EDH and Variant Magic Forum Rules

[Eternity]

You asked for it and you got it! Welcome to the EDH and Variant Magic forum.

As with all other forums, the basic Pojo rules apply.

This sticky will be used to explain the rules of various Magic formats, including Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), Mental Magic, Prismatic Magic and various other formats!

Please be patient as Mage Master and I update this sticky as time goes by. If you have a format you want to add to this sticky, send us a PM and we'll amend the sticky appropriately.

When posting in this sub-forum, you need to use the following tags in your thread title so we can differentiate between what format your deck is for. If you don't, you won't get any help and you risk your thread being deleted or moved. In the order they're posted here..

[MM] - Mental Magic
[EDH] - Elder Dragon Highlander
[Tribal] - Tribal Wars
[Prism] - Prismatic Magic
[Pauper] - Pauper Magic
[Vangaurd] - Vanguard Magic

[Mage Master]

Mental Magic

All you need is an opponent and a stack of nonland cards to form both of your decks. Players start with seven-card hands, just like in a regular game of Magic, but all players draw from the same library of cards.

Cards may be played in one of two ways:

1. Any card may be played face down as a basic land that's capable of producing any color of mana. Although these lands are basic, they have no subtypes (they're not Swamps, for example). Note that players may still play only one land on each of their turns.

2. A card may be played as any card in Magic with the same mana cost as that card—except for the card it actually is! For example, Fugitive Wizard (which has a mana cost of Blue Mana) could be played as Cursecatcher, Unsummon, or Ancestral Recall, but couldn't be played as Fugitive Wizard. In order to "mentally" play a card, a player must be able to accurately describe its card text with no outside help.

Once a card has been named, that card can't be named again for the rest of the game. In fact, if a card is returned to your hand and you want to play it again, you can't name the card you named before. You have to choose a different card with that mana cost.

There are some additional Mental Magic rules that you can play with or not as your group sees fit. Cards in your hand, graveyard, or anywhere else other than in play have no names—but they do have types and subtypes. If you play Raise Dead or Duress, for example, read what's actually printed on the card. Also, library-searching effects don't work. If you play a spell or ability that tells you to search your library, that part of the effect doesn't do anything.

Mental Magic challenges players' knowledge of Magic and allows for a quick, fun way to pass the time between matches. It also challenges players to figure out whether the 3U card in their hand is better played as Ray of Command, Phantasmal Forces, or simply as a rainbow land!

Source: Wizards website

[Eternity]

Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH)
Rules source can be found here - http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~geduggan/EDH_rules.html

Deck Construction Rules

1. Players must choose a legendary creature as the "General" for their deck.

League Rule An EDH "League" consists of a regular group of players who frequently play together using the same decks. No two players in a league game may have the same General. Within a given league, Generals are allocated first-come, first-serve and are preserved between meetings/games. No player may have, in his or her deck, the General of any other player in the game; it should be replaced with some other card before the game begins.

Open Play Rule: Open play EDH rules are used for games between opponents who do not routinely play together. Generals are not subject to the Legendary rule, although other creatures of the same name are; if a General and a non-General creature of the same name are in play, only the non-General is put into the graveyard by state-based effects. If two opponents in the same game have the same General and both are in play, neither is put into the graveyard (although other, non-General, versions are).


2. The General's mana cost limits what coloured mana symbols may appear on cards in the deck: if a coloured mana symbol is not present in the General's mana cost, the deck may not contain any cards using that mana symbol. Lands with a basic land type (basic lands, Shock lands, Dual lands, Shadowmoor CIPT-basics, etc) contain the corresponding mana symbol(s) as per CR 212.6g.

Example: If you were play Phelddagrif (Casting cost 1UWG) as your General, your deck may not contain any red or black cards; no card in such a deck may contain red or black mana symbols or hybrid mana symbols ( Talisman of Dominance, Life//Death and Boros Guildmage are not allowed. Degavolver is doubly bad).

3. A deck may not generate mana outside its colours; anything which would generate mana of an illegal colour generates colourless mana instead.

4. An EDH deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the General.

5. With the exception of basic lands, no two cards in the deck may have the same english name.

6. EDH is played with vintage legal cards, with the exception that cards are legal as of their set's prerelease. Additionally, the following are banned:

Balance
Test of Endurance * No longer banned *
Worldgorger Dragon
Biorhythm
Sway of the Stars
Upheaval
Panoptic Mirror
Crucible of Worlds * No longer banned *
Kokusho, the Evening Star
Limited Resources
Riftsweeper
Karakas
Tinker *NEW*
Ancestral Recall
Black Lotus
Mox Sapphire, Ruby, Pearl, Emerald and Jet
Time Walk
Library of Alexandria
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Coalition Victory
Recurring Nightmare
Protean Hulk
Grindstone
Lion's Eye Diamond
Time Vault
Metalworker *NEW*
Shaharazad is legal for play in EDH, even though it's banned in Vintage. Different groups have different philosophies on banned cards.. YMMV.

Play rules
7. Generals are announced and removed from the game before shuffling at the start of the game. Being a General is not a characteristic[MTG CR201], it is a property of the card. As such, "Generalness" cannot be copied or overwritten by continuous effects, and does not change with control of the card.

Examples: A Body Double copying a General in a graveyard is not a General. A General which is affected by Cytoshape, or is face down, is still a General.

8. If a player suffers 21 points of combat damage from a single General, they lose. This is an additional state based effect, similar to poison counters, but separate and specific to each General. This damage cannot be healed or undone, even if the creature is removed from play temporarily. Damage done by a creature under someone else's control is still counted towards the 21 point limit for that creature and defender.

9. While a General is removed from the game, it may be played. As an additional cost to play your General this way, you must pay {2} for each previous time you have played it this way.

10. If a General would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, its owner may remove it from the game instead. (This is a replacement effect.. the creature never goes to the graveyard and will not trigger abilities on going to the graveyard)

11. Players begin the game with 40 life.

12. The first time a player takes a paris mulligan, they draw 7 cards (instead of 6). The second mulligan is to 6, and so forth. (Actually this rule is very old, but it was only recently noted that it was missing from the rules page).

This concludes the rules for EDH.

[Mage Master]

Tribal Wars (Tribal) rules
Rules source can be found here - http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/rules/tribal

Tribal Wars is a casual Magic Online format that emphasizes creature combat: one-third of every deck must be of a single creature type.

Constructed decks must contain a minimum of sixty cards. All cards named Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest are basic. This includes Snow-Covered Lands.

Tribal Wars is based on the Classic format, so all sets in Magic Online, including promo cards, are legal.

The following cards are banned in Tribal Wars games:

Circle of Solace
Demonic Tutor
Endemic Plague
Engineered Plague
Gleemax
Imperial Seal
Mana Crypt
Peer Pressure
Skullclamp
Tsabo's Decree
Umezawa's Jitte
Unnatural Selection

[Eternity]

Prismatic Magic (Prismatic) rules
Rules source can be found here - http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/rules/prismatic

Prismatic is a casual Magic Online format for fans of big, fun, five-color decks. Prismatic has special deck construction rules and a special mulligan rule.

1. Big deck: Your deck must be at least 250 cards,

2. Five colors: Your deck must contain at least 20 cards of each color (multicolor and split cards count as one of their colors),

3. Prismatic is based on the Classic format. All sets and Promotional cards are allowed.[/list]

4. Prismatic banned list: Your deck cannot contain any of the following cards (banned in Prismatic):
Battle of Wits
Bribery
Bringer of the Black Dawn
Buried Alive
Burning Wish
Congregation at Dawn
Crucible of Worlds
Cunning Wish
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Tutor
Detritivore
Diabolic Intent
Earthcraft
Eladamri's Call
Enlightened Tutor
Entomb
Eternal Witness
Fabricate
Flash
Gifts Ungiven
Gleemax
Glittering Wish
Hermit Druid
Idyllic Tutor
Imperial Seal
Insidious Dreams
Intuition
Life from the Loam
Living Wish
Mana Crypt
Merchant Scroll
Mystical Teachings
Mystical Tutor
Personal Tutor
Skullclamp
Steelshaper's Gift
Sterling Grove
Summoner's Pact
Sundering Titan
Supply // Demand
Sylvan Scrying
Tolaria West
Umezawa's Jitte
Vampiric Tutor

5. Special mulligan rule: If your starting hand has 0, 1, 6 or 7 lands in it, you can take a "big deck mulligan" for free; that is, you can get back a fresh hand of seven cards. After that, you may mulligan as normal if you don't like your hand. Note that if you take a "big deck mulligan," your opponent has the opportunity to take one too, for "free." Same goes for you if your opponent takes a "big deck mulligan."

[Mage Master]

Pauper Magic (Pauper) rules

Pauper is played with a minimum 60 card main deck and optional 15 card sideboard. All cards must have been printed either in a paper Magic or Magic Online set as a common to be legal in this format. However, you may play a card that isn’t a common in the set that it’s printed in as long as it was printed as a common in another set.

Banned List:


Ancient Den
Cranial Plating
Darksteel Citadel
Great Furnace
Seat of the Synod
Tree of Tales
Vault of Whispers

[Eternity]

Vanguard Magic (Vanguard) rules
Rules source can be found here - http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/products/vanguard

The Vanguard format allows players to play with a special extra "card" that modifies the rules of the game just for them. You enter a Vanguard game with a normal Constructed deck in the format of your choice, plus a preselected Vanguard card. Players must agree on which format (Standard, Extended, Legacy, or Vintage) they will use to build their decks.

A Vanguard card modifies your starting (and maximum) hand size, as well as your starting life total. It also contains one or more abilities. Sometimes they're abilities that you can play; sometimes they're abilities that just change aspects of the game. Any abilities printed on a Vanguard card work exactly like those of an in-play Magic card. Note, however, that Vanguard cards are colorless, aren't permanents, aren't in play, and aren't even really cards—so they can't be affected by spells or abilities.

A number of Vanguard cards were printed around the time the Tempest set was released. For a list of the Vanguard cards that were released in physical form, click here. (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/products/vanguard) In Magic Online, each avatar can double as a Vanguard card. You can find more information about them here. (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnline.aspx?x=magic/magiconline/vanguard)