Thousands upon thousands of Magic cards printed last year, none of them Phelddagrif. No legendary commanders to wrest the title of #1 Bant Group Hug Commander from Ms. Bumbleflower, no Phelddagrif cameos in art or references in flavor text and certainly no cards printed with that special Phelddagrif creature type. So much pulp pressed and printed only to exclude the plump purple hippo with green plumage.

Then, on January 9, 2026, Wizards of the Coast uploaded the full card gallery for the first of seven sets to be released that year: Lorwyn Eclipsed. Many players celebrated the return to Lorwyn and its iconic creature types such as treefolk, giants and noggles. Some celebrated the return of early Magic artists such as Margaret Organ-Kean and Jeff Laubenstein. Some celebrated the mythic chase rares of the set, while others gnashed their teeth and wept bitterly that their specs did not pay off.1

Yet, much like Winston Churchill also said: “Never ever give up!.” And, when the Phelddagrif Phanatics were at their lowest, Wizards finally brought Phelddagrif back.

But I did not see anyone celebrate the return of Phelddagrif. There wasn’t much fanfare, no trumpets blared or parades conducted. No spontaneous make-outs in the streets, no party poppers popping. No one climbed any flag poles to mark Phelddagrif’s return to Magic, or urinated in any mail boxes. So, forgive me reader, if I’m feeling a bit lonely writing this blog post while I gaze upon all the new Phelddagrifs marched into our lives with the new year:

Yes, reader, who is going to keep all their new year’s resolutions even though you didn’t need to change for anyone least all need to change for me, these are Phelddagrifs, as well as lions, tigers, bears and many more!

The Anthropocentric World: There are No Humans in Lorwyn

I suspect, dear reader, this is not how you expected Phelddagrif to return to Magic. None of these cards look like a Phelddagrif. None of them are purple hippos with wings, or more normal appearing hippos with wings, or purple hippos without wings but wearing a cape. Why am I claiming that a bunch of weirdos looking like what people in the 1950’s considered a salad Phelddagrif’s brilliant return?

It has to do with the ability on all of these cards. “Changeling” is an ability that gives a card all creature types. Because Phelddagrif is a specific creature type, it is included with the changeling ability. You can name “Phelddagrif” with Engineered Plague and Artificial Evolution. If you use Path of Ancestry to cast Questing Phelddagrif in your Phelddagrif commander deck you get to scry. Morophon reduces Phelddagrif’s casting cost to 1 generic. These are all things that you can do in the game, and the game rules recognize Phelddagrif as its own unique type different from “hippo”, which appears on more cards, even having a hippo printed last year. And while many words have been gurgled in the dark alleys of Phelddagrif discourse (also known as the Phelddagrif subreddit) over whether Phelddagrif should be a hippo or not, the fact remains that Phelddagrif is still its own creature.

For now.

So, yes, technically Phelddagrif appears in Magic’s most recent set (making the “technical” Phelddagrif count an additional 70-ish cards on top of the 2 cards printed with the Phelddagrif type). But I think you know as well as I do, dear reader, that these changelings are not the same as seeing Phelddagrif in Magic again. To say that we got 14 new Phelddagrifs is like saying that Lorwyn is a plane littered with humans. Sure, there are no cards that say “Creature – Human”, but all the changelings count as humans and, mechanically, function as them as well. This is because, while Lorwyn has “humans” in it through the changelings it doesn’t have human synergies or payoffs unlike the cards for boggarts and treefolk. Changelings act as a sort of glue that can strengthen weaker creature type strategies (such as bears or bats) or add extra power to already powerfully recognized creature type strategies (such as older modern humans decks with unsettled mariner), there are many payoffs to playing only Changelings (or shapeshifters) on their own. Furthermore, because Phelddagrif is such a specific creature type, with only 2 printed creatures and no typal payoffs, it’s not really obvious that a creature with changeling really adds or creates a new strategy.

So, while I’m not marching in any parades, tooting any horns, or popping party poppers. What’s really getting my goat?

It’s because I can feel the sun retreating and the shift in mood as we enter an eclipsed realm, the calcifying force that cements oneself and halts movement. I can feel their scratchy hands, the creaking wood of their joints, sense their frightening visages of that totally-real-group of people who believe and petition to make Phelddagrif’s creature type “hippo”, despite Wizards have many clear opportunities to update Phelddagrif’s creature type, and refusing each time.

Against “Creature — Hippo”

Belonging by Danny Schwartz

Not many people know that Phelddagrif is not a hippo and that it has its own creature type. Looking at it, it would seem that Phelddagrif is a hippo. The famous features of hippos everywhere are there: the cute little ears, that famous cryptic smile hippos give, the gigantic maw for crushing watermelons, the powerful, yet stubby legs and formidable torso. Most would assume that, because Phelddagrif looks like a hippo, and it makes hippo tokens, it must also be a hippo itself. And there isn’t anything on the printed card to correct that misunderstanding:

Originally, when a legend was printed, it was not always assigned a creature type, instead just having the text “summon legend”. There were occasional legendary creatures that included a creature type such as the original elder dragons and Rayne, Academy Chancellor, but these were exceptions to the rule. Phelddagrif didn’t have a creature type and was just a “summon legend”. The Phelddagrif creature type did not exist until 2001 with Questing Phelddagrif’s printing in Planeshift as “Creature – Phelddagrif”. And still the original Phelddagrif wouldn’t have the Phelddagrif creature type.

The typing for Questing Phelddagrif is crucial here to demonstrate Wizards intentionally choosing “Phelddagrif” as a creature type over “hippo” as it would have been the first point where they could print “hippo” on the type line of the card since the original Phelddagrif appeared five years prior. There would have been precedent too, as the “hippo” creature type had appeared on Bull Hippo in Urza’s Saga.

Perhaps Wizards forgot about updating the Phelddagrif type? Unlikely, as Bull Hippo was reprinted with the hippo type again in 7th edition, which was released the same year as Planeshift. Wizards had hippos on their mind, because they also updated the card type on the first printed hippo card: Pygmy hippo.

Pygmy hippo set the stage for other hippo cards such as Defiant Greatmaw, Rampaging Hippo, Keruga, the Macrosage, and the famous Lazotep Behemoth. The printing of Pygmy hippo (and Bull Hippo afterwards) created a window between 1996, when the Hippo/Hippopotamus creature type was introduced on printed cards, and 2001, when Questing Phelddagrif was printed, that the card could have been printed with the “hippo” creature type, not contradicting the typeline of the original Phelddagrif.

Another opportunity for this (profane) possible creature type update would be in 2004. It wasn’t until 2004 when “legend” as a subtype was removed and replaced with the “legendary” supertype. With this update, all previous legends that did not have creature types were given creature types, which mean Phelddagrif needed a creature type update. And what did Wizards chose?2

Another clear opportunity for this (wretched) update would come on April 10, 2006. This was when Visions was released on Magic the Gathering: Online, which included Pygmy Hippo. The original printing of the card was a “Summon Hippopotamus”, a distinct creature type from “Hippo”. While the words mean the same thing, because they are different there would be different rules interactions for the cards. For example: a Callous Oppressor on “Hippo” would be able to take a Bull Hippo, but not a Pygmy Hippo.3 During Pygmy Hippo’s online debut, the creature type was changed to Hippo. Which would have only brought up the numbers of hippos in magic at the time to two, so why not also eliminate Phelddagrif at this point as well and add two more hippos? Yet, Wizards remained steadfast in their inaction.

Finally, Wizards could have updated the creature type in 2021 with the printing of the Extra Life charity secret lair Questing Phelddagrif, the most recent opportunity across 25 years when either Phelddagrif was being printed or the hippo type was being updated for Wizards to eliminate Phelddagrif as a creature type. Taking all of this into account, a timeline looks like this:

And imagine how impressive that would look if I had put all those data points on there. Pretty compelling stuff, and not an overdetermined argument against a straw man at all. The overall point being that there has been many opportunities for Wizards to, sensibly, replace Phelddagrif as a creature type with hippo and they’ve turned it down at every point.

I believe it’s unlikely for Phelddagrif’s creature type to be updated to “hippo”.4 Don’t get me wrong, I would understand if there was a type change to Phelddagrif, especially if there was some typal support in an upcoming set for Hippos, although it seems unlikely. It might make more sense to combine the creature types, like with Cephalids and Octopus, if it opened new creature type synergies for a hypothetical hippo typal deck. Perhaps it would happen then, but only seven hippos printed over the history of Magic makes me think they’re not really going to lean into supporting this creature type.

But this largely doesn’t matter. For a lot of people5 Phelddagrif is the purple hippo. It doesn’t matter that it has a weird creature type because they haven’t noticed it. If the “Phelddagrif” type disappeared during the Lorwyn Eclipsed prerelease6 nothing would change for these players. Which conjures melancholy thinking of these people haven’t experienced “Legendary Creature — Phelddagrif”, and hope, since they can experience the joy from seeing that creature type for the first time.

The Thrills of Type Tautology

I adore “Creature — Phelddagrif”. I’m charmed by it. The cavalier attitude towards the early typing of cards, where the name just became the creature type to “add flavor” brings me joy. Enchanted Being is, perplexingly, a “Summon Being” and Flying Men are Flying Men. A Phelddagrif is a Phelddagrif. The tautological type line injects a moment of spontaneity into the game. When playing we’re suspending our disbelief, reading the cards and interpreting what the words mean to glean how each game piece interacts with each other. A player looks up Phelddagrif to figure out its typeline and is met with the card’s name. The game stops and the mind blinks. How much clearer can it get, did you really need to look it up? Taxonomy has hit indexical bedrock. It is what it is.

The self-referential type line creates mystery. Questions about the card spring forth when looking at it. Why does Phelddagrif have a unique card type? Why does it make hippo tokens if it itself is not a hippo? Where are the hippos coming from? Is this like a backwards mule situation? To clarify through the type line would not bring satisfaction, the pleasure comes from asking and imagining. Something changed in Magic when the answer to “What is a Dandân anyways?” became “Just a fish.” I probably always knew that it was the fish under the water, but I had fun seeing the card as a child and thinking it might be the fishermen, the boats, or even the water itself.

Updating the creature type halts those types of thought. Specifically to Phelddagrif, a type change would collapse differences across species. The Greatmaws of Amonkhet are different from the Bull and Pygmy Hippos of Dominaria, but all are still hippos. While Phelddagrif would be in esteemed company in this hypothetical update, it would have lost something unique and special to it. Phelddagrif would flatten to mean something that looks like a hippo but has wings, when there’s nothing to Phelddagrif meaning that it has to be a hippo. Each time we’ve seen Phelddagrif we’ve continued to see it evolve and change. Questing Phelddagrif showed some differences from the first printing by dropping the spiked-green wings and purple skin for condor wings and a grey epidermis.

While the secret lair Questing Phelddagrif has no wings at all:

Taking this idea to the extreme, the background of Hydradoodle has Phelddagrifs that differ greatly from any other Phelddagrif’s physical appearance:

Sure, they have the purple hippo heads, but their wings are white, one has the body of a dolphin and the other an octopus. The limits of what a Phelddagrif could look like is where we’ll find the limits to our imagination.

To go back to the original Phelddagrif, looking at the card Phelddagrif doesn’t need to be a creature type at all but the creature’s name. It’s a moniker for exceptional gift giving, a sobriquet for group hug, a pseudonym for the strange and misplaced. Who’s to say that Sami, in their infinite capacity for hope, is not a Phelddagrif; or that Savage Knuckleblade with three different activated abilities costing three different types of mana is not also a Phelddagrif?

Phelddagrif looks like a hippo, but isn’t a hippo. It’s form is that of a shapeshifter, all meaning associated with it is too slippery for thought to hold. It’s a bit like a changeling in this way. Both adorable and horrendous, cheerful and unnerving. This weirdness has echoes of Phelddagrif, and in the way that returning to Lorwyn feels like a return to older magic for many players, it also feels like a return to Phelddagrif.7

And, at the very least, we finally got an official 1/1 hippo token from Wizards:

Lagniappe: Notes From the Lorwyn Visual Spoiler

Lorwyn: Eclipsed revisits a plane after 17 years, which gives the opportunity to see what’s going on with some cards that have very large fan bases. Like Evershrike.

Well, the set can only be so big and we can’t reference everything if the designers want to give Ashling two different cards. It’s unfortunate that Evershrike will be condemned to the same dustbin of Magic history that is barely-bracket 2 EDH….

What? Is that a reference to a beloved card from Magic’s past not as an updated version of the creature but as an aura that gives a creature flying and can return itself from the graveyard? Very interesting. It sort of reminds me of something I wrote last year around this time…

I guess we’ll have to keep imagining a Phelddagrif here instead.