Old Magic Rules: A Horrible Rat’s Maze
So, back in the ancient days of the early to mid 1990′s, Magic didn’t have a comprehensive rules system. The game began with basic rules like for any other game, with the understanding that a group of players would decide among themselves how a situation worked if it wasn’t clear.Â
(The original Alpha/Beta rulebook, whose text you can read here:Â http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25)
No one could have expected the amazing success that magic became so quickly, however. With more people getting introduced to Magic and more cards being printed, the need for official rulings on certain timings and interactions became increasingly important. These rulings were given by Magic’s first “rules manager” Beth Moursund, a.k.a. BethMo. She was the very first WotC netrep on usenet and her rulings were the closest thing to official policy that existed at the time.
Over time, these rules built up into an awful tangled mess, especially when it came to timing and priority. Early Magic didn’t have the stack, rather there were batches and at certain points a batch became complete and all of the spells and abilities in it would resolve without anyone being able to act until that batch was finished resolving.
These complicated rules were aptly illustrated in issue #9 of the Duelist, which featured this mindbending series of charts illustrating the timing rules:
(Image source:Â http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/rules-maze-2002-07-03)
So yeah… a little bit painful…
Other “highlights” of the early rules included:
Damage prevention windows
Creatures and other permanents being “on the way to the graveyard”
Combat not being its own separate phase, but just something the active player could go to at any point during their main phase
If you’re interested in learning more about this madness for some reason, you can read a copy of the Fifth Edition rules online here:Â
http://hudecekpetr.cz/other/rulebooks/rulebook-fifth-1997-03/index.html
Luckily, WotC came to their senses in 1999 and decided to overhaul the rules completely for Sixth Edition, finally giving us the first version of the Comprehensive Rules and streamlining spells and abilities with the Stack that we all know and love today.Â
While the rules have changed a bit since then, there hasn’t been a set of rules changes even approaching the magnitude of the Sixth Edition rules changes. (The Magic 2010 changes were a minor tremor in comparison.)
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