2001)

We arrived at the coffee house with three packs each. Excitement was all around as we prepared to booster draft.

Caffeine?

Check.

Booster packs?

Check.

Counters?

Check.

Land?

Oh no.

Now we have a problem! No one in the group had any extra land or decks. We only brought a pile of unopened booster packs! The blame game went around our group until Chris came up with a great idea. “Let’s try Mental Magic.” Mental Magic has been around for a long time, but I was indoctrinated into it only a couple of months ago.

Mental Magic is halfway between Fantasy Magic and Highlander Magic. These were two variants that our playgroup in Augusta, Michigan played when we got bored with the type-two scene. We used to have Fantasy decks filled with proxies; however, all of the proxies had to have the same casting cost as the item it was duplicating. For example, the Lotus Petal could be the Black Lotus. The other variant, Highlander Magic (named after the movie), was based on the idea that “there can be only one!” This constructed deck contained only one of any card except for basic land. To make things interesting, when an opponent played a spell (such as a lightning bolt), no other player could play their bolt. This forced our group games to be very strategic. Do I put in the Swords to Plowshares, or do I use Afterlife instead?

Mental Magic combines the best of both worlds by rewarding the player with the most creativity and knowledge of the game. Believe me, you want to play this game with a mental-equal and not a new player. If not, pick up a copy of Inquest magazine. They usually have a partial list of cards, their casting cost, and descriptions for easy reference. Better yet, use Card-Shark’s search feature!

I have seen different rules and guidelines posted for Mental Magic, but after countless games, our group has settled upon these for the most fun:

Setup:
Since we all bought booster packs, we popped them open and shuffled them together. Our group chose to split up the rares, uncommons, and commons based on who had the best record at the end of the night. Every person was dealt a 45-card deck of random cards. We all drew our seven cards and began.

The start:
There is no mulligan. This makes for an infrequent “lucky start” and maximizes creativity. It also keeps someone from looking for a combo or “broken” card (as you will see later). You keep all of the group game rules (or dueling rules) intact based on what “house rules” that you and your friends have agreed upon.

Laying the land:
Since you have no added basic lands in your deck, you will have to use a spell card as a land. Here is what you do: pick a card (your choice) from your hand and play it FACE DOWN as a land. For the rest of the game, it can be tapped for any color mana. Consider it a “Super” City of Brass with no life penalty. Each turn, you can play one card from your hand as a land. However, you may not look at the face of the card for the rest of the game unless the card goes to the graveyard (due to a Zuran Orb or an Armageddon). When any land goes to the graveyard, it reverts back to a normal card, face up.

Suppose you have a non-basic land that was shuffled in your deck. You can choose to play it face down OR face up as a NON-BASIC land of your choice. Our group’s favorite non-basic land was “Library of Alexandria”. You can bet that there was a bulls-eye on that card for the rest of the game! Other popular choices were “Maze of Ith”, “Treetop Village” and “Strip Mine”. For our group, we considered foil lands and seventh edition lands to be “non-basic lands” since there were so few of them in our games of Mental Magic.

But how does this affect land based abilities and effects? It changes it a lot. Since the land can be anything, our group chose to make sure it wasn’t unbalanced. Therefore, we made all face down cards a generic type “land” UNTIL it was tapped for a color. In other words, a forest-walking creature can’t forest-walk until your opponent taps a land for a forest THAT TURN. The benefits of this decision outweighed the losses. Even though this made River Boa weaker, it made Erhnam Djinn stronger. Sorry, Nightmare and Angry Mob are just bad plays in Mental Magic. For the newer cards that say “for each basic land type”, we make sure to declare what each land was before we tapped it. This is so we can get the maximum effect out of cards like Tribal Flames or Emblazoned Golem.

Spells:
A spell is determined by its casting cost. You may name any card if it matches the casting cost of the one that you are holding. In addition, once you play a spell, no one (even YOU), can play it again. This sounds easy, but it can get really tricky. I will start with some basic examples, with some of my personal experiences in Mental Magic.

Suppose you have an opening hand with a Giant Growth (one green). What other cards have one green? Creatures and enchantments come to your mind. You play a card face down to be your land for the turn and then tap it for one green. You announce that your Giant Growth is a “Fastbond”. You opponent looks in horror as you proceed to lay three additional land (Fastbond allows you lay additional land per turn at the cost of one life per land). You notice you have a Prodigal Sorcerer (one blue and two colorless) and a Stone Rain (one red and two colorless) left in your hand. What would you do?

A good decision would be to say “Timetwister” (ditching the Sorcerer, tapping out) so you can get a brand new hand and make your opponent reshuffle. A better choice would be “Wheel of Fortune” (ditching the Stone Rain, tapping out) so you can have your opponent discard his or her hand. Nice work! However, you opponent wants to stop this madness.

He declares “Force of Will” on your “Wheel of Fortune” play by throwing away an Air Elemental and another blue card from his hand (and then paying one life due to the card’s ability). Even though Force of Will has an alternative casting cost as a “pitch card”, the Air Elemental has to match the Force of Will’s converted mana casting cost. Since both are two blue and three colorless, this is a perfect match. As long as you follow the rules of the card text, anything is possible. Whoops. I should say anything LEGAL is possible!

What about kicker? Yes, it is still there, but you have to match the converted casting cost. For example, you have a Giant Cockroach card (one black and three colorless) and you really want to smash your opponent. Play the card at a “Phyrexian Scuta” and pay the kicker cost with the card. This especially works well with the Battlemages. Once you have six or seven mana, you can play the Battlemage and both kickers. Great abilities and a creature to boot!

Strategy:
As you can guess, the 187-creatures (or come-into-play-cards) are very strong in the environment. You will find you and your opponent(s) struggling for board control and superiority though creatures. When one creature can destroy or bounce other permanents, you gain time advantage and establish tempo over your opponent(s). Bounce is almost as good as removal because once you play a spell, not even the caster can play it again. I expect the Desolation Angel (with Armageddon ability) and Desolation Giant (with Wrath of God ability) to be very strong in this environment.

By all means, don’t forget about the broken cards. My friend Chris had this amazing draw against me in a game:

Land (tap for one green)
“Fastbond” (card used: Wild Growth)
Land (he took one point from past bond. He tapped the land for one black)
“Dark Ritual” (card used: Blood Pet)
“Megrim” (card used: Scathe Zombies)
“Black Lotus” (card used: Spellbook)
Sacrifice the Lotus for three red
“Wheel of Fortune” (card used: Granite Grip)

I took fourteen damage, lost seven cards, and Chris kept going with the Fastbond in play. Needless to say, I got my head handed to me on a platter. Don’t worry, a game like that doesn’t happen often. The event made me realize that the DCI has done a pretty good job with some of the older card restriction/banning.

Take one last look at the combo above. Can you tell what packs we were playing with?

If you guessed Seventh Edition, you were right! Normally seventh edition is very poor in draft (especially if Seventh Edition is the only set in your draft). However, in Mental Magic, the balance is near perfect for most spells. Our group has found that the Invasion block is really difficult to play due to its multiple-casting cost spells. If you really want to use Invasion, Planeshift, or Apocalypse, you are better off playing a normal booster draft rather then Mental Magic.

So our group spent a lot of time playing Mental Magic. We went through tons of Seventh Edition packs to play the best games possible. I think we may play it tonight to try to find that foil Birds of Paradise.

-marcand-

(By the way, if we DO find a Foil Birds of Paradise, it will be on card-shark, and our playgroup will split the money. That way there will be no hard feelings…)

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