I had assumed, based on the Fish examples we've seen, that "Gift a [creature type]" was shorthand for "opponent makes a 1/1 vanilla creature of the named type". But here the Octopus is an 8/8. Do the Comprehensive Rules have to list power and toughness individually for each creature type that can be gifted?
Edit: and color too I guess. Maybe abilities, if in some future set it becomes possible to gift birds. Hey, I just got a great idea for a Twelve Days of Christmas-themed Magic set.
Edit 2: this raises an interesting question about how Artificial Evolution interacts with the Gift mechanic. One way to look at it is that you already promised a certain gift when you announced the spell, and AE would come too late to matter.
Gifts are predefined, so instead of this being broken down like "Gift a [creature type], it would actually break down into " Gift a [predefined gift category], otherwise we'd be able to make Card creatures instead of drawing.
As Octopus is a predefined gift category meaning a blue 8/8 Octopus token, and isn't a creature type in this instance, just something using the same English word as a creature type.
As a sidenote, reminder text doesn't count as far as I know, so I think AE could make the card "remind" us that its a blue 8/8 goblin or zombie, but that reminder edit wouldn't be passed on to the gift token itself.
I had assumed, based on the Fish examples we've seen, that "Gift a [creature type]" was shorthand for "opponent makes a 1/1 vanilla creature of the named type". But here the Octopus is an 8/8. Do the Comprehensive Rules have to list power and toughness individually for each creature type that can be gifted?
Edit: and color too I guess. Maybe abilities, if in some future set it becomes possible to gift birds. Hey, I just got a great idea for a Twelve Days of Christmas-themed Magic set.
Edit 2: this raises an interesting question about how Artificial Evolution interacts with the Gift mechanic. One way to look at it is that you already promised a certain gift when you announced the spell, and AE would come too late to matter.
Gifts are predefined, so instead of this being broken down like "Gift a [creature type], it would actually break down into " Gift a [predefined gift category], otherwise we'd be able to make Card creatures instead of drawing.
As Octopus is a predefined gift category meaning a blue 8/8 Octopus token, and isn't a creature type in this instance, just something using the same English word as a creature type.
As a sidenote, reminder text doesn't count as far as I know, so I think AE could make the card "remind" us that its a blue 8/8 goblin or zombie, but that reminder edit wouldn't be passed on to the gift token itself.