Magic: The Gathering Special Card Lists / Searches

Since I’ve gotten back into Magic: The Gathering, a lot of things have changed, mostly for the better (though, seriously, who came up with the whole Planeswalkers idea? I thought we tried that with thos ugly oversized “Character” cards back in the day).

One of the great new things Wizard has given us is the Gatherer, their online card search database. I was surprised to learn that it allows Regular Expressions in its search terms. This makes for some seriously powerful search possibilities.

Since I realize that not all MtG afficionados might be programmers or even care what RegExps are, I am compiling a list of cool searches using Regular Expressions that will give you comprehensive card lists that you just wouldn’t be able to get any other way.

I’ll be adding to this list from time to time, so be sure to bookmark it for your own deck building / collecting research!

All red cards that deal direct damage:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&color=+[R]&text=+[m/deals\s\S*\s?damage/]

All cards that put a card from a graveyard directly into play

(plus a bunch of others that put Zombie tokens into play instead  (I’ll need to refine this one):

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[m/from\s(\w+|his\sor\sher)\sgraveyard.+(into\splay|(on)?to\sthe\sbattlefield)/]

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[m/return.+(from|of)\s(your|his\sor\sher|target\splayer's|any)\sgraveyard.+(into\splay|(on)?to\sthe\sbattlefield)/]

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[m/return.+(from|of)\s(your|his\sor\sher|target\splayer's|any)\sgraveyard.+(into\splay|(on)?to\sthe\sbattlefield)/]&cmc=+%3C[4]&color=+[B]

Note that there’s a bit of a bug with Gatherer right now in that it will lose the “?” in the URL when you click on any of the pagination links. So, in order to go to the second, third etc. pages, you need to modify the url by adding “&page=X” where X is the page number – 1. So to get to page TWO:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[m/from\s(\w+|his\sor\sher)\sgraveyard.+(into\splay|(on)?to\sthe\sbattlefield)/]&page=1

 All cards that grant an additional combat/attack phase:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[m/additional.+(attack|combat)\sphase/]

All cards that donate a creature (token) to your opponent:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[m/(into\splay|onto\sthe\sbattlefield).+under.+opponent.+control/]

All Cards that can be sacrificed on ETB

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?page=1&action=advanced&text=+%5Bm/enters%5Csthe%5Csbattlefield.+sacrifice%5Csit%5Csunless/%5D

All cards that have player gain or lose life equal to a creature’s Power or Toughness

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[m/(gains?\slife|deals\sdamage).+equal\sto\sits\s(power|toughness)/]