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Premium MTG card nerfed by printing error

The Magic: The Gathering card Koma, Cosmos Serpent has received an unexpected nerf, thanks to a misprint in an upcoming Secret Lair.

A big MTG snake

A Magic: The Gathering card in one of the premium Secret Lair collections coming out at the beginning of October is marred by a typographical error that changes what the card can do.

The Horrors From Across the Planes Secret Lair has a bunch of Magic: The Gathering creature cards drawn in a style reminiscent of retro horror comics or book covers. While the value of this batch of cards isn’t great, the artstyle is pretty sweet. So it’s a shame that a typo on Koma, Cosmos Serpent nerfs the card hard.

MTG cards Koma Cosmos Serpent and Doom Whisperer

Koma, Cosmos Serpent is an expensive MTG commander, but a powerful one, whose ability more than makes up for the seven mana casting cost. On each player’s upkeep step you create a serpent token creature, and whenever you like you can sacrifice one of them to make Koma indestructible, or tap a creature and shut off its activated abilities for a turn.

However, thanks to a mistake, the printing of this card says that Koma’s ability only activates on its owner’s upkeep, making the creature far less powerful. Now, you can no longer depend on a never-ending tide of tokens to swarm your opponents with; you have to make do with just one.

Or rather, that’s what you’d have to do if you used the card as written. Hopefully, most people who purchase this will be aware of the mistake and use the correct rules of the card.

The MTG card Circular Logic

Whether it’s because less time is devoted to them or the tricky fonts used in Secret Lairs makes them harder to check, errors keep creeping into these cards. Obviously that’s a shame when they’re intended to be luxury products.

This year, we’ve seen typos like when target was spelt ‘targeet’ on the Comic Sans Doomblade and rules errors like this one. Perhaps the silliest mistake was when the counterspell Circular Logic was printed as a sorcery, as it needs to be an instant to ever really function.

If you’re interested in the other MTG Secret Lairs coming out next month, check out the Chucky one and the Hatsune Miku Fall SL. You might also be interested in our guides to all the MTG Arena codes and every MTG set.