Magic: M10 Rules Changes

This article is part of the series: Magic: The Gathering Summer '09

Magic is a card game that has kept many of its essentials much the same despite pioneering the collectible card game as a business and surviving over 15 years. However as it's progressed it has found itself burdened with its attempts incorporate fantasy, fun, and comprehensive game mechanics. Magic started out as side game people could play with cards while waiting at Dungeons & Dragons gatherings, as it grew and developed into its own right it became distinctly different. While D&D is a story telling game, Magic has grown into a contest game. Magic boasts strict rules that can run through competitions and tournaments. These rules weren't perfected at the start and eventually the number of special cases and the strain of several stacked effects created situations where even judges and experts had to subjectively guess at what was going to happen in the outcome. In an effort to make the rules more coherent, Magic got a huge overhaul with the release of it's 6th edition core set, the summary of all past card accepted in the standard playing environment. For whatever reason, on the cusp of what would be the 11th edition core set, the power at work decided to do something similar. For starters, the core sets now are planned to be released by year, hence the title M10 for Magic Core Set 2010. There are six main changes to the rules and one policy change. Below Im' going to describe them and their impact.

#1 Now Mulligans are simultaneous. That is, before the active player decided how many mulligans he or she wanted to do before the passive player. No one really cared about this rule as it was an effort to make the game overly mechanized. It was cumbersome and largely ignored by 99% of the people playing. This was a good call even though it doesn't really effect much.


#2 Manaburn no longer exists. Typically you tap lands for mana of the corresponding color, and that mana is used to pay for the cost of cards and abilities you want to play. Occasionally there are cards that add arbitrary amounts of mana to your pool and before, the player would take damage for each unused mana as it emptied from the mana pool at the end of each phase. This reduces the functionality of some cards but Manaburn was always such a small part of the game, that I think it's a change for the overall better.

#3 Lifelink and Deathtouch are no longer triggered effects. These were both abilities that triggered when creatures that have them deal damage. Lifelink makes the creature's controller gain that much life and deathtouch kills any other creature hit with the damage. While it made the abilities easier for rule-whores like me to piece together in my head, it did lead to some unintuitive situations. Like even though a lifelink creature deals damage, there was always a brief momment where the player could take lethal damage and loose. This was especially relevant during combat, where lifelink-life could have otherwise kept a player alive. This change will make me have to reorder how I do combat math, but it still is so intuitive that I believe it is a good change. In a related story, this also means that multiple instances of lifelink no longer trigger individually. Genju of the Fields is sad.

#4 Token Ownership is now the controller of the Token when it comes into play. Apparently before, Tokens were 'owned' by the controller of the card that made them, reguardless who controlled them when they came into play. I didn't even know about this rule, but it largely was a technicality. This just prevents Warp World, Azorius Æthermage, and Brand from doing weird things with cards that put tokens under your opponent's control. It makes sense, I like this too.

#5 Assign Combat Damage is now no longer a phase. Instead now creatures all deal their damage and die. Also during the Declare Blockers step, if multiple creatures block a single attacking creature, the attacking player orders the blocking creatures in a row. When damage is dealt, it more or less 'tramples' through the creatures. Once damage assigned to be lethal to the first creature to attacking player can (but is not forced to) run the rest to the next in line and so forth. This is a huge change for me and my tricksey combat math, although I see how it makes the combat step easier to understand. It took me by surprise at first. It definitely changes how I evaluate cards like Mogg Fanatic (who can no longer assign his attacking/blocking combat damage and then activate this ability to sacrifice himself and deal another damage to a creature to player). Cards like Morphling and Fleeting Image don't like this change much, but everyone else does. I understand and agree with it. As a side note, Deathtough now lets creatures spread out it's damage.

#6 Terminology: Battlefield, Exile, and At the Beginning of the End of Turn. This change only affects how cards are worded. Now when a card would say "When CARDNAME comes into play" it'll say "When CARDNAME enters the battlefield." Instead of "Remove target card in a graveyard", it's "Exhile target card in a graveyard". And finally, instead of "At end of turn, sacrifice CARDNAME" it's "At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice CARDNAME." These were all done because newer player apparently were getting confused with terminology 'play', 'removed from game', and the convoluted end of turn step. However with the exception of Exile, it's just replacing sloppy wording with more sloppy wording. 'Entering the Battlefield' hints at 'whenever this attacks' as much as it does 'when this comes into play'. Although it tries to be flavorful, it comes off as stupid and clumsy. A better approach would have been to phrase it as 'Enters the field of play'. Although space is always a consideration with wording, 'field of play' only has 2 more characters than Battlefield and is much more clean. Speaking of which 'At the beginning of the end of turn step' is clumsy as hell! This is supposed to clear up the confusion because 'At end of turn' was a phrase for a triggered ability going off at the end of turn step while 'until end of turn' was a phrase for a state-based. This only mattered when people tried tricks, using 'At end of turn, this goes away' effects during the end step of the turn... meaning the 'go away effect' wouldn't actually go away until the end of the next turn. This is sloppy because these tricks were unintuitive anyway. They should have just consolidated them both as state based effects: for example changing it to 'during the end of turn'. That would have been shorter, cleaner, and easier for newer players to grasp while sacrificing nothing in terms of intended functionality as no 'at end of turn' abilities are really directed to be played through this loophole. I loathe 'Battlefield' and 'Beginning of the end of turn' phrasing. I can agree to 'Exile' as 'removed from the game' has become a more interactive zone, it just doesn't mean what it used to so it needs a new name.

#7 More generalized creatures will now appear in the Core set along with functional reprints of cards from previous sets. This is a policy to make the core sets appealing to newer players. 'Real world' things are being removed along with 'Magic universe only' name references to make a more generic fantasy scene. While this does make things easier to understand, it also gives returning players a little bit of the shaft. Core sets are low selling points, but they set baselines and return cards that would be retiring to the Standard format for another rotation. Now players who obtain cards when they are originally released have to buy their functional reprints when they're put into the core set? I understand the policy, but it smacks of something bitter. I only hope Wizards of the Coast look forward enough to start naming cards intended for the core set names that won't require functional reprints. The good news is that all the real functional reprints I've seen so far have been common, so in the online environment they can be picked up for literally a few pennies each. Also some of the creature types have shifted a little bit, allowing them to tweak relevant creature types more into use (for instance Savannah Lions is now a Human Solider, something with more type support in White). This change actually does help me out, in Singleton (where 100 card decks are used with only 1 of each card), I am now effectively able have two Skyhunter Prowlers, Remove Souls, and Civic Wayfinders. I'm confused as to why they made Runeclaw Bears to replace Grizzly Bears when they already had made exact-down-to-the-creature-type, ready-to-go functional equivalents with Bear Cub and Forest Bear. But whatever.

These eterras are meant to take effect immediately (Gatherer has already been updated) in paper Magic, and will go onto Magic Online come July 29th.