Modal & Double-Faced Cards

MDFCs, transforming cards, split cards, Adventures and Sagas — what each one is, in which zone.

Some cards are two things. The rules handle every one of them with the same question: which set of characteristics does this object have, in the zone it's currently in? Answer that and the rest follows.

The one rule that does most of the work

A double-faced card in your hand, graveyard, library, or exile has only its front face's characteristics. Nothing about a face survives a zone change — a transformed werewolf that dies arrives in the graveyard as its human side, and an MDFC's land back face is invisible to anything counting lands in your list.

On the battlefield or the stack, it has the characteristics of whichever face is up.

Modal vs nonmodal, and the mana value trap

This is the distinction worth being precise about, because the two families behave differently in exactly one place.

Nonmodal DFCs are transforming cards: the same object wearing a different hat. While the back face is up it has that face's characteristics — except its mana value, which is calculated from the front face's mana cost. A transformed werewolf with no printed cost on the back is still mana value 3.

Modal DFCs are two independent choices printed on one card. While a face is up, it has only that face's characteristics — including its own mana value, with no borrowing. An MDFC land face on the battlefield is a land with mana value 0, full stop.

Casting either means choosing the face before it goes on the stack, and only that face is evaluated to see whether it can be cast. Casting something "transformed" puts it on the stack back face up. Playing an MDFC as a land uses your land drop and does whatever that face says.

Two edge rules: an instruction to transform into an instant or sorcery face simply does nothing, and meld cards can never transform — their back faces exist only to define the melded permanent.

Split cards: combined everywhere except the stack

A split card is one card — drawing, discarding and milling all count it once. Off the stack its characteristics are both halves combined: every card type from either half, every ability in both text boxes, and a mana cost that is the two costs added together, which is where its colours and mana value come from.

Choose a half as you cast it; while it's on the stack, the other half's characteristics are treated as though they don't exist. It has two names, and naming it means naming one of them.

Rooms are the newer wrinkle — split cards with a shared type line, which represents static abilities that function on the battlefield. The half you cast gives the permanent the corresponding unlocked designation as it enters, and the existence of both halves is part of its copiable values.

Adventure and Omen: alternative characteristics, not a second face

Adventurer and omen cards have an inset frame defining alternative characteristics the object may have while it's a spell. Choose which way to cast it as you cast it. While it's on the stack as an Adventure or an Omen it has only those alternative characteristics; everywhere else it has only its normal ones. There is no zone where the two combine — the opposite of a split card.

They differ only in what happens on resolution: an Adventure is exiled and its owner may then cast the creature; an Omen is shuffled into its owner's library.

Two details worth carrying: a copy of an Adventure spell is itself an Adventure, and "has an Adventure" describes a card's construction rather than its current state — a creature card in your hand has an Adventure.

Neither can transform. There's no second face to turn over.

Sagas

A chapter symbol is a keyword ability representing a triggered ability: "when one or more lore counters are put on this Saga, if the count was less than N and became at least N, do this". That intervening-if shape is why two counters at once can fire two chapters, and why re-crossing a threshold you've already passed does nothing.

A Saga without read ahead enters with one lore counter via a replacement effect, so chapter I triggers immediately. Read ahead replaces that: choose a number up to the final chapter number as it enters, and start there.

Each turn, as its controller's precombat main phase begins, a lore counter goes on every Saga they control — a turn-based action, so no stack and no priority. It is not an upkeep trigger, however often people play it that way.

Finally, a Saga at or past its final chapter number is sacrificed as a state-based action — but not while it's the source of a chapter ability still on the stack. Exactly the same wiring as a Siege at zero defense, and for exactly the same reason.

20 questions in this track, checked against the 2026-06-19 Comprehensive Rules.

Rules covered: 614.1c, 704, 709.1, 709.2, 709.3, 709.4, 709.4a, 709.4b, 709.4c, 712.1, 712.4c, 712.8a, 712.8e, 712.8f, 712.9, 712.10, 712.11a, 712.11b, 712.11c, 712.11d, 712.12, 714.2, 714.2b, 714.3a, 714.3b, 714.3c, 714.4, 715.2c, 715.3b, 715.3c, 715.3d, 715.4, 715.5, 720.2c, 720.3, 720.3a, 720.3c, 720.3d, 720.5.