MTG Salvation

All super insightful comments. Thank you!

I had not thought about how it would be translated into other languages. My native language is French, which is generally wordier than English. I'll have to take a look at a translation of Oubliette when I can get my hands on it (I don't even know if they translated Arabian Nights into French, actually). "Oubliette" itself is a French word!

It's interesting to note how similar in word count and character count Oubliette and Animate Dead are. Thinking a bit more about Animate Dead, I see a major difference in how intuitive it is over Oubliette. Animate Dead does pretty much exactly what you expect it to do just by reading the card name. The same can't be said for Oubliette, in my opinion.

Again, thanks for your thoughts. The subject is much deeper than I'd imagined.

Thanks for the reply!

Why couldn't they reprint Oubliette with the previous wording? I get that it sucks, but it reminds me a bit of the Animate Dead situation. Could they not have done the same thing?

What do you think is the most problematic thing about the current wording? Is it the noting of counters and quantity?

In the end though, I agree with you. This felt like the best way to reprint this odd-ball. I imagine it will see more play now with increased accessibility.

We are finally getting a much-needed reprint of Oubliette, which was only ever printed in Arabian Nights! You could regularly see this common going for 40-50$. Even reprinted as an uncommon, this card will probably start at 3-4$ and wind its way down once Pauper players have had their fill.

On to the topic:

The original Oubliette had some very strange wording to it, exiling anything attached to the creature as well as retaining counters. This does sound a lot like Phasing, which is what Oubliette was changed into. There is one major difference I wanted to point out, however: Oubliette will no longer trigger ETB abilities like it did before.

This is most likely an improvement to the card overall, but it all depends on what you do with it. No more Aven Riftwatchers coming back with FIVE vanishing counters, but that Skarrgan Pit-Skulk is coming back with all his counters and auras.

What do you all think of the change in text? For better or worse? Should they have stuck to the original, wordy ability?