A look back at the original Alpha rulebook...

Hello. GoldenSandslash here. I'd like to talk to you in ugly-as-hell red-orange-ish colored text if you don't mind.

What could I possibly be talking about that would warrant such a disgusting-looking color? Magic the Gathering, of course. That's what this board is for.

Specifically, I'm going to be looking at the Magic the Gathering rulebook, as it first appeared in Alpha, when the game first launched. And I'll provide my commentary as we go. That's why I'm using this font color, so that you can distinguish my comments from the actual rulebook.

A bit of history here. Magic the Gathering first premiered in summer of 1993. The official release date for the set is given as August 5th, but that's just the day that it went on sale. There were special events where they showed off the cards a month earlier, in July. The game officially was released at Gen Con 1993 in Milwaukee. And while that may be where the game was first available for purchase, it was not where the bulk of the gameplay was. For most of Magic's early years, if you wanted any hope of finding another player, you HAD to search the west coast of the United States. That's where people were who played this. The game was practically unplayed anywhere else in the world.

So okay. You go to the west coast and get some cards. You have two options: a starter deck or a booster pack. A booster pack is just as you know it today: a rare, three uncommons, and eleven commons. Except that there was a chance that any of them could be replaced with a basic land (yes, even the rare). This means that a typical Alpha pack has four or five basic lands in it.

If you opt to get a starter deck instead, it's nothing like a pre-con deck today. Because the cards included in the Alpha starter decks are RANDOM. You get 2 rares, 13 uncommons, and 45 cards that can be either commons or basic lands (as a reminder, the minimum deck size at the time was 40, not 60, so you could make 20 cuts). But there's one other thing that is included in an Alpha starter deck: a rulebook. And that's what we're here to take a look at today.




Yeah, this is the front cover. For the most part, I'm going to be transcribing this rulebook in text rather than showing images, but if there's an illustration, we'll have to look at that. And in this case... we've got... this. If you don't know, this is the artwork that appears on the card Bog Wraith. It's a 3/3 swampwalk for 3B. I don't know why they picked that as the art to symbolize Magic the Gathering, but... there you go. Okay. Now let's get into the actual rulebook.

Credits:

Design: Richard Garfield, Ph.D.
Design Contributions: Charlie "Deck of Weenie Madness", "Infinite Recursion Deck" Canto; Skaff "The Bruise", "The Great White Death" Elias; Don Felice; Tom "Fontaine's Deck of Sooner Than Instant Death" Fontaine; Jim Lin; Joel Mick; Chris "The Great White Leftovers" Page; Dave "Hurricane Dave", "Dave's Deck of Land Destruction" Pettey; Barry "Bit", "The Archaeologist", "The Serpentician", "The Artifact Deck", "The Serpent Deck", "The 5 Color Deck" Reich; Bill Rose; Elliot Segal
Card Text: Ricahrd Garfield, Peter D. Adkison, Lisa Stevens, Lisa Lowe, Len Case, George Lowe, Sean Prather, Tom Fontaine, Jim Lin, Chris Page, Jesper Myrfors, Mike Davis, Lily Wu, Elizabeth Zanger
Editing: Beverly Marshall Saling and Victor K. Wertz
Art Direction: Jesper Myrfors
Graphic Design: Jesper Myrfors and Lisa Stevens
Typesetting: Peter D. Adkison, David Howell, Lisa Stevens, Victor K. Wertz
Layout: Peter D. Adkison and Lisa Stevens
Printer Liaison: Luc Mertens
Jobs too numerous to mention: Peter D. Adkison, Jesper Myrfors, Sean Prather, Lisa Stevens, Victor K. Wertz

© 1993 by Garfield Games, Inc. Used by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. under license. Magic: The Gathering™ and Deckmaster™ are trademarks of Garfield Games, Inc.

Playtesters: Peter Adkison, Mike Albert, Mikhail Chkhenkell, Steven E. Conard, Jeff Goldman, James E. Hays, Jr., Robin Herbert, Karen Hibbard, Dave Howell, Dave Juenemann, Howard Kahlenberg, Ruthy Kantorovitz, Nets "Moose Slippers" Katz, Anthony Kosky, Sarath Kumar, Ethan Lewis, George Lowe, Lisa Lowe, Beverly Marshall Saling, Jesper Myrfors, Katherine K. Porter, Ron Richardson, Rick Saling, Lisa Stevens, Jean Pierre Trias, Lily "Snow White and the Eight Dwarves" Wu

League Playtesting and Design: Charlie Canto, Skaff Elias, Don Felice, Howard Kahlenberg, Ethan Lewis, Joel Mick, Chris Page, Barry Reich, Bill Rose, Elliot Segal, Jean Pierre Trias

Special thanks to the late night DRL deck construction crew: Mike Albert, Skaff Elias, Ruthy Kantorovitz, Chris Page, Dave Pettey, Barry Reich

Thanks to Dave Petty for showing how nasty decks could get, to Charlie Canto for showing how bizarre they could get, and to Skaff Elias for stress testing every aspect of the game. Thanks to Beanies for late night coffee. Thanks to Peter Adkison for recognizing good ideas, while having them himself, and for recognizing good people, while being one himself.

Really? That's how you're starting off? With a bunch of legal crap and credits? That's... interesting, to say the least. Most rulebooks put this crap at the end. I will say that I really like the tone that they set here. The "design" credits including a million long nicknames to stretch it out to make it look like more people worked on this game than they really did is hilarious to me. I don't really know why. And I do love the "special thanks" section at the end. That's kinda heartwarming. I think I needed that right now. Okay, now let's turn the page and get to the actual rules. Just kidding! The next page doesn't actually have any rules on it either. Instead, we get... flavor.

Yep. This next bit is Magic's first storyline... I guess. It's a short prose piece written by Richard Garfield himself. Though note that Richard is a MUCH better game designer than a writer. It's... not very good.

Introduction

Worzel felt the telltale prickling at the back of her neck; her domain was being challenged! It's someone old, she thought. Someone I know... Thomil! It had been a long time since he had challenged her. Quickly, she called her vassals into action. She would need much mana for this duel, much indeed.

The last time Worzel fought with Thomil, he had focused on the destructive magic of the mountains. It had been a close fight; she still saw in her nightmares the brigade of firebreathers that had pushed her to the brink of submission. Since then, Worzel had learned from a specialist in white magic that there were ways to protect herself from the raw force Thomil loved. Unfortunately, the white magician had been unwilling to part with the knowledge in exchange for her offered artifact; she had been forced to coerce it out of him in other, more violent ways. It took a while, but she was far more experienced duelist than he, and in time he was forced to yield what she sought.

Worzel soon found that gathering the proper mana for her protective spells was going to be difficult. She needed the mana of the countryside, and disturbances in the ether were preventing her from making the necessary psychic bonds to any of those lands. She had precious little to draw on in the first place, so it could take a while before she managed to get a link to the plains. Just having the knowledge to protect yourself isn't enough, she thought. Well, let's see if I can't stall him with my friends of the forest in the meantime.

Worzel resisted the temptation to invest herself in blue magic, in case the rumor that Thomil had taken to raising serpents had any truth. Now she began to regret the loss of the Glasses of Urza, which might have given her some clue where the focus of his attack would be.

Thomil countered her creatures with a legion of undead. Black magic, she thought. Thomil! I wouldn't have expected that from you. Thomil had always enjoyed displays of pure power, but she had regarded him as a relatively clean fighter. At least, cleaner than most.

A sudden sense of horror came over Worzel as she felt a large drain on the mana plane– an enormous drain, accompanied by a stink of sulfur and the grave. Something big was coming.

Learned some new tricks since we last met, eh? muttered Worzel, under her breath. Well, so have I, dear Thomil, so have I.

It was going to be a tough fight.

I told you this was bad. I don't even get why this is here. It certainly doesn't belong in a rulebook. Either way, the duel between Worzel and Thomil is... dumb. Magic storyline has come a long way since then. Now we have much better stories. Whether or not the Worzel-Thomil duel is still canon to the current Magic storyline is... questionable. I'm a bit of a completionist when it comes to this type of thing, so I'm inclined to say it is. A couple years later, a follow-up story ("Roreca's Tale") was released in the Magic: The Gathering Pocket Player's Guide, and it revealed that this takes place on the plane of Ergamon. So yeah, Magic's original plane, contrary to popular belief, is NOT Dominaria. Ergamon technically came first, since you'd have to read the rulebook before looking at the cards. (The cards from Alpha do take place on Dominaria.)

If you are curious what Ergamon is like, there is a grand total of ONE Magic card that depicts it: Truga Jungle. That's all we got.

Game Description

Magic is a two-person card game in which the cards in your deck represent the lands, creatures, spells, and artifacts at your disposal. When you play the game, you pit your deck against your opponent's deck in an arcane duel, and the winner takes one random card to keep from the loser's deck. Over time, your deck will grow and shrink; it will have weaknesses you can try to fix by winning the correct games, and strengths with which you can barter between games. Sometimes winning a duel can be a lot less profitable than a successful trading session, and it is always more dangerous! Be especially on your guard when playing new opponents. They will likely have spells and artifacts you have never seen before, and they will certainly have unique deck mixes and styles of play. Also, watch out for old rivals -- anyone can have a magical encounter with a stranger and pick up some new surprises. No matter who your opponent is, never forget the possibility of learning a trick or two with the same old cards.

Hahahahaha. Ante. Oh man, that's a good one. No one played for ante, ever. Even back when the rules said you did, people still didn't. It's like how most playgroups say "you can take free mulligans as long as you don't abuse this." People just weren't listening to Wizards of the Coast's rules. Cause no one wanted to ante. They were too emotionally attached to their cards.

I often wonder what they were thinking with ante. Like, I get it. It's a game-balancing thing. Not only do you punish a player for having too many rare cards by the fact that they may lose one to the ante. But also this ensures that card ownership keeps circling between the playgroup so that no one person ends up with the most powerful cards. But... yeah. The downsides of including ante in this game definitely outweigh the upsides. I'm glad it's a thing of the past.

Equipment

To play, you need two decks of at least forty Magic cards each and at least twenty counters for each person. These counters represent life points. They can be pennies, poker chips, or whatever is convenient. You can even keep track of life points on paper if you want to. It's also best to have a large, flat playing area on which to lay out the cards.

So, in the original Magic rulebook, you only built a 40-card deck and not a 60-card deck. There was also no 4-per-card limitation. Nowadays, we know this as the deckbuilding rules for Limited. And that makes sense, because Richard originally envisioned this game with people spending about as much money as they would on a typical board game: just buy a starter deck and a few booster packs, and then that's your entire collection. This is very similar to playing Sealed today. So it makes sense to use the Limited deckbuilding rules for that.

This is one reason why cards like Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Moxen, Time Vault, and so forth are so powerful. Yeah, they're broken if you have all of them in a single deck. But if there's just one copy of a single one of these cards throughout your entire playgroup? It's not so bad. Especially since you can even try and trade to get that card off of that player, or get them to ante it.

But once anyone in your group starts buying a whole box of booster packs, then that all gets thrown out the window.

60-card decks with a 4-per-card restriction and with certain overpowered cards banned makes more sense for Constructed, and I'm glad they switched to this.

Next, let's talk about life. I find it interesting that the rulebook calls them "life points", rather than "life". We're Yugioh now, I guess.

Perhaps more interesting is how you keep track of it. You use counters. Nowadays, most people use spindown dice or pen+paper. While the Alpha rulebook does mention pen+paper, this is treated as an afterthought side option, even though I think it's the most common way to do it. This also lets me talk about my "life counter" theory. So, when planeswalkers were first being designed, loyalty abilities actually pre-dated loyalty counters. Yes, really. Early playtest versions of planeswalkers went through a number of iterations, and they had loyalty abilities before they had loyalty counters. How did that work? You just wrote down the loyalty and kept track of it on a paper, like a life total. But then they later switched to counters. What's interesting is that they use counters for just about everything now. Even players can get counters. But the one area where we don't use counters? Life totals. This led me to a theory that perhaps in the future at some point, in order to simplify it down, they would change it so that players use life counters. That way, you can proliferate yourself to gain a life. It was a neat idea, I thought. I've had this in my mind for quite some time. And then, of course, Wizards of the Coast decided to print Solemnity in Hour of Devastation, Suncleanser in Core Set 2019, and Price of Betrayal in War of the Spark. So much for that theory.

The last thing to talk about is the last sentence. They make it sound like having a play area is optional. Um... what? How are you supposed to play Magic without a table?

The Duel

One complete game of Magic is called a duel. A set is won by the first player to win three duels. A match is the best two of three sets. Players should agree before starting whether they are fighting a single duel, a set, a match, or some other competition. During the course of a single competition, players may never add or subtract any cards from their decks except those won or lost in the ante.

Huh. So Magic wasn't always best-of-three. This does that weird tennis thing of "game, set, match" so consecutive wins are worth more than nonconsecutive wins. More importantly... HOLY MOLY that's a lot of Magic. You play two out of three best-of-five sets? That means a maximum of FIFTEEN games. Jesus Christ. That'll take all day. I can't imagine if a tournament that's four or five rounds were to use this structure. Though I suppose it does make sense if you're playing for ante, and can use your ante in future games. The more "future games" there are, the more sense of an idea ante makes. So fair enough. You could have either gotten rid of ante or had ludicrously long matches. Shortening the matches gets rid of ante so... yeah. I understand that choice. Except, you know, not at all.

Setting Up

First, shuffle your deck thoroughly and cut your rival's deck. You may also ask to shuffle your rival's deck if you wish. Turn the top card of your rival's deck face up and have your rival do the same with yours. Set the turned-up cards aside. They will be the ante, which the winner of the duel will keep. Take twenty counters to represent the twenty points you begin the duel with. Your life will go up and down during the course of a duel, and you may end up with more than 20 points—if you're lucky.

Draw the top seven cards of your deck to form your hand, and set the remaining cards aside, face down, as your library. The loser of the previous game takes the first turn; if there was no previous game, decide who goes first randomly.

Yep! No mulligans in 1993! You just get your seven cards and pray that you're not mana screwed or mana flooded. Other than that, this is basically the same setup that we do today, except without the ante. You always shuffle your deck first, then present it to the opponent for additional shuffling. And then once that's done, you contract COVID-19 because you touched your opponent's cards. Wait... that's not right.

One interesting thing is that the loser of the previous "game" takes the first turn. Which means that this would carry between sets, if you're doing that whole "game-set-match" thing. Another interesting thing is what happens if the game is a draw. In current Magic, if a game ends in a draw, then the player who chose who gets to go first during that game also chooses who gets to go first during the next game. But here, you decide randomly, if I'm interpreting this correctly. I actually like the 1993 way better.

By the way, little-known-fact about Magic's current rules: you are NOT required to decide who goes first randomly, even though everyone does so. The only rule about deciding who goes first is that the method you use must be agreeable to all players, whether or not it's random or fair. If you can convince your opponent to decide who goes first by a method that guarantees you're gonna go first, then that's fine. As long as the opponent agrees to it. I don't know of any practical use for this rules obscurity, but... it exists. There you go.

The Playing Area



Throughout the course of the game, you will have a library of undrawn cards, a graveyard of discarded cards, and a hand. The space in front of you, called your territory, will also contain cards played face up. These cards are the ones currently in play. Usually your cards will be played in your own territory, though you may occasionally have cards in play in your rival's territory. After the duel is finished, you will retrieve all the cards that you began with, except for the ante, which is taken by the winner. Be sure to note when you play a card in your rival's territory. Ideally, you should mark these cards in some way, like with a coin or paper clip, so you don't accidentally lose one after the duel.

The term "battlefield" didn't exist until Magic 2010. But I've never seen the term "territory" until now. That's interesting. Makes me wonder why they didn't go with that term instead for Magic 2010 if it did indeed have precedent. Interestingly, the layout of the table is more strict in 1993 than today. By today's rules, there are no rules about where you place your cards. I do tend to put my library and graveyard on the right, with the library on top and the graveyard on bottom, as shown in this image. But you don't have to. You also don't have to put your lands in the back and your creatures in the front, even though most players do. And heck, you don't even have to keep your cards all together. Go ahead and put one on your side of the table, one on your opponent's side, one underneath the table, one on the bookshelf off to the side, one in the bathroom, one on the roof of the building, and one on a cruise ship that happens to be passing by your country. That's still perfectly legal by the Magic rulebook! Also, if you play Magic this way, I'm pretty sure that the devil has a special place in hell just for you. (I consider myself to be a pretty chaotic person, and even I would never do this.)

I do like the idea of using a paper clip to mark cards that are owned by the opposite player. I'm USUALLY pretty good about remembering this, but yeah. Occasionally if my opponent puts an Aura on one of my creatures (like a Pacifism or something), then when I scoop up my cards, I accidentally steal their card. And I feel really bad every time it happens. Though it's only happened twice in my decade of playing Magic (and in one case, the "card" I stole was only a token), so... I have a pretty good track record. Still, a paper clip would be a good idea. Thanks, 1993 rulebook.

Overview of Play

The object of the game is to reduce your rival's life points to zero, forcing him or her to flee the plane in which you are dueling. If you both are reduced to zero simultaneously, then the duel is a draw, and both players retrieve their contributions to the ante. You also win if your rival's library becomes so depleted that he or she cannot draw a card when required.

The cards represent lands and spells. Lands generate mana, which is required to cast spells. Spells can be used to summon creatures and artifacts, or generate magical effects.

To play a card, take it from your hand, and place it face up in the playing area. Many cards, such as creatures, and some artifacts, can only be used once per turn. If you have already used such a card during the current turn, you must turn it on its side. This is a procedure called tapping the card. At the start of your next turn, you return your tapped cards to the upright, untapped position (see Figure 2).



You and your rival play in turns. Each pair of turns is called a round. Turns follow the sequence of events described below in "Game Turn".

During the course of play, you will reduce your rival's life by successfully casting certain spells and by attacking successfully with your creatures. The upper right-hand corner of each spell card shows the cost of casting the spell. This cost is in mana, which you get from your lands, and occasionally from other sources. One of the vital concerns during a duel is getting enough of the right type of land into play to generate the mana you need to cast your spells.

I find it interesting that it mentions that lands generate mana. While all the lands in Alpha/Beta/Unlimited do generate mana (it's just the basic lands and the dual lands), literally the first expansion to have new cards in it, Arabian Nights, included multiple lands that don't tap for mana. There's eight nonbasic lands in Arabian Nights (Bazaar of Baghdad, City of Brass, Desert, Diamond Valley, Elephant Graveyard, Island of Wak-Wak, Library of Alexandria, Oasis), and only four of them tap for mana. I guess this expansion wasn't as planned out at the time. Obviously, nowadays, all lands either tap for mana or fetch other lands that do tap for mana. The only land cards from Modern-legal sets that don't do either one are Dark Depths and Eye of Ugin (I'd say "Modern-legal cards", but both of them are currently banned in Modern).

Game Turn

Both your turn and your rival's turn follow the same pattern. A game turn consists of the following phases:

1. Untap. Untap all your previously tapped lands, creatures, and artifacts.
2. Upkeep. Deal with any enchantment, creature, or artifact that requires upkeep or has an effect at the start of a turn. The card will tell you if a given item requires upkeep.
3. Draw. Draw one card from your library.
4. Main. You may do several things during the main phase. In no particular order:
(a) You may put any one land from your hand into play. Mana from this land may be used during the current turn.
(b) You may make one attack against your rival with any or all of your creatures in play except those that came into play this turn. Newly summoned creatures cannot be used until the next turn.
(c) You may cast any spells in your hand, provided you have enough mana. You can cast spells before and after taking other actions.
5. Discard. If you have more than seven cards in your hand, discard until you again have only seven.
6. End. Let your rival know you are finished.

Unless an action described above includes the word may, you must perform this action.

You and your rival may cast certain spells known as instants and interrupts at any time, even if it isn't your turn. You can also use your artifacts, enchantments, or special powers of creatures in play. These are called fast effects. Interrupts take place more quickly, actually being resolved before actions in progress, whereas instants don't take effect until both players have finished reacting to one another. At this point, they take effect simultaneously. Fast effects are always considered instants, unless they say otherwise. For more details, see "Timing" on pp.29-32.

What's interesting about this is that it is mostly untouched in terms of how it works. There haven't been really any major changes since 1993. They just did a bit of cleanup to what was already here. Untap-upkeep-draw became combined into a single "beginning phase". And the "discard" and "end" phases (what we now know as "end step" and "cleanup step" got combined into the "ending phase" (and their order relative to each other was swapped). Combat was also made its own thing, rather than a main phase action, which makes more sense to me. 

And now let's talk about timing! Cause oh boy is it a mess. The stack is THE most important thing in Magic the Gathering. If Magic is a car, then the stack is its engine. It is literally the thing that makes it function. Though, much like an engine, you don't need to know how it works in order to drive the car. So long as you have a basic understanding, you should be good. Like, you have a 2/2 creature. You cast Giant Growth and I respond with Lightning Bolt. Alternatively, I cast Lightning Bolt and you respond with Giant Growth. Do you know the difference between these two scenarios? Great. That's all you need to know in order to play the game. Obviously there's more to it than that, but the rules gurus can deal with that, just like a mechanic deals with car engines.

I bring this up because Magic the Gathering DIDN'T HAVE A STACK in 1993. It wouldn't get one until Sixth Edition. This is like a car without an engine. How on Earth did this work? The joke answer is that it was just "biggest kid on the playground makes the rules". The real answer is INSANELY complicated, to the point where it's the only part of Magic's history that I legitimately do not understand. If you are curious, here is a link that explains it. Richard Garfield himself has stated that if he could go back in time and just change one thing about Alpha, he would have added the stack. It's THAT important.

While I agree that this is a contender for "go back in time and change one thing from Alpha", I don't think it's necessarily the only contender. Other good options include adding colored rarity symbols and collector's numbers, starting Organized Play from Day 1 (rather than waiting until the Ice Age prerelease), fixing the misprints that were rampant in Magic's early years, and removing ante from the game.

Casting Spells

As mentioned earlier, you need mana from lands to cast spells. There are five different types of mana—one for each basic type of land. Red mana comes from mountains, blue mana from islands, green mana from forests, black mana from swamps, and white mana from plains. However, some spells can change the type of land a card represents. In this case, the changed land provides mana appropriate to the new land type. Occasionally, mana comes from other sources, in which case it may be of no color. If a spell doesn't explicitly call for a particular color of mana, then any color mana, or any colorless mana, can be used.

The chart on page 13 explains the mana symbols, and the relationships between the five colors of magic.

RUGBW is the original order of the colors, I guess. I don't get it either. Like, it's not the standard WUBRG. It's not alphabetical by color name. It's not alphabetical by land name. It just seems... random. Regardless, this all works. A lot of people don't seem to realize that this is how it works, even today. Like, a basic Forest does not have the rules text of "{T}: Add {G}." It instead gets that ability intrinsically just by being a Forest. If it loses that land type, it loses that ability. Anyways, now let's turn the page and look at the chart that they were describing above!

Mana Chart

 Black Magic: The black magician's power stems from the swamps and bogs. Black magic is the magic of death. The often self destructive lore of black magic is regarded by most as best left unknown. The traditional enemies of black are white and green.
 Blue Magic: The blue magician taps the islands for energy. Blue magic is mental in nature. The fortes of the blue magician are artifice, illusion, and deception, as well as the elemental forces of air and water. The traditional enemies of blue are red and green.
 Green Magic: The green magician draws energy from the forest. Many magicians have been lulled into complacency by green magic's peaceful exterior, the magic of life, and have been caught unaware by the vast destructive capability of its nature. Green's traditional enemies are blue and black.
 Red Magic: The red magician gets power from the mountains. Red magic is a destructive magic, the magic of earth and of fire, of chaos and of war. The traditional enemies of red are blue and white.
 White Magic: The white magician draws energy from the plains. Spells of healing and protection are the white magician's specialty, though chivalrous war magic is not unfamiliar. White's traditional enemies are red and black.

Oh come on!

That's a text wall.

In what world would anyone look at this and say "That's a chart"?

It's literally just a wall of text.

In terms of content, though, this is a pretty apt (though rough) summary of color philosophy. I approve. Oh, and the BUGRW order. At least it's alphabetical this time.

Each of your lands provides one mana of the appropriate color at the beginning of your turn. If you choose to use this mana, you must tap the land until the start of your next turn. Otherwise, you may keep this mana in reserve for use during your rival's turn. Mana does not accumulate from round to round, however. If you choose not to use a land's mana during a given round, that land still gives you only one mana at the start of your next turn.

Mana drawn from any source is put in your mana pool, which is simply the mana you have ready to use. Most of the time, you simply remember what mana you have in your pool, though you can write it down if you have a large series of spells being cast. Adding mana to your mana pool is always considered an interrupt. You lose all of the mana in your mana pool if you do not use it before a phase ends. The mana pool is also cleared when an attack begins and when an attack ends. You lose a life point for each mana lost in this manner. However, you cannot be deprived of a chance to use the mana in your pool. If a card provides more than one mana, you must draw the full amount into your pool when you use it.

The cost to cast a spell, listed in the upper right-hand corner of the card, is shown in the form of a number and/or mana symbols. The mana symbols indicate the amount needed of a particular mana color, while the number indicates how much additional mana, which can be any color or no color, is also required. For example,    means the spell costs 2 white mana plus 1 mana of any or no color. The total cost of a spell is the total number of mana needed to cast the spell—in this example, 3. If the cost includes an X, you can choose what number X will be by spending that much mana from your mana pool.

Example: A player casts Fireball, which costs X  Mana and does X damage to one or more targets. The player spends one red mana plus three mana for X, thus doing three points of damage to the targets.

Huh. So you lose your mana during combat, just like in phases, but they never thought "gee, maybe combat should be a phase then"? Weird. Obviously, all of this is still true today except that mana burn no longer exists.

One thing that this rulebook rarely does is use specific cards in their examples. This is because Richard originally wanted the game to have a sense of discovery. When you sat down to play with a new opponent, they could have cards that you had no idea existed before! (This is why there are no collector's numbers, they didn't even want you knowing how many cards there were.) This is why Alpha has some weird effects like Raging River, Camouflage, Lich, Word of Command, Chaos Orb, and so forth. The idea was that you could run into a card that you had no idea would even work within the rules of this game as you initially understood them. Heck, if you read the coverage of the first-ever Pro Tour, you'll find that Wizards of the Coast was very hand-wavey and not specific about what cards were being used (well, okay, they updated it and put out a revised version with full decklists years later once they got over this whole "not saying anything" policy). It's kinda interesting.

Of course, then the internet came along and killed all hopes of keeping information hidden, so Wizards was forced to come clean about this. I will admit that it does sound interesting to play Magic in a setting where I don't know what cards exist. But yeah, the internet would kill any hope of any company doing anything like this nowadays. Darn.

So then why does the rulebook mention Fireball here? I'm guessing because {X} is THAT confusing of a concept. Wizards of the Coast, still to this day, has a support line you can call if you are confused about their games and products. Well, okay. Now they do it through Twitter rather than through telephone, but still. And the most common thing that they get asked about? "How does {X} work?" There's a reason why this symbol no longer appears on cards at common. It's reserved for uncommon and above. The last time an {X} appeared on a common card in a premier set (supplemental sets like Masters sets generally have higher complexity) was Syncopate in Dominaria, and that was an outlier. The time before that was Death Wind way back in Avacyn Restored.

Another interesting thing here is that the rulebook got the effect of Fireball wrong. It's not {X}{R} to deal X damage to one or more targets. It's {X}{R} to deal X damage to one or more targets, but you have to pay an additional {1} for each target beyond the first. That's a critical mis-step. If, as in this example, a player spent one red mana plus three mana for X, it would only deal 3 damage to ONE target, not more. So why did they get it wrong? Either they're being secretive and want to hide Fireball's true effect from players who don't know the card yet (though the card is a common in Alpha, so you'd see it sooner than later, I would think). Or they just got the effect wrong because cards change during playtesting and they probably misremembered what the final overall version of the card that saw print was.

Honestly? I'd believe either one of these.

Finally, the rulebook refers to the symbol {X} as "X" rather than as "{X}". It's no big deal, I get what they mean, but it's odd that they have just a normal typed X there rather than the symbol, since they already put symbols all over the rest of the rulebook.

Spell Types

There are six different kinds of spells: artifacts, enchantments, creature summonings, instants, interrupts, and sorcery. A card is only considered a spell until it is successfully cast, after which it becomes an artifact, enchantment, or creature, or has its effect and is then put in the caster's graveyard. Artifacts, enchantments, and creatures are called permanents since they remain in play until destroyed or removed by a spell effect. The only spells that can be cast during your rival's turn are instants and interrupts, though you may also use permanents that are already in play. Permanents may not be removed from play by choice, but only as a result of some card effect.

Interrupts (and later mana sources) would later go away and just be folded into instants. The current card types are: artifact, conspiracy, creature, enchantment, instant, land, phenomenon, plane, planeswalker, scheme, sorcery, tribal, and vanguard. We've come a long way. We also no longer refer to creatures as "summon". (Interestingly, Alpha does call artifact creatures "Artifact Creature" rather than "Artifact Summon", no idea why there's that inconsistency.)

Some permanents have costs associated with them. In this case, the spell description will contain the cost, or the effect will be preceded by a colon and the cost. For example, 3: Do one damage to any target, would mean that for three mana (of no particular color), you could do one damage to any target. Sometimes these effects may require you to tap the permanent as well.

You cannot cast a spell or use a fast effect if a target is needed and is not available. For example, the effect   : Destroy a black card in play cannot be used if no black cards are in play.

The term "you" on a spell always means the person currently controlling the spell. The controller is usually the person who cast the spell, but this occasionally can change through a card effect. If a spell has a cost associated with it, only the controller of the spell can pay that cost.

If a spell affects a creature, land, or other item, and the card doesn't specifically say "of your opponent's" or "of yours", then you may choose either as the target. If the card says "player", you may take that to mean either player.

I find it very strange that they used "3" in the first example instead of "{3}", yet used "{W}" instead of "W" in the second example. Lack of consistency!

Artifacts: Artifacts never require any particular color of mana to put into play, and they may be used during the turn in which they are played. If an artifact becomes tapped, you may not use it again. Even its continuous effects cease until it is untapped. Artifacts often have a cost to use, which is listed on the card.



There are four types of artifacts:
1) Mono. These artifacts have one charge each round, and are tapped when used, making them unusable until untapped.
2) Poly. These artifacts may be used many times each turn and so are not tapped after use.
3) Continuous. These artifacts have a continuous effect on the play environment. They never have a cost to use, and the effect cannot be stopped unless the artifact is removed from play or tapped by a spell effect.
4) Creature. Treat artifact creatures as both artifacts and creatures; see "Creatures" on pp.21-22.

So... artifacts have changed quite a lot since Alpha. The idea of having four different kinds of artifacts was so unpopular that this was reversed as early as Revised! This was the first rules change in all of Magic's history: getting rid of these artifact types. The only cards that have these types are cards from Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights, and Antiquities. That's it.

The rules state that artifacts are colorless. Obviously, this was a thing for many years, with the first colored artifact being Transguild Courier in Dissension, and the first artifact that required colored mana being Sarcomite Myr from Future Sight. We're a long ways from that. Nowadays, colored artifacts are commonplace.

It may be confusing the whole Mono/Poly/Continuous thing, so let me give some examples. A mono artifact is an artifact that taps to do a thing. An example of this would be Sol Ring. You just tap it and then it does its thing. A poly artifact has an activated ability that doesn't have {T} in its cost. An example of this would be Ivory Cup. You just pay {1} to use it, but you don't need to tap it. It's important to remember that Alpha didn't have the {T} symbol in it at all. Everything that had {T} as a cost just said "Tap to do whatever" on the card. So that's the difference between Mono and Poly.

Continuous artifacts had what we now refer to as "static abilities". An example of this is Ankh of Mishra. As long as it's in play, its effect is active. Period. There was, however, an exception. The original rulebook said that if you somehow found a way to tap an artifact, then its static abilities would no longer be "turned on" until it untapped. The problem? Wizards of the Coast themselves kept forgetting that this rule existed. So many cool artifacts were designed with effects that affect both players. But if you found a way to tap it each turn so that it wouldn't function when you didn't want it to, you could break this. This was unintentional. And this was a pitfall that Wizards fell into over and over again. So they at last just removed the rule from the rulebook in Sixth Edition, ensuring that artifacts are always on. If they want it to only be on when the card is untapped, then they just add rules text to say "If this card is untapped, it does this." Which makes a lot more sense. (Howling Mine, Static Orb, and Winter Orb are the only three cards that got this errata, to show how often it was forgotten.)

And as for artifact creatures, I trust you know this one. They work the same way in 1993 as they do today.

Enchantments: Enchantments are called either enchantment or enchant [something], where "something" is another card type, such as a creature. They have a lasting effect on the game after they are cast. You may only cast an enchantment during the main phase of your turn. Some enchantments have a cost listed before the effect; this is the cost to use. An enchantment with a cost may only be used and paid for by the controller (usually the caster). If the enchantment has no cost, it is constantly in effect. An enchantment may be used more than once each turn, and it is never tapped.

An enchantment can even be used more than once at a time. For example, if an enchantment costs 1 red mana to add 1 to a creature's power, you can spend 3 red mana and give an extra 3 power to the enchanted creature.

If the spell enchants something, put the enchantment card on top of the card you wish to enchant. You can enchant your rival's cards, but be careful to retrieve your enchantment cards when they are removed from play. If an enchanted card is put out of play, the enchantments cast upon it are discarded.

If the spell just says "enchantment", put the card face up in front of you. Such an enchantment will either affect the environment of the game or give you a special power. Both players are subject to the effects of an enchantment unless the card says otherwise.



Ah, the good old days when Auras didn't say "Aura" on them.

This is mostly an accurate description of how enchantments work, even today. I will say that I never got why Auras and global enchantments were grouped into the same card type, when they play so differently. I feel like this should have been two different card types. Heck, you could make global enchantments into artifacts without much issue. The rules for artifacts and the rules for enchantments are basically the same. The only difference being that a card that says "destroy target artifact" can't destroy an enchantment and vice versa. There are some design rules, such as artifacts usually being colorless (though that is starting to go away) and enchantments never tapping, but otherwise? They're pretty much the same. Flavorfully, of course, they are wildly different. But that's just about the only thing separating them.

Instants: An instant can be played at any time, and is always discarded afterwards. You cannot interrupt your rival with an instant, but your rival's spells do not take effect until after you have had a chance to respond with instants and other fast effects. Once you have responded, your rival can respond to you, and so forth. After all responses are finished, all spells take place at the same time.

Interrupts: Interrupts can be played by either player at any time. Many interrupts modify the effects of spells; you cast them just as you or your rival are playing a spell you want to change. Although you must discard the interrupt immediately after you play it, its modification to a spell such as a summoning can be permanent. If you are not sure if you want to cast an interrupt, ask your rival to wait while you think. After your rival casts another spell, it is too late to interrupt the first. You may interrupt your own spells, and you and your rival can play more than one interrupt at a time. If you interrupt your own spells, your interrupt happens before your rival's. You may also interrupt an interrupt.

Sorceries: These spells are discarded after use and can only be played during your main phase.

Here's the nonpermanent spells: instants, interrupts, and sorceries. I will make no attempt to understand how the timing was meant to work here, cause it is and always has been a mess. Thank god they cleaned this up.

Summonings: Summoning spells, which can only be cast during the main phase of your turn, bring creatures into play. A creature cannot attack, or use a special ability that would tap it, until you begin a turn with it in play.

Yep. All that is still true, though we don't say "Summon" anymore. It is very strange that they had the cards were "Summonings" while on the stack (or, rather, what passed for a stack back in 1993), but were then called "Creatures" when they were in play. I can't see how they thought these wouldn't be combined into one term. It seems so obvious. I get that it's more flavorful if it's a summoning spell that creates a creature, but still. Then again, I am talking about the same guys who didn't think to write "Enchantment" on Auras. (Without a rulebook, you'd have no idea that a Disenchant could destroy an Aura.)

The Color of Spells and Effects

For the purposes of certain spells, a card is considered the color of the mana required to cast it. Land has no color, and neither do artifacts. If a card has an effect, that effect is considered to have the same color as the card. If a creature has its toughness or strength changed by a card of a different color than the creature, the color of the creature does not change. However, a card may change color as the result of a spell. Remember, though, that a card can only have one color at any one time.

Example: Circles of Protection are important defensive cards that cancel the damage done to you by a certain color of creature or spell. Each such defense costs 1 mana. Let's assume you have a Circle of Protection from red magic, and you are attacked by a Goblin, which is a red creature. The green instant Giant Growth has been cast on the Goblin, which adds to the damage of the Goblin's attack. However, you can still cancel all of the damage with your Circle of Protection for 1 mana, because the actual attack is from a red creature. If all you had was a Circle of Protection from green magic, you could not cancel any damage. The green spell affects the creature's strength, but does not affect its color.

I think Richard Garfield thought that color would be a bigger deal than it ended up being. There's an entire cycle of cards at rare that change the color of a spell or permanent. And they do nothing else! They're among the worst rares in the set.

"A card can only have one color at a time" would become outdated just two years after this, with the release of the Legends expansion and many multicolor cards. Obviously, multicolor is a staple in Magic today and it's hard to imagine the game without it.

We get another example that uses specific cards (Circles of Protection and Giant Growth). As I said, these are a rarity. Gotta keep those secrets secret.

Creatures

Any cards with numbers in the lower right-hand corners are considered creatures. They are brought into play mainly by summoning spells, but sometimes other spells bring them into being as well. Walls are considered creatures; the only differences are that they cannot attack and are subject to some additional spells. Summons are always Summon [Creature Type]. The creature type indicates exactly what sort of creature is summoned.

I'm gonna stop you right there. The first sentence here is technically wrong. Jade Statue, from Alpha is an artifact for 4 mana. You can pay {2} to turn it into a 3/6 creature until end of combat. This card, despite not being a creature by default, is printed with a power/toughness in the right-hand corner of 3/6. Though this has obviously been removed via errata (the card would be reprinted much later in Ninth Edition without the power/toughness). This unique oddity makes Jade Statue the only noncreature card with power/toughness printed on it, until the release of Vehicles in Kaladesh.

Next up, Walls. Nowadays, we have the keyword Defender for this, which enables non-Walls to also sometimes be unable to attack. But although we have yet to see a Wall without Defender, it is possible to use card effects to remove Defender from Walls, or to turn non-Defenders into Walls and still enable them to attack, because they don't have Defender. So an attacking Wall could work today. But back in 1993, having the Wall creature type meant having Defender.

Creature types in Alpha are very rarely relevant, though there are a few cards that care about tribal: Goblin King, Lord of Atlantis, and Zombie Master give a bonus to each of your goblins, merfolk, and zombies, respectively. This doesn't mean much at first glance, since there's only two goblins in the set, one merfolk, and one zombie (technically two zombies if you include Scavenging Ghoul, which was not printed as a Zombie but later errata'd to be such). But remember, there is no four-per-card restriction, so a single card is all you need to start a tribal deck. Just include ten copies of it.

Creature types in Alpha were a bit of a mess, though not as bad as you probably think. The creature types found in Alpha are: Angel, Assassin, Avatar, Basilisk, Bear, Bodyguard, Cleric, Clone, Cockatrice, Demon, Djinn, Doppelganger, Dragon, Dwarf, Elemental, Elf, Enchantress, Faerie, Force, Fungusaur, Gaea's-Liege, Gargoyle, Ghoul, Giant, Goblin, Goblin-King, Hero, Hydra, Imp, Knight, Lion, Lord, Lord-of-Atlantis, Mammoth, Mana-Bird, Merfolk, Minotaur, Nightmare, Nymph, Ogre, Orc, Paladin, Pegasus, Phantasm, Rat, Roc, Serpent, Shade, Shadow, Ship, Skeleton, Specter, Spider, Treefolk, Troll, Unicorn, Vampire, Wall, Will-O'-the-Wisp, Wizard, Wolf, Wraith, Wurm, and Zombie.

That's about a 50/50 rate of "makes sense to have as a creature type" and "should not be a creature type".

All creatures have two characteristics listed in the lower right corner: first power, then toughness. A creature's power rating indicates the amount of damage it does when it hits, while toughness indicates how much damage it takes to destroy the creature. Damage done to a creature accumulates throughout a turn, and is healed at the end of the turn.

Some creatures have special abilities that may or may not have a cost associated with them. The cost will be listed preceding the effect, or be included in the description of the effect. If the effect taps the creature the description will say that. Otherwise the ability may be used more than once in a turn.

The turn a creature comes into play on your side, it may not be tapped either to attack, or to use a special ability. However, you may use such a creature for defense. This restriction ends when you begin a turn with the creature already in play.

Funnily enough, this wording implies that creatures with vigilance (of which Alpha has one: Serra Angel) can attack as though they had haste.

Some spells refer to the normal characteristics of a creature. These characteristics include creature type, power, toughness, summoning cost, and special abilities. They do not include any enchantments that may have been placed on the creature.

Occasionally, a card will ask for the sacrifice of a creature. If this happens, you may choose a creature of yours to put out of play. This creature is placed into your graveyard, and it cannot be regenerated (see "Creature Abilities" on pp.27-29).



Funnily enough, this shows a real card, but doesn't give all the details. Yes, it's a Hurloon Minotaur, which is a vanilla 2/3 for {1}{R}{R}. But this doesn't show the art or the creature type. It just says "Summon Creature". It makes me wonder if that's how creatures were originally written (maybe with the exception of Wall), before they decided to design cards that make creature types relevant. And as for the flavor text, it is accurate to the card from Alpha, except that the actual card doesn't abbreviate "mountains". It lists the flavor text as "description of creature", which is interesting. In Alpha, only creature cards get flavor text. No non-creature has flavor text, except for Jade Statue, which I guess they thought was a creature based on the fact that it has power and toughness printed on its card. Perhaps they originally intended to only put flavor text on creatures, before expanding it to other card types. (Update: I have since found out that Firebreathing, an Aura, does have flavor text in this set (but no other card without power/toughness does). So much for that theory.)

Damage

If a player suffers damage, that player loses one life point for each point of damage suffered. If a creature is damaged, note how much damage it took, in case it suffers more damage later in the turn (you usually won't need counters for this). If the damage done to the creature in one turn is equal to or greater than its toughness, the creature is destroyed and must be put into the graveyard. If a spell does damage but the card doesn't specify a target, the controller may choose to damage either player or any creature.

Looks good to me.

Destroyed, Discarded, Countered, and Removed Cards

When a card is destroyed or discarded, it is placed into the graveyard. If a spell is countered as it is being cast, it, too, goes into the graveyard, without ever having its effect. Occasionally, a card will be removed from the game entirely. In this case, it is set aside until the next game.

This is all accurate to modern-day as well, except that "removed from the game" got renamed to "exile". Exiling is pretty rare in Alpha. Only two cards (Disintegrate and Swords to Plowshares) do it. Though I suppose anything that makes you ante a card may as well exile it.

The Attack

You may announce one attack during your main phase. After you announce an attack, only fast effects may be used until the end of the attack; no sorcery may be cast and no new enchantments, creatures, artifacts, or land may be put into play.

Attacking creatures are considered tapped as soon as the attack is declared, so you may not use special abilities during the attack if they require you to tap the creature. Defending creatures are not tapped. It is important to note that attacking creatures can only attack your rival. They may not attack your rival's creatures—though your rival's creatures can attempt to block them. They may not attack each other or you.

Apart from the fact that this is no longer in the main phase, this is accurate to how it works nowadays too.

The turn sequence for an attack is as follows:

1) Player Declares Attack
2) Opponent Declares Defense
3) Fast Effects
4) Damage Dealing

Player Declares Attack: To attack, first indicate which creatures are attacking. Walls and tapped creatures may not attack, and creatures that did not start the turn in play in your territory may not attack.

Opponent Declares Defense: After you announce your attack, your rival chooses the defense, indicating which defending creature is blocking which attacking creature. Tapped creatures may not block. An attacking creature need not be blocked, and a defending creature is not compelled to block. More than one creature may block a single attacking creature, but one creature may not block more than one attacking creature. After the defense has been announced, a blocked attacking creature attacks only the creatures blocking it, even if the blockers are somehow neutralized or destroyed before the attack is resolved.

Example: The player announces an attack with creatures A, B, and C, tapping them accordingly. Defender can elect to block with creatures X and Y. X and Y could both gang up on B; X could block C while Y does nothing; or X could block B while Y blocks A. However, Y could not block B and C, while X blocks A, since one defending creature can only block one attacking creature, or group of banded creatures. Defending creatures which block are not tapped.



Fast Effects: After the defender has finished declaring blocking, both the attacker and the defender can use enchantments or artifacts in play, instants, or interrupts to affect the outcome of the battle. You may also use fast effects during the attack and defense declarations, even though this phase is set aside for that purpose.

So far, this is surprisingly accurate. I guess combat hasn't changed much.

Damage Dealing: When the attack is resolved, every unblocked attacking creature does its power in damage to the defender, removing that many life points. Blocked creatures will not do any damage to the defender, only to the blocking creatures. A blocked attacking creature receives damage from all the defending creatures blocking it. A blocked attacking creature may distribute its power in damage to the blockers in whatever arrangement the attacker chooses. If a creature became tapped after it was assigned as a blocker, the creature still blocks but doesn't deal any damage. All damage dealt during this round is considered simultaneous.



Example: An Ogre, with power and toughness 2, attacks. The defense has two Goblins, each with power and toughness 1. The defender may choose any of the following: let the Ogre through unblocked and suffer 2 life points of damage; block with one Goblin, killing the Goblin and doing 1 point of damage to the ogre; or block with both Goblins, killing the Ogre and both Goblins. In the last case, the attacker could also choose to have the Ogre do 2 points of damage to one Goblin, allowing the other Goblin to survive.

Many creature abilities that affect combat are described in the following section.

Me and my big mouth. First of all, the whole "tapped blockers don't deal damage" thing isn't a thing anymore. This rule went away in Sixth Edition, presumably because it was very weird. Additionally, the rules no longer have you assign damage however you like. You instead order the blockers. In the example above, the attacker couldn't choose to do 2 damage to a single Goblin and let one blocker live. Regardless of how you order the goblins, both of them will die. This changed in Magic 2010, I think. Though if I recall correctly, it does revert back to the original way if a creature with banding is involved, though I may be wrong about that. I'm a little rusty on the rules for banding, because, well, it's a stupid overly-complicated mechanic. I could brush up, but ehhh. There's not really much benefit to learning it. I will say that though I agree with many rules changes that have come since Alpha, this is one that I disagree with. I feel like the attacker should be allowed to assign damage however they wish. If the Ogre's controller wants to do 2 damage to a single Goblin, that's fine. I'm okay with that.

I do love how they're so secretive that they don't give card names. They're just "Goblin" and "Ogre", even though, with those power/toughness combinations, it's clearly a Gray Ogre and two Mons's Goblin Raiders.

Finally, what is up with "many creature abilities that affect combat are described in the following section"? That line of text is entirely filler. You could just start talking about them without saying that you're going to be talking about them. It'd make sense if there was a page break between that line and the next section... but there isn't one. So I don't get it.

Before we get to that, just a quick reminder that reminder text didn't exist until Mirage. So until then... if you wanted to know what "flying" or "first strike" meant, you needed a rulebook. Let's see how good they are at describing each keyword!

Creature Abilities

Some creatures naturally have special abilities, and any creature with the appropriate creature enchantments may acquire special abilities. Some of the most common abilities are listed below.

Huh. So I guess originally the plan was for keywords to be a creatures-only thing? Fascinating. Obviously, nowadays, plenty of mechanics, like flashback and buyback, are on non-creatures. And plenty more, like madness, cycling, and kicker, can go on either creatures or non-creatures.

Regeneration: Regeneration prevents a creature from going to the graveyard. This ability must be used at the moment the creature would normally be removed from play. Creatures that have already been discarded into the graveyard cannot be regenerated. Enchantments on a regenerated creature remain in play. When a creature is regenerated, it is always tapped. A creature that is sacrificed may not be regenerated.

Regeneration is complicated, but this is a good summary. Worth noting, if it would be destroyed and you regenerate it, that only prevents one destruction. A later destruction effect, even in the same turn, would require you to regenerate again. Also notable is that if you regenerate a creature while it is mid-combat, whether as an attacker or a defender, it will be removed from combat as a result.

Evasion Abilities: Some creatures have the ability flies, which means that they can only be blocked by other flying creatures. Other creatures have landwalk abilities, such as swampwalk or forestwalk. If the defender has a land of the relevant type in play, such as swamp for swampwalk, the attacking creature cannot be blocked, even by creatures with the same landwalk ability.

Obviously "flies" got renamed to "flying", and other than that, this is on-point. I don't understand why the rules group flying and landwalk together. Weird. I also feel that renaming "flies" to "flying" was the wrong call. It should have been renamed to "flight" instead. "Target creature gains flight" sounds a lot more grammatically correct than "target creature gains flying". There is one card with reach in this set, Giant Spider, though it's not keyworded yet (and wouldn't be until Future Sight). So the rules can ignore the mention of how a non-flyer can block a flyer if it has reach. (Giant Spider's original text was "Does not fly, but can block flying creatures.")

Bands: A creature with the ability bands has two special powers.

A banding creature may join forces with another attacking creature. The resulting band must be blocked or let through as a unit. If any creature in the band is blocked, the entire band is blocked. There can be more than two creatures in an attacking band, though all but one must have the bands ability.

Anytime a group of your creatures blocks, or is blocked, and one or more have the ability bands, then the damage they receive from your rival's creatures is not distributed among them by your rival as usual, but by you. You may choose to assign more damage to a creature than it can survive.

*groan* I am far too lazy to look up how banding works to see how accurate this is. Based on what I remember, this sounds right though. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. (In practice, the ability "banding" means "Both players argue for an hour about how this ability works, then they finally just give up, scoop up their Magic cards, and go to the bar for a drink instead." By the way, Wizards, feel free to use that as reminder text if you ever bring banding back. Also, just don't bring banding back.)

Trample: A creature with trample can do damage to the defender even if blocked. Such a creature does a special kind of damage called trample damage. If a blocker has sufficient damage to destroy it then any trample damage done in excess of that amount is applied to the defender instead.

Yep, that works.

Protection: A creature with protection from one or more colors of magic cannot be affected by any magic of those colors. For example, a creature with protection from blue cannot be blocked by blue creatures, dealt damage by blue creatures, or enchanted, damaged, or otherwise affected by blue cards. Damage done by such a creature cannot be prevented using blue cards. Note that the creature does not have this ability until it is successfully summoned. If, for example, you are summoning a creature with protection from blue magic, your rival can still cast a blue interrupt that affects the summoning spell.

Protection has undergone a LOT of changes to make it, well, make sense. Alpha originally was pretty sporadic about its usage of the word "target". Targeting is a very crucial tool for the rules in Magic the Gathering. Once designers realized this, they were able to clean up protection a bit. But as originally written in the original Alpha rulebook? A card with protection could not be affected by that color (there was no protection from anything other than a color) at all. For instance, protection from white would save a creature from a Wrath of God, which it clearly wouldn't do today. The classic example of a confusing rules case, though? Suppose you have a creature with protection from white, and someone casts Balance. What happens? Balance counts the number of creatures each player has, then destroys a number of them in order to make the players equal in creature count. Can Balance get rid of the creature with pro-white? Can it even "see" the creature with pro-white in order to count it? It's... incredibly unclear. Luckily, protection is streamlined now and only protects against certain things: blocking, damaging, enchanting, equipping, fortifying, and targeting.

First Strike: Creatures with first strike have the ability to hit their blockers, or the creatures they are attacking, before being damaged themselves. During the dealing damage phase of an attack, first strikers deal their damage first, simultaneously. Afterwards, surviving creatures without first strike deal their damage.

So, it's not exactly clear from this rulebook, but it is worth noting that players can cast instants (or interrupts, in the case of Alpha, I guess) and activate abilities in between first strike damage and regular damage. Though to be fair, this isn't intuitive in the modern rules either. Very few players are aware that you can do this.

Mana Enhanced Power/Toughness: You may be able to increase the power or toughness of some creatures by spending mana. This enhancement lasts until the end of the turn. You may spend as much mana of the appropriate type as you like to increase the creature's characteristic. For example, if a creature's characteristics are listed as " : +1/+0", you could increase the creature's power by 1 for each added black mana, but you could not increase its toughness.

That's not a keyword! Why is it here? Well, presumably because it's not written out on Alpha cards. It would literally just say "{B}: +1/+0" rather than "{B}: This creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn." I think Richard Garfield messed up on this one, and they should have used the modern day templating instead. Though it's easy to say that in hindsight. I also find it curious that their example of firebreathing uses black mana instead of red. Red is far more frequent, both nowadays and back in Alpha. Indeed, in Alpha, there are NO black cards that have this ability. This is a red ability, found on Wall of Fire, Shivan Dragon, and Dragon Whelp, as well as being granted by the Firebreathing enchantment. It's also found on the blue card Wall of Water, which is obviously just done as a mirror of Wall of Fire (Alpha had a lot of mirrored pairings). But no black cards.

Timing

Oh boy. With a title like that, I can't wait. This is gonna be full of pre-stack stupidity, isn't it?

In general, you should try and cast as few spells at once as possible, because it makes things simpler. It also gives your rival less information upon which to plan his or her actions. Occasionally, there will be conflicts of timing when both players want to use spell effects at the same time. When this happens, the player whose turn it is announces their spells and effects first. Then, the other player can respond to each one with one or more fast effects (instants, artifacts in play, enchantments in play, or creature special abilities). These reactions can be reacted to, and so forth, and nothing happens until both players have finished taking actions. At this point, all spells take effect simultaneously. Usually, the outcome will be clear, but if the timing of any two effects makes a difference, the player casting the later spell gets to choose whether it occurs before or after the conflicting spell. Once it is announced, nothing can stop a fast effect unless it is countered immediately by an interrupt. Once a spell is announced, the mana has been spent, whether or not the spell actually takes effect as planned.

An exception to this are interrupts, which are resolved as soon as they are announced, unless the interrupt itself is interrupted. Don't literally interrupt your rival with these; let him or her finish saying just how their spell will be used, and how much mana is being spent on it. Then announce your interrupt before another spell is cast. Your rival must give you the opportunity to do this. Your rival can also interrupt the spell or your interrupt with another interrupt, and so forth. If the same spell has more than one interrupt done during its casting, the caster of that spell does his or her interrupts first, regardless of whether it was announced first. Interrupts take effect immediately, unless they themselves are interrupted, in which case you resolve their interruptions first. Interrupts commonly counter the spell being cast, but they sometimes change it in some way or have some peculiar side effect. Effects which take mana into your mana pool are usually interrupts, so you can get mana for your spells quickly enough to respond to your rival's actions.

Though a spell or effect that needs a target cannot be used unless a target exists, it is possible for a target to disappear before the spell affects it. In this case the effect is ignored, though the mana is used, and the spell is still considered cast.

Example: Your rival uses an artifact. You respond by destroying the artifact with a spell. Since your spell is not an interrupt, the artifact's effect still takes place, though your rival can't use it again.

Example: You cast a blue spell, and your rival interrupts with an Elemental Blast—a spell that counters blue spells. You announce an interrupt that changes blue cards to green cards, in order to change your original spell to a green spell. Your interrupt goes first since you are the original spellcaster, and changes your spell to a green spell. The target of your rival's spell is no longer legal, so that spell is simply discarded to the graveyard.

Example: Your rival casts a spell that would kill your creature. You respond by casting Unsummon, which puts the creature back into your hand. You cannot have a creature simultaneously go to the graveyard and into your hand, so the outcome depends on the timing of the spells. You may choose whether the Unsummon comes before or after the damage spell, since you cast your spell last. Naturally, you choose to have it come first and the creature is safely in your hand when the damaging spell takes effect. The damaging spell may not be redirected, and since its target is no longer in play it must simply be discarded. If your rival had responded to your Unsummon with another damage-dealing spell, your rival could have opted to have that last spell take effect before your Unsummon, giving your creature the deep-six.

I... I... I... I can't even...

So... yeah.

I don't even know where to begin with this.

For the record, this is NOT how timing worked pre-Sixth Edition in their madness. If you want info on that, I already posted a link earlier in this very thread. This is just... random noise.

Richard Garfield really ought to have worked out timing better than this. Let's analyze this.

"In general, you should try and cast as few spells as possible." Gee, thanks. What I love about this is that it's basically an admission of defeat. You know your timing system is bad when you are actively telling your players to try and avoid using it.

Then the rest of that paragraph talks about how each player goes back and forth with using fast effects, with the player whose turn it is going first, and then when everyone's done, all those effects happen at the same time, but that if there's a conflict, the later spell takes priority, but only if its controller wants it to. This is maddening. I couldn't even IMAGINE playing Magic like this. There seems to be a whole lot of interactions that would be unclear.

And then we get the rules of interrupts! And they're... pretty confusing.

Interrupts don't wait for players to finish responding to each other, they just happen immediately. Though you can delay them by casting an interrupt on the interrupt. Though of course, those interrupts could also be interrupted and so forth. Then you resolve from the innermost interrupt to the outermost. I think? Look, I'm getting confused by this and I'm pretty knowledgeable about Magic.

...

(some time later)

So I literally just now decided to go through the entirety of Alpha and look at all of the Interrupts (well, technically Beta, so I didn't have to deal with misprints), and okay. I think I have a pretty good grasp on this now. Interrupts are always one of four things: (1) mana producers (like Dark Ritual). This makes sense, since nothing is faster than a mana ability. You can always produce mana whenever you need to, potentially in order to cast another interrupt. (2) counterspells. This is the most common type of interrupt. (3) color-changing effects. And (4) the card "Fork", which copies an instant or sorcery spell and choose new targets for the copy (interestingly, you can't copy interrupts with this), though the copy becomes red.

So basically, aside from mana sources (which, remember, would later become their own card type before being folded back into instants), everything that is an interrupt is just anything that can target a spell on the stack, and thus possibly modify what would happen when that spell resolves.

I guess that works, given how, in Alpha, apparently all spells resolve at the same time. If interrupts also adhered to such a system, they literally would not work, because they need a spell to target.

We also get the rules about spells "fizzling" if they lose their target. That's been a rule that's been around from day one, huh? Fascinating. I think everyone agrees that this is a bad rule though, but it's too late to change it. Like, if a card effect says "destroy target enchantment, draw a card" and your opponent sacrifices the enchantment in response, then your spell loses its target and fizzles, thus doing nothing. You don't even get to draw a card. I think that this is unintuitive and stupid though. You SHOULD be able to draw a card. The rules, even to this day, are a bit dumb about this.

By the way, fun fact: prior to the release of the Dominaria expansion, a spell that "fizzles" would be considered to be countered by the game's rules. Now, the spell isn't "countered", it just "doesn't resolve". If you ever see a pre-Dominaria Aura or a pre-Dominaria instant/sorcery that has targets, and it says "can't be countered" on it, the wording actually says on the printed cards "can't be countered by spells or abilities" to indicate that they are still indeed countered by game rules if they lose their targets. Though they have since been errata'd to simply say that they "can't be countered". Another fun interaction is Multani's Presence. This has the effect of "Whenever a spell you've cast is countered, draw a card." Naturally, this card got a lot worse once Dominaria came out and the fizzle rules changed.

Anywho, back to Alpha.

We then get THREE example interactions. Again, I feel like this is an admission of defeat by Richard, knowing that his timing system still had some kinks to work out, given the sheer number of examples he gave. I do hate how he refers to destroying a creature as "giving [it] the deep-six". Richard, your rulebook is where people will go when they are confused. This is not the place for jokes. Just say "destroy". You're trying to clear up confusion, so the less ambiguity you have, the better.

Variations of Play

You can play Magic with only one deck if it is large enough. Just divide it between the players. One way to play in this case is with antes, continuing until one player wins enough cards to render the other's deck unplayable (though, of course, the owner gets all the cards back afterwards). This can take a while if the deck is large.

Huh. I've never thought to play Magic that way. Have a super-large library of cards that gets dealt between players before the game begins. That's... kinda interesting actually.

By mutual consent, players may agree not to play for ante. This is recommended until you get a feel for the game. You can also agree to reduce the stakes. For example, you could agree that one card goes to the winner of a full set, rather than risking your ante for each duel. You can also agree not to "play for keeps" but exchange ante anyway, keeping track of won and lost cards on paper so they can be returned afterwards. After all, it's fun to try to work with new spells and a shifting distribution of cards.

Hahahahahahahaha. In other words, play the game the way that it always should have been. :P

This is legitimately hilarious to me. "If you want, you can play without ante!" That's literally what this says.

I love it.

Naturally, ante was so abysmally unpopular (the worst mechanic in all of Magic's history) that this "variant" became the official way to play Magic very quickly. Though the fact that various places have gambling laws probably also contributed to this. Yeah... if your game's rulebook violates local laws... then you know you fucked up.

Rules for multiplayer Magic, tournament Magic, and league Magic are forthcoming.

Huh. So they were planning multiplayer from the beginning? That's... honestly surprising to me. If you read the printed text of every Magic card in existence, you'll find that early Magic cards make no reference to the fact that you might have more than one opponent. As far as I'm aware, the first card to do so was Syphon Soul from Legends. But I guess Richard Garfield was planning to do multiplayer even during the early days.

No idea what the difference between tournament rules and league rules would be. Aren't those the same thing?

About the Rules

If a card contradicts the rules, the card takes precedence.

This has always been one of Magic's "Golden Rules", from Alpha all the way to today. And if you look into the rules, you'll quickly see why. This is VERY necessary to make the game function. And yet... I hate this. Simply because far too many people quote this rule and erroneously assume that it means whatever they want it to mean. There are times when this rule applies and times when it doesn't. But there's a lot of ignorance around this. Still, it is one of the most important rules in all of Magic, so I can't fault Richard for including it.

Be prepared to encounter house versions of this game when you play someone you haven't played before. These rules are a framework from which to start; after you know how to play, your play group may develop local rules, new ways to play particular cards, or other variations. Just be sure before you start that everyone is playing the same game.

Yeah.... that never really panned out much. Players wanted consistency. But I do admire Richard for thinking that this could work.

During the course of a game, a dispute that you cannot solve by referencing the rules may occur. If both players agree, you can resolve the difference for the current game with a coin toss. After the duel, you can come to a decision about how you want to play such a situation in the future. If the players don't agree to a coin toss, both players retrieve their ante and the duel is a draw.

Seriously!? A coin toss!? You just can't make this stuff up...

Some Questions and Answers

Oh boy. Let's see what they thought would be the most frequently-asked questions. On a side note, why couldn't they call this "Frequently Asked Questions"?

Q: Can I use my Giant to kill my rival's Goblin?

A: Not unless your rival uses the Goblin to block your Giant or your rival attacks you with the Goblin, in which case you can block with the Giant. The only time creatures fight each other is when blocking.

I respect them putting this here. Far too often I see people come to Magic from Yugioh and Hearthstone (or just people who are new to TCGs in general too) and wrongly assume that creatures can attack each other.

Q: Can I use my Shatter spell to get rid of my rival's artifact before she uses it?

A: The Shatter spell is an instant that destroys an artifact. When your rival puts the artifact into play you cannot use Shatter, because until it is in play it is a spell, not an artifact. Once it is in play, you could destroy the artifact first if Shatter were an interrupt. Since it isn't, your rival will have the opportunity to use the artifact concurrent to its destruction. Maybe if you had an interrupt artifact destroyer, or could counter the artifact when she was putting it into play, you could get it out of play before she could use it.

This is literally the exact same example as the "Timing" section above, except that this time they actually named the card in question (Shatter) rather than leaving it a mystery. I have no idea why the same example is in the rulebook twice. You couldn't think of a different example? Really?

Q: My friend got several Magic decks and put them together into one deck. How can I compete with that without doing the same?

A: There are many answers to this question. If your friend is playing with more powerful cards, then your occasional victories will net you more valuable cards. Or perhaps your friend would agree to play with a handicap. For example, he might play with some of the weaker cards he doesn't normally use. You can also work up a competitive deck of your own, simply by trading and dueling. A person who obtains their cards by guile is usually more formidable than a person who simply buys them. You can also use the option of splitting your friend's deck into two, as described in the "Variations of Play" section on p. 32.

Hahahaha. So, here's the funny thing. Magic the Gathering was the original "microtransaction" game. The more you spend, the more in-game things you have. So I get that they need to include this, because they need to make it sound like you can win without spending a lot of money. Naturally, that's not the case. But they can't be blatant about how they just want to take your money.

Either that, or they were genuinely ignorant about just how pay-to-win Magic is/was.

Q: My opponent keeps using her Circles of Protection. How can I get around those?

A: A Circle of Protection against a color you rely on can be crippling. However, there are many spells which cripple or destroy enchantments. If you don't have any of those, try waiting until your rival uses a lot of mana. Then, try to lure her into investing all of her the rest of her mana in Circles or in some other defensive measure, and, when she is out of mana to spend on them, slip in a spell you really want to cast.

In general, though, any time you rely too heavily on one thing, be it one color of magic, or one particular creature, it is usually not too hard to construct a deck to cripple it. To overcome this, vary your card mix so your opponent doesn't always know what to expect.

That's... actually solid advice. No complaints.

Q: Can my opponent do something that doesn't make sense, such as casting both Holy Strength and Unholy Strength on his Air Elemental?

A: Yes, these effects are magical, after all.

So... this would be a neat format idea. Every time you want to do something, you must come up with a flavorful justification for it. If you can't, then your play is invalid and must be undone. If players disagree on whether a move makes flavorful sense or not, you have an impartial third party "flavor judge" make the ruling for you. I'd be down for trying that out sometime.

With Art By:
Rob Alexander
Julie Baroh
Melissa Benson
Kev Brockschmidt
Cornelius Brudi
Sandra Everingham
Dan Frazier
Daniel Gelon
Quinton Hoover
Fay Jones
Anson Maddocks
Jeff A. Menges
Jesper Myrfors
Mark Poole
Christopher Rush
Andi Rusu
Douglas Schuler
Brian Snoddy
Ron Spencer
Mark Tedin
Richard Thomas
Drew Tucker
Tom Wänerstrand
Amy Weber
Dameon Willich

And on the back cover of the rulebook, we conclude with a list of the 25 original Magic artists. By the way, the misspelling of Douglas Shuler's name is not my typo, it's theirs. It was typo'd in the original rulebook. I wonder how many of these artists are still doing Magic art today. I imagine not very many, if any at all. Eh, the list isn't too long. Fine, I'll check.

(some time later)

Okay, so the most recent new artwork from these artists was in the following expansions:

* Rob Alexander (Unsanctioned)
* Julie Baroh (Tempest)
* Melissa Benson (Urza's Legacy)
* Kev Brockschmidt (Alpha -- yep, he never came back for another expansion.)
* Cornelius Brudi (Ice Age)
* Sandra Everingham (Mystery Booster playtest cards -- if that doesn't count, due to not being "real" artwork, then the most recent is Alliances. Quite a large gap!)
* Dan Frazier (Time Spiral)
* Daniel Gelon (Time Spiral)
* Quinton Hoover (Morningtide)
* Fay Jones (Alpha -- yet again, never came back. And even in Alpha, she only illustrated a single card: Stasis, which has often gone down in Magic history for being the most abstract and weird art EVER to be put on a Magic card. She clearly wasn't fit for the tone that Magic was going for. So why is she here? Well... interesting fun fact: she is Richard Garfield's aunt. I assume she just wanted to be a part of his creation, so he let her do this one art.)
* Anson Maddocks (Time Spiral)
* Jeff A. Menges (Tempest)
* Jesper Myrfors (Fallen Empires -- he was Magic's original art director!)
* Mark Poole (Double Masters)
* Christopher Rush (Time Spiral -- though he's best known for illustrating Black Lotus and the Moxen, one little-known-fact about Christopher Rush is that he's the one responsible for designing the mana symbols {W}, {U}, {B}, {R}, and {G}. So he's arguably illustrated literally EVERY Magic card in existence, since his illustrations are on every Magic card. He's also the one who REALLY wanted to put full-art basic lands into the game, even though everyone else said no. His wish would later be granted in Unglued, and of course, player response was the exact opposite of what everyone else thought it would be. Players loved it! So you can thank him for your full-art lands. He was ahead of his time, I guess. Sadly he passed away in 2016.)
* Andi Rusu (Alliances)
* Douglas Shuler (Ninth Edition)
* Brian Snoddy (2017 MTGO Promo Card, and if that doesn't count, then Eternal Masters for his last paper card)
* Ron Spencer (Double Masters)
* Mark Tedin (Double Masters -- this gives a false impression. His art style is very stylistic, and while that is what he was going for with the full-art Urzatron for Double Masters, this is atypical from what Magic typically does. Prior to that, his last new art was a promo Sol Ring that had a similar artistic style. Prior to that, we go to Dominaria, but that art was for a Saga card, which also had a unique art style, since even in-universe, it depicted a drawing rather than an actual event. His last Magic art that truly fit with Magic's current art direction was way back in New Phyrexia, but to say that ignores QUITE a bit of recent work.)
* Richard Thomas (Unhinged)
* Drew Tucker (Eventide)
* Tom Wänerstrand (Mystery Booster playtest cards -- and if that doesn't count, then Time Spiral)
* Amy Weber (Alliances)
* Dameon Willich (Ice Age)

So I'm inclined to say that only three are still active: Rob Alexander, Mark Poole, and Ron Spencer. Possibly Mark Tedin as well.

So that's Magic's original rulebook! I hope you enjoyed taking this trip down memory lane with me!