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Moxonomy

Goblin Caves

Enchantment — Aura1 generic manaRed manaRed mana

Three conditions stack between this Aura and any effect: it has to enchant a land, that land has to be a basic Mountain, and there have to be Goblins in play for the buff to land on anything. Clear all three and the payoff is +0/+2, a toughness pump with no offensive component at all. That makes it the rare tribal Aura built to keep an aggressive creature type alive rather than to make it hit harder, a survivability tax on a tribe that historically wanted to be racing the opponent's life total instead of grinding through combat. The fragility is total: lose the Mountain to land destruction, or change its typing so it stops being a basic Mountain, and the card reverts to doing nothing whatsoever. This comes from a period when tribal payoffs were scarce enough to be worth printing at all, lands were a normal target for Auras, and developers were comfortable shipping permanents whose entire function evaporated if one condition failed. The toughness-only direction is the giveaway that this was never meant to break a board open; it exists to drag small Goblins through damage-based removal and combat. What survives is a snapshot of tribal identity, basic-land typing, and enchant-permanent templating all being worked out before later sets imposed the guardrails that would have flagged a card this conditional.

Goblin Caves (me4)
ME4 · #119common
Pricing
Normal: $1.23
Foil:
Oracle Text

Rules text

Enchant land As long as enchanted land is a basic Mountain, Goblin creatures get +0/+2.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
N/A
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
Legal
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
Legal
Pauper Commander
Legal
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
Legal
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

1 set
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