Synergy Search
Every new set, read against every older card, by the rules.
Reading the new sets…
How new sets are read
How new sets are read
Which sets
The newest expansions on the card list (Scryfall's expansion, core and draft innovation sets), with the sets released the same day folded in: a set's Commander decks, promos and bonus sheet. A card is new to a set when its first printing is that release. A set in spoiler season shows up as soon as its cards reach the card list, and the site's card list is read again every morning, so the page grows as cards are revealed.
Where the links come from
The same two indexes as Synergy Search: the lane index (cards/lanes.json: tribes, spells cast, card types, lands, counters, enters and leaves abilities, tap abilities, costs, protection, graveyards and doublers) and the card database's join (cards/feeds.json: a trigger or a cost and what fires or pays it, with each row's own check on both cards' text). A link the text can't settle is not decided and is never listed. Commander Spellbook's combos are on each pair page, not here.
How the lists are ordered
New cards: each with its older partners in Best fit order (lane weights, plus 2 when the link runs both ways; the more played card first among equals), the cards with the most to work with first. Older cards that gained: cards linked closely to two new cards or more (a weight-3 lane, two different lanes, or both ways), ordered by the share of their main lane the set brings, so a card whose lane had a dozen cards and gets nine more comes before a payoff that gains a few dozen among thousands; two cards per lane at most. Worth testing: a new card and an older card few people play (an EDHREC rank past 5,000, or none), linked through two different lanes or both ways, tightest first, two pairs per card at most.
Formats
A format's view keeps the pairs where both cards are legal there, or join it on release by Wizards' announcement. Cards from the same set aren't paired with each other: the page is about what the set adds to the cards already out.
About Synergy Search
What it does
- Pick any card and see every card that works with it, a lane for each way they connect: creature types, spells cast, card types, lands, counters, enters and leaves abilities, costs, graveyards, doublers, each trigger and what fires it, and Commander Spellbook's two-card combos.
- Each lane says its rule in one sentence, with its Comprehensive Rules numbers, shows its first eight cards and opens the whole list in Super Search. A card whose text can't settle a link is shown as not decided and never counted.
- Format (any, or the one you play, remembered), colors (any, inside the card's colors, or inside a commander's), cards you own, cards on Arena, and five orders: Best fit, Deep cuts (cards that fit well and few people play), Most played, Newest and Cheapest.
- Open a card from a lane to see why the two work together, with the matching words marked on both cards, their combos and the official rulings, then add it to a deck or share the pair.
- The pair page holds what the Interaction Oracle did: how two cards work together, with the sentences each finding was read from and the line of play, where one gets in the other's way, what each can do against the other, every combo with both, and both cards' rulings.
- The New set tab reads each of the newest sets, spoiler season included, against every older card: pairs worth testing with cards few people play, the older cards that gained the most, and every new card with what it works with, by format. Updated every morning.
- The Goals tab starts from what you want your deck to do, like sacrificing creatures for value or doubling your mana: about fifty goals, each split into parts with the cards that do each part, the rules that make it work, and three picks that link to each other.
Why
The question when you build is "what goes with this". Lists of what decks already play only find cards people have tried together; this reads the cards themselves, so it also finds the partners nobody has tried yet, and it shows the words on both cards so you can check every link.
Changelog
- The Interaction Oracle is now Synergy Search. One card opens lanes of every card that works with it, by the rules, in any format or yours, each lane with its rule, its count and the whole list in Super Search; deep cuts are one tap away. The two-card view is the pair page, with everything it showed before. Old links open the new page.
- Rest in Peace and Hushbringer now shut off Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat and every other "whenever ~ or another creature dies" card, said in whole sentences. "Shuts it off" means nothing is left: Blood Moon only limits Volcanic Island, which still taps for red. Unholy Heat against Sheoldred reads Maybe: 2 damage, or 6 with delirium.
- On opposite sides it reads what lasts: Stony Silence shuts off Sol Ring, Blood Moon turns Urborg into a Mountain, Teferi leaves Counterspell nothing to counter, with the rule numbers, and it never says "no" for an effect it can't read. Rulings that name both cards come first, and links can name cards by name.
- What feeds a card: the card database's join, one hand-checked row per class the rules connect (a token entering, a creature dying, a life gain), with the rule in words and its Comprehensive Rules numbers. One card shows what feeds it and what it feeds, a line per class with the cards in your format that carry the other half, never one total; two cards show each row that joins them, both ways, under the page's own links. Loops are left out until the finder behind them is measured better.
- Facts, not verdicts: links are named by kind (combo, cost, trigger, wipe, loop and the rest) and listed in a stated order, never graded. The judge reads protection only when the card has it itself (The One Ring and the Swords give theirs away), treats a known ward cost as a cost to pay, judges discard in the hand, says "For a turn" for bounce, tap and phasing, sizes creatures that enter with counters (Murktide Regent), exiles spells from the stack (Mindbreak Trap), and keeps hexproof against a card whose sweep is in another mode (Ajani, Nacatl Pariah). New same-board readings: named-card hosers (Pithing Needle), ability locks (Stony Silence, Karn, the Great Creator) and Containment Priest.
- A sharper judge, found by attacking the new Matchup Lab: a counterspell's own limit is read (Spell Snare, Change the Equation, Stern Scolding now say yes or no instead of maybe), a fixed minus like Dismember's is weighed against toughness and a minus paid for in life (Toxic Deluge) reaches any, protection from a player (True-Name Nemesis) stops that player's damage, a cast trigger's mana value is no longer read as a limit (Kozilek's Return), a mode chosen three times counts three times (Fiery Confluence), and Engineered Explosives reads as conditional.
- Together and apart. The Oracle is no longer one card against another: pick two cards and it shows how they work together first (a wipe that spares one, a cost one cuts, a trigger one feeds, loops, engines, doublers, a line of play), where they get in each other's way, then how they meet on opposite sides. Pick one card and it finds every card that works with it, two-card combos first. Checked against known pairs, misses first: a fresh set of 40 caught 27 on its first run and 38 after the misses became new patterns; 68 of 80 famous pairs show a link specific to the pair (5 of the rest are pure combos Commander Spellbook finds); no false links among 22 unrelated pairs.
- Sharper verdicts: conditional upgrades read as Maybe (Fatal Push with revolt, Unholy Heat with delirium), indestructible or hexproof that an ability only grants is a Maybe, indestructible no longer stops damage to a planeswalker, protection from multicolored and card types counts, X/X creatures that enter with counters are sized by X, and overload is named when it's the only way past hexproof. A typo in the box lands on the nearest card and says so.
- Live. Two cards, both directions: what deals with what, what stops it and why, what else happens, how they work together, the combos with both, and the official rulings.