General Guess the Card

Zoss

Zoss

pvan-201-barrin.jpg

Not affecting Tarmogoyf means that this card begins the game outside of your deck, hence it's some unusual card type. The four cards that are related help me narrow it down in the following order:

Vanguard's Shield -- the card hinted at is a vanguard.
Providence -- the card we're looking for changes your life total to 26! This brings our options to Barrin, Karn, Rith, and maybe Stuffy Doll's vanguard versions if we allow for changes of -6.
Barrin and Karn are both cards, so we can restrict our investigation to those two. Karen's ability doesn't have anything in common with the listed cards, but Barrin's requires you to sacrifice a creature, just like Fanatical Devotion. Therefore we can conclude that the card we're looking for is Barrin's Vanguard card. All in all, a good riddle! (Assuming I got it right. If I didn't, clearly it's a very poor riddle /s)
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Sheltem said:
Is it
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Nope, that one buffs Tarmogoyf just fine!
Jason Waddell said:
Red Sun's Zenith?
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Creative! But. if it hits the yard (e.g. because your opponent makes you discard it), it still buffs Tarmogoyf.
TekLazar said:
I'm thinking it's
But that's more of based on the kitten and Garruk, I have no idea how the rest of the cards fit in. Barrin, Master Wizard and Karn seem to fit though since Barrin is a knowledge seeker and Karn is a planeswalker.
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This is the closest anyone has gotten so far. In fact, it has one thing exactly in common with the oracle version of my card, though not with the printed version of it.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Zoss said:
View attachment 7188

Not affecting Tarmogoyf means that this card begins the game outside of your deck, hence it's some unusual card type. The four cards that are related help me narrow it down in the following order:

Vanguard's Shield -- the card hinted at is a vanguard.
Providence -- the card we're looking for changes your life total to 26! This brings our options to Barrin, Karn, Rith, and maybe Stuffy Doll's vanguard versions if we allow for changes of -6.
Barrin and Karn are both cards, so we can restrict our investigation to those two. Karen's ability doesn't have anything in common with the listed cards, but Barrin's requires you to sacrifice a creature, just like Fanatical Devotion. Therefore we can conclude that the card we're looking for is Barrin's Vanguard card. All in all, a good riddle! (Assuming I got it right. If I didn't, clearly it's a very poor riddle /s)
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Hahaha, and while I was typing my answers, Zoss got it. Congrats!
Hint 1: Like Adorable Kitten, Barrin isn’t legal in any format.
Hint 2: Like Garruk the Slayer, Barrin is an oversized card with a nonstandard Magic back, and thus not legal for constructed play.
Hint 3: Like Zoss wrote, vanguard cards can’t hit the graveyard, ever, and thus never buff Tarmogoyf.
Sneaky hint 4: Cards from the Vanguard set were originally printed with the type line “Character”. Ral’s Vanguard is actually the first card printed with the Vanguard type in the type line. IIRC the old Vanguard cards were errata’ed to the Vanguard type in Oracle when they started doing Vanguard cards on MtGO and decided to change the card type.
 
Velrun

Velrun

That was a cool one!

I still can’t believe it wasn’t a card number 001 card after being showed two 001 cards :p Sometimes hints can point towards several things.
 
Zoss

Zoss

Four hints, four distractions! I have three additional hints in case this is trickier than I expected.

 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I have a feeling the answer is...



I can't explain exactly why but that was my first thought. Obviously it doesn't fit the hints, other than being a 2/3, but still :)
 
Zoss

Zoss

Onderzeeboot said:
I have a feeling the answer is...



I can't explain exactly why but that was my first thought. Obviously it doesn't fit the hints, other than being a 2/3, but still :)
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Laz said:
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No to both, unfortunately, but I've always liked that card, Onderzeeboot, so thanks for reminding me of it!

Hint #1: the card I'm thinking of is a specific printing of a specific card.
 
Zoss

Zoss

Laz said:

Except not that printing... the other one...
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Nope!

Zoss said:
Four hints, four distractions! I have three additional hints in case this is trickier than I expected.

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Hint #1: the card I'm thinking of is a specific printing of a specific card.
Hint #2: one of the four cards that is a clue is an Un-clue. (Hint #2.5: this both is and isn't the same clue as clue 1!)
 
Zoss

Zoss

Good clarification--"Un-clue" means that the clue is about something that Un-sets care about/something that black-border/non-acorn sets will never reference.
 
sigh

sigh

well I'm really curious now to see how one of the 8 black bordered cards cleanly points to a silver-border thing!
 
Zoss

Zoss

No, sorry--you know how Un-cards can reference something like the number of words in the name of the card or whether or not a character in the art is wearing a hat but traditional black-border cards can't? One of the clue cards relies on a mechanic that is similarly silver-bordered.

Concrete example: I'd consider Onderzeeboot's Vanguard's Shield hint an Un-hint because card names are, by and large, an Un-mechanic (Zzzyxas' Abyss, etc.).


Edit: fwiw, I think that a lot of these "4 hints, 4 herrings" puzzles turn into "guess what I'm thinking," so it could just be a bad set of clues here.
 
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Zoss

Zoss

Jason Waddell said:
Maybe unpopular opinion but I think the red herring style clues would be more motivating to solve without the red herrings.
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That's probably what's been unsatisfactory about them to me.

Zoss said:
Hint #1: the card I'm thinking of is a specific printing of a specific card.
Hint #2: one of the four cards that is a clue is an Un-clue. (Hint #2.5: this both is and isn't the same clue as clue 1!)
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Hint #3: these are the hint cards

Zoss said:
Four hints, four distractions!
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This was the first Magic card I ever owned. And yes, this is a hint, not just nostalgia.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

As someone who missed the start of this thread due to moving and decided to check it out because, hey, I know a bunch of dumb magic cards and could probably make up some fun puzzles...

It was really fucking annoying to see that we've already gotten to the point of "the card has something in common with four of these eight cards", with "what they have in common" being literally anything on the card.

Like, for reference... here are three cards that match the four "real cards" from Zoss' puzzle:



I'm pretty sure that none of those cards are the one that Zoss is thinking of... which is why this style of puzzle is Bilbo-asking-what's-in-his-pockets tier nonsense.

(For reference, those cards are an uncommon gold MV 3 Sorcery, a sorcery with two words in its name that costs {1}{G}{G} and involves sacrificing a creature, and an MV 7 Red creature from MH1.)
 
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sigh

sigh



Elemental, printed in a commander set, green + toughness less than power + two creature types, cares about creature type
 
Zoss

Zoss

No, sorry! I guess the statute of limitations has passed, as I'd completely forgotten about this thread.

images.jpeg-5.jpg
This specific edition of Elvish Champion was the promo for the Eighth Edition core starter set, which is how I learned to play Magic.


Like Thorn Elemental, it was a promo card headlining a deck.
Like Insurrection, the artist is Mark Zug.
Like Mirri, it costs 1GG and is a creature.
Like Etchings of the Chosen, it is a lord.


Thanks for playing!
 
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