Trippin' (Variant)

This Magic: the Gathering variant is designed to play with two players who draw from the same 80 card library built completely of the cards from Magic’s long past known in player slang as “cantrips.” Players generally have no draw phase in a game of Trippin’ and the way to draw cards is to play cards. With the standard rules removing all casting costs, the game moves quickly and spell stacks can get quite complex as players fight to make their opponent’s cantrips fizzle and deplete his hand. RULE CHANGES A game of Trippin’ is played like any game of Magic except for the following rules changes. The two players share a library and a graveyard. A card that refers to the “owner” of a card, is treated as referring to that card’s “controller” instead. To begin the game, each player draws a opening hand of 10 cards instead of the normal seven. The standard mulligan rule applies with added emphasis on making sure the player has creatures to play or might be able to eliminate creatures. If a player mulligans, he does not scry1 after keeping his new hand. There is no hand size limit. There is no land in the Trippin’ deck. Casting costs are ignored and players may play spells any time allowed by their card type without paying mana costs. At the beginning the active player’s draw step each round, he checks to see how many cards each player has in hand. He draws a card only if his opponent has four or more cards in hand than he does. If the hand sizes are within three of each other, he does not draw. The deck purposefully contains both “fasttrips” and “slowtrips.” Fasttrips are those that say “Draw a card” or “When (card name) enters the battlefield, draw a card.” Slowtrips are those that were printed in earlier sets (and Coldsnap as an Ice Age block set) and say “Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep,” or ”When (card name) enters the battlefield, draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep.” One issue with the old slowtrip cards, is that they were easy to forget at the next turn’s upkeep. For ease of play and remembering to draw cards gained through slowtrips, I created the Slowtrip Reminder card. A player takes a Slowtrip Reminder card anytime he or she successfully casts a slowtrip and adds it to his hand. Then at the beginning of the next upkeep, the player returns his Slowtrip reminder cards to the pool and draws cards equal to the Slowtrip Reminder cards he returned. If both players would draw cards at the beginning of the same upkeep, the active player’s card draws go on the stack first, followed immediately by the nonactive player’s card draws. This is a regular stack and can be added to prior to anything on the stack resolving in priority order. It is recommended to have at least 10 Slowtrip Reminder Cards on hand when playing Trippin’. If the deck runs out of cards, reshuffle the graveyard into the library before the next card is drawn. Players cannot lose by being forced to draw from an empty deck. However, if the stack is empty and any player has no cards in hand (including slowtrip reminder cards), that player loses the game no matter the life totals. The stack works as normal, but can get quite complex. Players should allow time for their opponent to respond and make sure his opponent passes priority before beginning resolution of the stack each time a spell is cast or resolves. For optional rules, strategy, customization options, designer notes, and slow-trip reminder cards, see this Google Docs link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cf4NFx1ZlHE1ISS7aYYnbrBTR6H30yYbKax5iubK3qI/edit?usp=sharing