More M10 Rules Impacts

Quoted DCI Judge List email:

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.

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