Faceless Agent doesn't work as it is written
Faceless Agent reads in part:
"When Faceless Agent enters the battlefield, seek a creature card of the most prevalent creature type in your library."
The issue: when seeking a card, Faceless Agent NEVER selects a Changeling card until all of the creatures left in the library have "Changeling". This is clearly in opposition to the rules text on the card. Any Changeling in the deck should be counted as every creature type, so they should all be candidates for seeking ANY time Faceless Agent's ability resolves.
I built a deck and played it against Sparky many times to test the extent of this. I resolved Faceless Agent's ability literally hundreds of times and never seeked another Faceless Agent (there were four in the deck) until all creatures left in the deck were Changelings. This is clearly not just a small sample at this point.
This not only the card not working as it is written, but is abusable. For instance, if a deck is built around some (non-Changeling) creature, it could run just one copy and 4 Faceless Agents, and the first Agent will seek out the creature in question every time. This seems contrary to the nature of the card. (In my current pet deck in Historic, the fact that Faceless Agent never finds another Faceless Agent is honestly makes the card much better than a 3-mana common would typically be.)
I can think of a couple of reasons why this might have been the intended functionality of the card (mostly color-pie reasons, since this card is colorless) but if this is the case this should really be represented in the card's text. If this is truly a bug, the following fix would work:
- Whenever Faceless Agent's ability resolves, first check if there are any creatures with Changeling in the library. If there are, count them first.
- Count all of the instances of creature types on the type-line of all other creature cards in the library.
- Add to each tally the number of creatures with Changeling.
- Choose a creature card randomly from amongst all creature cards with the highest count (there may be more than one option.) If there are only creatures with Changeling left in the library, choose on of these randomly. Note that EVERY creature with Changeling will be a candidate for selection now.
This method will ignore all of the irrelevant creature types out there, as it doesn't actually matter that a Changeling counts as an Octopus (for instance) if there are no other non-Changeling Octopi in your deck.
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Nanashi#14594 commented
This bug is seemingly solved, or at least from I've seen, Faceless Agent can seek other Faceless Agents.
But now there is another bug: if there are 4 Faceless Agents in the "deck" (not "library", which is the pile of cards you draw from during the game), a Faceless Agent can seek another Faceless Agent, even if there is another creature type besides Changeling with 4 copies of it in the library.
To be clear: if I were to describe what Faceless Agent is doing right now, it's:
"When Faceless Agent enters the battlefield, seek a creature card of the most prevalent creature type in your **starting deck**."Example:
-It's turn 3 of the current game. In my library, there are 4 elves (which is the most prevalent type; other creature types are neither elves nor changelings, and always in 2-of-a-kind).
-I have 1 Faceless Agent in hand. The other 3 Faceless Agents are still in the library.
-I play Faceless Agent, it seeks one of the other 3 Faceless Agents instead of seeking one of the 4 elves.