Pointed Discussion

Thrummingbird and Steady Progress should speed up this glorious transformation.

Send the guy to the Training Grounds for a fouth-turn 13/13 trampler without any acceleration.

UR proliferate deck, anyone?

This card is remarkable. A 0/3 Defender for 1U is perfectly adequate and from there it acts as a mana dump for any mana you might have to spare. Or you can focus on it and it could essentially be a turn seven win condition. A 13/13 with Trample for essentially 12 mana that you can recycle instead of spending all at once is great.

The card seems remarkably tedious in theory, having to spend five turns, give or take, charging him up, but every single time I played this guy at the Prerelease for Innistrad he won me the match. Broken? In Limited, yes, because Innistrad lacks blatant creature removal like Doom Blade, but in standard it's a fairly legitimate card, more of a presence to worry the other guy than anything.

I really like how it's Blue, too. Really helps beef up any sort of Blue deck.

He played alright in prerelease, as long as I wasn't going against green with Prey Upon. Unfortunately, 75% of the matches I played, they were playing some combination of green and he was taken out, even if I got him out on the second turn.

NeoKoda: It's a good thing this costs two.

I had a guy pull this on me the second turn, so I nuked it. Guy plays Stitched Drake next turn and says, "Thanks bud."

Basically this card either transforms and wins you the game, or it acts as a removal magnet for zombie fodder. That was a frustrating game to play.

Giving him Hexproof (I'm not sure if it'll still work with Shroud) seems like a nice idea.

I don't understand why Ludevic's Abomination would transform back if it has five hatchling counters on it as stated in the Innistrad FAQ. Only Ludevic's Test Subject has the conditions for transforming but not Ludevic's Abomination right?

Just made a proliferating blue deck with some phantasmal bear/invisible stalker combining with curse of stalked prey as an alternate win condition of this. Hopefully it works as I'm imagining it to. May need to toss in some myrs to get that red mana out more easily.

As for transforming back... I'm thinking that if the trigger is on the stack and you continue to add counters to it until it triggers AGAIN that it'll transform to Ludevic's Abomination and then back to Ludevic's Test Subject due to the second trigger. I'm not sure I agree, although the trigger does not specify WHAT to transform... I would think that is implied as 'it' can only refer to 'Ludevic's Test Subject' in the first sentence.

Take note: Eggs are actually lizards.

So this is why so much burn does 13 damage!

I absolutely agree with Quibbleflux. This will win an Innistrad limited game with relative ease. The beauty here is that he's good regardless of when you draw him, Early game to just mana dump, or late game, to power him out in two turns easily. With 6 mana out it only takes one turn to prime it with 2 counters, and flip it next upkeep, and swing. That's nothing to sniff at, espcially in blue. In many ways it reminds me of the level-up mechanic, especially the aggressively costed ones like Kargan Dragonlord. You kill it, or it wins the game. And the thing about the current meta, there's much less aggressively costed removal flying around these days than there was in Rise.

In summation, Stellar in Limited, Good enough for constructed, Fun and cool enough to see plenty of casual.

The only double faced card that I actually like. Sad part: This could have easily been done as "normal" card.

@RJDroid That's why you gotta wait until he puts the last counter on it, and then nuke it.

A 0/3 defender for four is really bad. But then it becomes great.

EDIT: I'm a squidiot, it costs 2.


Also, it's like the ugly duckling... (Finished in Ludevic's Abomination.)

Why it transforms back:

Let's say for the sake of argument, that you start your turn with 4 counters on the Test Subject, and have 12 blue mana available. If you put six instances of the ability on the stack, what you are adding to the stack is "Put a hatchling counter on this permanent. Then, if it has five or more counters, remove them all and transform it."
So the first ability resolves, the Test Subject gets a hatchling counter. Then that ability checks if there are five or more counters. There are, so all counters are removed, and it transforms.
Then the second ability resolves, Abomination gets a hatchling counter. Then that ability checks if there are five or more counters. There are not, so it doesn't transform.
The third, fourth, and fifth instances resolve similarly. Then the sixth ability resolves, and Abomination gets a hatchling counter. Then the ability checks to see if there are five or more counters. There are, so all of the counters are removed and it transforms, back into Test Subject.

The transformation is tied to the activated ability. So if Test Subject has 4 counters and you proliferate it, it gets a fifth counter, but does not transform. If you did the same thing as described above, but only stacked enough instances to leave four hatchling counters on the Abomination, and it got proliferated, it doesn't transform. When a card transforms, it is still the same permanent, but it gains a different name and new types when it transforms. Equipment, Auras, +1/+1 counters, hatchling counters, these things stick on it when it transforms. When the fisrt sentence of the ability says "Test Subject", it means "this permanent". It's just like how you couldn't use this ability to put hatchling counters on other permanents with the name "Ludevic's Test Subject".

Interestingly, if you play the terribleness combo of Xenograft and Moonmist, you can flip between them all you want! So if in your terrible combo deck, you have 10 mana available when you want to flip the Test Subject, you can stack five instances and leave 4 hatchling counters on the Abomination. That way, when you Xeno-mist it back to an Egg, you only need to pay 1U to make it big again.

xenograft + moonmist?

silly silly thing you can do here. let me take you on a journey of discovery.
you can transform this beastie without even using counters. How? moonmist.
you might be thinking "but that only transforms humans!". exactly.
how can you make this thing a human? well, either have a Xenograft out (which, if your opponent is paying attention, they'd just naturalize that), or use Shields of Veils Vel.

Ludevic's test subject out, use Shields of veils Vel to turn it into a human (or all of em into humans, if you have more than one out), then use your moonmist! AND BOOM! a 13/13 trampler that you can pop out on turn 4.

Weird, this is rated higher than Ludevic's Abomination

Everyone finally got an instant speed level up card, what's the problem?

Question:

Say it was my turn and i have ludevics test subject on the field, i have enough mana open to cast fuel for the cause during my opponents turn.However, they cast no spells during their turn, can i then put 2 counters on my test subject? or would is this an ability i can only play during my own turn?

13/13

big

Due to greed/inability to draft properly, this ended up being my first pick during Draft (2-0, 2-1, 1-2, for 4th place out of 9 drafters), during which I drafted a control heavy deck (also had 3 copies of Hysterical Blindness and Silent Departure). The only time I managed to let it go off was during the third round, second game, which I won. When sideboarding, my opponent half-jokingly suggested, "Get rid of it, because it sucks."

Aww man, this was a lot of fun in the Innstrad pre-release, not that I had the card, but someone else did, he was so happy to transform it, only to have me use a red spell to take it and kill him with it next turn.

A removal fodder, nothing more nothing less.

This is the first card with a ruling that advises you to do or not do something that I've ever seen.

Just tragic slipped this guy:

The theory about transforming it back is flawed. A hatchling counter is put onto Ludevic's Test Subject. If there are hatchling counters put on the stack, they are either put onto Ludevic's Test Subject (giving it more than 5 counters) or Ludevic's Test Subject transforms into Ludevic's Abomination, and the hatchling counters disappear, as they have no Ludevic's Test Subject to be put on.

If you want to return the Abomination to Test Subject, you could exile it, then return it to play (Flicker, Flickerform, etc.), but that seems a little excessive.

@whyt His getting counters ability activates as an instant, so you can save all your mana until your opponents' end step and then put as many counters on him as you can afford if you want to.

@JimT70

read "Ludevic’s Test Subject" in the rules text as "this permanent." When it transforms, its name changes, but it is the same permanent as it was before. You activate the ability enough times for it to transform, and then five more times. The fifth counter will be placed on the Test Subject, it will resolve and transform, and then the remaining five copies of the ability will resolve, each placing a counter on the Abomination. The "if there are five or more counters" trigger checks for five or more counters, not whether or not it was transformed, so the trigger fires again regardless of its transformed state. Elbrus, the Binding Blade can also transform back in a weird circumstance.

This is basically level up, but they wanted to show off dfcs. On a side note, why is there no Ludevic card? I was waiting, and waiting. :(

After several frustrating experiments, the visionary Ludevic realized he needed to create a monster that fed on torch-wielding mobs.

Nearly all of the flavor text in Innistrad is impeccably perfect. This might be the best.

I like to pair this with Paradox Haze and Training Grounds
Say hello to my cheap 13/13.

It's instant speed, that lets you use your Mana Leak mana if they didn't play anything worth countering. And then it turns into your finisher. In mono-blue, who cares if it takes maybe 6 or 7 turns to get your win condition out? Not a bad finisher at all.

This is instant speed leveling folks. Hold your mana for counters and then level this guy at the end of their turn. Its not wasting mana if you were not going to spend it anyways.

Awww.... Isn't that cute!?

If we're talking Standard, I would use Axebane Guardian for mana for the ability — this is a defender after all, so it boosts Guardian's ability.

It's possible (though not advisable) to activate the ability of Ludevic's Test Subject enough times in response to one another that a resolving ability places a fifth hatchling counter on Ludevic's *Abomination*. If that happens, it'll transform back into Ludevic's Test Subject.

Screw you, Oracle rulings! I'll do it if I want. Ten mana, whoo! In fact, I'm gonna set up an infinite-mana combo just to flip it repeatedly and spite the Oracle text telling me it's not advisible to do so.

Turn him into a human with Amoeboid Changeling then use moonmist. T4 "haste" 13/13 Trample in U/G

Nice idea, but double sided cards are not practical. These always get dumped during the deck construction phase because I don't want to deal with proxies... I enjoy the egg, though it doesn't make any sense for it to be able to block. Better logic than Rukh's Egg, which can also attack. The beastie that comes out of this is pretty scary. You can use this as a mana dump at the end of your opponent's turn and it will draw some hate since very few people want to face down something that beefy. At worst, it's a little, overpriced wall. Great flavour. Maybe someday... 4/5