What happens if a single-faced card would 'enter the battlefield transformed'?

Asked by Yesterday 6 years ago

My question mainly revolves around the possibility to going infinite (or at least arbitrarily high) with the new Wizard commander Mairsil, the Pretender which has exiled a Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip, but I guess the same question could apply with Experiment Kraj.

Mairsil: http://edit.magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/mairsil-pretender-2017-08-10

What happens if a creature would copy baby Jace's ability to exile itself and return itself to the battlefield 'transformed'? I'm assuming it would just return to the battlefield on its only side after failing to have been transformed, but would like if somebody could confirm this.

Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1

I almost got this wrong because I forgot the rules changed sometime over the past few years. The card in your example would stay in exile.

711.8a If a player is instructed to put a card that isn't a double-faced card onto the battlefield transformed, that card stays in its current zone. This is a change from previous rules.

Now that I think about it, the rule probably changed when Magic Origins was released to prevent some silly infinite combos with copies of the "baby planeswalkers" that the old version of the rule would have allowed.

August 10, 2017 5:01 p.m. Edited.

Yesterday says... #2

Well that's legitimately disappointing. Thanks for answering!

August 10, 2017 5:06 p.m.