Welcome to another edition of Messed Up Mechanics! It’s spoiler season for Core 2021, and boy have there been some bombs dropped. Grim Tutor, Massacre Wurm, Containment Priest; I’m super excited for this set. The biggest bomb for me, however, was the reveal of Teferi, Master of Time. Not only does he allow activations on your opponents’ turns, but he heralds the return of phasing!
Next to banding, phasing is my favorite mechanic. It was introduced in Mirage, released October 1996. Teferi’s connection to it is that phasing represents people and objects being removed from time temporarily, a specialty of the planeswalker. At the height of his power he phased out the entire continent of Shiv, and later his homeland of Zhalfir, to protect them from the Phyrexian invasion. Shiv was brought back with (relatively) minor problems, but Zhalfir… He’s still searching for a way to bring it back.
Next to banding, phasing is my favorite mechanic. It was introduced in Mirage, released October 1996. Teferi’s connection to it is that phasing represents people and objects being removed from time temporarily, a specialty of the planeswalker. At the height of his power he phased out the entire continent of Shiv, and later his homeland of Zhalfir, to protect them from the Phyrexian invasion. Shiv was brought back with (relatively) minor problems, but Zhalfir… He’s still searching for a way to bring it back.
Speaking of bringing back, after the Mirage block phasing was deemed a 9 on the Storm Scale (“I never say never, but this would require a minor miracle”) likely due to its rules complexity and unpopularity. However, in Commander 2017 that minor miracle happened and we received Teferi’s Protection. This card was a huge boost for white, as it has trouble rebuilding after a board wipe, so protecting your investment for just three mana was huge. This marked the longest gap between a mechanic’s release and its return (still hoping for banding). It was just one card in a Commander product, but it was nice to see that Wizards is willing to try things.
Phasing is a simple enough mechanic to understand (despite its 13 bullet points in the comprehensive rules): before a player untaps, all permanents they control with phasing phase out, and all phased out permanents that had phased out under their control phase in simultaneously. While phased out, a permanent is treated as though it doesn’t exist. See? Easy. The devil is in the details, though. What about tokens? Or auras and equipment? Read on.
Phasing is already a rare mechanic, but after Teferi’s Protection tokens and attached permanents phasing out shows up a lot more. “Phased out” used to be a game zone and so tokens would cease to exist while phased out (as they can only exist on the battlefield) but with the release of M10 the zone was phased out (pun fully intended). Now it’s simply a status like untapped or face down. Anything that was attached to that permanent is also phased out and will phase in as normal, attached to that permanent. If the attached permanent phases out, it will phase back in attached to the same object or player. If the object or player it was attached to is no longer there, state based actions apply as normal, so equipment will stay unattached to anything and auras go to the owner’s graveyard. These are corner cases to an already rare mechanic, but again it does show up every so often in Commander.
That’s all for today. I hope you all get to play with this super fun mechanic a bit more *cough*build a Taniwha Commander deck*cough*. There are a few cards, like Vodalian Illusionist, that force a permanent to phase out that I believe are underplayed in Commander, so look out for them. Hope you enjoyed the article, and have a good whatever!
