I’ve avoided writing about individual card design for two reasons. First, I usually find solo design a bit self-indulgent. Second, I want Wizards R&D to be able to read my articles—so they can learn how awesome I am and hire me.

So today, I’ll be looking at a different area of Magic design: the rules. Now, Magic’s rules have enough of a history that I would be loath to suggest making any radical changes in reality, but I want to explore how I would do things if I were starting fresh. Imagine that I’m designing some combination of Limited Edition Alpha and Magic 2010 for an alternate dimension in which Richard Garfield went into theoretical physics instead of game design.

Now, I’ll be using the current Magic rules as a point of departure. I believe that most if not all of the changes to date have been positive—the four-of card maximum, the stack, the elimination of interrupts, the addition of planeswalkers, and so on.

The Five Colors and the Mana System

These are Magic’s defining attributes, and they are the one thing that I wouldn’t change in the slightest. The philosophical and elemental breakdown and the ally/enemy pentagram are pure genius.

The mana system is occasionally derided by players for its variance, but that variance drives the game in subtle ways. The fact that sometimes you miss that critical fourth land drop and sometimes you flood out is part of the ebb and flow that makes the game tick.

Types

Artifacts and Enchantments

I seriously considered merging these into a single type. After all, they both fill the same role of noncreature permanent spell with little or no inherent rules difference. In the end, though, I decided that I liked the flavor and color pie implications of separating out physical objects and ephemeral magics. Colorless artifacts are mechanically distinct, and having different colors affect different types adds to the game.

Instants and Sorceries

One of the more first radical changes I would make is to eliminate instant as a distinct type. I’m not the first person to notice that instants are just sorceries with flash. Instead of having a type and keyword that do the same thing for different types, let’s just have a supertype that we mostly use on sorceries and occasionally throw on other spells. Unlike artifacts and enchantments, I never bought the flavorful distinction between instants and sorceries. The idea that red has some particular connection to sorceries whereas blue prefers instants always seemed ridiculous and arbitrary to me. In fact, I think “search for an instantaneous creature or sorcery spell” is much more interesting design space.

Turn Phases

I think the number of phases and steps in the Magic turn could afford to be slimmed down a bit. Having two main phases is a bit odd, the upkeep is poorly named and oddly timed, and combat has as many steps as the rest of the turn combined. Here’s how I would break things down:

Start

At the beginning of your starting phase, draw a card and untap all permanents you control, then you get priority and put start-of-turn triggers on the stack. I’ve always been annoyed by having to pay upkeep costs and make start-of-turn decisions before I see what my card is, and I think it adds more feel-bad moments than interesting strategy. I’m fine forcing people to use library manipulation at end of turn, and I like the symmetry of drawing being the very first thing you do and discarding being the very last thing you do.

Main Phase

This is maybe the most extreme change I’m suggesting: Eliminate the first main phase. It simplifies the turn structure at little cost to gameplay, and it actually has some less obvious, positive effects. It reduces memory issues with land drops, simplifies player communication regarding turn sequence, and eliminates the need for awful rules text like “at the beginning of you precombat main phase.”

Combat

Without a first main phase, we can reduce combat to three steps: attackers, blockers, and damage. The start phase can be used as a virtual beginning of combat step for preventing and forcing attacks, and the few non-instant pump spells such as Overrun can be only playable during your start phase.

The elimination of the first main phase also serves to eliminate the need for summoning sickness as a rule (more on that later). This changes creatures with tap abilities a bit, but I don’t have a problem with making skillhaste the default. Design can always use start-of-turn triggers or make a creature enter tapped if it needs to be delayed for gameplay reasons.

End

I think the end step can be left more or less unchanged. I actually like the ability to do things during your opponent's end step after he’s done for the turn—before having a cleanup step when things refresh and no one gets priority.

Keywords

Flying, Trample, First Strike

These abilities are all basically perfect as is. Flying has been called the most intuitive mechanic in Magic, and I usually explain trample to new players just by teaching how combat doesn’t normally work. First strike is slightly more complicated, but it pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin and is a good combat keyword.

Defender, Vigilance, Reach

These are all abilities that appeared in Alpha but were keyworded over a decade later. Even if they only appeared on a card or two, I think it would be worth keywording them to set a precedent for future cards and sets.

Haste, Flash

I mentioned earlier that removing the first main phase eliminated the need for summoning sickness, but where does that leave haste? The answer is that it’s hidden in the new instant supertype. You can cast an instant creature during your starting phase and then attack during combat. While rolling haste and flash together does increase their power level substantially, it also introduces a lot of strategic tension to the ability. Now you have to decide whether to play instant creatures precombat to get an extra attack in or to save them to ambush an opponent’s attack.

Fight

Fight is a sweet keyword action, but let’s take it even further. How difficult would it be to make creature combat count as fighting? It would a bit of definition changing, but I think it would really pay off in card text. I’d love to replace “whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked” with “whenever this creature fights.” And making first strike and bushido work with Prey Upon? Beautiful.

Hidden and Protected

Magic’s defensive keywords have generally been problematic. Protection is an overcomplicated mess of four distinct traits. Regeneration is painfully unintuitive. Shroud tacks a drawback onto the ability for no flavorful reason, but hexproof has proven to be problematic in large quantities. Indestructible is cool, but it is simply too powerful to use widely.

I invented a completely different breakdown that I think solves many of the problems. I combined all of these abilities into two new mechanics: protected and hidden. Protected from X means that the object cannot be damaged or destroyed by any spell or ability that is X. Hidden from X means that the object cannot be the target of any spell or ability with the X property.

I think that these two abilities are fairly intuitive and still give us a lot of design space to work with. Shroud and indestructible can be simulated by “hidden from everything” and “protected from everything” while still giving us room use more narrow and interesting variants. “Hidden and protected” does a pretty good impression of the existing protection keyword, and “hidden from opponents” gives us hexproof without adding vocabulary.

Double Strike, Deathtouch, Landwalk, Lifelink, Intimidate

These are all fine keywords that I think would make the cut eventually, but I don’t think they’re important enough that I would include them in the first set. I’m adding enough modern keywords and concepts that I feel it’s important to cut out some of the less critical rules to keep the first set accessible.

Wrapping Up

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little rules design walkthrough. If there’s interest, I would be happy to write a card design article on what new space these rules open and what I would do to adapt existing game concepts. Otherwise, I’ll probably return to Commander for a bit since I’ve given the topic a bit of rest.

What do you think? Am I providing some good ideas and elegant concepts or ruining the game you love? Let me know in the comments!