Between DFCs and alpha-cut cards, we found that a legal Magic card for the tournament doesn`t need to have the typical Magic: The Gathering card. This brings us to another point from Mark Rosewater, which again concerns the reserved list: If I go back to MTG, I would like to play Grand Prix and different types of regional tournaments to play one day on the Pro Tour. Are there any restrictions on certain types of cards that can be used? For example, I have Underground Sea with other countries that I`ve been using since the mid-90s, but on Card Kingdom, they sometimes write that a map is not legal for tournaments. Does anyone know how this is handled and is there ever a resource on the internet to check it before investing in certain cards? Dungeons are a special type of non-traditional map. It is assumed that players will have copies of the dungeon cards at all times, even if they are not currently in possession of the physical map. Any depiction of the dungeon map is acceptable as long as it does not disrupt the game area or tournament and distort the correct progression of the dungeon map. Multiple players can use the same dungeon at the same time, as long as each player`s marker is clear. Their underground sea would therefore be legal in the last three formats. As an old-school Type I player, I had an alpha bias and had preferred beta for a long time.
This was mainly because Beta was legal, whereas Alpha was not legal for a while. In addition, the less rounded corners of the beta had a more sober feel and appearance. However, in the early 2000s, I began to appreciate the appearance of Alpha. I remember seeing Carl Winter play with his Alpha powered Type I decks around 2003 and noticed how “cartoonish” his Power 9 looked. The rounded corners create a carefree, bubbly and lively aesthetic. If a card has been reprinted in a newer extension, it becomes legal in formats where the extension is allowed, and you can use any copy in that format. For example, Serra Angel is an Alpha card, but it has been reprinted many times, most recently Dominaria. This makes it legal in Pioneer and Modern, and you can use any copy, even alpha versions, in those formats. In Round 6, I played against a heavy bolt deck (the lowest number of lives I ever hit in the tournament was 14 – one bolt in the first round, followed by a bolt in holding my opponent`s second move). Many of the reprint cards are part of what is known as the “reserve list”.
This is a collection of over 500 cards from Magic`s early days that are never officially reprinted so that they retain their value on the secondary market. These are some of the most powerful cards in the game and that`s why Wizards prints alpha cards as non-tournament cards for collectors and casual games. So I was the winner of the tournament, and I won this amazing necklace trophy: I drove with Mox Sapphire and Ancestral, then with another Sapphire and Ancestral, and my opponent strangely noticed that I had been very lucky. But when I played another Sapphire and Ancestral, the jig was over. He had a cool deck with 4 Serra Angels, but could never throw them. I finished the Swiss rounds with 7 wins in a 6-round tournament. I mean, I play the three alpha cards that I own without sleeves. This really adds to your opponent`s tilt factor when playing a Benalish hero. It`s humbling to be able to play that today at the Wizards tournament. All my opponents were great sportsmen.
@mgdelaval managed to thwart a first-round win by playing Twiddle on both vices! pic.twitter.com/msG7mQbjOl alpha cards are easily distinguished from beta cards by their rounded corners. The alpha corner radius is about 2mm instead of the next standard of 1mm for all other legal tournament cards. [6] The early rules of the tournament required that cards without protective covers appear unmarked. Because of the different coins, alpha cards were considered marked unless the deck consisted only of alpha cards. This initially made them less desirable and therefore less valuable than beta and even unlimited cards. In Round 3, I played against Magnus, the tournament organizer, who played a blue and black deck with 70+ cards with time jump and four twiddles. His deck was the only deck that could thwart a Turn 1 win by playing a black Lotus on the first lap and using two Twiddles to hit my black vices. Unfortunately, I reset the game in turn 2, and it didn`t have a lotus or pair of twiddles. Alpha 40 reintroduces this compressed form of the bridge screen. My two favorite versions that have appeared in duels and tournaments are the Benalish Hero Deck and the Plague Rat Deck. The tournament was only supposed to last 6 rounds, but a Finnish player approached me and asked me for a match. I warned him, but he insisted.
Instead, I want to talk about what makes a legal Magic card for the tournament. From 1995 to 1999, alpha cards were only legal for tournaments if your entire deck consisted of alpha cards. Starting in 2000, WotC updated the tournament rules to allow alpha cards universally as long as they played with opaque covers. There are some famous printing errors whose art comes from another card. For example, Revision`s German-language print had a lowland art forest. While these cards are an interesting curiosity, they create an ambiguous and confusing state of the game and should not be used in tournaments. All of this is a never-ending way of saying that at this point, I guess I`ve probably played the best deck ever built for tournaments. This was almost certainly true for all Alpha cards, as there was only a 7-week period between the release of the Alpha and the beta, and it is extremely unlikely that any player would have been able to build and adjust a deck that came close to that level of power and consistency with the rudimentary understanding of the game that existed at the time. You can check the collector if you are not sure if a card is legal. This wouldn`t be the first time WotC has allowed cards that weren`t originally designed for tournaments. Did you know that WotC has produced four sets designed to help people play magic? These were called Portal, Portal: Second Age, Portal: Three Kingdoms and Starter 1999. These sets were produced between 1997 and 1999, but were not legal for any tournament until October 2005! At that time, they were legalized for legacy and vintage gambling – which in modern times also means commander game.
I ask – why aren`t gold-edged cards declared legal for the tournament right now? All the precedents created by WotC show that this is an arbitrary decision. These cards are officially manufactured by WotC products. WotC has shown (through #5) that there are plans to legalize Collectors` Edition and WM cards, as they are not willing to produce other versions of these cards. To check the legality (and for map research in general), I highly recommend the Scryfall site. When you look at a map on Scryfall, it shows whether the map is legal or not in the most popular formats. You can also see the current market price of different prints, and you can use the advanced search to search for cards that meet certain criteria (including limiting your search to legal cards in a specific format). Magic: The Gathering (MTG) cards have used the same design on the back of the cards since the Alpha. The Alpha Edition had slightly more rounded corners than the traditional Magic card, but all legal tournament cards since the beta have the corners we`ve come to know and love.
To be legal in a format, a card must have been printed in an expansion set since the beginning of that format (collector`s editions, From the Vault, Commander, Masters sets, etc. do not count anything other than legacy and vintage). Underground Sea had its latest expansion in Masters Edition IV, so it`s only legal in Legacy and Vintage. I`m not a judge, but I would say that if you play with alpha cards without sleeves, it`s you: paradoxically, as the tournament progressed, my anxiety increased. Not because I feared defeat, but because my deck was so powerful that a game loss would be humiliating. My nerves focused less on what my opponent`s deck was and more on whether someone could twist or balance my hand in the first round. Players may use non-English and/or misprinted cards, provided they do not use them to gain an advantage by using misleading text or images. Official advertising spells without text are allowed in sanctioned Magic tournaments where they would otherwise be legal. But there was one crucial ambiguity: how did the Orb of Chaos work? The short answer: The referee decides.