I'm pleased to announce that on Monday we'll release major revisions to the main Magic
tournament documents. They'll available in the Document Center at
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dci/doccenter/home Coincidentally, there are seven major changes, which, in terms of impact, parallel quite nicely with
the seven changes announced in the M10 Rules Announcement. You've all read that, right? I
thought I'd take a few minutes to run down them here for you and give you some insight as to why
they've changed. There are other little details - this isn't a substitute for actually looking at the
documents - but they can wait for now.
1) Graveyard order - just as with Simultaneous Mulligans, we're adapting a technique that is
already used in casual circles to make tournament Magic a little easier to play. The last time
Wizards printed a card that cared about the order of your graveyard was over 10 years ago, in the
form of Stronghold's Volrath's Shapeshifter, and R&D has been very clear that they don't want to
use this as an explorable design space. As a result, as long as they're playing in formats with cards
from Urza's Saga and on, we no longer care how the players order their graveyard.
2) Cosmetic changes - Just as "removed from game" has changed into Exile, so has much of our
terminology been tweaked. The holy trinity of documents you remember - the Penalty Guide, the
Universal Tournament Rules and the Magic Floor Rules - have been merged and reconfigured into
two documents: the Magic Tournament Rules and the Magic Infraction Procedure Guide. Both
documents are devoted solely to Magic, and have been divided into information that players
should generally be expected to know (the MTR) and information more geared towards judges (the
PG).
Lots of changes cascade from this. Communication is now part of the MTR. Deck/Warband Errors
become Deck Errors. Card-Game Specific Rulings move into the main body (which has an impact
on what upgrade path infractions are on). Everything is renumbered. Just as with "cast", "exile" and
"Battlefield", the changes are mostly cosmetic - an organizational shift to make the documents
easier to read.
The MTR is particularly worth highlighting. Two years in the making, a ton of judges have made
substantial contributions to it. Space prevents me from highlighting all the judges who were
involved, but special mention must go to George Michelogiannakis, Falko Goerres, Nick Sephton
and Jason Ness, all of whom contributed large sections or took a full whack at the document at
one time or another. All your tournament policies should be in here, but they're cleaner, easier to
read, and polished up from years of questions.
3) Mana burn has confused new players for years. Drawing Extra Cards has been a source of
similar pain for judges. If I evoke Mulldrifter without blue mana, it's a Game Rule Violation, but
casting Counsel of the Soratami without blue mana is Drawing Extra Cards? If I take the actions on
Cruel Ultimatum out of order, which is it? If I activate Jace to have us both draw a card, and it's
the second activation this turn, who gets a penalty?
We spent a lot of time debating options on these and similar questions, and eventually produced a
much narrower definition for Drawing Extra Cards: If you are told to draw cards, and draw too
many, it's Drawing Extra Cards. Otherwise it's a GRV. This is partly to reflect the fact that it can be
very hard for an opponent to notice how many cards you've drawn and we were able to do this
because we've been reasonably happy with the success of the GRV backup approach to dealing
with the extra drawn card and believe it can be applied more widely.
4) In a rule that will only affect a small number of people, but might have a substantial impact on
them, we're extending Out-of-order sequencing to also cover Professional REL. Initially some of
the philosophy was experimental, and we saw it as an opportunity to differentiate the highest level
of play. However, pros use out-of-order sequencing just as everyone else does. It's hard to
imagine an Elf mirror at PT Berlin that didn't involved substantial use of the approaches defined in
(former) section 52.
There's still a lot of work to be done in explaining the application and use of the section, and I'd
suggest it's a good topic for multiple articles (hint, hint), but we believe that the basic
philosophies are sound enough to apply at all levels.
5) When I alluded to parallels with the M10 rules changes, I'll bet everyone immediately wondered
what our version of Rule 5 would be. And here it is: players may now look at outside notes
between games.
The impetus for this change arose out of some painful questions about sideboards. Are sideboard
cards with a dot on them considered marked? What if the dots are differently colored? What if it's
ordered? If my friend looks through my limited sideboard and shuffles a couple cards I might want
to play to the top, is that Outside Assistance? (Remarkably, under some interpretations, the
answer to all of the above was 'yes'). In trying to find solutions that worked, the idea of simply not
worrying between games came up and turned out to be an elegant solution.
Like the M10 rule 5, I suspect it will turn out to generate a lot more noise than actual impact. The
good players realize that sideboarding is a fine art and can't be brute-forced by a set of notes;
even more so they may seek to exploit players who are locked into previously determined plans.
Most people didn't have that hard a time memorizing the sideboarding for basic matchups, so the
incremental advantage is small. Players are, of course, still held to the same between-game time-
limits.
Related to this, there are new guidelines on acceptable card modifications, and we're not going to
worry as much about minor strategic information. If a player has altered a Tinker to show a
Darksteel Colossus emerging, or written "Smash with Me!" on a Goblin Piledriver, odds are fairly
high that they didn't need the help in game. Obviously, writing out ste-by-step combo guides on
cards is still out, and the Head Judge has ultimate authority over where the line is.
6) A recurring theme that arises with marked or lost cards is what to do if the player can't find a
replacement. In the past, this has been a death sentence - they haven't been allowed to continue
in the tournament without unmarked versions of the cards. In the interests of enabling them to
continue, we're going to allow them to replace those cards on their decklist with basic lands. Once
they do so, it locks in - they can't go back to the old list even if they find replacement cards later.
This is a tradeoff between a very small potential strategic hole and a huge customer service
benefit.
7) Finally, speaking of customer service, we're going to test a new approach to spectators
intervening at Regular and Competitive REL. At the moment, a spectator who sees an error should
find a judge and let them know, but often they can't do it fast enough for the judge to be able to
do anything other than assess a penalty. Now, spectators will be allowed to ask the players to
pause while they find a judge, though that is all they are allowed to do - no indicating to the
players what the problem is. This is still in the experimental stages, but we are hopeful that the
benefits of not allowing the game to get too far ahead will outweigh the occasional match that
gets stopped due to a false positive.
There are lots of smaller changes throughout the documents, and I'd encourage people to look
through them to find the other tweaks. A big thanks to the Policy Committee, and the L4 judges,
who spent a lot of time discussing and improving these changes. I hope everyone will find these
changes helpful in their judging, and would love to hear any feedback or suggestions for
improvements.
Best,
Toby
