MTG Rules team fixes nerf to popular Commander after fan complaints 

While powerful Magic: The Gathering Commanders can occasionally be on the receiving end of a ban, Neheb, the Eternal narrowly avoided a catastrophic nerf originating in the Bloomburrow set. 

Magic: The Gathering is busier than ever before, with fans near-constantly having new sets to explore, decks to build, and spoilers to get excited for. As the pace of the game’s releases continues to ramp up and up, new cards filter into Magic all the time. 

As MTG cards become more and more complex, more space is needed to ensure that they are still legible and easy to follow. But with the game’s increasing power creep, which is obvious in sets like Modern Horizons 3, even basic, cheap cards that might once have been vanilla are coming with multiple impactful effects. 

Alongside this increase in complexity of individual cards has come many new additions to the game, from new card types to updated rules.  

Wizards of the Coast seems to be taking steps to trim down on wasted space in its card designs and language to accommodate the extra space needed for rules text. However, that change has had some unexpected consequences. 

Bloomburrow sees Wizards making a change to some of Magic’s wording, with enters the battlefield (often shortened to ETB) becoming simply enters.  

While this change is simply a matter of phrasing, another change in wording has had unfortunate consequences for several of Magic’s Creatures and other cards. 

Staring with Bloomburrow, the postcombat main phase will be renamed to simply the second main phase. This makes the wording a little less clunky but has proven to be a huge hit to the viability of a certain combo relying on activating additional combat steps. 

As MTG fans caught wind of this change in wording, it didn’t take long for the consequences to become clear for a select number of cards that are benefitted specifically by additional postcombat main phases, including one of the most popular mono-red Commanders of all time, Neheb, the Eternal.

Players have been calling for a fix to restore Neheb, the Eternal to its former functionality, and thankfully the MTG rules team was quick to respond. 

Initially, changes to Neheb, the Eternal were up in the air, but it didn’t take long for a concrete ruling to be reached. Matt Tabak, Wizards’ Principal Magic Editor, let fans know on Twitter that Neheb is one of 11 cards that will keep the text Postcombat Main Phase, allowing its best combos to function as before. 

WotC

To explain just why Neheb was impacted so badly by these changes, some of red mana’s most potent cards allow players to have multiple combat steps within the same turn, with Murders at Karlov Manor’s Anzrag, the Quake-Mole being a recent example. 

Neheb, the Eternal synergizes perfectly with the extra combat cards, also serving as a useful card in the 99 of other red decks, 

At the beginning of your postcombat main phase, Neheb allows you to gain one red mana for each life opponents have lost this turn. Through this, Neheb can keep casting and triggering extra combat steps, snowballing value and closing out the game before opponents get another turn to act. 

However, with the switch to ‘Second Main Phase’, Neheb’s ability is restricted to only triggering once per turn, cutting off many of the deck’s best plays and removing its ability to steamroll over opponents. 

Thankfully, Wizards responded to the unexpected nerf once fans made their displeasure known, and players running mono-red decks got to keep one of their best options for Commander.