Original MTG Card Text vs Modern Oracle Text
Clone by Kev Walker and Julie Baroh
Kevin Malone said it best: "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"
The text box on your average Magic card, if there is such a thing anymore as an "average" Magic card, is 59 by 32.5 millimeters, or for us Imperial-loving Americans, 2.3 inches by 1.28 inches. That's not a lot of space, and until Magic players are able to internalize every word of text on every card so that they can all look like new Steve, rules text will have to remain a feature on every card.
Perhaps one day every card will be printed with a QR code instead of a text box and our augmented reality glasses will automatically pull up the words and any helpful interactions on a virtual HUD. We'll be able to have that while we play games in our self-driving flying cars on our way to Magic Con: The Moon. But that day is not today, sadly.
We don't have to be content with whatever is just printed onto the card at the time of release, however. Over the years, as Magic's rules and language are refined, what once required an entire paragraph to be conveyed can now be done with a few words. Precision in language is important for a game like Magic, with its tens of thousands of individual cards. For Magic, ambiguity is the enemy, both in terms of rules and in translation to languages other than English.
For example, let's check out Sage of Lat-Nam. Between 1994's Antiquities and 2003's Eighth Edition, our friend the sage shaved off that insane beard, and in the process shaved a considerable amount of text as well:
With such a reduction in rules text, it even allowed the guy to pick up some flavor text, as strange of a mental image as that flavor conjures. He went from 53 words of rules text all the way down to six, plus the little "tap" symbol. We saw the Sage again in Dominaria, this time with flavor text a bit more relevant to the guy himself. He also grew hair since Antiquities. And one more fun fact: Sage of Lat-Nam went from common in Antiquities to a rare in Eighth Edition to an uncommon in Dominaria. Neat.
Anyway, Sage of Lat-Nam is far from the only card from yesteryear that saw its legalese-adjacent rules text streamlined for modern Magic. Let's see if we can beat Sage's shaving of 47 words.
Priest of Yawgmoth
Let's stay in Antiquities for a minute and talk about this weird dude. As printed, Priest of Yawgmoth features a rules text consisting of 58 words, while the current Oracle text reads:
{T}, Sacrifice an artifact: Add an amount of {B} equal to the sacrificed artifact's mana value.
That's 14 words and two symbols, meaning Priest of Yawgmoth lost 44 words since 1994. Unfortunately, I can't show you this updated rules text on a more modern card, since there isn't one. Priest of Yawgmoth has only ever been printed once, despite it being a common and thus not on the Reserved List. Even still, it's barely more than a buck and should be played a lot more than it is. Go buy one. According to EDHREC, only 1,058 decks out of the possible 2.1 million are playing Priest of Yawgmoth.
And while it lost 44 words of rules text, it actually gained not one but two new creature types. As printed, it's just a Cleric, but according to Oracle updates, it's now a Phyrexian Human Cleric. Yes, what you're looking at is a Human.
In terms of our little experiment today, though, 44 words is a smaller number of words than 47, so we must keep looking.
Cleansing
With all the Discourse-with-a-capital-D on Magic-centric social media in recent times regarding mass land destruction, it's interesting that Cleansing has never entered into the discussion. It's certainly land destruction, but "fair" in the sense that you can make people pay life if they're truly that attached to their precious lands.
Similar to Antiquities, The Dark released in 1994 and featured Cleansing, in all its Reserved List glory. Because of its RL status, it's never been reprinted, and thus the version with 39 words is the only one we have on paper, but according to its Oracle text, what is explained in those 39 words can be summed up better with only 12:
For each land, destroy that land unless any player pays 1 life.
That's a reduction of only 27 words, child's play compared to our previous two entries.
The Legends Color Changers
You may have seen a few of these a lot lately, since with everyone's favorite Bird friend Nadu, Winged Wisdom making waves, cards that synergize well with the feathered fiend are also seeing more attention. A rising tide lifts all 25-year-old creature-targeting instants, or whatever the phrase is, so it probably comes as no surprise that the words on the card are not the current Oracle text. I'm sure the "creature(s)" gave it away.
Sea Kings' Blessing went from around five bucks to nearly $60 overnight, while Sylvan Paradise is currently around $70. The members of the cycle not in Nadu's colors are all less than $10, with the chuckle-inducing art of Dwarven Song running you somewhere in the three-dollar range. Regardless of ridiculous prices, each of the five cards contain 39 words of rules text, almost identical on each card save for the mentions of the specific color of effect.
And each one has the same errata, reducing the number of words down to 11.
One or more target creatures become [color] until end of turn.
Be sure to check those bulk boxes for the blue and green ones, but overall, we're only cutting 28 words here. We can do better than that.
Crown of the Ages
If Magic R&D can ever figure out how to make Auras good, maybe Ice Age's Crown of the Ages will see more attention. Put simply, it moves one Aura from one creature to another, effectively giving them an equip cost. However, you can move Auras to and from your opponents' creatures as well, maybe sliding over a Pacifism in case you left your copy of Prison Term at home. Or if someone slaps down an Eldrazi Conscription, you can just touch your temples and slurp that thing up.
Its original printing from Ice Age features 36 words, and this time we actually do have a later reprinting to compare it to. Unfortunately, the Fifth Edition version isn't as concise as it would eventually become:
That one has 15 words, down 21 words from the original. But its modern Oracle wording is as follows:
4, {T}: Attach target Aura attached to a creature to another creature.
Only ten words to explain what at first took 36, with a reduction of 26 words. We're getting further away from our goal, here.
Atog
Back to Antiquities for a classic creature that spawned a ton of variants over the years in Atog. But the original grinning purple goofball has been munching on trinkets since 1994. It's also so old that the text box is stuffed full of words that no longer need to be there. Seriously, look at 'em all. Get out the magnifying glass and count along. Did you come up with 50 words? If you count "+2/+2" as a word (and who wouldn't?), then that's the number you should get.
Atog's been reprinted a few times, so we can see how the rules text has evolved over the years. First, we've got the Revised Atog, which came out barely a month after Antiquities itself:
We've still got that weird "pay zero" activated ability device, but the words following are much more succinct. We're down to 16 words now, but we're still a bit backwards on the Atog's famous artifact-munching talent. We'll clean up the wording even further with Fifth Edition:
The bad news is, Fifth Edition cleaned it up a little too much. We're down to eight words from 50, which is a 42 word reduction. They were trying to be so expedient in their relaying of information on this one, they forgot the period at the end of the ability. When we next saw Atog, and the last time it has been printed, it was Mirrodin. We got a bit more specific with the wording here, to the detriment of our little game:
Not just anyone gets that +2/+2 now, but rather Atog specifically. The modern rules text is 10 words, so the final count is an excising of 40 words from the original version to now.
Lure
We've known Lure as long as we've known Magic itself, and if anything, Alpha is notorious for superfluous word usage in rules text. Lure, with its creepy apple skull art, is one such card that uses way too many words to convey a very simple concept. It's a critique I have heard about myself more than once, so don't bother commenting because I already know what you're thinking.
Anyway, there are 47 words on that bad boy. Unlike many of the cards we've talked about so far, though, Lure has many, many printings since 1993 to cross-reference. Let's hop over to the Ice Age version, surely they tightened things up a little bit over those two years:
Uh...the font is smaller, that can't be good. In all, Ice Age's Lure has 56 words, which, if you're keeping track, is nine more words than where we started. Fifth Edition, which was released only two years after Ice Age in 1997, finally reworked Lure's gargantuan text box, and that updated wording continued through Mercadian Masques and Champions of Kamigawa:
That's nine words, a 47-word decrease from Ice Age's peak word bloat, tying Sage of Lat-Nam in our word reduction survey. Unfortunately, the most recent printings of Lure added two words:
We were so close.
Marble Priest
In the early 90s, there were more thematic similarities between Magic and the world of professional wrestling than people like to admit. Just look at this guy and tell me you couldn't see him eating a 2x4 wielded by Hacksaw Jim Duggan. And don't get me started on Maraxus of Keld.
Marble Priest, in addition to his grandiose ring attire, also features a wall of text underneath that art. A wall of text comprised of 69 words.
It's never been reprinted (a travesty, if you ask me), so I can't show you the updated Oracle rules text on a card, but I can tell you what it would be if we ever saw Marble Priest again:
All Walls able to block Marble Priest do so.
Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt to Marble Priest by Walls.
That's 22 words, which is a lot compared to some of the cards we've talked about, but in terms of total words excised from the text box, Marble Priest comes in at 47. That's another tie with Sage of Lat-Nam. But we can go deeper.
Honorable mentions
There are many, many cards that have seen word reductions in the dozens. We've got Control Magic, which went from 42 words to six (with a pitstop at only four words):
Then there's good ol' Clone, which started at a bloated 47 words before shedding all but 16:
And we can't forget Forget, which went from 44 words to only 24 from its first printing to its most recent. However, for this one, the Oracle text is even more precise:
Target player discards two cards, then draws as many cards as they discarded this way.
No list like this would be complete without Bazaar of Baghdad, either, which went from 47 words to seven, cutting 40 total words. While the $2,500 uncommon is on the Reserved List and will never be reprinted in paper, we've actually got a digital-only version with the most up-to-date text, which is notable for being exactly what you think the card does in the first place:
The Hive
I'm sure you guessed that it would end this way, covered in mechanical wasps. Most things do, if we're being honest.
The Hive is famous for being the very first card in the history of Magic that creates a token, so it's not surprising that they'd have to load up that text box with everything an unsuspecting player in 1993 would need to know about that process. It's a complicated process indeed, as we see, and it's fun in a full-circle kind of way that the first card to make a token uses the word "create" just as we've done since 2016's Kaladesh.
In all, the Alpha version of The Hive features 61 words in its rules text. Six of those words are "wasp."
We haven't seen The Hive in some time, as most players today would find it quaint (another word for "useless"). The most recent printing, not counting the 30th Anniversary Edition that we all try to forget exists, is from 2007's Tenth Edition:
In addition to the awesome new art (using the term "new" loosely here), I'm sure you also notice the totally reworked text box. If we throw out the reminder text, there are only 13 words in there. By my math, that's 48 words we've erased. A new record!
And we even get a token, to boot:
Synonyms for "erase" we haven't used: ablate, a̶b̶r̶a̶d̶e̶, chafe, fray, f̶r̶a̶z̶z̶l̶e̶, scuff, and scrub
This is by no means a definitive list. There might be another card out there with even more words removed from first printing to most recent wording, and maybe one day, the cards even on this list will see further changes. That's kind of how language works.
Do you know of any others that fit this theme? Any particular favorites? Let me hear them. And be as clear and concise in your commenting as possible.
Also, this article is 2,335 words, if you're counting.
