One-of-a-Kind Removal Spell Hits MTG Arena for First Time

Last updated on September 5, 2025

Saw in Half | Illustration by Sebastian Giacobino

Bonus sheets have become more commonplace in recent MTG sets. They've strayed from their Limited-focused designs, partly because the chances of opening a bonus sheet card in a Play booster have dramatically declined, and also because many recent bonus sheets just feel like a collection of cards more than anything with a cohesive theme.

But bonus sheets are great for many things, including getting new cards onto MTG Arena. Stellar Sights from Edge of Eternities brought MTGA players Strip Mine and Ancient Tomb, for better or worse, and the Final Fantasy bonus sheet gave the client Urza, Lord High Artificer, Farseek, Cryptic Command, and other goodies. But the upcoming Spider-Man bonus sheet has one of the strangest cards ever printed, and it's totally legal to play.

Two For the Price of One

Saw in Half | Illustration by Slawomir Maniak

Saw in Half is making its way to Magic Arena as part of the Spider-Man bonus sheet. The whole sheet is very art-forward, so the cards are less thematically cohesive and more just a pile of reprints that made sense with the Spider-Man art they wanted to use.

Saw in Half does exactly what it says: Destroy a creature, and its controller makes two copies of the card, each with half the power and toughness of the original. Commander players know the card well enough, since it's used in many infinite combos. What you really want to do is Saw in Half your own value creature, using it as a sort of sacrifice effect that then doubles the value of that creature.

You don't care so much about the size decrease if you're hitting something with a solid static ability or ETB effect.

And yes, there's the Dualcaster Mage combo too, which is already on the Arena client. The idea here is that you cast Saw in Half on anything, then you flash in Dualcaster Mage in response. The Mage copies Saw in Half on the stack, and the copy splits apart Dualcaster. This infinite combo results in as many 1/1s as you want, and you can execute it at instant speed, so you might be able to untap right away and swing out for the win.

Rise of the Silver Borders

Saw in Half | Illustration by Alexander Mokhov

The card comes from 2022's Unfinity (yes, that's the one with the stickers and attractions), a joke set.

Unfinity changed the formula for “Un-sets“, replacing the traditional silver borders with an acorn stamp at the bottom of the card. Silver borders were originally used to indicate that a card was not tournament-legal; Un-set cards often bent the rules of Magic, so silver borders indicated “just for fun” cards. The acorn stamp replaced that, but Unfinity included a mix of cards that did/didn't have the acorn stamp.

You won't find an acorn stamp on the original version of Saw in Half, which means it was legal from the very beginning. It found an immediate home in Commander as a combo and general value card, and it even saw reprints in Bloomburrow Commander and the Deadpool Secret Lair, making it one of the few (and maybe the only?) Un-set cards to get reprinted.

That means Saw in Half is the first Un-set card to make its way to Arena, and honestly, the card feels right at home on the digital client.

It's a welcome addition to Arena despite its bizarre origins, and it shares the bonus sheet with other MTGA newcomers like Ponder, Arachnogenesis, Mystic Confluence, and Silkguard. It'd be nice to see the return of bonus sheets that are designed for Limited, but it's still cool to have these cards added to the client.