Substance
Substance is an obsolete keyword ability that had no effect. Substance was introduced at the same time the Ravnica: City of Guilds set was released in 2005, but it was never printed on a Magic card. The ability was originally created to fix twelve cards that did not work the same way under post-Sixth Edition rules as they did when they were first printed. The cards were:
Substance was used to ensure that the permanents these cards created would always go to the graveyard during the cleanup step of the turn in which they were played. Under the rules at the time, the cards' original wordings of "at end of turn" would cause their effects to occur at the beginning of the end of turn step instead of the cleanup step; as a result, for example, if Armor of Thorns had been played as an instant, it would not save a 2/2 creature with 3 damage on it, because when the enchantment was put into the graveyard, the creature would still have the damage marked on it and would thus be destroyed as a state-based action. With the introduction of substance, instead of creating "at end of turn" triggers, the cards would grant themselves (or, in Waylay's case, the tokens it created) the substance ability until end of turn and create a delayed trigger that triggered when substance was lost (which occurred at the beginning of the next cleanup step), thereby letting the cards work the same way that players expected them to.
Substance was removed from the Comprehensive Rules in 2009 as part of the Magic 2010 Rules Changes, being replaced with the use of the newly introduced "at the beginning of the next cleanup step" triggers.
External links
- July 2009 Update Bulletin — Sweeping Card Changes — Describes the loss of substance and how it had been used