Guardian of faith not returning all reinforcements from exile [Investigating]

andrewvanmarle

Pw: huatli 2

Deck
Hoogar
Gaea's revenge
GoF
Song of Creation and assorted gemchangers

I've confirmed multiple of the creatures in my exile but GoF only grabs one instead of all.

KrizzB

Creatures need to be reinforced on the board before being exiled for it to bring the reinforcements back with it, but if you have multiple copies of a creature in the exile there is no way of telling which one of them was the one with reinforcements..

And so if an exiled creature is added to the bottom of the exile pile and GoF fetches from the top then that would be a problem 

andrewvanmarle

If that's the way it should work, then that differs from other abilities that grab all of the same from the graveyard (gy or exile shouldn't make a diff)
The gy recursion spell from kaldheim grabs all the creatures with the same name when foretold and we have a pw ability do the same.

It doesn't match the text this way

jtwood

andrewvanmarle said:

If that's the way it should work, then that differs from other abilities that grab all of the same from the graveyard (gy or exile shouldn't make a diff)
The gy recursion spell from kaldheim grabs all the creatures with the same name when foretold and we have a pw ability do the same.

It doesn't match the text this way

Pretty sure B2’s ultimate only returns the card and its specific reinforcements - not every copy of the creature in your gy. 

It took me forever to figure that was happening. Unlike hired, it’s not very easy to understand. 

ambrosio191

The reverse side 2nd ability of Bolas, The Ravager (Bolas 2) says:

Return the creature with the most reinforcements from your graveyard to the battlefield with its reinforcements. Then, reinforce it.

Guardian of the Faith says:

... Return the first 2 different creatures from your exile into the battlefield under your control with their reinforcements.

Bolas returns all creatures with the same name in the graveyard to the battlefield, I dont see why Guardian wouldnt, with their similar wording.  I cant imagine its vs their makes that much of a difference in wording.

andrewvanmarle

Thank you ambrosio, that was the one I was thinking of.

jtwood

ambrosio191 said:

The reverse side 2nd ability of Bolas, The Ravager (Bolas 2) says:

Return the creature with the most reinforcements from your graveyard to the battlefield with its reinforcements. Then, reinforce it.

Guardian of the Faith says:

... Return the first 2 different creatures from your exile into the battlefield under your control with their reinforcements.

Bolas returns all creatures with the same name in the graveyard to the battlefield, I dont see why Guardian wouldnt, with their similar wording.  I cant imagine its vs their makes that much of a difference in wording.

Pretty darn sure NB2 does not return all copies of the creature from the gy. 

In this video, there were two Urza’s in the gy. It returns one (the last one), reinforces it, and the other is still in the gy. 

https://i.imgur.com/DHLbFu3.mp4

In this video, my gy has one copy of Gyruda and Urza each. But the Gyruda was reinforced multiple times when it died. Urza was not. Note that Gyruda comes back with a lot of reinforcements that weren’t in the gy and then it gets the +1 trigger. 

https://i.imgur.com/e2iiOCh.mp4

What we need to take from this is that creatures go to the gy with a hidden attribute: reinforcements. It’s equal to the number of reinforcements they had when they were destroyed. These abilities that return “creatures with their reinforcements” care about that hidden attribute on a single card - not the other cards with the same name in the gy. 

For GoY, it can exile your creatures when it enters play. The ability to return creatures + reinforcements means that the entire exiled stack can come back (eventually). It doesn’t mean it will return all copies from your gy. 

KrizzB

Cards have always had this hidden reinforcements attribute, I tested this by reinforcing Armament Master a bunch of times with tokens, then killing him off and then returned him and his reinforcements using Nethroi and he came back reinforced. 

Also notice that if you cast 10 Caustic Caterpillar to reinforce it and then destroy it, there will only be a single caterpillar in your GY even if you did cast 10 from hand.


There is only a handful of times where all of a given creature will be returned and that is the ones with text like "when you gain x life, return this creature to the battlefield"



The biggest issue here is when a card will return a non-specified creature and its reinforcements, that means if you have 10 of the same creature in the GY/exile and only one of them was reinforced when killed or exiled you are not guaranteed to get the reinforced one back.

Teleportation Circle has the same wording and issue as GoF. 

Magic:PQ Support Team

Hello guys,

Thank you for all the information provided, this issue will be investigated!
If you have any additional information that you consider relevant, please don't hesitate to send me.

Rebeca.

andrewvanmarle

KrizzB said:

Cards have always had this hidden reinforcements attribute, I tested this by reinforcing Armament Master a bunch of times with tokens, then killing him off and then returned him and his reinforcements using Nethroi and he came back reinforced. 

Also notice that if you cast 10 Caustic Caterpillar to reinforce it and then destroy it, there will only be a single caterpillar in your GY even if you did cast 10 from hand.


There is only a handful of times where all of a given creature will be returned and that is the ones with text like "when you gain x life, return this creature to the battlefield"



The biggest issue here is when a card will return a non-specified creature and its reinforcements, that means if you have 10 of the same creature in the GY/exile and only one of them was reinforced when killed or exiled you are not guaranteed to get the reinforced one back.

Teleportation Circle has the same wording and issue as GoF. 

And a problem is that if you return said caterppillar, you lose all the other copies in your GY, which is bad for a graveyard recursion deck.


This might not be a bug then, but it is a design flaw.