Since I learned of it back in High School, Mental Magic has always been my favorite format. However, people all over the country seem to play differently; among the three people I played matches with at Origins and GenCon, I played with three different rule sets. I looked online, and no two documents gave exactly the same rules - so I decided to try to put all the rules in one place, along with suggestions as to which are the best to use, and the best to avoid.
The fact that Mike Flores started a series of articles with a rule set I abhor has long made me want to write this article... And after the past two conventions, I feel I have enough material and a better feeling for the environment.
For those of you unfamiliar with Mental Magic, the basic idea is simple. The game starts as normal: Seven cards, play/draw rule. Any card in your hand can be played face-down as a land. These lands' Oracle Wording would be:
Name: Utopia Land (although what you call them hardly matters)
Type: Basic Land (thank you, 8th Edition!)
Rules Text: (T): Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
Any card in your hand can be put on the stack - at which point you identify it as a spell that shares its mana cost. For instance, a physical Shock could be a theoretical Lightning Bolt, Pyroblast, or Scarred Puma - and vice versa all the way around. Final Fortune could be Giant Strength, but not Incinerate.
If there are any lands in your deck, you have the option of playing them as any land - normally non-basic ones, but you might want a basic island so you can play Kukessema Serpent, for example. Of course, most people just leave lands out, because if they pick up a random starter, it'll have way too many lands.
The last rule that always exists is that once a card has been named, it cannot be named for the rest of the game.
The game contrasts sharply against DC-10, a just-for-fun format where you get as much mana as you want. While obviously played for fun, Mental is intensely strategic and mind-bending - it is, in my mind, the most skill-testing format in existence. Unfortunately, it very often tests a completely different kind of skill. While most people play that you can't use any outside references to come up with appropriate card names for the mana cost, thinking of cards with the right cost is the worst barrier to entry of the game. The skill involved in the game should not be whose Magic vocabulary is larger, but who can come up with the best uses of their cards, knowing all that they have available... But stalling the game while someone goes searching through reference material is no fun, either. So if someone's only played for a year or so but has played in a lot of tournaments, playing with only cards in Type 2 or Block Constructed is a good place to start. I personally think Type 1.5 is the best format, although there are quite a few banned cards that aren't overly powerful and perhaps should stay.
From here, the variations are nearly limitless. Many people play with a single library and/or a single graveyard (since it's standard in DC-10), but it is preferable for both to be distinct. Shared graveyards mean that both players get threshold very quickly - and they either both have it, or both don't. Separate graveyards also make it easier to backtrack the game and recall what was played. A shared library allows cards that mess around with the top of the library to work a bit different than normally, while separate libraries means that your opponent can only screw with your draws if they have a card that would normally do that.
But that is nothing compared to how and whether to implement different mechanics. First, let me mention the ones that no one will argue with: Abilities that only exist in (and affect) the in-play zone are obviously fine. Other mechanics that are trivial include Buyback, Storm, Threshold, and Kicker, since they either only apply to spells when they are played, or reference another zone in a very general way. From here, I've played with people that have decided that nothing else is allowed, because it requires identifying a card at a time other than putting it on the stack. This is a very good and logically consistent way to play, but requires being unable to use a significant percentage of cards. In analyzing the following mechanics, I've considered the following things:
- Is implementing this going to be too abusive? Will the game revolve around who can take advantage of this rule the most?
- Is it clear how to apply the rule? Are there some cards that almost fit the criteria, or are similar and might lead to arguments?
- Is it being used in a way that it was intended? Since you can play a card in hand as anything, you could easily get around restrictions intended.
(1) is important because the game is normally based around card advantage; anything that gives card advantage too easily must be heavily scrutinized. Since you don't want arguments in the middle of the game after having agreed to rules at the start, (2) is very important. (3) exists because very often cards will have drawbacks or restrictions that don't exist - or exist to a far lesser extent - in Mental. While it's not always a card advantage issue, it's something to keep in mind. Also, remember that the whole point of adding these is to create a larger card pool, and thus more possible strategies to consider and be prepared for, so some of these can be slightly broken to make for a better game.
Morph
You can play any non-land card in your hand face-down as a 2/2 for 3. You should obviously make sure it's clearly separate from your (also face-down) lands. You can turn it up by identifying it with a creature with Morph that shares its mana cost by paying the morph cost. For example, you could play a Hundroog face-down (Hundroog! - The Ferrett), then pay 3GG to turn up Venomspout Brackus.
The problem is that a lot of people don't remember some mana costs of morph creatures. For this reason, you have to allow any cost to be played face down, because it might take ten turns for the player to flip it up, and they might have chosen a cost they thought was a certain creature - but in reality, no such creature exists. Yes, it means you can always play a 2/2 for three... But without a good creature to turn up, it's not that useful. It also allows you to change what exactly the face-down creature was intended to be, and while that is a bit against the intention of the mechanic, it's very strong strategically. The rules for Illusionary Mask are much the same.
My verdict: Yes, with no hesitation.
Cycling
You can identify a card in your hand as a card that shares its mana cost, pay its cycling cost, and discard it to draw a card. This triggers all appropriate triggered abilities on cards in play and on the discarded card itself. This mechanic was fine before Onslaught Block - but now, it can get abusive with Lightning Rift. Of course, most players should have enchantment removal, and it's no worse than Argothian Enchantress.
My verdict: Yes, with the slightest hesitation.
Madness
When you discard a card, you can identify it with a card that shares its mana cost, and play it by paying its Madness cost. This is a great mechanic to fight against discard, and can lead to some very interesting strategic plays. Unfortunately, it can get very abusive with outlets like Jalum Tome and Merfolk Looter. I'd have no hesitation just allowing it defensively, but that seems a bit wrong. As it stands, I still love the Jalum Tome + 2U + 3GG, and there is a lot of removal for the possible outlets. Allowing Madness also allows Guerilla Tactics, Mangara's Blessing, and Psychic Purge's abilities to function if discarded, which is no big deal.
My verdict: Yes, with a slight hesitation.
"Domain" And Other Spells Requiring Land Types
As stated above, you might be able to play some lands as basic islands, etc. Some people have also been known to play that a Utopia Land has the abilities"0: ~this~ becomes the basic land type of your choice," and"0: ~this~ loses all land types." This makes Mind Sludge and Allied Strategies very powerful. It also makes Kavu Scout a 5/2 for 2R. I've generally disliked the mechanic, because it was created to force people to diversify their mana bases in order to get stronger effects - and you don't have to do that in Mental, making these cards much more powerful than intended.
My verdict: No, although I could accept it.
Library Searching
For Demonic Tutor and similar, there are no problems; just pick any card. For tutors that ask for a particular type of card that will go to either your library or hand, there are a number of ways to do this.
The first is to say that the cards in the library have merely their mana cost, so you can't find anything unless you're only looking based on color/mana cost/converted mana cost.
The second method is that you have to get a card that physically matches the requirements, such as getting Fyndhorn Elves with a Worldly Tutor, and can play it as any legal spell.
The third is you can get nearly any card so long as you identify it with a card that shares its mana cost and has whatever type you're looking for. You then cannot play the spell as it was identified; its use for the game is gone. For effects that will put the cards into play, the issues are slightly different, so let's use Rebels as an example: The only way to allow this sort of effect to be used is getting a card that matches a Rebel mana cost, identifying it as that Rebel, and putting it into play.
The issues with allowing these sorts of things are complex. First of all, there's Citanul Flute - and no matter how you implement it, the Flute will be abusive. Unlike previous abuses, this gets you any card that can be used as anything; that's not its intended purpose. With Rebels and such, you only get what it was designed to get. This straddles the line between the power of Domain and Cycling triggers: Each were, in some way, meant to force a particular type of deck to be built, and falls in the middle of the power range. Given the easy ability to remove Rebels, I don't think it's abusive, but it does mean another exception to the rules.
My verdict: Go with the first option, although I would allow Rebels to work if you really wanted.
Graveyard Abilities And Recursion
At any time you can identify a card in your graveyard as one that shares its mana cost. It keeps its identification until a) it leaves the graveyard, and/or b) you want to identify it as something else or nothing at all. It gets very abusive with Squee, Goblin Nabob, Carrionette, the incarnations, Nature's Resurgence, and a host of other cards - including all flashback cards. It requires a major exception to the rules, and it's not all that clear sometimes what's allowed and what isn't. Even with the"once a game" rule, there are too many ways to make this too good, such as every single flashback spell.
My Verdict: No. No. A thousand times no. Flashback and Squee are ridiculous ways to get card advantage.
Wishes (and Ring of Ma'Ruf)
These cards are basically Demonic Tutor with different costs - and one's an instant. They're not abusive. But where are you going to get the physical cards? Only the RFG pile or cards that might have been put into one of your decks but wasn't due to size constraints and is still close at hand. Of course, you could just not allow them because implementing decent rules would make them weak. That's my choice.
That covers mechanics involving most zones: In-Play, graveyard, library, RFG. As to the other zones, ante doesn't exist, and the Phased-Out zone is trivial once you say that a permanent returning to play from it (or the RFG zone) is the same as it was when it left. The problem comes with the hand. I already mentioned this slightly with Cycling and Madness, but those only concern discarding the card. What about Duress? Cursed Scroll? I think the best solution to these is to have the cards be exactly what they physically are. It makes Duress decent, Cursed Scroll usable, and doesn't require naming bunches of cards.
There's one other rule that I haven't mentioned that most people play with: You can't identify a card as what it is physically. This is supposedly to force people to think of another card and not just use what's immediately available. While this is a great idea in theory, mental players don't even look at the card names to begin with. At least twice I've started playing a card and my opponent told me I couldn't because that was the actual card. I had never noticed, because the only thing I had ever looked at was the mana cost. I personally think the rule is good for beginning players, to make them concentrate on the mana cost and not the actual cards in their hand, but it really sucks for people who are already used to doing it. I still consider it to be bad form and try not to play cards as what they actually are, but I'd hesitate to force it on people that knew what they were doing.
I'm not giving out my email address for fear of spammers. If you have comments to me directly, send me a Private Message on StarCityGames' forum - my nickname is Cthulhu - or just post a response in the forum! I'm also looking for ideas as to what makes a"perfect" constructed Mental deck. The only one I remember seeing so far only went through converted mana costs of 5, and there are a lot of good cards in Mental that cost 6 or more.
I plan on doing a series of articles on Mental Magic strategy, but in order to do so, I need a set of rules that the general readership agrees is fair. I'm not going to be like Flores and just assume that you like the rules that I'm giving you.
Steven Glowacki
Cthulhu on many Internet media
BuddyCthulhu on AIM
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