The Scryfall Blog: Archival

On August 8, 2024, multiple Oracle updates arrived on Gatherer for the release of Bloomburrow, detailed below.

Note that as always, Scryfall does not control or issue errata, we just reflect it from the official source. We’re just noting what we’ve seen that’s changed.

Enters the battlefield errata

The phrase “enters the battlefield” has been shortened to just “enters”. This affects all new cards in Bloomburrow, and errata for this has been issued to several thousand cards.

For example, Baleful Strix up to now has had the following ability:

When Baleful Strix enters the battlefield, draw a card.

With Bloomburrow, that text is being shortened to the following:

When Baleful Srix enters, draw a card.

There are some notable exceptions:

• The phrase “leaves the battlefield” has not been changed.
• The phrase “enters or leaves the battlefield” has also not been changed.
• Some cards will still use “enters the battlefield” when they care about control, e.g. “enters the battlefield under your control” doesn’t appear to have been changed.

Paw symbol & Phyrexian mana symbol

Bloomburrow introduced a new paw symbol, {P}, as a resource on modal spells.

One card, Rage Extractor, features the nonspecific Phyrexian mana symbol. This used to be {P} but has been renamed to {H}.

First and second main phases

Cards that referred to your “precombat main phase” or your “postcombat main phase” now refer to your first or second main phase instead.

These cards were affected: o:"first main phase" or o:"second main phase"

Energy fixes

Some cards, notably including the recently released Suppression Ray and Wheel of Potential, received errata to fix an error where you could choose an arbitrary value of X and pay no energy.

Other template changes

During our sweep we saw other template changes we aren’t certain occurred with Bloomburrow specifically:

• “As long as it’s not your turn” became “During turns other than yours”
• “As long as it’s your turn” became During your turn”
• “Protection from all colors” became “Protection from each color”

On June 14, 2024, with Modern Horizons 3, Gatherer introduced a series of Oracle errata now reflected on our site.

Several types and an ability were replaced:

• The Naga creature type was removed. All Naga creatures have become Snakes instead. (For the affected cards, see: (art:naga t:snake date<mh3))
• The Viashino creature type was removed, and they’ve become Lizards instead. (See: (art:viashino t:lizard date<mh3))
• The Cephalid creature type was removed, and they’ve become Octopuses instead. (See: (art:cephalid t:octopus date<mh3))
• Totem Armor was renamed to Umbra Armor. (See: kw:umbraarmor date<mh3)
• The Tribal type was renamed to Kindred. (See: t:kindred date<mh3)

Additionally:

• Kaladesh’s dragons are now officially Cat Dragons. Freejam Regent and Skyship Stalker received errata.

You can see a list of all affected cards with this search.

Some of these changes were foreshadowed on November 3, 2023 as part of the announcement that Rakshasa creature types were changing.

Note: We don’t author these updates; they’re issued by Wizards of the Coast. Tokens don’t have have oracle text and don’t receive errata. That means various embalm/eternalize tokens and Estrid’s Mask token will continue to reflect their original printed text on Scryfall. We anticipate that eventually they may receive reprints with updated text, which we will reflect at that time.

On November 3, 2023, Wizards announced that Rakshasas in the game would receive errata to cease to be Cat Demons (or Cat Devils, in Mahadi’s case). This means they will simply be Demons (or Devils), and simply no longer have the Cat type.

That update affected these cards.

This change is not solely a type line change. The Rakshasa is a type of being found in Hindu Mythology, and Magic is pivoting to reflect their origins rather than the cat version picked up by way of Dungeons & Dragons. This means Arena piloted this change with some sweet new art of a whole new kind of errata seen on Rakshasa Deathdealer, Rakshasa Vizier, Rakshasa’s Secret, and Villainous Wealth.

We welcome Wizards making efforts to address their past and improve the representation found in their games.

Throughout Magic’s history, there have been insensitive, bigoted, and stereotypical decisions made about set designs, card artwork, and Magic’s story. On June 10th, Wizards of the Coast announced their intent to ban a set of older Magic cards and adjust their presentation on Gatherer.

We fully support Wizards’ decision to discuss openly how these cards are not appropriate for Magic. However, we want to be clear that we also believe that these changes are minor gestures within a grander scope of issues in Magic and within Wizards of the Coast.

• The Scryfall team supports calls for Wizards of the Coast to take strong, transparent steps to diversify and improve their hiring process, diversify their permanent and contracted staff, and to make inroads on shaping their company to better match the demographics they serve.

• We support anyone speaking up about their positive or negative experiences with Wizards of the Coast, professional or otherwise.

• The Scryfall team supports all efforts to elevate participation in our community from black and brown players and creators.

• We want an inclusive future for Magic where often-marginalized voices are given space to flourish. And we want the community to continue to keep all organizations involved in Magic accountable for that future.

It is important that Wizards of the Coast continues to acknowledge their role in perpetuating systemic racism and confronts their prejudices and biases, as we all should as we strive for a more just and inclusive world.

What is Scryfall doing?

You can make arguments both for and against Scryfall as a “museum” and as a “public utility” of Magic knowledge. Our goal is still to be the most comprehensive search engine of Magic cards, and very few other sites have the same ability to archive Magic data like we can. We could set that goal aside in this instance and delete the images of these cards as Gatherer has done, but we believe keeping the images will enable people to understand and learn from this game’s past.

We will however work to divest ourselves from these cards and warn users about them:

• These cards will no longer appear in most casual Scryfall searches, you must specifically search for their sets or their names, or add include:extras to your search terms.

• Scryfall will be asking other search engines to de-index our pages for these cards.

• Scryfall will no longer refer sales and web traffic for these cards.

• Scryfall will no longer sync prices and store IDs for these cards. (Some of our partners have also already taken steps to remove these products for sale.)

• When you look up these cards on Scryfall, you will now see an overlay that requires you to click through to view the card’s image.

• We have also merged in the changes to Multiverse IDs and card legality

For Scryfall API developers, these specific technical points also apply:

• These cards are now marked as Scryfall “extras”, so you must opt-in to receiving them with the include_extras flag where applicable.

• We have added a new "content_warning": true field to these cards, so that downstream you can also decide how to properly handle them.

• Cards with "content_warning": true will omit several sales URLs and prices.

Finally, we are listening to community feedback about these changes, and continuing to evolve our response as wider discussion happens. Nothing we’ve done here is necessarily final and permanent. Our site has always evolved with the community’s desires and we’ll continue to do so.

Supporting the Black Lives Matter movement

Members of the Scryfall team have made private contributions to nonprofits and fund drives supporting the BLM movement. We are also announcing that we plan to run a public fundraiser auction to benefit Black Lives Matter and Fair Fight .

The Scryfall team will be auctioning a complete collection of every basic land card, with all proceeds going to these two organizations. Please look for more news about the fundraiser very soon.

We love you,
The Scryfall Team

All cards from Hour of Devastation (HOU) are now indexed. Find them with ++e:hou. Happy hunting!

Banners and shields up! Commander Anthology is now available.

All cards from Khans of Tarkir Promos (PKTK) are now indexed. Find them with ++e:pktk.

All cards from Welcome Deck 2017 (W17) are now indexed. Find them with ++e:w17.

All cards from Amonkhet (AKH) and Amonkhet Invocations (MP2) are now available. Good luck on those trials… you’ll need it. 🌄

All cards from Magic Online Theme Decks (TD0) are now indexed. Find them with ++e:td0.

All cards from Duel Decks: Mind vs. Might (DDS) are now indexed. Find them with ++e:dds.

All cards from Modern Masters 2017 (MM3) are now indexed. Find them with ++e:mm3. Happy hunting!

All cards from the MTGO prize sets Legendary Cube (PZ1) and You Make the Cube (PZ2) are now indexed. 📦😎

We’ve archived two older Magic Online sets: Theme Decks (TD0) and Mirrodin Pure vs. New Phyrexia (TD2). Find them with ++e:td0 and ++e:td2 These also have high-res images!

All cards from Planechase Anthology (PCA) are now available. Try ++e:pca.

Friday Night Magic promos have been organized into yearly sets, and now include high-resolution images. See them all with ++b:fnm

Plane, Scheme, and Phenomenon cards have been hidden from default results. You must now specifically search for their sets or types. See the docs for more info.

Complete Commander 2016 information is available. Try ++e:c16.