So I've been trying to come up with one cohesive rule set for mental magic but there appears to be too many home rules across different regions to do so. A lot of people have come up with rules which in my opinion only serve as band aids over bigger issues with their core rules set. So working with some local judges and accepting the input from as many people as I can I've tried to combine it all into one cohesive rule set. This involves some borrowing from the most popular rule sets I've found and AS LITTLE as possible home rules or alterations of any kind that don't exist in regular tournament play. Since this is a completely different format from the others there are a few things that have been added rule wise, however they are pretty straight forward and they have been done with the purpose of allowing EVERY card in the game to be played during ANY game you play. Finally the "additions" are one small aspect of these rules that can be just as easily taken out by anyone who doesn't wish to use them while still Not affecting the rest of the rulings. I'm making this post because I'm trying to get the input of the community with some things rule wise and would like to structure them as close to what wizards would likely do in a competitive setting.
This is a section where the rules can be a little foggy depending on where you play. So here is the outine:
A template is what is used to reference the difference between the actual card that you are holding in your hand and the named card you are playing it as. For example if I have a "grizzly bears" in my hand and I template it as "Tarmogoyf" then the base card is "grizzly Bears" and the template is "Tarmogoyf".
A template may only be used once per game or per match depending on what is agreed upon beforehand. Once a template is chosen it is treated as a statebased effect and the template is removed from the choice pool, so a player may not play "Ancestral Recall" in response to another players "Ancestral Recall" attempting to fizzle it.
A card without a template in ANY zone only maintains two inherent qualities which are it's casting cost and it's color (Color can be determined by its casting cost). This means that if a player chooses not to template a card it can still be returned by effects like "Recollect" or "All Suns' Dawn" but not by "Raise dead" or "Zombify". This also means that colorless cards are not inherently artifacts meaning if you don't template the cost [2] and its in your graveyard you can not return it with an effect like "Myr Retriever". (Note that Gold and Wild cards are viewed as 5 color cards at all times when they are without a template.)
1. A card may only be templated when being revealed by effects that require a template (such as Enlightened tutor) or going into a revealed zone such as "face up exile", "The battlefield", or "the graveyard". (Note that this does not include the hand, library, or face down removal from the game such as hideaway effects.)
2. A card may not be templated without valid reasoning. This means a card like "Blackmail" would not require the opponent to template the cards they reveal while a card like "duress" would.
3. The owner of any card will be the one to template it during any given effect. This means a card like "Telamin Performance" will have the opponent template the revealed cards off their deck.
4. A card maintains its template at ALL times unless it enters a non revealed zone such as the hand or library.. (This means that a player cannot play fact or fiction then flash it back as Deep analysis or moves like that. Once you template the card as fact or fiction it will REMAIN fact or fiction in the graveyard.)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Utopia Land -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Any card may be played face down from your hand as a "Utopia Land"
The abilities of lands named Utopia are as follows:
~Utopia is a basic land~
Tap: add one mana of any color to your mana Pool
0: This land becomes the basic land type of your choice until end of turn *
0: This land becomes Snow covered or Non Snow Covered until end of turn.
The first of two rulings in question is once a Utopia land uses its first 0 ability does it become an island and nothing more or can it still produce five colors and maintain its other abilities. (Ruling Question #1)
The second has largely to do with how the first was answered and thats adopting the "reflecting" nature of Utopia lands. This means that a Utopia land will be CONSIDERED to be a basic land type of a certain color based on your controlling of a permanent or pending spell on a stack. So for example lets say you control a green permanent like "tarmogoyf" while controlling 5 utopia lands. Then you cast "Allied Strategies" allowing you to draw a card for each basic land type you control, then in this case you would draw TWO cards. One for the green "tarmogoyf" and one for the blue "Allied strategies" on the stack. Other key aspects of this ruling is that they are only considered to be the respective lands but not actually are one. So creatures with island home won't die and creatures with island walk can not be blocked if the opponent controls a blue permanent BUT Boil will not destroy the Utopia lands of any player even if they control a blue permanent. (Ruling Question #2)
The first ruling becomes important when considering this because under some interpretations of the rules a single utopia land could draw you five cards when playing Allied strategies.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The Deck List -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
There will be one deck per player each with the exact same cards both in number and in break down. It is as follows:
(Image 1)
The *'s by the casting costs imply that there are ruling options in question for them.
The C's underneath the "five colors" section stands for "color" and there will be one card for each of the five colors that corresponds to a casting cost there. All in all each color will have 9 cards from this section mounting to 45 total cards when all five colors are accounted for.
The next section is the colorless section. This is straight forward with the exception of "0". The option pending here has to do with how we allow the templating of cards without casting costs. Its unclear whether the community wants Land cards to be able to template as cards without costs or just the casting cost "0" should be allowed to do so. (Ruling question #3)
The rationale for the multi's and wilds I'll explain later on but for the purposes of this section know that there only needs to be one of each resulting in 5 gold cards and 4 wilds equalling 9 more in total. (Keep in mind these can be removed at any point if rationale is unsatisfactory or someone doesn't wish to use them but they do allow for the usage EVERY card in the game including ones with too unique a casting cost to otherwise ever be played.)
Finally we have the land cards which can vary in amount from 5 to 10 and in addition to being able to be played as a Utopia land will be allowed to be played face up as any non basic land.
So this is just a basic list for now and all in all presuming you only use 5 lands should have a card total of: 65
(Later on I'll explain about the possibility of where to add multiples of certain costs.)
Before I explain why I'll explain what they are exactly. The five Multi colored cards shown in the list are allowed to be templated as ANY multi colored card with the same CONVERTED mana cost. This means that the gold card with converted mana cost "2" for example can be templated as swerve or lightning helix. This same concept can be applied to other five as well. Here are some examples:
Multi 1: Deathrite shaman, Figure of destiny, judge's familiar, fossil find, Nivmagus Elemental
Multi 3: Vindicate, Animar Soul of elements, Arrows of justice, Counterflux, Boros Reckoner
Multi 4: Advent of the Wurm, Aethertow, Ajani Vengeant, Any Nephilim, Ashenmoor Liege
Multi 5: Sliver Queen, Coerced Confession, Culling Sun, Deity of Scars, Drastic Revelation
(It should be noted that Multicolored can not be templated as split cards as some split cards can be mono colored. This can be changed however depending on how Ruling question #5 is answered.)
The next set are the wilds and they are explained as such:
The Six and up wild (6&^): This card may be templated as any card with converted mana cost six or greater.
Ex. : Emrakul the Aeons Torn, Griselbrand, Time Stop, Coalition Victory,
The Three of a kind wild (3oak): This card may be templated as any card with three of the same mana symbol in its casting cost.
Ex. : Cruel Ultimatum, Cryptic Command, Kikki-Jikki mirror breaker, Griselbrand, Avatar of Discord, Entreat the Angels, Blue Suns Zenith
The "X" wild (X): This card may be templated as any card with an "X" in its casting cost. *
Ex. : Chimeric mass, Blaze, Mindspring, Astral Cornucopia, Mind Shatter,
The Split card wild (Split): This card may be templated as any split card. *
The rationale behind these cards are that they enable the casting of all cards including the ones that fall into these categories:
1. They have too unique a cost making it so that there is either no other card with that same cost or no other good templates for that cost besides it. (Eldrazi or ultimatum's for example)
2. The amount of cards required to add to the deck to provide an apropriate card to template the cost would force the deck to become well over 100 cards and most of them only have one good call. (X Costs for example)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "Split" and "X" questions -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Now I'll address why "X" and "Split" have stars next to them. This is because there have been reasonable arguments made to make rulings to make them unnecessary as opposed to making a whole other wild card.
The first ruling in question is that ANY cost could be allowed to have as many X's added to its cost as necessary. This would allow the casting cost [R] to be templated as both Lightning Bolt, blaze, or bonfire of the damned depending on your choice. The cost [UU] could be both Counterspell and Mindspring, or even [0] to be templated as Chimeric Mass or Astral Cornucopia. (Ruling Question #4)
The second is to allow any card to be templated as a split card as long as the card you are templating it on possesses one of the two costs. This would mean that the cost [1R] could be templated as Incinerate or Rough//Tumble for example. (Ruling Question #5)
With all this in mind there are a couple things left to clear up. First is addressing that unlike other formats major aspects of the game will not be banned under this rule set. This means that effects like searching the library, Dredge, and returning/playing cards from the graveyard will be legal.
Also there have been strong arguments made that the list shouldn't just be one of each card as presumed in the list above. Due to how deck curves play out and the massive amount of some calls available for some cards there should be some additions made. These additions are:
-Every card with a converted mana cost 3 or less shall have two copies in the deck instead of one. (Note that this includes the Multicolored cards but does not include the Wilds)
-The Six and Up Wild (6&^) should have 3 copies of itself in the deck. (This is due to the fact that this card represents so much of the card pool in magic)
-If you add the extra cards mentioned the deck list should be up to 97 - 99 cards depending on how Ruling questions 4 & 5 get answered. Currently extra land cards are being used to fill the slots to round the deck list out to 100 like an EDH deck. (Although adding 3rd copies of [G1], [2], and [UU3] have been tried and did wonders to reduce Land destruction losses in games)
Finally it's unclear how lands are to be templated when they are destroyed by effects like stone rain or Armageddon. Due to cards like Sacred ground and Crucible of worlds its become a difficult question. While Crucible could be forced to deal with only working on nonbasic lands from the graveyard, its unclear how to deal with sacred Ground. Its been suggested that the ruling should read as follows:
-Cards played as Utopia lands when sent to the graveyard trigger all effects relating to lands similar to a token triggering effects when it enters the graveyard. However, the land will only flip and be allowed to be templated AFTER the stack is cleared from all effects.
This would in theory allow for cards to be returned by Sacred Ground. (Ruling Question #6)
Finally its undetermined if land cards should be allowed to be templated at all after being sent to the grave as a Utopia Land but merely flipped over and left without a template.
This is so vastly different to the rules we used to use for Mental Magic when I played it that it was barely recognisable. Interesting just how differently this is played in different places.
Our rules only made you 'template' a card when adding it to the stack or playing an ability of it from a public zone, and it lost the 'template' upon entering any zone that wasn't the stack or battlefield. Cards could not be 'templated' as what they actually were (so a printed Spell Snare could not be played as a Spell Snare to counter a Time Walk).
We also used different land rules - an actual land card could be templated as any nonbasic, a non-land card could be 'played' as a land that tapped for the mana you'd get if you'd imprinted the card on Chrome Mox, and would be treated as basic if the card was single-colour. (So playing Vine Dryad as a 'land' resulted in a Forest, and playing a Violent Ultimatum as a land resulted in a non-basic land with T: Add B, R or G). If those cards played as lands were bounced, they 'forgot' that they had ever been templated as lands.
This meant no need for wild cards (as really odd mana costs are mostly found on gold cards, and heavily multicoloured cards were inherently useful).
Finally we had one more rule - if a card has an absolutely unique mana cost, you may cast it as the printed card, but if your opponent can prove you wrong by naming another card with that exact cost, they may exile the spell. (For instance, XXBBBB is absolutely unique, so you can template a printed Empty the Pits as itself; but if you try the same thing with Gwendolyn di Corci and I can name Unscythe, Killer of Kings, I can exile your Gwen if I desire).
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Templating -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
This is a section where the rules can be a little foggy depending on where you play. So here is the outine:
A template is what is used to reference the difference between the actual card that you are holding in your hand and the named card you are playing it as. For example if I have a "grizzly bears" in my hand and I template it as "Tarmogoyf" then the base card is "grizzly Bears" and the template is "Tarmogoyf".
A template may only be used once per game or per match depending on what is agreed upon beforehand. Once a template is chosen it is treated as a statebased effect and the template is removed from the choice pool, so a player may not play "Ancestral Recall" in response to another players "Ancestral Recall" attempting to fizzle it.
A card without a template in ANY zone only maintains two inherent qualities which are it's casting cost and it's color (Color can be determined by its casting cost). This means that if a player chooses not to template a card it can still be returned by effects like "Recollect" or "All Suns' Dawn" but not by "Raise dead" or "Zombify". This also means that colorless cards are not inherently artifacts meaning if you don't template the cost [2] and its in your graveyard you can not return it with an effect like "Myr Retriever". (Note that Gold and Wild cards are viewed as 5 color cards at all times when they are without a template.)
1. A card may only be templated when being revealed by effects that require a template (such as Enlightened tutor) or going into a revealed zone such as "face up exile", "The battlefield", or "the graveyard". (Note that this does not include the hand, library, or face down removal from the game such as hideaway effects.)
2. A card may not be templated without valid reasoning. This means a card like "Blackmail" would not require the opponent to template the cards they reveal while a card like "duress" would.
3. The owner of any card will be the one to template it during any given effect. This means a card like "Telamin Performance" will have the opponent template the revealed cards off their deck.
4. A card maintains its template at ALL times unless it enters a non revealed zone such as the hand or library.. (This means that a player cannot play fact or fiction then flash it back as Deep analysis or moves like that. Once you template the card as fact or fiction it will REMAIN fact or fiction in the graveyard.)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Utopia Land -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Any card may be played face down from your hand as a "Utopia Land"
The abilities of lands named Utopia are as follows:
~Utopia is a basic land~
Tap: add one mana of any color to your mana Pool
0: This land becomes the basic land type of your choice until end of turn *
0: This land becomes Snow covered or Non Snow Covered until end of turn.
The first of two rulings in question is once a Utopia land uses its first 0 ability does it become an island and nothing more or can it still produce five colors and maintain its other abilities. (Ruling Question #1)
The second has largely to do with how the first was answered and thats adopting the "reflecting" nature of Utopia lands. This means that a Utopia land will be CONSIDERED to be a basic land type of a certain color based on your controlling of a permanent or pending spell on a stack. So for example lets say you control a green permanent like "tarmogoyf" while controlling 5 utopia lands. Then you cast "Allied Strategies" allowing you to draw a card for each basic land type you control, then in this case you would draw TWO cards. One for the green "tarmogoyf" and one for the blue "Allied strategies" on the stack. Other key aspects of this ruling is that they are only considered to be the respective lands but not actually are one. So creatures with island home won't die and creatures with island walk can not be blocked if the opponent controls a blue permanent BUT Boil will not destroy the Utopia lands of any player even if they control a blue permanent. (Ruling Question #2)
The first ruling becomes important when considering this because under some interpretations of the rules a single utopia land could draw you five cards when playing Allied strategies.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The Deck List -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
There will be one deck per player each with the exact same cards both in number and in break down. It is as follows:
(Image 1)
The *'s by the casting costs imply that there are ruling options in question for them.
The C's underneath the "five colors" section stands for "color" and there will be one card for each of the five colors that corresponds to a casting cost there. All in all each color will have 9 cards from this section mounting to 45 total cards when all five colors are accounted for.
The next section is the colorless section. This is straight forward with the exception of "0". The option pending here has to do with how we allow the templating of cards without casting costs. Its unclear whether the community wants Land cards to be able to template as cards without costs or just the casting cost "0" should be allowed to do so. (Ruling question #3)
The rationale for the multi's and wilds I'll explain later on but for the purposes of this section know that there only needs to be one of each resulting in 5 gold cards and 4 wilds equalling 9 more in total. (Keep in mind these can be removed at any point if rationale is unsatisfactory or someone doesn't wish to use them but they do allow for the usage EVERY card in the game including ones with too unique a casting cost to otherwise ever be played.)
Finally we have the land cards which can vary in amount from 5 to 10 and in addition to being able to be played as a Utopia land will be allowed to be played face up as any non basic land.
So this is just a basic list for now and all in all presuming you only use 5 lands should have a card total of: 65
(Later on I'll explain about the possibility of where to add multiples of certain costs.)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Multicolored & Wilds -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Before I explain why I'll explain what they are exactly. The five Multi colored cards shown in the list are allowed to be templated as ANY multi colored card with the same CONVERTED mana cost. This means that the gold card with converted mana cost "2" for example can be templated as swerve or lightning helix. This same concept can be applied to other five as well. Here are some examples:
Multi 1: Deathrite shaman, Figure of destiny, judge's familiar, fossil find, Nivmagus Elemental
Multi 2: Countersqual, terminate, Abrupt decay, Azorious Guildmage, Bant Sureblade, Rakdos Guildmage
Multi 3: Vindicate, Animar Soul of elements, Arrows of justice, Counterflux, Boros Reckoner
Multi 4: Advent of the Wurm, Aethertow, Ajani Vengeant, Any Nephilim, Ashenmoor Liege
Multi 5: Sliver Queen, Coerced Confession, Culling Sun, Deity of Scars, Drastic Revelation
(It should be noted that Multicolored can not be templated as split cards as some split cards can be mono colored. This can be changed however depending on how Ruling question #5 is answered.)
The next set are the wilds and they are explained as such:
The Six and up wild (6&^): This card may be templated as any card with converted mana cost six or greater.
Ex. : Emrakul the Aeons Torn, Griselbrand, Time Stop, Coalition Victory,
The Three of a kind wild (3oak): This card may be templated as any card with three of the same mana symbol in its casting cost.
Ex. : Cruel Ultimatum, Cryptic Command, Kikki-Jikki mirror breaker, Griselbrand, Avatar of Discord, Entreat the Angels, Blue Suns Zenith
The "X" wild (X): This card may be templated as any card with an "X" in its casting cost. *
Ex. : Chimeric mass, Blaze, Mindspring, Astral Cornucopia, Mind Shatter,
The Split card wild (Split): This card may be templated as any split card. *
Ex. : Rough//Tumble, Turn//Burn, Rise//Fall
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Reasoning -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The rationale behind these cards are that they enable the casting of all cards including the ones that fall into these categories:
1. They have too unique a cost making it so that there is either no other card with that same cost or no other good templates for that cost besides it. (Eldrazi or ultimatum's for example)
2. The amount of cards required to add to the deck to provide an apropriate card to template the cost would force the deck to become well over 100 cards and most of them only have one good call. (X Costs for example)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "Split" and "X" questions -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Now I'll address why "X" and "Split" have stars next to them. This is because there have been reasonable arguments made to make rulings to make them unnecessary as opposed to making a whole other wild card.
The first ruling in question is that ANY cost could be allowed to have as many X's added to its cost as necessary. This would allow the casting cost [R] to be templated as both Lightning Bolt, blaze, or bonfire of the damned depending on your choice. The cost [UU] could be both Counterspell and Mindspring, or even [0] to be templated as Chimeric Mass or Astral Cornucopia. (Ruling Question #4)
The second is to allow any card to be templated as a split card as long as the card you are templating it on possesses one of the two costs. This would mean that the cost [1R] could be templated as Incinerate or Rough//Tumble for example. (Ruling Question #5)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Conclusion -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
With all this in mind there are a couple things left to clear up. First is addressing that unlike other formats major aspects of the game will not be banned under this rule set. This means that effects like searching the library, Dredge, and returning/playing cards from the graveyard will be legal.
Also there have been strong arguments made that the list shouldn't just be one of each card as presumed in the list above. Due to how deck curves play out and the massive amount of some calls available for some cards there should be some additions made. These additions are:
-Every card with a converted mana cost 3 or less shall have two copies in the deck instead of one. (Note that this includes the Multicolored cards but does not include the Wilds)
-The Six and Up Wild (6&^) should have 3 copies of itself in the deck. (This is due to the fact that this card represents so much of the card pool in magic)
-If you add the extra cards mentioned the deck list should be up to 97 - 99 cards depending on how Ruling questions 4 & 5 get answered. Currently extra land cards are being used to fill the slots to round the deck list out to 100 like an EDH deck. (Although adding 3rd copies of [G1], [2], and [UU3] have been tried and did wonders to reduce Land destruction losses in games)
Finally it's unclear how lands are to be templated when they are destroyed by effects like stone rain or Armageddon. Due to cards like Sacred ground and Crucible of worlds its become a difficult question. While Crucible could be forced to deal with only working on nonbasic lands from the graveyard, its unclear how to deal with sacred Ground. Its been suggested that the ruling should read as follows:
-Cards played as Utopia lands when sent to the graveyard trigger all effects relating to lands similar to a token triggering effects when it enters the graveyard. However, the land will only flip and be allowed to be templated AFTER the stack is cleared from all effects.
This would in theory allow for cards to be returned by Sacred Ground. (Ruling Question #6)
Finally its undetermined if land cards should be allowed to be templated at all after being sent to the grave as a Utopia Land but merely flipped over and left without a template.
Thanks for your input.
Our rules only made you 'template' a card when adding it to the stack or playing an ability of it from a public zone, and it lost the 'template' upon entering any zone that wasn't the stack or battlefield. Cards could not be 'templated' as what they actually were (so a printed Spell Snare could not be played as a Spell Snare to counter a Time Walk).
We also used different land rules - an actual land card could be templated as any nonbasic, a non-land card could be 'played' as a land that tapped for the mana you'd get if you'd imprinted the card on Chrome Mox, and would be treated as basic if the card was single-colour. (So playing Vine Dryad as a 'land' resulted in a Forest, and playing a Violent Ultimatum as a land resulted in a non-basic land with T: Add B, R or G). If those cards played as lands were bounced, they 'forgot' that they had ever been templated as lands.
This meant no need for wild cards (as really odd mana costs are mostly found on gold cards, and heavily multicoloured cards were inherently useful).
Finally we had one more rule - if a card has an absolutely unique mana cost, you may cast it as the printed card, but if your opponent can prove you wrong by naming another card with that exact cost, they may exile the spell. (For instance, XXBBBB is absolutely unique, so you can template a printed Empty the Pits as itself; but if you try the same thing with Gwendolyn di Corci and I can name Unscythe, Killer of Kings, I can exile your Gwen if I desire).