Castle

Object

The object is the same in regular Magic - to reduce your opponent to zero life or run them out of cards. However, you must first penetrate your opponent's defenses, and that's no small task.

Setup

In addition to your normal Magic deck, you must prepare a stock of fifteen creatures. At the beginning of the game, each player shuffles their creature stock and places twelve of the creatures face down in a 4x3 grid. This is your castle defense. Neither player may look at these cards at this time.

Rules Changes

Castle Magic is played like normal magic, with a couple of major exceptions - like how combat works. But first, here are the more general changes:

A player can only take damage from attacking creatures of from upkeep costs/side effects of his own creatures. All other damage done to a player is reduced to zero.

Ignore all evasion abilities (flying, landwalk, protection, shadow, etc.). A creature can always be blocked, even if the defender is tapped.

Ignore the trample ability.

The creatures you summon cannot defend.

Breaching The Castle

The only way you can damage your opponent is by attacking with your creatures, but you must first penetrate your opponent's outer defenses.

When you declare an attack, you must specify which column out of the four of your opponent's castle you are attacking. You may attack with more than one creature, but they must all attack the same column. If there are no cards in the column you attack, your opponent takes damage from the attacking creatures as normal. Otherwise, the defender reveals the foremost card in the column.

The defending player must now determine whether or not the revealed creature becomes active. Here's how you do it: if you have enough lands in play to produce the appropriate mana to cast the creature, the creature becomes activated. Note: your lands do not have to be untapped.

If you do not have enough mana capability to cast the revealed creature, you may pay one life for each unfulfilled mana (unfulfilled colored mana cost two life each). Otherwise, the creature is immediately discarded and combat immediately ends. Once a creature becomes activated, it remains in your castle until destroyed and it does not need to be activated again (as long as it remains face up).

Once the creature is activated, you may proceed with combat, or you may pay two life to have the creature switch positions with the card directly behind it. You must then reveal that creature and repeat the process above.

When you proceed with combat, the foremost creature blocks all of the attackers (even if it is tapped). You decide where your creature deals damage. If the defending creature dies, it is removed from the game, its spot becomes vacant and combat is over.

Cr eatures In Your Castle

In addition to the above changes, there are several rules governing creatures in your castle (and only the creatures in your castle):

Face down creatures cannot be the target of spells or effects.

Your opponent may not target your face up creatures with spells or effects during combat (once attackers are declared). Your face up creatures may still be the target of spells or effects after combat is finished.

All creatures in your castle are immune to non-targeted effects. That means a Wrath of God or Earthquake will have no effect on your defenders, and your defenders will not receive the benefits of a global enchantment like Bad Moon or Crusade.

Creatures in the second row of your castle gain +1/+1. Creatures in the third row of your castle gain +2/+2.

When a creature in your castle is activated, any effects triggered by it entering play take effect. If you choose not to activate the creature, it is discarded and treated as if it had never come into play.

When a creature in your castle is placed in your graveyard, it is removed from the game.

For all other purposes, creatures in your castle count like your regular creatures in play.

You must pay upkeep costs on them, and you can sacrifice them.

You may not summon a creature into your castle. Once a creature in your castle is destroyed or discarded, you've got one less castle defender for the rest of the game.

Once during your turn, you may do one of the following:

How To Win

The object is the same as regular Magic. Castle Magic may seem complex, but it's actually pretty smooth once you start playing. Instead of worrying about which creatures to attack with and which creatures to keep for defense, you can focus solely on your task at hand - breaking down your opponent's defenses.

History

This variant was created by Jeff Hannes.