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Welcome to my explanation of the comprehensive rules. When I was answering the questions for"Ask The Judge"; many of those were easily answered by doing a little research on the net. For this research, I used mainly three sources: The Oracle card reference, Crystalkeep's card ruling data base and the comprehensive rules. I thought it would be interesting to try to explain the comprehensive rules in smaller, more understandable chunks. I'll cover everything which will take a long, as of yet undefined, number of articles. The most current version of the comprehensive rules is from October 7, 2002, and can be found here. The latest version of the Oracle is dated October 1, 2002 and can be found here. Crystalkeep's card ruling can be found here.
Both the comprehensive rules and the oracle are updated regularly; please visit this site to find the newest updates. I will copy paste everything from the comprehensive rules document; selections will be in italics.
Let's venture into the first part of the comprehensive rules.
Magic: The Gathering Comprehensive Rules
These rules are current as of October 7, 2002.
Introduction
This booklet is designed for people who've moved beyond the basics of the Magic: The Gathering(r) game. If you're a beginning Magic(r) player, you'll probably find these rules intimidating. They're intended to be the ultimate authority for the game, and you won't usually need to refer to them except in specific cases or during competitive games.
In this series of articles the main goal is to make everything understandable for everyone, both by explaining everything more detailed then is done in the comprehensive rules, and by giving a lot more examples. So even if you are a beginning magic player, please keep reading.
For casual play and most ordinary situations, you'll find what you need in the general rulebook included in the Magic: The Gathering-Seventh Edition(tm) game box. You can download a copy of that rulebook from the Wizards of the Coast(r) Magic rules website at www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/rules. If you're sure this is where you want to be, keep reading.
While true for the most part, knowing the rules as they are explained in the comprehensive rules will help you out tremendously. Your knowledge will help you win games and matches.
This document includes a series of numbered rules followed by a glossary. Many of the numbered rules are divided into subrules, and each separate rule and subrule of the game has its own number. Words or phrases in italics are defined in the glossary, along with a few concepts that don't really fit anywhere among the numbered rules. So if you can't find what you're looking for, check the glossary.
We at Wizards of the Coast recognize that no matter how detailed the rules, situations will arise in which the interaction of specific cards requires a precise answer. If you have questions, you can get the answers from us. Contact information is on the last page of this rulebook.
In response to play issues and to keep these rules as current as possible, changes may have been made to this document since its publication. See the Wizards of the Coast website for the current version of the official rules. www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/rules
I have nothing to add to this last part. Let's continue with the table of contents; I will only list the chapters here. Some of them will be links, which will take you to the correct part of the explanation.
1. The Game
2. Cards
3. Turn Structure
4. Spells, Abilities, and Effects
5. Additional Rules
Glossary
On to chapter 1, the Game - it consists of the following paragraphs:
1. The Game
100. General
101. Starting the Game
102. Winning and Losing
103. The Golden Rule
100. General
100.1. These Magic rules assume a game between two players.
Optional rules allow for more players but aren't discussed here. These rules can be found at the Wizards of the Coast website; although these are rules by Wizards, they are not very official. Many playgroups will have a, some or loads of extra or different rules. If you are joining a new group, don't assume they will use the rules as presented at the above link. It's more likely than not that some rule will be different - so make sure you check with someone from the group what kind of play you can expect.
100.2. In Constructed play, each player needs his or her own deck of at least sixty cards, small objects to represent any tokens and counters, and some way to clearly track life totals. A constructed deck can have any number of basic land cards and no more than four of any card with a particular English name other than basic land cards.
If you are playing with foreign cards in your deck, it is a good thing to be able to explain what it does, or maybe even have the printed oracle text with you. If you or your opponent is not sure what a card does, call a judge to make sure both players understand the card.
100.3. For sealed deck or draft play, only forty cards are required in a deck, and a player may use as many duplicates of a card as he or she has. See the most current Magic: The Gathering DCI(tm) Floor Rules for more information. They can be found at www.wizards.com/DCI/main.asp?x=UTR_Intro.
If you are going to play Sealed or Draft, make sure you bring lands with you. It happens often that players are ready to play and then use a magic marker to make basic lands out of their sideboard. Many tournament organisers are very short on basic land - so if you are going to a tournament it is always good to have some lands with you. Ideally, you bring twenty lands of each so you can even play a mono color deck.
Strategic advice: Make sure all lands you bring have the same picture; even better, make sure all cards in any of your decks are identical if they have the same English name. This way if you opponent has taken a look at your hand and sees, for instance, only one forest - an Asian one - he can easily remember that. If you draw a regular English forest and play that, he knows you have drawn that. However, if you had played the Asian forest, your draw would have still been a mystery. If all your forests (cards in general) are the same, you don't have to think about which one to should play.
100.4. There is no maximum deck size.
This is true for casual play - but when you go to a tournament, it is not allowed to bring huge decks. In the Floor Rules, it is stated that you have three minutes to randomise your deck between game. If a deck has more then 250 cards, it is almost impossible to randomise it in three minutes. If you do bring a deck which has more than a hundred cards, make sure you are able to randomise it before the tournament.
Remember, there is no actual restriction in the floor rules: It just says that you should be able to randomise it in three minutes. Hard to do that with a thousand-card deck
100.5. Most Magic tournaments have special rules (not included here) and may limit the use of some cards, including barring all cards from some older sets. See the Magic DCI Floor Rules for more information.
The Floor Rules is another very important document when you are playing (or going to play) tournaments. I highly recommend reading it.
101.1. At the start of a game, each player shuffles his or her own deck so that the cards are in a random order. Each player may then shuffle his or her opponent's deck.
There is an extra rule which is used at tournaments:
Whenever your opponent has shuffled a deck, you are allowed to cut it.
At more serious tournaments, Rules Enforcement Level (REL) 3+, you must shuffle your opponents deck whenever he shuffles his deck. (The REL indicates what penalties will be handed out when a situation arises during a tournament. The higher the REL the more strict the tournament is)
Remember that if your opponent only cuts your deck, you are not allowed to alter the order of your deck in any way. A lot of players don't shuffle their deck and even stack their deck. They'll separate their lands and spells, and then make piles. They will start by placing a land in each pile and then two spells, another land and two spells again, repeat. This way, they have a nice distribution. Some players will then shuffle very good and get a randomised deck (but why not just shuffle well and randomise it in the first place?); others will just do a small overhand shuffle and present their decks. They say that mana screw (drawing to few lands) is no fun and this prevents them from having it.
Actually, they are probably playing with too few lands - and what they are doing is cheating. If your opponent does this during a tournament, you should call over a judge, who will then take a look at the deck and have a little talk with the player. If this happens at the kitchen table, it is up to you what you want to do.
101.2. After the decks have been shuffled, the players determine who chooses which player goes first using any mutually agreeable method (flipping a coin, rolling dice, etc.). In a match of several games, the loser of the previous game decides who will take the first turn. If the previous game was a draw, the person who determined who would take the first turn in the previous game decides.
Sidenote: The system used to determine a match winner in Magic tournaments is not best-out-of-three anymore. It is a similar but slightly different system these days. You need to win two games to win a match (time permitting, of course).
Example: In a best-out-of-three match, you have won if you have won one game and two games are a draw. In the new system, if there is still time left you will continue playing until either player has won two games. When time is called, the winner of the match is the person with the most game wins. An unfinished game is recorded as a draw. In the above example you would report to the scorekeeper of the tournament that the result was a win for player X and three draws (two drawn games and one unfinished)
101.3. Once the starting player has been determined, each player sets his or her life total to 20 and draws a hand of seven cards.
Some cards (the Vanguard cards and some Unglued cards, which are only used in casual environments) can be used to alter these starting points.
101.4. The player who plays first skips the draw step (see rule 304,"Draw Step") of his or her first turn.
Usually, this rule is negated in multiplayer play (but of course, as I said before, there can be different house rules). If you didn't get to draw a card, you would be a disadvantage because of the different nature of multiplayer.
101.5. A player who is dissatisfied with his or her initial hand may mulligan. That player shuffles his or her hand back into the deck, then draws a new hand of six cards. He or she may repeat this process as many times as desired, drawing one fewer card each time, until the hand size reaches zero cards. Once the first player has decided to keep a hand, the second player may mulligan. Once both players are satisfied with their hands, the first player takes his or her turn.
This used to be called the Paris mulligan, because it is linked with Pro Tour Paris way back in 1997, which was a Constructed tournament with Mirage and Vision.
This will be all for this week, I hope you enjoyed it so far. The first part doesn't have many difficult rules, so you'll have to wait some time before we get into the harder stuff.
If you have any comments or questions, please send them to gorraxpb@yahoo.com.
Take care,
Gis
