Introduction
This page is current as of Comprehensive Rules October 2010. Please direct your feedback to: The Staff
The Importance of terminology
The first thing a good judge should learn is technical terminology. We are not talking of big tomes or endless lists, but approximately fifty terms that define clearly and uniquely for all judges around the world what section of the rules we are referring to. Magic is a mixture of art, fantasy and mathematics, and we could expect a card to have a list of symbols that defines its abilities: on the contrary we'll find full phrases. At first glance they may seem simple descriptions of the abilities, but it is a clear code that can be broken into different abilities and effects, and uses keywords that every judge must know.
Important: a candidate that doesn't know technical terminology has already failed 80% of his exam, both because he or she will probably not be able to understand specific examples on his or her test and because he or she will not be able to communicate correctly with other judges and players.
Differences between this document and official rules
This document aims to teach basic rules concepts and the logic that should be applied to solve all situations you could encounter.
It does not completely replace rules documents. What the vast majority of Level 1 candidates have raised as one of the main problems during their preparation is the scarce number of examples that can be found in the rules documents. They are also missing a guide that calls their attention to those parts of the documents that must be "known in depth" as opposed to those that can be "just read".
Another problem of the rules documents is some long technical rules, very hard to understand and to apply to real game situations.
The main goal of this document is to present practical examples to complex rules and to separate between rules really fundamental to the game and those that are needed to cover corner cases, with little practical use during exams and in real judging. We will often use real rules paragraphs integrated with explanations, aimed to familiarize with the "style" of rules documents that judges will often read after having certified.
The Comprehensive Rules and the various tournament documents (Infraction Procedure Guide, Guide to Fixing Common Errors and Tournament Rules) can be obtained from Magic Rules and DCI Document Center and are the reference technical documents. On those documents you can find both the concepts included here and other elements that a judge should know: what is left out can be learnt with just one single read.
My advice to a candidate who wants to learn the rules is read this document first, learn the basic concepts and terminology, and then, after having reached a good knowledge of the rules presented here, read carefully the Comprehensive Rules and all other documents at least once: at that point, it should be fairly easy. Remember that the Comprehensive Rules are not intended to teach the game to new players: it is a document written for those who already know the game where you can find all technical rules. Also to benefit from this document you should already know how to play Magic and have already played some games.
| Note: don't try to learn Magic rules only by memorizing all examples presented in this document. This is the worst way you could try it (and I write "try" because you will not succeed). Magic has over 10.000 different cards and endless possible interactions. You should try to learn the logic behind any single example presented and not only the cards involved and the solution; it will be wasted time and effort. A judge should be able to solve real game situations he or she has never seen before (for example at a Prerelease), and the only way of doing so is to learn why an example has a specific solution and asking how to apply that solution to other cases. Once you have learnt the basics and the logic all this will be really easy! |
Use of the examples
The main tool used to teach various parts of the rules will be examples. Every time we will use one, you will find it marked by the word Example. Do not memorize all the examples, but try to understand the logic behind them.
In a lot of situations the technical language and the analysis of different form of spells, abilities and effects is intentionally redundant, so that the reader can reach an excellent understanding of technical concepts that are the basics of the logic.
In almost all examples we try to present different cases, special rules or exceptions, all referring to the main topic, trying to give the reader a wide range of usual and specific situations.
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