Arena Has to Fix This ASAP: Jumbo Cactuar Literally Breaks MTG:A

Last updated on June 18, 2025

Jumbo Cactuar | Illustration by Jason Kiantoro

UPDATE: It seems as though this dilemma has been patched, although many players have still been experiencing lags and crashes: Mobile players, use Jumbo Cactuar at your own risk!

Step #1 to winning with Jumbo Cactuar on Magic Arena: Attack with Jumbo Cactuar.

Step #2: Give Jumbo Cactuar trample (Blitzball Shot for simplicity, Gladiolus Amicitia‘s landfall trigger if you're feeling spicy).

Step #3: Wait for opponent to double-block, fail to manually assign 10,000+ damage one point at a time, rope until you lose, and explode.

Wait… what?

One Big Bug Cactus

Cactuar | Illustration by Kevin Sidharta

So yeah, Magic Arena has an issue with Jumbo Cactuar right now. It's not the 10,000 point life swing that's the problem per se, it's situations where the creature has to assign damage to multiple blockers that messes everything up. In this instance, the controller of Daddy Cactuar has to actually manually assign all of that damage across multiple sources, and you don't have the time to actually do that, so boom goes your head and you end up just handing your opponent the win.

Source

As noted by nico_bico and other commenters on Reddit, this issue only exists on the mobile client. On desktop versions of Arena, you can manually type in the amount of damage you want to assign to each target, but the mobile app doesn't allow you to do that, so attacking with Jumbo Cactuar while you're popping a squat is actually detrimental to your win percentage. Whelp, back to reading the back of shampoo bottles!

Author's Note: This exact scenario came up in a game I played recently. A double-block on an opponent's Cactuar caused the opponent to freeze up, eventually resulting in them running out of timers and immediately losing the game. It wasn't clear what went wrong at the time, but it appears now that the opponent just couldn't find a way to actually assign their damage correctly and ran out of time, leading to an untimely concession. Seems the opponent had 9,999 problems, and a correctly-working digital client ain't one.

That's a Jumbo Problem

Needle Drop | Illustration by Greg Staples

This is clearly an issue that's in need of an immediate fix. For one, it's just sloppy and makes it look like no one tested the set out on mobile clients. It's not even that niche of a scenario when you think about it. Jumbo Cactuar is a normal rare, so it shows up frequently enough, it's imminently playable, so people who pull it in Limited are going to run it, and one of the more reliable ways to answer it is with a multi-block to plow through its 7 toughness.

Source

User Cieguh on Reddit posted a similar problem, seemingly replicated using Arena's in-game testing bot, Sparky. You know there's a colossal problem on your hands when a card causes you to lose to Sparky.

And it's worth noting that this issue theoretically already existed before the release of Final Fantasy. You could duplicate this scenario with any arbitrarily large creature, it just so happens that creatures don't really get big that often. Even a 100-power creature's damage can be split up in a timely manner. But 10,000 damage? That's, like, so much more. It's literally Over 9000!

The fix seems simple: Just incorporate a manual typing system on Arena where players can key in the damage like they'd be able to on desktop. It's not like this functionality doesn't already exist in the game: Cards like Sorcerous Spyglass work as intended, allowing players to type in a card name.

Alternatively, maybe don't print creatures with 10,000 power. Honestly though, Jumbo Cactuar‘s kind of a meme to begin with, but it's such a flavorful gem of a card that the hassle's sort of worth it. It just needs to work correctly.

Or, alternatively, just Self-Destruct that bad boy and send all that damage to face. Problem solved.