as having every creature type simultaneously.
• Player Archetypes: Wizards has created two different categorization systems:
  • Timmy/Tammy-Johnny/Jenny-Spike: At one point, the creators decided to personify three major motivations that (so far as they could tell) drove their players. Nowhere in their original article or its followup does Wizards of the Coast suggest that you can be only one of them, but they feel that most people empathize with one of them more than others:
    • Timmy/Tammy, Power Gamer plays to have fun. He/she doesn't care if it's Cool, but Inefficient as long as it's interesting, because for Timmy/Tammy, "fun" is more about the journey than the destination. Timmy/Tammy puts the most emphasis on the game as a social experience. Timmy/Tammy lives for awesomeness, and enjoys deploying the Infinity-Plus-One Whatever that makes your eyes bug out. Wizards deliberately prints cards that are Awesome, but Impractical to keep him/her happy.
    • Johnny/Jenny, Combo Player plays as a form of self-expression. The more customization there is in the game, the more Johnny/Jenny is interested, because he/she thrives on taking the pieces the game gives them and making something uniquely his/her own. He/she lives for the strategy that makes your eyes bug out. Cards made with Johnny/Jenny in mind tend to be open-ended; like LEGOs, they can be combined in new and different ways. Johnny/Jenny also loves Junk Rares with hideous Necessary Drawbacks, because if he/she can just find a way to get around that drawback, he/she has got a Game-Breaker on his/her hands—not to mention the fifteen minutes of fame associated with turning a Joke Character into a Lethal Joke Character forever.
    • Spike, Tournament Grinder sees the game primarily as a competition, and likes to win. They're most likely to be a Tournament Player, spend time analyzing and scrutinizing any available strategies, looking for the one which gives them the best odds, and is most likely to copy other people's designs and strategies (as opposed to inventing their own) if they think that holds the key to victory — the Collectible Card Game version of Min-Maxing. Spike is also the most likely type to be a "Mr. Suitcase," a player who spends unusually large amounts of money on the hobby; as such, Spikes determine the market value for almost all components, since they're the ones first in line to grab them. Their favorite cards are Boring, but Practical or Simple, yet Awesome ones; efficiency is king for them. This culminated in Modern Masters, a set composed solely of cards with a proven impact on tournament play.
  • The other set of archetypes is Vorthos-Melvin/Melanie. This is a separate axis; one's Vorthosity is unrelated to one's Timminess. Essentially, it's a matter of appreciation for form vs. appreciation for function: Timmy/Tammy-Johnny/Jenny-Spike is about why a person plays (and what they play), whereas Vorthos-Melvin/Melanie is about what they appreciate. When evaluating cards, Vorthos likes them based upon how they make them feel, and Melvin/Melanie likes them based on how they make them think. Original article: here before we elaborate.
    • Vorthos is primarily interested in fluff, setting, background, story, etc. A Vorthos-Johnny/Jenny might build a deck with contraints of "Soldiers only. It doesn't matter the color, because soldiers are professionals, and know how to work together." Or, "I am going to buld a zombie deck, with a handful of necromancers and maybe a powerful demon. It fits storywise." Or (and this one's straight from the Magic website), "How about about a deck focused solely around clams, with a single Mox Pearl in the middle?"
    • Melvins/Melanies, at the opposite end of the spectrum, would see such constraints as pointless. They still care about what's written on the cards, but focus on mechanics rather than flavor. A Melvin/Melanie might build a deck around a mechanic such as vampirism (dealing damage while gaining life) and completely ignore any flavor. A Melvin/Melanie-Johnny/Jenny might say "I am going to figure out how to use these oddly-worded cards that seem kind of counter-productive, figure out how they actually work, and then build a Goldbergian deck that I understand, but will leave my opponent hopelessly confused". Melvins/Melanies LOVE the Yu-Gi-Oh! CCG, and were deeply offended when a card for a demon had the number "7" in every possible spot except one (the casting cost).
• Player Elimination: Commander is a multiplayer format where players are eliminated by losing all their life or falling victim to any other loss condition (the format adds one with the commander damage rule: you also lose if you take 21 points of combat damage from a single Commander). The last one remaining wins.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: In Duels of the Planeswalkers, on lower difficulty settings, the computer may never execute certain mechanics. For example, they won't activate the "pumping" (paying mana to temporarily increase power and toughness) abilities of certain creatures.
• Play Every Day: Magic Duels has daily quests you can complete for additional currency. You can have up to three unfinished quests at once. There's also community quests to shoot for.
• Playing with Fire: A large portion of Red, described in detail throughout this page. Also, Jaya Ballard and her pupil, the lesser planeswalker Chandra Nalaar.
• Poisonous Person:
  • A number of cards inflict damage via "poison counters" rather than direct damage. Collect 10 poison counters and you lose the game.
  • Phage, the Untouchable. One hit from her and a player loses the game outright. Not because of her attack power, that's only a four, and players typically start with twenty. No, she kills thanks to this trope. She also automatically destroys any creature she does combat to and prevents such a creature from regenerating. The downside is, if a player plays her card via any way other than from his hand, then he loses the game.
• Poor, Predictable Rock:
  • In general, each of the five colors lends itself well to a few specific strategies, but also has weaknesses that cause it to fall into this trope. This can be resolved by adding more colors to the deck to cover the weaknesses, but this can make it hard to play spells reliably. To note:
    • White is often considered to be the most "balanced" color, giving it some Jack of All Trades attributes but also ventures into Master of None territory. Their strengths include removal (temporarily on the low end of the scale, full blown exile at the highest), damage prevention, life gain, many forms of protection, small Boring, but Practical/Badass Normal creatures, and means of empowering those creatures with abilities such as First-Strike and Vigilance. However, White struggles with card draw, is lacking in large creatures, and their offense spells typically include caveats (ex. destroy attacking creature, exile tapped creature, etc.)
    • Blue is something of a Magikarp Power among the colors, being slow to start but finishing incredibly strong thanks to their strong control/combo potential, while being prone to Crippling Overspecialization if their combos are disrupted or their defenses circumvented. Their strengths include card draw, counterspells, attacking the opponent's hand and deck with discards, "bounce" effects (returning cards to hand), taking control of/redirecting opponent spells, and generally anything else related to "trickery". Creatures are their largest weakness, with Blue decks rarely running creatures due to their combat potential alone and instead selecting them based off of their synergistic effects. One creature caveat is that Blue tends to have quite a few "Flying" creatures, which overcome their relative weakness thanks to creatures without Flying or Reach being unable to target or block them.
    • Black, like White above, is considered a very balanced color due to the sheer breadth of what they can do. However, Black is rarely as efficient as those other colors in accomplishing these things. To make up for this, they can pay in life, sacrifices, and discards. Their two biggest niches are necromancy, being the color most easily able to interact with the graveyard, and pure creature destruction, which feeds back into necromancy.
    • Red is the most offensively oriented color, with elements of being a Glass Cannon. Their strengths include direct damage, aggressive creatures which hit hard and fast, and, unusually, luck, being the color with the most coin-flip, dice roll, random chance cards with a variety of effects depending on the outcome. On the flip side of Blue, Red tends to be strongest early in the game and falls behind as the game drags on while the other colors gain synergistic momentum. Protection, life gain, and interaction other than pure destruction are largely unheard of in Red.
    • Green is the color of creatures, from weenies and tokens all the way up to huge stompy behemoths. Like White, Green also has many means to power up these creatures, though rather than new abilities, Green power-ups tend to take the form of raw Power and Toughness increases. Further, Green is the color with the most options for additional permanent mana generation, including of other colors of mana. They also have the most anti-air options, and are quite good at artifact destruction. In terms of weaknesses, they have almost no creature destruction or removal beyond using their own creatures in direct combat, and very little means of protecting themselves from such effects when used by an opponent.
  • Tournament Magic is heavily based on rock-paper-scissors. Decks frequently fall into one of three categories: aggressive, combination, or control (aggro, combo, and control). Sometimes decks can play as either of two roles, but not as well as a deck truly dedicated to that role. The three roles fall into a rock-paper-scissors scenario: Aggro decks play multiple redundant threats to keep the pressure on and overwhelm Control decks. Combo decks use cards that are individually relatively weak but synergize to create powerful effects that can overcome even the strong threats from an Aggro deck. Control decks focus on defense foremost and use card-removal effects to dismantle combos — if a Control deck removes one part of a three-card combo, it cripples the whole combo, while removing one of three Aggro deck cards will leave the other two to continue attacking. In tournament play, matches last for three-rounds and each player is allowed to have a side deck of 15 cards which they can use to tweak their deck to counter whatever strategies the opponent is using, helping to avert this.
• Portmanteau: Seen occasionally in card names like Blightning and Deadapult.
• Possession Implies Mastery: On the metagame level, the idea of "netdecking" is for a player to look up the cards of a tournament winning deck card for card. However, simply possessing a good deck doesn't necessarily mean you know how to use it. Control decks require precise timing and an exact knowledge of where to spend your limited answers, combo decks require that you know how every card in your deck interacts to generate the winning combos, and aggro decks require that you know when to attack, when to hold back, and when to block — all of which requires knowledge of the constantly evolving metagame. If the deck is so strong, you're going to run into other people playing the same deck, but who know what to do with it. In addition by the time you get to a tournament, really good players will have analyzed the famous "winning deck", noted its vulnerabilities, and will have modified their own decks to include counters or even built new decks specifically designed to beat it.
• Power at a Price: A major theme for Black. Phyrexian Negator, Cosmic Horror, Xathrid Demon... one commentator here describes the entire Suicide Black ethos as "tearing off your own arm so you can beat your opponent over the head with it."
• Power Born of Madness:
  • The aptly named "Madness" keyword. Sanity is represented by the cards left in your hand and in your library; an empty hand is unstable, an empty library is when a planeswalker is going to completely lose their mind. Madness allows you to sacrifice short-term sanity to play the card you're discarding cheaply. Decks built around Madness naturally see significant discarding.
  • The "Hellbent" keyword similarly denotes cards that gain an advantage when your hand is empty.
  • "Dredge" allows you to affect your long-term sanity to recur things from your graveyard.
  • Laboratory Maniac is a specific card example. Normally, you lose the game if you must draw when your library is empty. As long as Laboratory Maniac is in play, you win the game instead.
• Power Copying:
  • Experiment Kraj copies all the abilities of creatures that have +1/+1 counters on them.
  • Necrotic Ooze and Havengul Lich all directly copy the abilities of creatures in any Graveyard. Souflayer is a variant where you can permanently assign abilities of dead creatures to said Soulflayer, but only by Deader Than Deading said creatures during the assignment process.
  • Majestic Myriarch copies abilities at the beginning of combat if its owner controls a (living) creature with those abilities. Exaggerated by Odric, Lunarch Marshal, who not only copies them but distributes them.
  • Several shapeshifters can copy the abilities of defeated foes; Dimir Doppelganger and Cairn Wanderer, for example.
• Power Creep:
  • Happens so frequently that the term "strictly better" has entered the Magic lexicon to describe the phenomenon. Card A is "strictly better" than Card B when they are identical in most parameters, and in the ones where they're different Card A has a clear advantage, meaning that Card A is preferable to Card B in almost all situations. Specific example: Lightning Bolt costs 1 mana and deals 3 damage where Shock does only 2. (An incomplete list of cards that fit the "strictly better" comparison can be viewed here.) In total fairness, the game is over 20 years and 21,000 cards old, which simply suggests that Power Creep is inevitable.
  • There is also deliberate creep on the part of Wizards. The overall pattern has been creatures growing in strength while spells get weaker. When the game first came out, Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards was in full effect. The infamous Power Nine were early cards considered to be the most powerful effects in the game (despite all but one of them being fairly boring in effect). Six of them are mana sources while the other three are all spells. There are no creatures in the Power Nine. Meanwhile, Force Of Nature was originally the biggest creature in the game, an 8/8 (for 6 mana) that you need to keep paying mana to in order to keep alive. Nowadays, Terra Stomper — a "strictly better" version with a more flexible casting cost, the upkeep drawback removed, and a small perk added — is considered too weak to play in competition. Additionally, compare Serra Angel, a creature that was at one point removed from the core set for being too powerful, to Baneslayer Angel, which lacks one of Serra Angel's traits (Vigilance) but replaces it with a metric crap-ton of other stuff. The generally-agreed-upon theory as to why creatures suddenly became extremely useful around 2003-2004 was that, for the first 10 years of the game's life, creatures were largely a total waste of mana. While a few were actually considered "good", such as Morphling and Psychatog, the vast, vast majority were considered plainly useless compared to Enchantments, Instants, Sorceries, and even Lands, to the point that most top-tier Type 1 and Type 1.5 decks (now called Vintage and Legacy Formats) were creatureless. Wizards vastly overestimated the effect that creatures had on the game outside of Limited and Standard, and around 8th Edition, realized that they needed to make creatures relevant. What ensued was massive power creep of creatures that were intensely mana-efficient, so that they would be considered just as useful as other card types. It worked: it is now very rare for Modern, Legacy, and Vintage decks to contain no creatures, but at the same time they aren't the bulk of most decks, either, with most decks playing between 8 and 18 creatures.
  • Wizards has also identified complexity creep as an issue. The rules needed to deal with thousands of different cards make for an imposing document. The spiraling increases in complexity put the game at risk of being impossible for any potential customer to understand. To combat this, they created the Type 2 (or Standard) format, which is theoretically immune to both power creep and complexity creep as only the last two years of cards are allowed, so that power creep/seep relative to older cards doesn't matter.
  • Wizards also takes measures to avoid the level of power creep that other CCGs suffer by temporarily increasing the power of one type of effect, but scaling it back later to focus on another aspect.
  • Finally, it should be pointed out that "strictly better" cards almost always have another downside: they're strictly more expensive, especially in cases like Lightning Bolt vs Shock where the more powerful card was deliberately Nerfed. How much more? In this case, ten times more (25¢ vs $2.50). And let's not even talk about the value difference between the aforementioned Serra and Baneslayer Angels.^note Without boring you with the math, you're six times more likely to open a Serra than a Baneslayer — and, accordingly, Serra Angels are six times cheaper on the singles market.
• Power Degeneration: Unstable Mutation grants a creature +3/+3, but then removes -1/-1 at the start of every turn until it becomes weaker than before the mutation was applied, and eventually dies once its Toughness hits zero.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: A staple of black cards. The whole concept of black mana is sacrifice for selfish, personal gain — even to the point of sacrificing bits of yourself. All colors have some sort of ubercard that's cheap to use but has some drawback. Black, however, is the king of this, with a hideous number of cards that allow one to do quite a lot of awesome things, but cost you creatures, land, life, cards in hand, cards in graveyard (a viable resource for black, so not something to be sneezed at), or something else. One makes you lose the game if you don't win by the end of your next turn. Some especially notable examples:
  • Lich is a classic. It essentially turns you into a lich — you lose all life, but do not immediately lose the game. Instead, you can sacrifice cards in place of damage taken. If you are unable to sacrifice, then you lose.
  • Another notable early example is Lord of the Pit, an extremely powerful creature for its cost that requires a sacrifice of one creature per turn or it turns on you.
  • The infamous Necropotence allows the player to trade life for more magical power and knowledge (i.e. draw cards). One common combo is creature removal (i.e. killing creatures), discard spells, and the Avatar of Woe, a huge creature which costs eight mana (two of which have to be black), but only costs the two black mana if there are a total of ten or more creatures in all graveyards. This card was so powerful it has been banned or restricted in most formats.
• Power Fist: Popular as a source of power for red. Examples include Granite Grip, Stonehands, and Fists of the Demigod. Similarly, the latest art for Kird Ape has powerfists made of rock.
• Power Equals Rarity: An interesting case. Although many rares are more powerful than their common or uncommon counterparts, powerful cards are not exclusively rare. Additionally, rarity is used to balance Limited formats (in which players build decks out of a random or semi-random pool of cards). And this is only scratching the surface—whole essays can (and have) been written on the guidelines the designers use to determine rarity.
• The Power of Friendship: The aptly-named Ally creature mechanic, which benefits from the presence of other Allies.
• Power of the God Hand: Not In-Universe, but used as fanspeak. A different definition of "hand" than most uses of this trope, but a "God Hand" is generally considered seven cards that, when drawn, will defeat an opponent in the first round. The exact definition of a God Hand can sometimes be a source of great contention.
• Power Nullifier: There are a number of different Power Nullifiers depending on exactly what you want to nullify — Null Rod for artifacts, Arrest for creatures, Pithing Needle for any one card, Back to Basics for non-basic lands, etc.
• Power Palms: Each of the five "Gempalm" creatures (one in each color). White, Blue, and Green power up a specific type of creature, while Black and Red deal damage based on the number of a specific creature-type you have in play.
• Powers as Programs: Creature enchantments are this. As are equipment; yes, it's possible for a bird to carry three swords, a shield, and armor clearly designed with humans in mind. Could they be Morph Weapons? It sounds like something a Planeswalker could do, but we might never know.
• Power-Up Letdown: Auras have a long history of fitting this trope. They come into play attached to another card, and are typically destroyed if that card leaves play in any way. This results in a powerup that's typically rather easy to eliminate, and after nets the opponent a two-for-one card advantage (the opponent spends one card to destroy the attached card, which takes the Aura with it). It tends to be a better deal to use a more impressive one-shot instant or sorcery boost for the same cost in cards and mana instead. Wizards does seem to be aware of this problem if the Totem Armor mechanic, which saves the creature if it would be killed at the price of the aura, is any indication. There are also a few cards that return to your hand when the creature is killed, most notably Rancor, and there are some which can be "bounced" to your hand by paying a certain amount of mana.
• Practical Taunt: Taunting Elf causes all of the defending opponent's creatures to block it when it attacks.
• Press Start to Game Over: There exists a deck that can theoretically win the game before you take your first turn by using Gemstone Caverns and a Simian or Elvish Spirit Guide to cast Flash, dropping Protean Hulk into play and executing any of the busted combos this enables, before your opponent can even drop their first land. (The only format this is legal in aside from the kitchen table is Vintage, and even there Flash is restricted to a single copy per deck, turning the chances of this working from merely small to astronomically infinitesimal.)
• Press X to Die: With elements of Press Start to Game Over, to note:
  • A handful of actions will do nothing useful and just harm you or your creatures. For example, normally, when you cast Progenitor Mimic, you target another creature and the Mimic become a copy of that creature that makes more copies. However, the ability responsible specifies "may", which means you don't have to do any of that, in which case "Progenitor Mimic enters the battlefield as a 0/0 Shapeshifter creature and is probably put into the graveyard immediately." Another example is Force of Savagery, an 8/0 (yes) creature intended to be played into any static effect that boosts the toughness of creatures. In the absence of such an effect on the controller's side of the field, it dies immediately.
  • Mana in Magic pays for almost anything a player wants to do. In Magic's early days, the mana pool emptied at the end of each phase of a turn as well as before and after combat. Mana is almost always voluntarily generated by a player by using their land, artifacts, and creatures. In early editions, having unspent mana in your pool when it emptied resulted in mana burn, or loss of life.
  • Phage the Untouchable causes you to lose the game instantly if she enters the battlefield through any means other than being cast from your hand. Using her as your Commander in that format doesn't help, as bringing her in from the command zone still triggers her ability, causing you to lose.
• Production Throwback/What Could Have Been/Production Foreshadowing: The sets Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, and Future Sight, in that order, explored each of these.
• Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage:
  • Wizards tends to give these out as one-of-a-kind prizes. Several have been given out as unique prizes within books. One unique card was given at the opening of Wizards' first store in Japan. One was given to the 1997 World Champion. Three more were given to Richard Garfield to commemorate his proposal, wedding, and the birth of his first child, respectively. Wizards has also given its employees silly, "Unglued"-style foil promotional cards at Christmas.
  • For the game's thirtieth anniversary, they put out special edition booster packs featuring reprints of some of the game's most powerful cards (including the infamous Black Lotus). However, these cards would not be tournament legal (as their card backs were different from all other cards), the booster packs were randomized (which meant there was always a chance of missing a few cards from this set), and they could only be bought in sets of 4 boosters for $1000 U.S. dollars. While the intent was that people could collect these extremely rare cards without reprints disrupting the speculator market around their original printings, a majority of the playerbase called out Wizards for printing what were essentially very-expensive fake cards.
  • Secret Lair sets feature alternate artwork for existing cards, and can be used to release themed collections of cards with unique artworks and frames, including Crossovers with other intellectual property. These can also include low rarity cards that you can find for cheap. Whether the Secret Lair is worth the asking price will be tied to how much you value these alt-arts, because if you compare them with the regular cards' average price on the secondary market, you definitely won't be breaking even.
• Psychic Powers: A staple of blue magic, especially anything relating to the famous planeswalker Jace Beleren. In terms of game mechanics, "psychic" abilities most often take the form of forcing your opponent to discard from their hand and/or directly from their deck (attacking their mind and knowledge), removing cards from their graveyard (their memory), and even playing their own cards against them (landing somewhere between Mind Control and Mind Rape).
• Public Domain Artifact: The Arabian Nights set is full of these, including Aladdin's Lamp, Bottle of Suleiman, and Aladdin's Ring. Due to the popularity of the game, Arabian Nights was rushed out as the first major expansion set and drew heavily from the source material as a result.
• Purposefully Overpowered:
  • "Archenemy" decks, intended for a 3-vs-1 format, which are played with more life, tougher creatures, and a separate library of spell-like effects that are played one per turn at random. Naturally, these would be completely devastating in a standard game.
  • Many cards from the various "Un-" sets would be horrifically broken if used in standard play. Naturally, these cards are illegal for tournament play. Particularly notable examples include the Mox Lotus, which gives you infinite mana, and Cheatyface, which you can sneak on to the battlefield for free as long as your opponent doesn't catch you.
  • The ultimate abilites of most Planeswalkers are this. Most duels are over by the time you get enough loyalty counters on the Planeswalker to use them (though there are plenty of tricks to get around this), but if you do get to use the ability, you can all but guarantee a next turn win. Examples include dealing 10 damage to your opponent and each creature they control (all but ensuring a sweep of the board), preventing all opponents from casting anything other than creatures (a death sentence for nearly any Combo or Control deck), countering all spells (a death sentence for any deck), exiling every non-land permanent your opponent controls, taking as many as five extra turns, and restarting the game while leaving your opponent with nothing.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Can happen in tournament play in two ways. The first is that, since you play three rounds with the opportunity for each player to adjust their deck using their 15 card side board in between, you may win the first round but expose your strategy to your opponent. If they have cards to counter your strategy in their sideboard, it may be very difficult to defeat them again in the other two rounds. Second, even if you defeat that opponent, the rest of the remaining tournament players will now be aware of your strategy. This is, of course, all part of the metagame that Magic is well-known for.
• Quad Damage:
  • Many combat-oriented instants, especially Giant Growth and variants.
  • Also, Furnace of Rath and a few other cards double all damage.
• Quicksand Sucks: Quicksand is a non-basic land, which in addition to providing one colorless mana, can be sacrificed to deal -1/-2 to a non-Flying attacking creature. It saw some use in Control decks of its introductory era.

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