5-Color Magic

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5-Color Rules & Guidelines


All play is governed by standard DCI rules except where noted below.

Minimum deck size and color requirements:

Ante:

Determining Play or Draw:

Mulligans:

  1. There are four different 5-Color mulligans, 0-Land, 1-Land, All-Land (land-based), and Paris. For the purposes of mulliganing, there is absolutely no distinction at all between mana-producing lands and non-mana-producing lands.
  2. After the players have determined which player goes first, shuffled, and anted, players may mulligan.
  3. The first player examines her opening hand and if she qualifies to take a land-based mulligan and wants to, she reveals her hand and announces which mulligan she is taking. The second player may then declare that he “rides” the mulligan. The first player then reshuffles her deck and draws a new hand of seven cards. If the second player “rides” the mulligan he also reshuffles and draws a new hand of seven cards, and this does not count towards the second player’s mulligans. Repeat this process until one of the following cases is true: The first player chooses to keep her hand, or has taken all three Land-based mulligans, or is ineligible for any more land-based mulligans (e.g. has 2-6 lands in hand).
  4. Once the first player is done with her land-based mulligans, the second player repeats this process in the same way. The first player may ride the second player’s mulligans as above.
  5. Once both players have completed their land-based mulligans, the first player may take as many “paris” mulligans as she wants. To “paris”, a player announces that they are taking a paris mulligan and then reshuffles their deck and draws a hand of one fewer cards. The other player may not ride a paris mulligan. No land-based mulligans are allowed after paris mulligans.
  6. After the first player has announced that she will take no more paris mulligans the second player may take as many paris mulligans as he wants. Once the second player announces that he will take no more paris mulligans the game begins.

Errata:

The following cards have received errata specific for 5-Color play. These wordings take precedence over other documents in all 5-Color games and matches.

Contract From Below

Discard your hand. Ante a card if playing for ante. Draw 7 cards.

Jeweled Bird

Remove Jeweled Bird from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante.
{T}, Ante Jeweled Bird if you own Jeweled Bird: Put a card other than this Jeweled Bird in your ante into its owner's graveyard, then draw a card. [17 Mar 2010]

Chaos Orb & Falling Star

The following text is added to these cards: "Remove ~this~ from any sleeve before flipping."

Other 5-Color Specific Rulings:

Card Eligibility

New cards are legal on the day of their respective prerelease event.

Having No Permanents

Players with no non-proxy permanents may not speak.

Chaos Orb & Falling Star

At any point if Chaos Orb or Falling Star is involved in any spell or ability, no permanents may move from their locations in play. (Essentially, everything has a "pin" in the center around which the card can turn to tap.) This condition remains for as long as there is a Chaos Orb in play. If a Chaos Orb or Falling Star lands on a stack of cards, the following 5-Color ruling applies: If cards are stacked and a Chaos Orb or Falling Star lands on top of those stacked cards, any cards that are under that area of the Orb or Star are affected, including cards underneath other cards. Only cards that would touch the Orb or Star are destroyed in this way. [29 Jun 2008]

Jeweled Bird

Only black bordered or heavily modified Jeweled Birds are allowed in 5-Color events. If it is determined that the card in question is not appropriate, that card is removed from the game and another card is drawn.

5-Color Legal Promotional Cards

The following cards are legal in all 5-Color play: