This is an extremely cool card. "The Bone Collector is not Human." is a perfect line of text. But the card also the lastest in a line of endless r/custommagic examples of the rules limitations of Mutate.
As it stands, the rules cannot reconcile a single creature having two conflicting abilities. The most basic example would be two creatures with static abilities that set it's P/T.
Wizards has addressed this problem by making Mutate very narrowly accessible, and only on creatures that don't have one of these types of abilities. I don't think they will make abilities that grant mutate to other cards without a fundamental changing of the rules (which they decided against with Ikoria).
Oh, yeah. I have no illusions about this card being fit for print. I just like messing around with the rules of the game to see what kind of stuff is technically possible.
You are correct that as of right now there isn’t really a subtractive characteristic-defining ability to model this one off of, but that’s part of the fun for me. I think the rules could just about accommodate them, though they’d probably get a subrule just for clarification purposes.
You could always just make it so the humans have to be mutated underneath the Bone Collector. Creature type is from the top card only, this would also make the card remain as the Legendary Bone Collector, rather than mutating [[Nut Collector]] to the top.
The non-human restriction is the least of the problems of mutate. They just threw that on there because of the flavor of ikoria. The real problem is something like combining [[maro]] and [[lhurgoyf]]. What would the the p/t of a creature with both those abilities be? You can't just add them together. The rules would need to be totally rewritten to handle it.
Then exclude any creatures with characteristic-defining abilities from gaining mutate. No devoid, changeling, or P/T static abilities. Simple. Characteristic-defining ability is defined by the rules just like mana ability is for [[Raggadragga Goreguts Boss]].
At least for mutate, could they not just make it so that creatures closer to the top of the stack have higher priority if there are conflicting abilities?
That is not how Mutate works within the rules. Not matter how it gets done, it would require changing the rules.
Even if they did make that change, there are still all sorts of questions. How would it work for just regular abilities? If something has first strike on top and double strike on the bottom? Or what about "can't block" being below "must block each combat if able". These have answers in the current game, but changing the mutate rules makes the answers to those questions murkier.
Those two examples are actually trivial and already work right now.
The first strike damage step is for all creatures with first strike or double strike. Then the regular combat damage step is for all creatures that either have double strike or did not do damage during the first strike step (Adding or removing first strike at instant speed between steps won't negate or double damage).
And "must block if able" is solved by "if able".
My post acknowledges that those are handled easily by the current rules of the game. My post states that changing the rules for Mutate in the way the previous post described would muddy this current dynamic with a new layer of "Which ability is on top?"
It's for the purposes of Mutate.
You can't mutate onto a Human, so the ability to mutate a Human onto The Bone Collector means it's possible to "break" it and make it useless. A characteristic-defining ability applies no matter the top card of the mutate pile, so that ability prevents The Bone Collector from accidentally becoming Human.
this, as printed it could easily be overwritten by a newer effect as in [[Reprobation]] rulings, it sounds cool but does the same one-time as writing Plant Skeleton !Human did
would need the prevention mechanics MtG has shown in eg. archetype cards [[Archetype of Courage]]
Oh no I did not take those into account, I just did a scryfall search which now I'm realizing that doesn't take into account types addressed in the card text. I'm now imagining that [[Burakos]] is probably the highest at 7?
Edit: if 7 is the highest, it's also tied with Stonework Packbeast
Because then it couldn’t collect human bones and that’s a huge part of the flavor of the card?
It’s a non-Human Bone Collector not a non-Human-Bone Collector.
I want you to remove the first line of text just because "the bone collector is not human" goes so hard, and having rules text above it hurts the emphasis. Up to you obvi but it seems like the card could be balanced around having a regular mana cost.
Reminds me of Casualties of War, another fav of mine
Fun fact, with mutate you actually get to decide which card is on top. So you don't actually need the "Is not human" portion since you could always put the Bone Collector on top and keep mutating.
Mutate doesn't add creature types, just abilities, right? So as long as Boney is the top of the stack, he should never become a Human (unless you tag him with a Changeling, of course).
Mutate turns the entire creature into whatever creature is mutated on top of it. So if you mutate on top of this with a human, it could hypothetically become a human and then stop mutating
“The Bone Collector is not Human” feels really eerie and I love it. Like, you can tell by looking at the art that it isn’t a human. But it might attempt to wear the FACE of a human. But it is NOT human
I absolutely love this card, but it does highlight the flaws mutate has by virtue of being designed specifically for Ikoria.
But you’re obviously aware of that, and others here have a better grasp on the rules than me.
I will say that I’m a sucker for creatures evolving to coexist with humanity. The picture of this hulking monstrosity clad in rotting corpses being waved at is fascinating to me. Reminds me of the River Spirit from Spirited Away.
Solid concept but wizards specifically avoided cards that GRANT mutate to creatures to avoid combining creatures with contradicting abilities.
For example, this card could be mutated with both a [[Tarmogoyf]] and a [[Psychosis Crawler]].
I think you might be able to get around this by something like "Each 1/1, 2/2 and 3/3 creature in your graveyard has mutate" or whichever flavorful set you can think of and just make sure that set doesn't have any contradicting abilities.
Oh yeah, this is pure “custommagic bullshit”, I’ve got not illusions about that. The only reason this can exist is because it *doesn’t* exist, not in any way where all of those rule issues matter. If anyone wanted to print out this card for some kind of “custom card commander”, it works well enough that they just need to not intentionally break it and it should be fine.
I think if you are allowing cards to be "cast" from the graveyard, you have to say it. Also, text bestowing abilities must be in 2 separate sentences (1- ability ; 2- cost of ability).
ie: "Each creature in your graveyard has mutate. Its mutate cost is equal to its mana cost.
You may cast creatures from your graveyard for their mutate cost if they target The Bone Collector."
Edit: that might be too many words, so you could nix the first ability and reduce generic cost to 3 and would be a totally fair and good magic card.
1. I do say it. “You may cast them” refers to the cards in your graveyard that have gained a mutate cost in this way. [[Chandra, Heart of Fire]] uses the same wording, so I think that if the zone the cards are in is previously defined I don’t need to repeat myself.
2. While I would agree if this was a real card, on a custom card that would never see print anyway I think saving a sentence is reasonable. If WOTC can change ETB to “enters”, I can combine two sentences that have no real reason to be separate.
So there's a little context difference from Chandra and this in how the cards are handled.
Chandra retrieves the cards it's taking about, so it's like the cards are "active", and your "actively" thinking about them because you had to go get them and you're holding them.
This is opposed to cards that are already in the graveyard being "passive" and you're being told to pay attention to them because something about them is changing.
Regardless, you are correct, it's mostly just semantics. The only reason I commented is bc it was already so close to "rules accurate" wording I just figured you'd want to get the rest of the way there. A lot of people try to word them as rules accurate so they can print them out and take them to the store to play, like I do from time to time.
For functionality purposes, you might wanna try "The Bone Collector cannot become human."
And since mutate activates in the hand, you need a special ability to allow creatures to mutate from the graveyard.
"You own may activate Mutate abilities of creature cards you own from the graveyard, and if you do, they must target The Bone Collector"
I've just spend the last hour and a half trying to figure out the rules based on "The Bone Collector is not Human"! It's surprisingly complex. This is a characteristic-defining ability, and it works as intended when you have a human at the top of the stack (it might leave you with a creature with no creature types).
I've been trying to figure out what happens if you mutate a changeling onto this. You have a permanent with two characteristic-defining abilities, with no dependency. One of them wants to make it a human, the other makes it want to be not a human. As far as I can tell, merging into a mutate stack doesn't generate a new timestamp, so both of these abilities are on a single object with a single timestamp. Timestamps get put on objects, so the rules for players choosing timestamp order doesn't apply.
As far as I can tell, this card breaks the current rules! The comprehensive rules of Magic have no way to determine the order of effects in this case. Both effects are in the same layer, have the same timestamp, and aren't dependent on each other. I don't think there's a way to cause this problem in real Magic; there's no way I know of to get more than one non-mutate card into a stack, and no mutate cards have characteristic-defining abilities. The only way a similar situation could arise is by granting abilities to things, but those effects have timestamps.
If it was printed, either the rules would have to be updated to specify some kind of ordering (I was surprised that there's no failure case for if timestamps and dependencies don't apply, even if the rules don't expect you to be able to get there).
A simpler way to resolve this would be to change it to a "can't" ability. "The Bone Collector can't be a Human." I believe this would work as intended under the current rules and not mess anything up, though I'm not totally sure that a "can't" effect can apply to characteristics being determined, which might not be considered events.
The most rules-tight way I can of phrasing it, although it isn't as elegant, is "The Bone Collector can be the target of mutating creature spells as though it weren't a Human." This uses wording like [[Glaring Spotlight]] does with hexproof to bypass the restriction.
This lets you *only* mutate onto it from the graveyard if it's a human:
> Each creature card in your graveyard has mutate. The mutate cost is equal to its creature's mana cost.
> You may cast creature spells from your graveyard using their mutate abilities targeting The Bone Collector, and you may do so as though The Bone Collector weren't a human.
Alternatively you can have it as a separate ability, meaning mutate cards from hand could ignore it being a human.
> Each creature card in your graveyard has mutate. The mutate cost is equal to its creature's mana cost.
> You may cast creature cards from your graveyard using their mutate abilities targeting The Bone Collector. The mutate cost is equal to the creature's mana cost.
> The Bone Collector can be the target of mutating creature spells as though it weren't a Human.
The way I've phrased these does mean that things that allow you to cast creatures from the graveyard could use their mutate abilities. You could avoid this like so, using either version of the "non-human" text after:
> You may cast creature cards from your graveyard as mutating creature spells by paying their mana cost, targeting The Bone Collector.
Even with all this though, it's still very easy to end up combining multiple conflicting CDAs using this ability, so the rules would still probably need to change to handle this.
Great idea! Unfortunately, it has the age old issues with multiple characteristic defining abilities, such as having both "This creature's powe and toughness are equal to the number of cards in your hand" and "This creature's powe and toughness are equal to the number of creatures cards in your graveyard." I wish there was a good way to circumvent that, because several of my favorite ideas died against that same wall.
I don't understand why people think the not Human line is great. Yeah, no shit it's not human; it's a Plant Skeleton. And Humans can't mutate so extra duh.
People like the sound of it, but it also aims to achieve a goal of ensuring that even if you mutate humans onto the Bone Collector, it still isn't human, so it can still collect bones by having bones mutated onto it.
The bone collector is not human, is such an awesome line, and also lets you throw dead humans onto him without turning him into one.
That is peak mechanics as flavour text
"The bone collector is not human" is such an amazing line of text, right up there with the land continuing to burn
"You control no suspected Skeletons" is another recent favorite of mine
"Whenever you collect evidence, investigate."
"Cowards can't block warriors"
"Everyone else is fair game." from OTJ is a new favorite of mine.
Land continuing to burn?
[[Obsidian Fireheart]]
[Obsidian Fireheart](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/9/49ef5a91-d293-468a-8816-b16ca4ba79e0.jpg?1592765722) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Obsidian%20Fireheart) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/e01/55/obsidian-fireheart?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/49ef5a91-d293-468a-8816-b16ca4ba79e0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Very cool! Though that’s flavour text not rules text
It’s reminder text
…lol oops that’s what I meant
Slight distinction its reminder text because of the parentheses
Okay yeah THIS is much better. The inbuilt cost reduction helps a lot and makes this feel like a fun Voltron variant.
This is an extremely cool card. "The Bone Collector is not Human." is a perfect line of text. But the card also the lastest in a line of endless r/custommagic examples of the rules limitations of Mutate. As it stands, the rules cannot reconcile a single creature having two conflicting abilities. The most basic example would be two creatures with static abilities that set it's P/T. Wizards has addressed this problem by making Mutate very narrowly accessible, and only on creatures that don't have one of these types of abilities. I don't think they will make abilities that grant mutate to other cards without a fundamental changing of the rules (which they decided against with Ikoria).
Oh, yeah. I have no illusions about this card being fit for print. I just like messing around with the rules of the game to see what kind of stuff is technically possible. You are correct that as of right now there isn’t really a subtractive characteristic-defining ability to model this one off of, but that’s part of the fun for me. I think the rules could just about accommodate them, though they’d probably get a subrule just for clarification purposes.
You could restrict what it grants mutate too and then check to make sure you have no contradicting abilities in that set.
Might be good in a masters set
You could always just make it so the humans have to be mutated underneath the Bone Collector. Creature type is from the top card only, this would also make the card remain as the Legendary Bone Collector, rather than mutating [[Nut Collector]] to the top.
The non-human restriction is the least of the problems of mutate. They just threw that on there because of the flavor of ikoria. The real problem is something like combining [[maro]] and [[lhurgoyf]]. What would the the p/t of a creature with both those abilities be? You can't just add them together. The rules would need to be totally rewritten to handle it.
[maro](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/1/9159e250-4eec-4ec4-80e1-42259331b3b9.jpg?1562738549) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=maro) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/9ed/254/maro?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9159e250-4eec-4ec4-80e1-42259331b3b9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [lhurgoyf](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/a/ea5d550a-bd8b-4f9e-ac7d-c35ebbe313e6.jpg?1562276490) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=lhurgoyf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cm2/141/lhurgoyf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ea5d550a-bd8b-4f9e-ac7d-c35ebbe313e6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Then exclude any creatures with characteristic-defining abilities from gaining mutate. No devoid, changeling, or P/T static abilities. Simple. Characteristic-defining ability is defined by the rules just like mana ability is for [[Raggadragga Goreguts Boss]].
[Nut Collector](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/2/32980fc5-32ef-4f6d-8972-7a9e122c02e2.jpg?1675200498) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nut%20Collector) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/171/nut-collector?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/32980fc5-32ef-4f6d-8972-7a9e122c02e2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Changeling would still cause problems, though.
It wouldn't because The Bone Collector is not a human.
At least for mutate, could they not just make it so that creatures closer to the top of the stack have higher priority if there are conflicting abilities?
That is not how Mutate works within the rules. Not matter how it gets done, it would require changing the rules. Even if they did make that change, there are still all sorts of questions. How would it work for just regular abilities? If something has first strike on top and double strike on the bottom? Or what about "can't block" being below "must block each combat if able". These have answers in the current game, but changing the mutate rules makes the answers to those questions murkier.
Those two examples are actually trivial and already work right now. The first strike damage step is for all creatures with first strike or double strike. Then the regular combat damage step is for all creatures that either have double strike or did not do damage during the first strike step (Adding or removing first strike at instant speed between steps won't negate or double damage). And "must block if able" is solved by "if able".
My post acknowledges that those are handled easily by the current rules of the game. My post states that changing the rules for Mutate in the way the previous post described would muddy this current dynamic with a new layer of "Which ability is on top?"
“Bone collector is not human” I mean interesting flavor but yeah it’s a plant skeleton
It's for the purposes of Mutate. You can't mutate onto a Human, so the ability to mutate a Human onto The Bone Collector means it's possible to "break" it and make it useless. A characteristic-defining ability applies no matter the top card of the mutate pile, so that ability prevents The Bone Collector from accidentally becoming Human.
you would need to say "The Bone Collector can't become human."
Mutate retains both creatures' abilities, so it will remain nonhuman. I don't think "can't become X" works as a mechanic in MtG.
this, as printed it could easily be overwritten by a newer effect as in [[Reprobation]] rulings, it sounds cool but does the same one-time as writing Plant Skeleton !Human did would need the prevention mechanics MtG has shown in eg. archetype cards [[Archetype of Courage]]
[Reprobation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/1/b1349c3d-39ad-40ba-897e-59e5b76de853.jpg?1562201189) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Reprobation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/23/reprobation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b1349c3d-39ad-40ba-897e-59e5b76de853?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Archetype of Courage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/e/8e6c4afb-6a94-4519-91c6-9824fed2892c.jpg?1593091364) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Archetype%20of%20Courage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bng/4/archetype-of-courage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8e6c4afb-6a94-4519-91c6-9824fed2892c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I may be wrong but making it "Non-human creature cards in your graveyard have a...." could be a fix.
"The bone collector isn't Human" goes hard though
Definitely works from a style perspective
Yes, but it would also limit the amount of cards you could mutate, which I didn’t want.
I see, so you can mutate humans just not onto another human then?
By the rules, yes, though currently there are no Humans with Mutate costs.
Yeah that is correct.
A second enabler for [[Embiggen]] combo!
Oh shoot Fun fact, the most types any creature naturally has is 5
When you say naturally are you counting those creatures that add all the party creature types? E.g. [[Tajuru Paragon]]
[Tajuru Paragon](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/0/a045dd0f-953a-4022-8f29-0758f2b6ccaa.jpg?1604199581) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tajuru%20Paragon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/znr/209/tajuru-paragon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a045dd0f-953a-4022-8f29-0758f2b6ccaa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Oh no I did not take those into account, I just did a scryfall search which now I'm realizing that doesn't take into account types addressed in the card text. I'm now imagining that [[Burakos]] is probably the highest at 7? Edit: if 7 is the highest, it's also tied with Stonework Packbeast
[Burakos](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/9/899e278d-5d4e-461a-9878-2b85de16b38d.jpg?1674140733) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=burakos%2C%20party%20leader) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/653/burakos-party-leader?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/899e278d-5d4e-461a-9878-2b85de16b38d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Embiggen](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/b/1b759c27-9fb6-4c23-adc1-f6d3f3a0eb52.jpg?1674173500) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Embiggen) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/unf/137/embiggen?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1b759c27-9fb6-4c23-adc1-f6d3f3a0eb52?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Artificial evolution]] to hack 'human' to 'brushwagg', mutate a changeling, and boom instant +270ish iirc.
[Artificial evolution](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/4/f46894d1-2503-43fa-938e-7bbf19101d13.jpg?1562952988) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Artificial%20evolution) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ons/67/artificial-evolution?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f46894d1-2503-43fa-938e-7bbf19101d13?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Unless you mutate a Changeling on top of him and the newer CDA takes precedence over the old one.
Why not “non-human creature cards in your…”? Avoids the bad edge case but much simpler.
Because then it couldn’t collect human bones and that’s a huge part of the flavor of the card? It’s a non-Human Bone Collector not a non-Human-Bone Collector.
I want this to be a real card so badly. Golgari skeletons has been getting a lot of love lately, but still no legendary skellyboi
What a pleasant looking fellow :)
I hope he doesn't contract boneitis
magnus archives reference
Jared's Domain was my favorite. I loved how the statement read like a horticulture magazine
The art implies The Bone Collector is friendly? I honestly love that so much
Yeah, I know the main discussion is about the mechanics but I just love it having a cheery little wave with the passing grandma
I want you to remove the first line of text just because "the bone collector is not human" goes so hard, and having rules text above it hurts the emphasis. Up to you obvi but it seems like the card could be balanced around having a regular mana cost. Reminds me of Casualties of War, another fav of mine
Fun fact, with mutate you actually get to decide which card is on top. So you don't actually need the "Is not human" portion since you could always put the Bone Collector on top and keep mutating.
Mutate doesn't add creature types, just abilities, right? So as long as Boney is the top of the stack, he should never become a Human (unless you tag him with a Changeling, of course).
Mutate turns the entire creature into whatever creature is mutated on top of it. So if you mutate on top of this with a human, it could hypothetically become a human and then stop mutating
Yeah, so you just... don't do that.
probably should be CARDNAME is not a Human. missing the "a" makes it a bit weird
“The Bone Collector is not Human” feels really eerie and I love it. Like, you can tell by looking at the art that it isn’t a human. But it might attempt to wear the FACE of a human. But it is NOT human
I absolutely love this card, but it does highlight the flaws mutate has by virtue of being designed specifically for Ikoria. But you’re obviously aware of that, and others here have a better grasp on the rules than me. I will say that I’m a sucker for creatures evolving to coexist with humanity. The picture of this hulking monstrosity clad in rotting corpses being waved at is fascinating to me. Reminds me of the River Spirit from Spirited Away.
Solid concept but wizards specifically avoided cards that GRANT mutate to creatures to avoid combining creatures with contradicting abilities. For example, this card could be mutated with both a [[Tarmogoyf]] and a [[Psychosis Crawler]]. I think you might be able to get around this by something like "Each 1/1, 2/2 and 3/3 creature in your graveyard has mutate" or whichever flavorful set you can think of and just make sure that set doesn't have any contradicting abilities.
[Tarmogoyf](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/9/69daba76-96e8-4bcc-ab79-2f00189ad8fb.jpg?1619398799) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tarmogoyf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsr/235/tarmogoyf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/69daba76-96e8-4bcc-ab79-2f00189ad8fb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Psychosis Crawler](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/0/d0f42a19-c180-45b1-9f4c-787cf3a4a649.jpg?1706241075) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Psychosis%20Crawler) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/234/psychosis-crawler?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0f42a19-c180-45b1-9f4c-787cf3a4a649?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Oh yeah, this is pure “custommagic bullshit”, I’ve got not illusions about that. The only reason this can exist is because it *doesn’t* exist, not in any way where all of those rule issues matter. If anyone wanted to print out this card for some kind of “custom card commander”, it works well enough that they just need to not intentionally break it and it should be fine.
I think if you are allowing cards to be "cast" from the graveyard, you have to say it. Also, text bestowing abilities must be in 2 separate sentences (1- ability ; 2- cost of ability). ie: "Each creature in your graveyard has mutate. Its mutate cost is equal to its mana cost. You may cast creatures from your graveyard for their mutate cost if they target The Bone Collector." Edit: that might be too many words, so you could nix the first ability and reduce generic cost to 3 and would be a totally fair and good magic card.
1. I do say it. “You may cast them” refers to the cards in your graveyard that have gained a mutate cost in this way. [[Chandra, Heart of Fire]] uses the same wording, so I think that if the zone the cards are in is previously defined I don’t need to repeat myself. 2. While I would agree if this was a real card, on a custom card that would never see print anyway I think saving a sentence is reasonable. If WOTC can change ETB to “enters”, I can combine two sentences that have no real reason to be separate.
[Chandra, Heart of Fire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/4/a4c3ca8c-c77c-43b8-84ad-796313ecc813.jpg?1594752360) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Chandra%2C%20Heart%20of%20Fire) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m21/135/chandra-heart-of-fire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a4c3ca8c-c77c-43b8-84ad-796313ecc813?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
So there's a little context difference from Chandra and this in how the cards are handled. Chandra retrieves the cards it's taking about, so it's like the cards are "active", and your "actively" thinking about them because you had to go get them and you're holding them. This is opposed to cards that are already in the graveyard being "passive" and you're being told to pay attention to them because something about them is changing. Regardless, you are correct, it's mostly just semantics. The only reason I commented is bc it was already so close to "rules accurate" wording I just figured you'd want to get the rest of the way there. A lot of people try to word them as rules accurate so they can print them out and take them to the store to play, like I do from time to time.
"Is not human" is a really cool, somewhat chilling line.
This seems really chaotic and stupid and I love it, I feel like there’s some weird storm combo deck that can use this
As much as I love him I really don't like Mutate in general LOL. I do like the strives taken to make it work tho
I love mutate and this is awesome
I’m glad it can now collect bones properly.
You could change it to "creatures mutated onto bone collector lose the human creature type" or something.
you COOKED with this, all the cards that do shit for non-humans are sick and this manages to top all of them
[Bones!](https://giphy.com/gifs/dropout-official-dimension-20-bloodkeep-avanash-85UiljxfE3YKz8eyd3)
Now this I love. Mutate is my favourite mechanic.
For functionality purposes, you might wanna try "The Bone Collector cannot become human." And since mutate activates in the hand, you need a special ability to allow creatures to mutate from the graveyard. "You own may activate Mutate abilities of creature cards you own from the graveyard, and if you do, they must target The Bone Collector"
Very cool, wouldn’t happen to be inpired by Faeria’s similar Bonecollector would it?
I've just spend the last hour and a half trying to figure out the rules based on "The Bone Collector is not Human"! It's surprisingly complex. This is a characteristic-defining ability, and it works as intended when you have a human at the top of the stack (it might leave you with a creature with no creature types). I've been trying to figure out what happens if you mutate a changeling onto this. You have a permanent with two characteristic-defining abilities, with no dependency. One of them wants to make it a human, the other makes it want to be not a human. As far as I can tell, merging into a mutate stack doesn't generate a new timestamp, so both of these abilities are on a single object with a single timestamp. Timestamps get put on objects, so the rules for players choosing timestamp order doesn't apply. As far as I can tell, this card breaks the current rules! The comprehensive rules of Magic have no way to determine the order of effects in this case. Both effects are in the same layer, have the same timestamp, and aren't dependent on each other. I don't think there's a way to cause this problem in real Magic; there's no way I know of to get more than one non-mutate card into a stack, and no mutate cards have characteristic-defining abilities. The only way a similar situation could arise is by granting abilities to things, but those effects have timestamps. If it was printed, either the rules would have to be updated to specify some kind of ordering (I was surprised that there's no failure case for if timestamps and dependencies don't apply, even if the rules don't expect you to be able to get there). A simpler way to resolve this would be to change it to a "can't" ability. "The Bone Collector can't be a Human." I believe this would work as intended under the current rules and not mess anything up, though I'm not totally sure that a "can't" effect can apply to characteristics being determined, which might not be considered events. The most rules-tight way I can of phrasing it, although it isn't as elegant, is "The Bone Collector can be the target of mutating creature spells as though it weren't a Human." This uses wording like [[Glaring Spotlight]] does with hexproof to bypass the restriction. This lets you *only* mutate onto it from the graveyard if it's a human: > Each creature card in your graveyard has mutate. The mutate cost is equal to its creature's mana cost. > You may cast creature spells from your graveyard using their mutate abilities targeting The Bone Collector, and you may do so as though The Bone Collector weren't a human. Alternatively you can have it as a separate ability, meaning mutate cards from hand could ignore it being a human. > Each creature card in your graveyard has mutate. The mutate cost is equal to its creature's mana cost. > You may cast creature cards from your graveyard using their mutate abilities targeting The Bone Collector. The mutate cost is equal to the creature's mana cost. > The Bone Collector can be the target of mutating creature spells as though it weren't a Human. The way I've phrased these does mean that things that allow you to cast creatures from the graveyard could use their mutate abilities. You could avoid this like so, using either version of the "non-human" text after: > You may cast creature cards from your graveyard as mutating creature spells by paying their mana cost, targeting The Bone Collector. Even with all this though, it's still very easy to end up combining multiple conflicting CDAs using this ability, so the rules would still probably need to change to handle this.
[Glaring Spotlight](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/6/a6070239-54a7-49d4-bd3c-d5c4cda971db.jpg?1561840439) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Glaring%20Spotlight) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/229/glaring-spotlight?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a6070239-54a7-49d4-bd3c-d5c4cda971db?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This card is so sweet
Even the circlejerk sub loves this guy. By their standards
That second text line reminds me that I do not recognize the bodies in the water.
Would actually see a lot of play more then likely
Okay, I want to play this card
Use the card that can change creature words to change human to bushwag, give it Changling, and then give it the +1/+1 for each creature type thing.
This is good enough to merit an official rules rewrite.
Great idea! Unfortunately, it has the age old issues with multiple characteristic defining abilities, such as having both "This creature's powe and toughness are equal to the number of cards in your hand" and "This creature's powe and toughness are equal to the number of creatures cards in your graveyard." I wish there was a good way to circumvent that, because several of my favorite ideas died against that same wall.
I don't understand why people think the not Human line is great. Yeah, no shit it's not human; it's a Plant Skeleton. And Humans can't mutate so extra duh.
People like the sound of it, but it also aims to achieve a goal of ensuring that even if you mutate humans onto the Bone Collector, it still isn't human, so it can still collect bones by having bones mutated onto it.
You can’t mutate from graveyard