2

I was browsing around Gatherer the other day, and found that there are multiple examples of cards with identical wording.

For instance Final Fortune, Last Chance, Warrior Oath all have identical wording / color / costs / type.

Similarly, Ambition Cost, and Ancient Craving are twins.

So, I have found a triplet above, is there a quadruplet? Quintplet cards with identical wording?

1
  • 5
    Final Fortune is an instant; the other two are sorceries.
    – Cascabel
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 17:34

2 Answers 2

7

The phrase you're looking for is "functional reprint" - they're not literally reprinted cards, but they're functionally the same.

There's a list of them on MTG Salvation. You can just skim through the table and look for cards with lots of reprints. Generally cards like that are pretty boring, for example vanilla creatures. Simpler cards tend to make sense in more sets, and the renaming happens when the old name doesn't fit thematically with the set they want to print it in.

Some of the most-reprinted cards:

(There are plenty more creatures that have been functionally reprinted a few times; some even have exciting abilities like flying or mountainwalk!)

And I think the most-reprinted noncreature spell (though I didn't go through the list too carefully yet) is Remove Soul (1U, "Counter target creature spell"): False Summoning, Preemptive Strike, and Essence Scatter. (Note that Preemptive Strike is from Portal Three Kingdoms and thus the wording on the physical card is really really awkward, but the oracle text is the same.)

1
  • Interesting that type changes are still classed as "Functional Reprints", my Ape Tribal deck doesn't agree :)
    – Jontia
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 15:22
4

Cards that are effectively the same but have different names are often called "functional reprints". The one with the most duplicates is probably Grizzly Bears, which has 4 functional reprints: Balduvian Bears, Bear Cub, Forest Bear, and Runeclaw Bear. All five of them are 2/2 creatures that cost {1}{G} and have the type "Bear" and no abilities.

This wiki page lists every card with functional reprints. That page shows Hill Giant as having the most functional reprints instead of Grizzly Bears because it counts otherwise identical creatures with the same types as functional reprints.

2
  • Should Last Chance/Warrior Oath be added to the wiki, or is there some good reason they aren't there? Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 11:58
  • They probably should be. They definitely look the same to me.
    – murgatroid99
    Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 17:22

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .