Pithing Needle Effects Missing LOTR Cards MTGO Bug - Reported Fixed
If you play Modern Magic: The Gathering Online (MTGO), it's nearly guaranteed that you've come across some Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth cards, with the main one being The One Ring
. The card is so good in the format that you're either playing it, building your deck to beat it, or both. Unfortunately, the main answer for the card (and others) is Pithing Needle
, and until recently, there was an MTGO bug that wouldn't let you "needle" LOTR cards. Today I'll cover the Pithing Needle MTGO bug, some other cards affected, and what formats the problem was happening in.
Pithing Needle Bug With LOTR Cards
In short, Pithing Needle and similar effects like (Sorcerous Spyglass
, Phyrexian Revoker
, The Stone Brain
, and even Unmoored Ego
weren't recognizing that cards from Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth existed - Before the recent fix, when you cast any of these cards and search for a target to name, anything from the LOTR set didn't show up.
Considering how much play The One Ring is seeing in Modern, how good it is, and how hard it is to deal with, (thanks to indestructible), cards like the ones mentioned above were significant to answering the powerhouse of a card. That said, the fact that they didn't work because of the bug was a massive letdown to Modern MTGO players struggling to handle The One Ring.
You May Also Like: Even Non-serialized The One Ring Cards Climb To Insane Prices
Oh, and I keep specifying Modern because the bug wasn't an issue in other formats like Legacy - The cards worked as usual in all formats but Modern. Here is a bit of a discussion from the official MTGO forums, where they've thankfully reported that the bug has been fixed.
Conclusion
There you have it, my friends, the Pithing Needle MTGO bug. I wanted to do a quick write-up to let people who had experienced the issue know it's been fixed. I haven't been on MTGO since they reported it fixed to check for myself. However, according to the MTGO forum for resolved bugs, it has been fixed. Now you can answer those rings! If you are on Magic: The Gathering online playing Modern and can confirm that it now works (or doesn't), comment and let me know, and I'll update the article accordingly.
