The Saga rules change and You

The “Saga rules change”?

Wizards of the Coast announced that beginning June 6, with the Final Fantasy prerelease, there will be a tweak to the rules of how Sagas will work. The TL;DR is that:

1. Urza’s Saga will not be sacrificed as a result of Blood Moon type effects.
2. No more lore counters will be added under Blood Moon.
3. Urza’s Saga will retain any of the abilities gained from its chapter abilities under Blood Moon, such as the ability to make constructs.

(1) and (2) of the above applies to other Sagas that have their abilities removed, such as an Enchantment Creature - Saga under Dress Down. (Abilities will still be removed for more detailed reasons mentioned at the end of the article.)

If that’s all you care about, thanks for stopping by! You can express your joy or frustration in the comments below or emailing us at teamlogicknot[at]gmail[dot]com. The group is currently split on celebration vs desperation, with a curious correlation between whether or not they play Amulet Titan....

But why? HOW?

The “why” is very simple: with the release of Enchantment Creatures with the Saga subtype, new with the Final Fantasy set, WotC did not want them to be easily and unintuitively killed via effects such as Unable to Scream that remove their chapter abilities. To get into the “how”, or the more detailed mechanics of the current rules and the new upcoming rules, we have to get, what the L2s call, rules sweaty.

How do Sagas actually work?

As a reminder, “Saga” is a subtype of Enchantment, and Sagas have a few characteristics:

• A Saga enters with a lore counter on it.
• As a result of a lore counter being placed on a Saga, it will trigger one of the Saga’s chapter abilities.
• At the beginning of Main Phase 1, another lore counter is added to the Saga.
• When a Saga has all of its lore counters* and none of its chapter abilities are on the stack, the Saga is sacrificed as a state-based effect.

Let’s take a look at how this works with Urza’s Saga, step-by-step.

1. On Turn 1, Urza’s Saga is played. As it enters play, it enters with a lore counter.
   -The lore counter being added triggers the first chapter ability, and it gains the ability “Tap: add {C}”
2. On Turn 2, at the beginning of Main Phase 1, a second lore counter is placed.
   -This triggers the second chapter ability, and it gains the construct-making ability.
3. On Turn 3, at the beginning of Main Phase 1, a third lore counter is placed.
   -This triggers the third chapter ability, and the player can search for an artifact; perhaps an innocent, nonthreatening Amulet of Vigor.
   -After the third chapter ability has resolved, since Urza’s Saga has three lore counters, it is sacrificed.

How does Blood Moon work with Urza’s Saga now/before?

*Let’s focus on a small detail where I left an asterisk. The bolded part of “When a Saga has all of its lore counters … sacrifice it” is paraphrasing the more technical definition “at least N lore counters, where N is the number of chapter abilities the Saga has”. In normal cases, as described above, a Saga gets a lore counter that triggers its final chapter ability, then it's sacrificed. This is because it has a number of lore counters equal to the number of chapter abilities. Simple, right?

Blood Moon causes what is called a type-changing effect. We’ll get into the nitty gritty details later, but the result of this type-changing effect is that Urza’s Saga loses all of its chapter abilities. Since the number of chapter abilities is 0, Urza’s Saga will always have more lore counters than chapter abilities and therefore be sacrificed.

Okay, so what’s exactly changing?

WotC is changing the rules slightly. When a Saga loses its chapter abilities, it will not be sacrificed as a result of having “too many” lore counters. Urza’s Saga will stay on the battlefield as an Enchantment Land - Mountain Saga with however many lore counters it had when Blood Moon landed.

Another curious result, mentioned in the TL;DR, is that Urza’s Saga will keep any abilities gained from its chapter abilities. Most competitive players are vaguely aware that something called “layers” keep the game working, but have no idea how they work, kinda like magnets. To understand the Blood Moon and Urza’s Saga interaction, though, we must learn about dipole moments layers 4 and 6.

Blood Moon, as a “type-changing effect”, is applied in layer 4. As the name suggests, they causes objects to change their type and/or subtype. In this case, Blood Moon causes nonbasic lands to become subtype Mountain. In becoming subtype Mountain, nonbasic lands lose their abilities; this is why a Shifting Woodland loses both its “Tap: add {G}” ability and its “2GG: become a copy…” ability and also why Urza’s Saga will lose its chapter abilities. Inherent to subtype Mountain, they gain “Tap: add {R}”. However, abilities gained (as a result of previously triggered chapter abilities) are applied in layer 6, which comes after layer 4. Therefore, it retains these ability-added effects.

I’ll briefly mention that Alpine Moon works differently than Blood Moon with Urza's Saga and will remove the abilities gained because it has the text “lands … lose all land subtypes and abilities”. The “lose all land types” applies to layer 4, which is not the relevant part. The “lose all abilities” applies to layer 6; assuming the Alpine Moon came in after the Urza’s Saga was in play, it will override the abilities gained that also apply in layer 6.

The ramifications of these changes are hard to tell beyond the basic observation that Urza’s Saga becomes stronger and Blood Moon effects become weaker against opposing Urza’s Sagas. Amulet Titan in general greatly benefits from no longer losing a land, though the effect is still devastating against the deck as a whole. The change is particularly relevant in the Amulet Titan vs UB Murktide matchup that is currently strongly in UB Murktide’s favor. Harbinger of the Seas becomes much less of a hammer because it enables the Urza’s Saga construct gameplan that their deck already struggles to deal with.

Some players are toying with the idea of combining Urza’s Saga with Blood Moon effects in their own deck to enable the construct gameplan I’ve mentioned a few times. I’m dubious this will stick around, as Urza’s Saga constructs have not been a reliable way to win for quite some time in Modern, especially with the speed the format currently operates in. A second-order effect Amulet Titan degenerates fear is that this will enable other Urza’s Saga decks to play moon effects, such as Harbinger of the Seas in Affinity-style decks. Realistically, they are just fearful when the truth is that the deck has and will always remained tier 0 or 1 through metas with KCI, Hogaak, Eldrazi, Oko, Mox Opal, Treasure Cruise/Dig Through Time, Faithless looting/Golgari Grave Troll Dredge, and Urza’s Saga rules changes. The deck is always the most broken thing in Modern and just avoids bans by being hard to play.

Rules citations:
CR 613 - Interaction of Continuous Effects (613.1 describes the order of layers)
CR 714 - Saga Cards

Thanks to incredible judges Garrison (@hanweirgarrison) and John (@zakana) who have the patience to help laypeople, like myself, understand the changes!