Original Post — Direct link
5 months ago - /u/WotC_Jay - Direct link

Sorry about that! We had a glitch with yesterday's release, but it's fixed now.

5 months ago - /u/WotC_Jay - Direct link

Originally posted by Stack3686

Strangely it’s just the Plainscycling that isn’t working from what I hear. I used swamp cycling this morning so know that works.

Even more fun, it was just Plainscycling 2, so Eagles of the North (with Plainscycling 1) still worked. Complex game is complex.

5 months ago - /u/WotC_Jay - Direct link

Originally posted by LadylikeAbomination

Does this have anything to do with you implementing Timeless Dragon on the client? :P

Yes, actually, in a truly ridiculous cascade of interactions.

We added Painscycling 2 to the token on Timeless Dragon (to avoid blue text on the token in-game). This token got included in Tuesday's Alchemy: Ixalan release, though the dragon didn't. MH2 (where Timeless Dragon comes from) gets built before NEO or LCI does. So the token of Timeless Dragon was the first instance on Plainscycling the rules engine encountered. But tokens don't get full rules built for them, so this ended up breaking Plainscycling 2 (but not Plainscycling 1, Swampcycling 2, etc.)

Or, as one of our engineers helpfully explained:
You may be wondering why and how plainscycling, a seeming well established and functional game mechanic, would unexpectedly stop working. Well, it turned out to be less of a problem of what happened and more a problem of what hasn't happened yet

You see, when entities outside of time start manipulating subjects trapped in time, you get some very unexpected behavior.
Take Timeless Dragon, a being of incomprehensible eternity. Timeless Dragon isn't on Arena, but he will have been. Timeless Dragon also happens to have Plainscycling {2} as an ability. So, from Timeless Dragon's point of view, Plainscycling {2} is within his eternal domain, not in the mundane domain of time. To Timeless Dragon, Plainscycling {2} has already existed as long as he has existed. However, Timeless Dragon doesn't exist in Arena. When Timeless Dragon tries to observe Arena from outside of time Plainscycling {2} is undefined.
So, without the dragon properly on Arena, Plainscycling {2} was in a superpostion. Did it exist? Did it not?