Whatever happened to the colon? I find myself asking this question when I look at cards like Reckless Abandon, Raze and Rupture. Has all that talk of "templating" flown out the window in the interim since the advent of 6th Edition rules last year? Clearly, Wizards had crises of conscience. They didn't want certain cards to work in certain ways so they left numerous issues deliberately vague. The following is an indictment of this ambiguity.

Raze: "At the time you play Raze, sacrifice a land."

Reckless Abandon: "As an additional cost to play Reckless Abandon, sacrifice a creature."

Rupture: "Sacrifice a creature."

Question: do the above three spells, all Sorceries involving the sacrifice of a permanent, function identically? As Reverend Lovejoy might say,“short answer no with an if, long answer yes with a but.” One thing is certain - I don't see a colon in any of the cards' texts and therein lies my annoyance. More on that after the answer.

Answer: Raze and Reckless Abandon function identically to each other. For example, the land/creature is always sacrificed, regardless of whether the spell may be countered. The sacrifice effectively becomes part of the casting cost, as much so as the payment of mana. To wit, you cannot legally play Raze off a Fire Diamond if you have no land. You cannot legally play Reckless Abandon if you control no creatures.

Rupture does not work this way. If my understanding is correct, you can play Rupture if you control no creatures (it will simply have no effect). If you control one creature and your opponent zaps it in response to Rupture, Rupture will be countered. If you control two creatures and your opponent zaps one in response to Rupture, you must then sacrifice the other creature. This interaction is different from Raze and Reckless Abandon. With Raze and Reckless Abandon, your opponent cannot respond by zapping your land or creature (they are already in the graveyard by the time you, as the active player, yield priority). The sacrifice required (rather, requested) by Rupture happens on resolution, not upon casting.

Question: is the difference between how Raze and Reckless Abandon vs. Rupture function abundantly clear from the card text?

Answer: NO!

Should it be? YES!

Now I'm an old school Magic player. Time was when I remember a little piece of punctuation called the colon. It looked similar to this:

:

In Tempest block, there were cards like Spontaneous Combustion, Fling and Sonic Burst. They all had the same wording. They all said "do this: this happens." The fact that you must satisfy all costs before the colon was expressly stated, a priori. If you topdecked Sonic Burst and didn't have another card in your hand, you couldn't cast it. RTFC. The discard was clearly mandatory. There was no wishy-washy, namby-pamby, plastic banana, touchy-feely wording to the effect of "at the time you play Sonic Burst, on alternate Thursdays in the state of Montana when the moon is full, discard a card at random. If you succeed in this endeavor, you may choose to do four damage to something." The mighty colon said that all in a concise, pithy, crystal clear voice.

And then, sadly, for who knows what reason, we suddenly lost the sacred colon. Did you know that a human can live without a colon? You have to carry around a colostomy bag to collect the body's waste products. You are significantly more likely to die from long-term complications of the removal surgery, especially infections. Yet, you can live. Your quality of life, however, is forever diminished.

That's exactly how I feel about Magic in this colonless era. Why do cards like Dust Bowl have a colon but cards like Raze do not? If Dust Bowl's ability had to be played as a Sorcery, would it lose its colon? Don't talk to me about Oracle wordings, which aren't even all that consistent anyway (though they are a lot better than the cards themselves as printed). The typical Magic player will never have occasion to leaf through a judge's Oracle books and furthermore should not have to.

My overall concern is chiefly that of consistency and clarity with with respect to the wordings on all Magic cards. Why do cards that are worded similarly function differently (Reckless Abandon and Rupture)? Why aren't cards that function similarly worded the same (Raze and Dust Bowl)? It's an issue that warrants attention, in my humble opinion. To have to explain to a new player why, because his opponent used Seal of Fire on his Pouncing Jaguar in response to Rupture, he will now have to sacrifice his Skyshroud Behemoth is not an enviable task, wouldn't you agree?

-js