Shadowborn Apostle and commander?

Asked by Izzet_Planeswalker 5 years ago

So I know the card will let me run more then one Shadowborn Apostle, but what I would like to know is could I exploit the fact that it says "any number" to make a commander deck with more then 100 cards, could I potentially build a Battle of Wits commander deck?

DankStompy says... Accepted answer #1

more "than" one. but no, you cannot have more than 100 cards. not sure why you'd want to anyway. more than 100 cards would be a real pain to shuffle and you shouldn't be having any consistency issues when you can run any amount (between 1 and 99) of Shadowborn Apostle you want.

May 25, 2018 2:19 p.m.

Honestly I would have built it, had a good laugh with my friends by trying to win with the deck, then after a few times of using it I'd just dismantle it. Tho I thought it would work since it says "any number" I figured I could pick whatever number I wanted, oh well I'll have to try something else

May 25, 2018 2:30 p.m.

FancyTuesday says... #3

I appreciate the lawyer approach to reading the card. The text says "any number" so you say "ok, what about 200? 200 is a number." Often that will serve you well when interpreting rules, but in this case it's a bit of a trap.

Most sanctioned formats do not have a rule for maximum number of cards in a deck. They say for example: "a minimum of 40 (or 60) cards," so there's no reason for the text of a card to address maximum deck size. Commander, on the other hand, has a rule that says a deck must have exactly 100 cards. Shadowborn Apostle's text directly addresses the rule limiting how many cards with the same name can be in your deck for a format, but does nothing to modify deck size limits.

Think of it this way: You can have as many Apostles in your deck as you like, but you can't have more (or less) than 100 cards in your deck. It passes one check but fails another, like if a card failed a color identity test. Does that make sense?

Having a card modify rules about deck size would be additionally problematic because you would have to reveal that card when presenting the deck. This is probably why there are no effects that I'm aware of that modify how the rules about how big or small a deck can be. A commander could hypothetically do it, I guess?

As your question has been correctly answered by DankStompy you should mark your question answered with their response.

May 26, 2018 1:33 a.m. Edited.

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