Just curious why Embalm seems to be the only mechanic that keeps track of how many of that creature are on the board.
I played a match where the AI cast 2 of the same creature with embalm 2.
When the creature died, there were 4 “embalm’d” gems on the board.
If I cast 2 of the exact same non-embalm creatures on the board, I have one creature that is essentially reinforced. Now if I cast the white God, Oketra i think, from Amonkhet, the God will not be able to attack or block as I only have “1” creature on the board.
Maybe I am missing some other cards that also are treated this way, but this seems to be in contradiction to how the game is handled normally.
Prized Amalgam worked the exact same. If it was reinforced twice making it a 6/6 and then destroyed, all 3 copies of it would come back to play after a Zombie entered play.
Yeah, somehow the “number” of a creature changes when it moves from the board to the graveyard if it has been reinforced. We’ve seen this before with Prized Amalgam (as @WiLDRAGE mentioned) and Scrapheap Scrounger. (Not sure how Erebos’s Titan, Despoiler of Souls, and Ovalchase Daredevil work in this regard.) So the way embalm works -is- consistent with how previous cards which triggered from the graveyard worked. It’s confusing though that the “number” of a thing is not consistent across zones.
It’s not really inconsistent.
Cards have always been separate. They just stacked together to form one creature on the battlefield.
This goes back all the way to Origins where lil1 skill 3 would bring back 3 copies if your double reinforced creature died.
I’d never thought of a “card/creature” distinction. (Probably because it doesn’t exist in Magic.) That’s really helpful for explaining the confusion in my post. Thanks!
Somewhat oddly, Relentless Dead does not work this way; when a stack of them gets killed you only get 1 back.
The game knows how many of copies of something there are when they are in the graveyard… but in play, it treats a stack as if it is a single creature/card/instance/whatever you want to call it.
Interestingly, if you bounce a stack of X copies of a Prized Amalgam back to your opponent’s hand, then only one copy is bounced, and X-1 copies go to the graveyard.
I assume it works the same with other creatures, but I’ve not really tested it… it’s easy to tell with Prized Amalgams.
does anyone know how I can tell my sacred cat
embalm activated gem from that of my opponents?
HH
I have no idea. Been running a temmet cat deck and when I run into an opponent’s embalm deck, I have a tiny kitty of a time trying to find out which gem is mine. A suggestion to the devs… maybe make the PW image flash when you click on a corresponding embalm gem that it owns? I cannot see that being any more difficult to manage if there already mechanics in play that flash the support/creature an activation gem belongs to.
Next you’ll be asking to actually see your graveyard / exile pile…
If I didnt know better, I’d thought that it should be a standard for a card game…