Can Nevermore name a creature type?

Asked by sliver____king 8 years ago

I have a friend who believes that Nevermore can name a creature type, I just need a reference to prove him wrong.

No. Nevermore states to Name a card. The name of a card is on the top of the card, to the left of the CMC. A creature type is not considered a name of a card, it is a subtype.

October 26, 2015 3:20 p.m.

TheRedMage says... Accepted answer #2

What you name with Nevermore needs to be the name of a magic card. So the answer to your friend is "no", it can't.

There a couple exceptions if one wants to be incredibly technical, but in general no, you can't name "goblin", rather you need to name "Goblin Rabblemaster"

October 26, 2015 3:23 p.m.

Epochalyptik says... #3

Cards do exactly what they say. Nevermore says "name a nonland card." It doesn't say anything about naming a type or subtype.

October 26, 2015 3:23 p.m.

TheRedMage says... #4

The exceptions I was referring to - there exist a small number of magic cards that have the same name as subtypes. I know of two - Illusion and Assembly-Worker, but there might be more I don't know about.

These are real magic cards and can be named by Nevermore, so technically yes, you can name a creature subtype with Nevermore as long as it's one of those :)

Notice that having Nevermore name, say, Illusion will not prevent any creature with the Illusion subtype from being cast, just the actual Illusion card (In fact, since Illusion/Reality is a split card, you can still cast the Reality half).

Why would this be relevant ever, you ask?

well, it isn't. Most of the time at least. In Conspiracy, however, there are a number of cards that care about cardnames - like, say, Immediate Action, now, as far as I remember no card in Conspiracy makes Illusion tokens. But, if someone opened a Lore Seeker, added a Modern Masters pack to the draft, pulled a Meloku the Clouded Mirror and happened to know the existence of an obscure split card from Invasion, they could name Illusion and, since unless other wise specified the name of a token is the same as their subtype or subtypes, the Meloku token would indeed be granted Haste from Immediate Action.

This is obviously super-relevant and you will encounter it in every game of magic that you play in your everyday life, so I thought I would mention it :P

October 26, 2015 3:50 p.m.

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