Well, the release notes (
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2016-07-08) contain full Comprehensive Rules passage for meld, and it's a LONG one. So, tests necessary are:
1. Meld conditions -- If you
Cloudshift Graf Rats in response to the ability, the ability will fail because you no longer "own and control" the same object. If you
Cloudshift Midnight Scavengers, on the other hand, the ability will succeed because you still "own and control" a creature named Midnight Scavengers. If you lose control of either creature, the ability will fail. If you control multiple Midnight Scavengers as the ability resolves, you will get a chance to specify which one will be used. If either permanent is a token or a copy, they will be exiled, but the meld will fail.
2. Meld limits -- it doesn't matter what cards are exiled by the meld ability, the melding can be only successful if the objects, while in exile, are two physical cards with different names that belong to the same meld pair. The meld pairs are actually identified by name in the rules.
Corner cases:
2a: If you meld Gisela and Bruna and one is your commander, you are able to replace its exile with moving to command zone. However, since the effect doesn't talk about "exiled cards", the meld will still be successful.
2b: If you get somehow a meld pair where each card copies another meld pair (for example physical Graf Rats that copies Bruna and physical Midnight Scavengers that copies Gisela), the meld should probably still succeed, even though they will meld into a different creature than mentioned by the ability. I am not 100% sure about this.
3. Meld card properties: Meld cards cannot be transformed or turned face down.
Moonmist should do nothing to Midnight Scavengers or to Chittering Host Xenografted to be Human.
Ixidron should be unable to turn either of these face down.
4. Converted mana cost: Effects that ask for converted mana cost of melded permanent get 3 for Hanweir, the Writhing Township, 7 for Chittering Host and 11 for Brisela, Voice of Nightmares. However, this works only for the physical meld pairing -- anything that is a COPY of one of those will return zero.
5. Copying: like for double-faced cards, only the face that is currently up can be copied.
6. One permanent, two cards: Meld cards should have two card IDs. Even if only one is used internally, the other should be displayed somewhere. If a meld card leaves the battlefield, one permanent leaves and two cards arrive into the new zone.
6a: If the meld card is put into library (not shuffled in), its owner decides the relative order of the two parts. If it is put put into library together with other cards (for example with
Terminus), you first decide on the order of the creatures normally, and only then decide how to split the melds (so their halves always end next to each other). [Here I'll notice that there seems to be a bug with
Terminus where the player who cast it always orders all the cards, even those owned by opponent.]
6b: If the movement is replaced by something (like
Leyline of the Void), both cards end up in the new zone. The only exception is commander movement replacement which is still in effect only for that half of Brisela which is the actual commander.
6c: If
Duplicant exiles a meld card, you should be able to specify the timestamp order for exile, and thus which half will be "seen" as "last exiled card" by
Duplicant.
6d: Effects that can track a card after leaving the battlefield will track both halves (
Otherworldly Journey and
False Demise are mentioned as effects).
7: When viewing a card from meld pair, you should be able to switch between viewing front face and the whole meld, when viewing a melded card, you should switch between whole meld and two front faces side by side.
8: Meld card can still be manifested and turned face up normally.
9: "Name a card" effects like
Runed Halo should be able to specify the melded names.
Posted: 09 Jul 2016, 08:32