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Yesterday, some changes to the floor rules were announced for PT Origins. You can find them here. They've changed a lot of things about Magic since I started playing, but I never thought I'd see a new mulligan rule. Check it out:
103.4. Each player draws a number of cards equal to his or her starting hand size, which is normally seven. (Some effects can modify a player’s starting hand size.) A player who is dissatisfied with his or her initial hand may take a mulligan. First, the starting player declares whether or not he or she will take a mulligan. Then each other player in turn order does the same. Once each player has made a declaration, all players who decided to take mulligans do so at the same time. To take a mulligan, a player shuffles his or her hand back into his or her library, then draws a new hand of one fewer cards than he or she had before. If a player kept his or her hand of cards, those cards become the player’s opening hand, and that player may not take any further mulligans. This process is then repeated until no player takes a mulligan. (Note that if a player’s hand size reaches zero cards, that player must keep that hand.) Then, beginning with the starting player and proceeding in turn order, any player whose opening hand has fewer cards than his or her starting hand size may scry 1.
This looks like a nice way to mitigate some variance in the game. It's going to take a minute for this information to reach some players, and I'll grant that it's not elegant, but I like it. Keep in mind that this rule is currently only in place for the PT, but if they like it it will obviously make its way to your LGS.
Additionally, judges will now be able to review video coverage for calls and investigations, which would have stopped the whole Pat Chapin debacle from the last PT from happening.
Lastly, my favorite change to any Magic rule ever comes in standardizing the way that players must organized their boards for PT coverage. I usually see two arguments for lands in front, those being that the original rulebook said to play the game this way, which is fair, and the other being from those libertarian types that think just because you can conceive of doing something goofy that it should be an inalienable right. Either way, this change helps a great deal for the presentation of feature matches.
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I don’t know why video playback should prevent Chapin’s thing happening again. Video would have shown that he put a legal card type in his hand but it would also show that he committed a game rule violation by not revealing for which the penalty is Game Loss. You would need the rules of the game to change for the outcome to have been different.
I don’t have the exact rule in front of me, but I believe that if the non-revealed card is in some way indistinguishable the penalty can be downgraded and the card can be revealed, which this would have allowed them to do here. This might have just been something I heard when the ruling was made though.
I don’t know if that ruling would be different with the new guidelines, but that example certainly triggered inside discussion with this as the final result.
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article…
In my own humble opionion, those people with the “original rulebook” thing are full of crap!
Don’t think the original rulebook puts lands in front of creatures. Doesn’t have a specific place for any cards other than the library and graveyard, which go on the right. Fig. 6 suggests that creatures go in front.
Lands in back [mic drop].
This link does not work.
Lands always went up top, and tapping was 45° when I started playing.
yeah sorry i can’t get that link to work. wizards has the original rulebook posted in their archives and you can find it with google. no mention of where lands go, but a figure that suggests they go in back. tapped cards in all the pictures are 90 degrees turned :). I was also a part of the guru program in 1999, the playmats that came with the cards instructed that lands are in back. that was 5 or 6 years into magic though.