Tarmogoyf question

[jp22102000]

Once during a discussion about Tarmogoyf with some people, some said that it was misprinted and was not corrected before seeing print (Umezawa's Jitte was supposedly a victim of this too). Has anyone else heard this story before or know if it is true? In a way I could believe this, since entire cards have been misprinted before ( Beta Elvish Archers).

[Benobi]

Actually, both Tarmogoyf and Umezawa's Jitte were given last-minute "power-ups" that weren't fully tested. R&D puts months of testing into all of their cards, so last-minute changes are rare. But Toshiro Umezawa was a main character of the Kamigawa storyline, and Tarmogoyf was supposed to be a spoiler of sorts for Planeswalkers (note the rules text, before Planeswalkers were ever printed); both cards had underperformed in playtesting, but R&D wanted to make them fringe-playable, so they made some last-minute adjustments to them. The original Tarmogoyf was 1GG for a */*, and the original Umezawa's Jitte didn't have the -1/-1 counter ability.

So yes, both cards were "accidents", but they were not misprints.

[Shadow_Seraph]

For what it's worth, the same can be said for Jace, the Mind Sculptor. The +2 was a 'target player mills 2' in FFL, but it became 'Scry 1 or Fateseal 1' shortly before being printed. And the rest, as they say, was history.