Not even 24 hours have passed since Magic: Gathering's the latest Commander decks were revealed as part of the upcoming Lorwyn eclipsed There's one extremely powerful card in the set that's already dropped a bit. Ashling Flame has been a popular character since the original Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block, so it makes sense that she would headline one of the two Commander decks in the new set. Dance of the Elements is a pre-built five-color deck designed to play Elementals cheaper and take advantage of their Enter the Battlefield (ETB) triggers. Ashling, the Limitless has two abilities that interact exclusively with her elemental brethren – just too much.
Her first ability gives all elementals spells you cast summon 4 from your hand, which means you can pay four colorless mana to cast an elemental, and then it will be sacrificed once it hits the board. Then, whenever you sacrifice a non-token elemental, you can quickly create a copy of it. You then sacrifice that copy at the end of the turn unless you pay one of each mana, for a total of five. The strategy here is to double the ETB and sacrifice the bonuses of your other elemental creatures, but as some Magic players quickly noticed that Ashling is actually even more powerful – at least as the card is currently formulated.
The problem is that the related mechanic is back. Lorwyn eclipsedby assigning creature types to certain non-creature cards. In other words, the set includes non-creature spells that are technically still elementals. This makes it theoretically possible to create a kindred instant that is also an elemental by summoning Ashling. But what exactly will happen? Instances do not technically “enter” the battlefield, so they cannot be sacrificed. Therefore, Ashling's second ability will not work. The tricky part is that the official summoning rules state that the card in question must be a permanent, which essentially means it must be a creature. But I'm sure that at many casual tables, players might think that you can cast an instant on him with relatives and elementals, and then copy that spell, which would theoretically lead to some pretty devastating combos.
Replying to post on Bluesky asking about this particular interaction, Wizards of the Coast Editor-in-Chief Matt Tabak confirmed that “Ashling is getting an update to its formulation so that it only works with permanent Elemental spells.” Thus, before the set is even released, the pre-built Commander deck's face card appears to have errors (official changes to the Magic language of the cards).
As a mechanic, summoning has always been tied specifically to permanents, as it only makes sense when the permanent lands on the battlefield and is sacrificed at the end of the turn. This has happened with every challenge card since then. Floor This mechanic was first introduced in 2007. This new situation highlights one of the reasons why the Wizards of the Coast research and design team stopped using related (formerly called tribal) creatures altogether. 2010s Rise of the Eldrazi was the last standard set to feature a mechanic – until now. When asked about relatives on his blog in the past, Magic lead designer Mark Rosewater called it “terribly contradictory” And “problems everywhere” because the result is “a lot of unnecessary words with very little use.” It turns out he was right.
