Here's an excerpt from the Alpha rulebook (to see the whole thing click here): About the Rules No simple system could figure out everything, so the original design gave you guidelines to help players figure out decisions for themselves and then told the players to figure it out for themselves. The problem was that trading card games by their design have an insane number of interactions. When Richard first created Magic, he and the playtesters had worked out the basic rules. Why did the major rules overhaul come about? Because Magic really, really needed it.
The Stack was part of a major rules overhaul commonly known as Sixth Edition Rules (named as such because they were introduced in conjunction with Sixth Edition). Most of you playing Magic now (statistically speaking at least) have never known The Stack to not be part of the game, but it wasn't always that way. (If you don't like bad puns, Making Magic might not be the column for you.) Love Stackīefore I explain why we're so shy to talk about The Stack, I wanted to take a little time to talk about where The Stack came from, a little history for you to enjoy. Why are you instructing designers not to talk about it? That, my faithful readers, is the topic of today's column. So The Stack is one of the most important parts of the game. Noah Weil, columnist and GDS candidate, has been sitting in on a class on game design that Richard Garfield is currently teaching and after class one day, he asked Richard what he would change about Alpha if he could go back in time. I even said that if I could go back through time and suggest one thing for Richard Garfield to change about Magic it would be the addition of The Stack (see my column " Test of Endurance" if you want to know how that topic came up). The Stack is one of the most important parts of the game. Not a quiet little "Oh, by the way we were wondering," but more of a "What kind of an idiotic rule is that?" The public came out of the woodwork asking why. That would have been the end of it had we not gotten a reaction I honestly hadn't expected. Universally, Aaron, Devin, Gleemax and I (the judges) said that it was a big no-no. You see, the very first week of the GDS, the judges were reviewing the applicants' original card design tests, and a number of them had cards that referenced The Stack in their text. (And yes, normally it isn't capitalized but it just felt right for this column.) (If by the way, you don't know what The Stack is, I highly recommend you click this link to Ted Knutson's " Magic Academy" column about The Stack.) Today's topic came from the audience reaction we got when the judges gave the candidates a little piece of advice: don't mention The Stack. It keeps giving me topics for my off-theme week columns. There are a lot of positive things I can say about The Great Designer Search, but here's one I hadn't anticipated.
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