Summary
A seemingly minor rules change is coming toMagic: The Gatheringwith the imminent release of Bloomburrow, but it’s going to have massive implications for one of the game’s most popular commanders.
In a rare instance of a functional errata for existing cards, Neheb the Eternal’s infamous infinite combat loop has been completely destroyed thanks to one small change to its wording.
Magic often tweaks the language (or ‘templating’) it uses on its cards to make things more streamlined. With the launch of Bloomburrow, for instance, all mentions of “enters the battlefield” have been shortened to “enters”, and back in 2021’s Strixhaven: School Of Mages, “shuffle your library” was shortened to just “shuffle”.
Many cards mention the “postcombat main phase” – the phase of your turn after combat where you can cast non-instant spells, play lands, and carry out the bulk of your turn. But Bloomburrow will be completely removing the phrase from its rules, and any cards that mention it will now be read as “second main phase” instead.
In most situations, this won’t have a big material impact on the game. Cards like Brazen Cannonade, Sphinx Of The Second Sun, and Belbe, Corrupted Observer all function the same, with the only difference being they could potentially trigger sooner than your combat phase if a card that adds main phases before combat is ever printed.
Neheb The Not-As-Eternal
Neheb The Eternal, on the other hand, has been nerfed to the point of being useless by this change. Neheb’s ability gives you one red mana for each life your opponents lost in a turn at the beginning of your postcombat main phase. It’s a popular mono-red aggro deck that likes to swing lots as often as it can.
Neheb is one of themost popular mono-red commanders, currently sitting in ninth place on EDHRec.
Most decks that use Neheb then use Aggravated Assault, an enchantment that allows you to pay five mana to untap all your creatures and have an additional combat and main phase. You go to combat again, and Neheb triggers again – as long as you can deal at least five damage per combat, you’ve got infinite activations of Aggravated Assault. Or, rather, you did.
Neheb explicitly triggers “at the beginning of your postcombat main phase”. Now that that terminology has been replaced with “second main phase”, Neheb’s mana-generating ability only triggers once each turn, no matter how many times you go to combat. The combo that defined Neheb and made it such a powerhouse just flat-out doesn’t work anymore.
This was confirmed by principal Magic editor Matt Tabak, the person largely responsible for templating. Ina tweetclarifying the rules change, Tabak said “there are functional changes to a few cards. ‘Second main phase’ is only the second one, not the third, fourth, and subsequent ones, if applicable”.
On being asked explicitly about Neheb,he said“Once a turn, at the beginning of your second main phase. If you have subsequent main phases, it won’t trigger at the beginning of those”.
Functional errata, where how a card plays is changed after it is printed, are incredibly rare for Magic, and only usually happen in either the most extreme circumstances or when a card just don’t work within the rules because of a templating mistake. Neheb is neither of these, making the errata controversial.
Players have since been calling on Wizards to issue another errata for Neheb, to change it back to how players were actually using the card. For instance, one Twitter user asked for Neheb to be changed to read “At the beginning of each of your main phases except the first one”. This would keep the more simplistic language of “second main phase” in place, while still allowing edge cases like Neheb to do what they do best.
Magic is the only game to have errata troubles lately, withDisney Lorcana nerfing Buckyright into the ground.
As this largely applies to the Commander format, Neheb players don’t need to worry too much. you’re able to clarify with your table before you play that your deck relied on the pre-errata rules, and most reasonable groups would allow you to run Neheb as intended with little issue. More competitive formats like Legacy and Vintage will need to find new ways to break Aggravated Assault. Savage Ventmaw can do the same thing, for example.
These rules come into effect with the launch of Bloomburrow on August 2.
Magic: The Gathering
Created by Richard Garfield in 1993, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) has become one of the biggest tabletop collectible card games in the world. Taking on the role of a Planeswalker, players build decks of cards and do battle with other players. In excess of 100 additional sets have added new cards to the library, while the brand has expanded into video games, comics, and more.
