It is still astonishing why this lord was changed to almost useless status.
Weretarrasque
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(3 votes)
Oh, goody. I can pay 6 for a potential 4/4 red-blocker.
...
This is an awful card.
Guest57443454
★★★☆☆ (3.6/5.0)(5 votes)
This card has been nerfed by successive rule-changes and the Grand-Creature Type update. It still wasn't the best anyway...needed to cost less...
Duskdale_Wurm
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(2 votes)
Too expensive. Should be 5 cmc.
Kirbster
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(3 votes)
The white relentless rats...? Now with 50% more Swirly-pecs.
Aaron_Forsythe
★★★☆☆ (3.8/5.0)(15 votes)
Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #67, 3/28/10
Back in the day, subtypes weren’t always capitalized in rules text, which sometimes made said text difficult to decipher. “Guardians” is capitalized on the subtype line, but not in the rules text. One might guess its rules text referred to any creatures of the type “Guardian” and not just Ivory Guardians. If you look at the Alpha Zombie Master, you’ll see a similar lack of capitalization on “zombie” in the text box, and we all know that guy affects all Zombie creatures. But other cards in the Legends set muddy the waters a bit with inconsistent capitalization. Blazing Effigy has “Effigy” capitalized, which might mean it isn’t referring to any creatures of the type Effigy (which it was) but rather other copies of itself. If you look at Clergy of the Holy Nimbus, you’ll see the self-referential “Clergy” in its text box--its subtype was “Priest”--so shortening card names down to a single word was done a lot in that set. But then Kobold Overlord speaks of the subtype “Kobold,” which is capitalized… but then Adventurer's Guildhouse doesn’t even capitalize “Legend,” the premier subtype of the set. There was no clear pattern regarding whether a word was a shorthand for a card name or a subtype.
So what did Ivory Guardians do? A look at its mirror card, Beasts of Bogardan, doesn’t help, as that card is pretty clear (at least I think so) in that it just affects itself, not other Beasts or creatures named “Beasts of Bogardan.”
The answer becomes definitive in Chronicles, when much clearer templating tells us that Ivory Guardians affected all creatures with the subtype “Guardian,” which, at that time, was only Ivory Guardians themselves and Guardian Beast. I’m not sure this was anything more than a guess at the original intended functionality, but the Chronicles printing did set the decision in stone, at least for a while.
The Grand Creature Type Revision of 2007 eliminated the Guardian creature type, at which point Ivory Guardians became a Human Cleric--an error that was rectified a year later when they were changed to Giant Cleric. But without a narrow subtype, what were they supposed to do? Pump all Clerics? Hardly. No one would be able to infer that’s what the card did by reading any of the printed versions of it. So the Oracle team reverted them to a plausible interpretation of the Legends wording, a wording that they still have today: “Creatures named Ivory Guardians get +1/+1 as long as an opponent controls a nontoken red permanent.” Note the use of the term “nontoken” to match original functionality, which cared only that an opponent controlled a red card. That’s quite a roundabout trip for a bunch of Guardians.
Fans of Ivory Guardians may have picked up on the homage we did to them in Time Spiral: Ivory Giant. The link is more creative than it is mechanical.
luca_barelli
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
Stupid errata. Makes my Ivory Guardians/Fountain Watch deck useless!
Zindaras
★★★☆☆ (3.0/5.0)(1 vote)
Strange that Ivory Guardians was updated to be nontoken permanents, but Beasts of Bogardan wasn't. Kind of ruins the symmetry.
willpell
★★★★☆ (4.7/5.0)(3 votes)
I really miss the Guardian creature type, as it felt perfect for WU creatures that wanted to hang out and block. Harbor Guardian was my favorite, and I loved comboing it with Ivories and Sleight of Mind. Magic is better today than it was back in the day - mostly. But there are a lot of charming idiosyncracies and pleasantly quaint attributes that I miss, and this is way up there. I would still bring Guardian back if I could.
Cpt.Average
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(3 votes)
Was there really a need to eliminate 'Guardian' as a creature type? I know the aim was generally to standardise MTG's types and get rid of the more esoteric ones, but a quick name search shows there's certainly room for guardians in magic. They could even be useful going forward (so far they're all bant colours with the exception of Guardian Beast.)
Plus some of the creature types produced since haven't exactly been super useful (noggle anyone?) Guardians could really be a build-around class-type if promoted, especially because of cards like Ivory Guardians.
Comments (15)
...
This is an awful card.
Back in the day, subtypes weren’t always capitalized in rules text, which sometimes made said text difficult to decipher. “Guardians” is capitalized on the subtype line, but not in the rules text. One might guess its rules text referred to any creatures of the type “Guardian” and not just Ivory Guardians. If you look at the Alpha Zombie Master, you’ll see a similar lack of capitalization on “zombie” in the text box, and we all know that guy affects all Zombie creatures. But other cards in the Legends set muddy the waters a bit with inconsistent capitalization. Blazing Effigy has “Effigy” capitalized, which might mean it isn’t referring to any creatures of the type Effigy (which it was) but rather other copies of itself. If you look at Clergy of the Holy Nimbus, you’ll see the self-referential “Clergy” in its text box--its subtype was “Priest”--so shortening card names down to a single word was done a lot in that set. But then Kobold Overlord speaks of the subtype “Kobold,” which is capitalized… but then Adventurer's Guildhouse doesn’t even capitalize “Legend,” the premier subtype of the set. There was no clear pattern regarding whether a word was a shorthand for a card name or a subtype.
So what did Ivory Guardians do? A look at its mirror card, Beasts of Bogardan, doesn’t help, as that card is pretty clear (at least I think so) in that it just affects itself, not other Beasts or creatures named “Beasts of Bogardan.”
The answer becomes definitive in Chronicles, when much clearer templating tells us that Ivory Guardians affected all creatures with the subtype “Guardian,” which, at that time, was only Ivory Guardians themselves and Guardian Beast. I’m not sure this was anything more than a guess at the original intended functionality, but the Chronicles printing did set the decision in stone, at least for a while.
The Grand Creature Type Revision of 2007 eliminated the Guardian creature type, at which point Ivory Guardians became a Human Cleric--an error that was rectified a year later when they were changed to Giant Cleric. But without a narrow subtype, what were they supposed to do? Pump all Clerics? Hardly. No one would be able to infer that’s what the card did by reading any of the printed versions of it. So the Oracle team reverted them to a plausible interpretation of the Legends wording, a wording that they still have today: “Creatures named Ivory Guardians get +1/+1 as long as an opponent controls a nontoken red permanent.” Note the use of the term “nontoken” to match original functionality, which cared only that an opponent controlled a red card. That’s quite a roundabout trip for a bunch of Guardians.
Fans of Ivory Guardians may have picked up on the homage we did to them in Time Spiral: Ivory Giant. The link is more creative than it is mechanical.
Plus some of the creature types produced since haven't exactly been super useful (noggle anyone?) Guardians could really be a build-around class-type if promoted, especially because of cards like Ivory Guardians.