Supports which have no subtype

Pantagruel

Some supports have no subtype. Is this an oversight?

Some support cards have no subtype, such as Nissa's Pilgrimage, but more importantly supports which are created by PW abilities such as Ob Nixilis's Forbidden Knowledge or Teferi's Zhalfir's Fate have no subtype.

This in effect means there are are 6 subtypes of supports: Land, Enchantment, Artifact, Token, Vanguard and None.

This has the knockon effect of making newer support removal cards which name specific subtypes minimally useful, especially compared to older cards like Demolish (which, in particular, will never leave Standard, for reasons I have never understood).

Casualties of War will not remove PW supports. Is this 'working as intended'?

wereotter

This is intentional. Not all supports were translated from cards of those types.

Nissa's Pilgrimage in paper magic is a sorcery. Hixus is a creature. The other two are planeswalker emblems, and wouldn't have any type either.

Mburn7

Basically, when this game first came out there was no such thing as a support type, they were all just "support" and destruction cards were worded accordingly.

Gradually as the game expanded the devs have added in support types and more specific removal so that we can have pseudo-targeted support removal, but older supports that are not of a "support" type in paper have been left out.  I guess planeswalker abilities should have the "Emblem" type eventually, but since there is no way to destroy them in paper we're most likely not getting a card that specifically targets them anyway.

Casualties of War is supposed to kill Vanguard supports, but it won't destroy any support card without a type, since that's not on its list of targets.  So yeah, I guess its working as intended right now in that regard.

Pantagruel

wereotter said:

This is intentional. Not all supports were translated from cards of those types.

Nissa's Pilgrimage in paper magic is a sorcery. Hixus is a creature. The other two are planeswalker emblems, and wouldn't have any type either.

Then why does Demolish kill the 'creature' Hixus or the 'emblem' Forbidden Knowledge?

In paper, Hangarback Walker is a cheap 0/0 creature, not an expensive 8/8. In paper, Fblthp is not a planeswalker. Oktagon quite obviously deviate from paper design when they decide it's necessary.

I'm interested in whether they consider adding support subtypes to all supports necessary; supports do not exist in paper and Oktagon can implement them how they wish!

Thankyou for your speculations, though, they are interesting!

Ampersand

@Pantagruel
Hibernum, the original development team, were the ones who made those choices about Origins cards. Hibernum were the devs up through Hour of Devastation, Oktagon's first set was Ixalan.

Pantagruel

Ampersand said:

@Pantagruel
Hibernum, the original development team, were the ones who made those choices about Origins cards. Hibernum were the devs up through Hour of Devastation, Oktagon's first set was Ixalan.

But Hibernum made supports that had no subtypes. Oktagon went back through old sets and gave subtypes to cards like Brawler's Plate, which originally had no subtypes (I'd post a picture if it was easier to do so but it isn't so you'll have to take my word for it )

wereotter said:

Nissa's Pilgrimage in paper magic is a sorcery. Hixus is a creature. The other two are planeswalker emblems, and wouldn't have any type either.

Path of Discovery was an Enchantment in paper MTG, but has no subtype in MTGPQ. This, at the very least, is an oversight.

jtwood

Quirks & Inconsistencies™

Kinesia

Except it's gotten worse... There _used_ to be a bunch of Aura supports too when they were first added and this was done to past ones like Knightly Valor. I had it in a deck _specifically_ because it was an aura, but as of this new set it is not and there are a bunch of other old auras missing in action too.
That was a really bad plan. The type  _mattered_ and was way more appropriate for them than "none"