What happens when Celestial Archon is cast with bestow, but its target becomes illegal before it resolves? For normal Aura spells, the Aura fizzles, per rule 303.4g:
“If an Aura is entering the battlefield and there is no legal object or player for it to enchant, the Aura remains in its current zone, unless that zone is the stack. In that case, the Aura is put into its owner’s graveyard instead of entering the battlefield.”
It turns out bestow works nothing like this, though you wouldn’t know it from the reminder text. After Twitter clarification from Aaron Forsythe and Matt Tabak (@mtgaaron and @TabakRules, respectively), we now know that Celestial Archon can’t fizzle. If it was cast for its bestow cost and there is no legal target for it to enchant as it enters the battlefield, it instead enters the battlefield as a creature, as if you had cast it normally.
After clearing that up, Forsythe then opined:
The lesson on bestow cards not being countered if their targets become illegal is "Don't assign too much weight to reminder text."
— Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron) August 27, 2013... which is a cop-out and an obnoxious thing to say. In my mind it’s equivalent to “Why would you expect reminder text to do its job?” which isn't too far from “Why would you expect us to do our jobs?”
Sadly, at this point regular letdowns are an assumption, but only because things like YMTC, GDS2, FTV
In fact, it’s not very difficult to come up with reminder text that adequately explains how bestow works, and in less space than the Wizards template to boot! So how does bestow work exactly? Whenever the Theros rules update comes out, I expect the bestow rules text to look something like this:
- “Bestow [cost]” means “You may cast this card by paying [cost] rather than paying its mana cost. If you do, it’s an Aura spell with enchant creature.”
- If an Aura with bestow is enchanting an illegal creature or the creature it was attached to no longer exists, the Aura becomes an enchantment creature and loses enchant creature. It’s no longer an Aura.
- If an Aura with bestow is entering the battlefield and its target is illegal or no longer exists, it enters the battlefield as an enchantment creature and loses enchant creature. It’s no longer an Aura.
Our goal is to distill all of the above into a handy summary that fits on a card with room to spare. The existing reminder text is a good place to start, though it obviously has problems:
“If you cast this card for its bestow cost, it's an Aura spell with enchant creature. It becomes a creature again if it's not attached to a creature.” (148 characters.)
Most concerning is that there isn’t even a hint of what to do in the case explained by the third bullet point of the proposed comprehensive rules text. This is especially egregious considering it’s the least intuitive element of bestow as a mechanic, given that it runs counter to how Auras have always operated in the past, and it's going to come up all the time.
It also seems like there's potential for a confusing interaction with cards like Feroz's Ban. What if you cast Celestial Archon normally, but Feroz's Ban is in play? Did you cast it for its bestow cost? If you aren’t a level 4 judge, it sort of seems like you did, right?
This issue arises in part because bestow doesn’t conform to the standard alternate casting cost template, which will cause many players to overthink things when they try to figure out what it actually does. The standard template would be:
“You may cast this card for its bestow cost. If you do, it’s an Aura spell with enchant creature. It becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to a creature.” (160 characters.)
It should be uncontroversial to suggest that most players would be more comfortable with the standard template and the following thought process: “I pay a cost, then I pay an additional cost, because this is how additional costs have always worked” than they would be with a template which confusingly seems to be asking (but isn’t actually): “Did you pay this specific amount in total?”
Since we value parsimony over exactness in this context, it’s perfectly alright to cut essentially superfluous reminder text, as was clearly the intent with Wizards’ version. The manner in which it was done is odd, though. Something like:
“You may cast this card as an Aura spell with enchant creature for its bestow cost. It becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to a creature.” (146 chararacters.)
... reads much more naturally, and avoids some potential confusion, though it’s interesting to note that despite containing two fewer characters than the original, it takes up more space in most fonts, including the one used in reminder text on actual cards.
Now it’s time to trim the fat. Most players don’t formally make a distinction between an Aura card, the Aura spell that card becomes when it’s on the stack, and the Aura permanent that spell becomes as it enters the battlefield, so there’s no real reason to specify “spell” here. I’m not aware of there being a problem whereby inexperienced players try to Disenchant Aura spells (that is, an Aura on the stack), and even if there is, bestow at least wouldn’t add to that confusion. Players that do know the difference are knowledgeable and savvy enough to realize contextually what type of object a card with bestow is in any zone. So:
“You may cast this card as an Aura with enchant creature for its bestow cost. It becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to a creature.” (140 chararacters.)
“Card” doesn’t need to be there, either. It’s universal that things can only be cast when they are cards in your hand, unless explicitly told otherwise by something like flashback or Djinn of Wishes. The following should cause no confusion:
“You may cast this as an Aura with enchant creature for its bestow cost. It becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to a creature.” (135 chararacters.)
How about “you may”? The original template didn’t need it, and there’s no reason this one does, either. The card wouldn’t be talking about an alternate means of casting itself if you weren’t allowed to avail yourself of it:
“Cast this as an Aura with enchant creature for its bestow cost. It becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to a creature.” (127 chararacters.)
At this point it seems like we can do without “this” entirely, though then “its bestow cost” and “it becomes” sound unnatural. If we substitute the actual bestow cost for the phrase “its bestow cost”, however:
“Cast as an Aura with enchant creature for 5WW. This becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to a creature.” (112 characters.)
Next on the chopping block is “enchant creature”. Most players don’t know what “enchant creature” formally means, and just play Auras in the way that seems most natural. It’s also obvious from context what a bestowed Aura can enchant, as it’s mentioned in two other places, namely “attached to a creature” in the reminder text and “enchanted creature” in the ability text. That’s good enough for me:
“Cast as an Aura for 5WW. This becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to a creature.” (90 characters.)
Now that we’ve managed to trim 58 characters, we should have enough room to explain the missing information that can’t be inferred from context. Here are a few reasonably compact and straightforward ways to address the third bullet point of the proposed comprehensive rules:
“Cast as an Aura for 5WW. This becomes a creature again if it’s not or won’t become attached to a creature.” (106 characters.)
“Cast as an Aura for 5WW. This becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to or targeting a legal creature.” (109 characters.)
“Cast as an Aura for 5WW. This becomes a creature again if it’s unattached or has no legal targets.” (98 characters.)
“Cast as an Aura for 5WW. This becomes a creature again if it’s unattached or resolves with no legal targets.” (108 characters.)
“Cast as an Aura for 5WW. This becomes a creature again if it’s unattached or resolves without its target.” (105 characters.)
“Cast as an Aura for 5WW. This becomes a creature again if it’s unattached or loses its target.” (94 characters.)
Obviously, none of the above is formally correct, but they all get the gist across and contain intelligible guidance for most of the scenarios players will commonly encounter, which is fundamentally the goal of reminder text. All of them certainly seem less likely to bewilder players than the actual reminder text.
Because the last version avoids confusion about exactly when creature reversion happens and is quite svelte, it's probably the best option. I also don't see any reason not to cut “again”, so the final reminder text becomes:
“Cast as an Aura for 5WW. This becomes a creature if it’s unattached or loses its target.” (88 characters.)
Additionally, the visual impact of fewer lines and just a bit more white space in the text box is quite dramatic:
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(Note: the new card was rendered in Magic Set Editor. There are some minor inaccuracies in MSE's rendering, not to mention the card frame, but the comparison is still instructional.)
(Further note to whomever does card layouts at Wizards: vertically center the contents of the name/cost bar, the MSE mockup looks way better in that regard!)
Think all my cuts were unjustifiable and insane? You can still manage to cram more information into a similarly lengthy blurb while maintaining a conservative wording very similar to the original:
“If cast with bestow, this is an Aura spell with enchant creature. It becomes a creature again if it’s unattached or loses its target before resolving.” (150 characters.)
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