From: edt@admin.lsa.umich.edu (Eric Taylor) Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy Subject: Giving Magic a System of Notation (revised) Date: 23 Aug 1997 02:48:21 GMT With all of the current interest in magic notation, I think it might be worthwhile to repost my article from April 24th of this year. I hope it may stimulate ideas about notation a bit. I've taken the liberty to do some updates and streamlining to my original article due to some things I've figured out in play-testing since April. Considering that WOTC wants to push magic as an intellectual game, and considering that there is a real need to allow tournament judges to go back through a played game to find out the entire sequence of events, and due to the fact that players want desperately to be able to analyze the games as you can in chess, checkers or go, there seems to be a need for a notation which allows people to write down quickly and accurately what transpires during a magic match. I think it's best not to create a system of notation which describes every iota of detail because this goal is at such odds with creating a system which is fast and easy to use. My prime goal is to create a notation which works like chess and checkers do -- the notation gives all the details of the plays made during the game so that with merely the notation you will be able to play back the entire game, however, the notation doesn't try to show the details - such as how much life a person is at, or how much mana is in the mana pool at any time or what exactly is tapped, or how many cards a person has in his or her hand -- i.e. the state information (however, state information can be inferred from the notation). In particular I've found it better to keep life totals on a seperate piece of paper or a regular life counter anyway to help your opponent. It's too hard for your opponent to look through this seeming gibberish and glean the life totals from the notation if he is not already familiar with it. * * * A Magic Notation First of all, to represent a magic card, the first time it appears, the full name or enough to uniquely identify it should be spelled out. So the "Wall of Swords" would be Wall of Swords. Thereafter, anytime it is mentioned again in the game record, the abbreviation would be used: "WOS". If another card is played with the same abbreviation, for instance a "Wall of Shadows", some letters from the words will be taken to uniquely identify it in subsequent abbreviations. So, if someone is playing "Wall of Swords" and "Wall of Shadows" the abbreviations could be "WOSw" and "WOSh" repsectively. Each player can be signified by the letter P with P' being your opponent. If you have more than one opponent, P'1 is your first opponent, P'2 is your second, etc. If there is more than one permanent, indicate the number of that permanent with a number after it, for instance, WOS1 indicates the first Wall of Shadows, or optionally you can specify it with the number sign, i.e. as WOS#1 and WOS#2. For any multiple, for instance 3 walls of shadows, the number comes first and then the item you are describing a mutiple of. For instance 3(Wall of shadows), or 3(WOS) indicates three walls of shadows. To specify all your items, in an attack for instance, you can say just spell out the obvious, such as an attack with "all", or "everything". I am using Mo for Mountain, Fo for Forest, etc, for clarity. However, you could also just use M and F to be able to write it more quickly. All spells are cast in the order they are written. To indicate a new spell stack, just leave some space. description of thing notation -------- -------- opponent's ' So for opponent's mountain, it would be Mo' card If there is more than one opponent, indicate the number of the opponent after the ' counting from the clockwise direction. For obvious cases (such as when you tap a land for mana, it's usually obvious you tap your own land), you can leave off the ' tap /xxx This indicates you are tapping item xxx. You can signify what the land is being tapped for with parentheses if it's ambigious, so for instance to get red out of a city of brass, you could write /COB(R) Untap is signified with \ target xxx-yyy xxx is the source and yyy is the result. spell This often means that xxx targets yyy, but it also indicates all such effects with a source and a result, such as non-tagetted spells like damage prevention. For something like a fireball killing 2 Scryb Sprites and 1 Giant Spider, you could say FB-2(SS),GS or FB-SS#1,SS#2,GS You can also indicate the amount done in parentheses so for instance, you could write FB-SS#1(4),SS#2(4),GS(4) to do 4 damage to each scryb sprite and 4 damage to the giant spider. Normally of course, it would be easest and clear enough to use the first style with FB-2SS,GS The '-' target symbol could also be written -> on paper, however, it's easier to keyboard it in as '-'. activate xxx:yyy xxx is the card, and yyy is the ability target, amount activated, or type of ability used. So Pestilence for three would be p:3 and return opponent's mountain to hand with the time elemental would be TE:Mo' You can leave off 'yyy' to indicate a simple ability of 'xxx' permanent being activated or triggered, for instance to millstone someone, you could write Mi: You can indicate banding a Benalish Hero with a Scryb Sprite by BH:SS For a more complicated creature which has banding and some other ability you can specify the ability being used explicity and then the creature it is being used with. So for instance, to write it out the long way, you could say that a Benalish Hero bands with a Scryb Sprite by BH(banding):SS Turn #) The '#' is the number of the turn. So for instance, 1) is your first turn and 1)' is your opponent's first turn. Play a xxx mentioning the spell indicates it is being spell or played or cast permanent Player P# where # is the number of the player. To indicate yourself, you can use simply P and for your opponent, P' Phase untap If you need to specify the phase, upkeep you can either write out the full word or draw abbreviate it. attack main cleanup damage prevention Attacking xxx=yyy To indicate that yyy is blocking xxx. and xxx= xxx= indicates xxx is attacking and not blocking blocked Graveyard Gr or G To indicate placing a creature in the graveyard, you use '-', so for instance to place a Scryb Sprite in the graveyard it would be SS-Gr Most of the time you won't have to specify explicity that a creature goes to the graveyard, since it would be obvious for instance if nothing else happened and a scryb sprite blocked a benalish hero, both would die. Library Li or L To indicate adding to the library, you can type the card you are putting in the library, a '-' and then 'Li'. To indicate something like a Millstone effect, you could say, Li(2)-Gr, however, you don't really need this since saying MS: indicates use of the millstone ability, which is unambiguous. Hand Ha or H Play Pl To indicate something in play. You can use this to show moving a permanent from one place to another, such as Gr(AG)-Pl to signify moving an ashen ghoul from the graveyard to play. However, because merely mentioning a card means you are putting it in into play, Pl should not have to be used that often. In the above case, it's enough to just say, Gr(AG) to indicate you are placing the Ashen Ghoul from the graveyard into play. A partial game sample. . . * * * * * * * * * * * * 1) Mountain, /Mo, Lightning Bolt-P' 1)' Forest, /Fo(G), Llanower Elf 2) Mo, LB-LE, Mountain Goat 2)' Fo, Whirling Dervish 3) attack MG= main Mo, Phyrexian Warbeast 3)' Crumble-PW, WD=, Fo, WD#2 4) Mo, PW 4)' attack WD1=PW WD2=MG Giant Growth-WD1 LB'-WD1 WD1,WD2,MG-Gr main LE etc. * * * * * * * * * * * * With this notation, I am deliberately overloading the symbols used, so that for instance the '-' symbol is used to many different things. I think that it is easier to write and to read it this way than having to make a symbol for every little situation which might come up, which would then require you memorize all these symbols before you could write down a single game. --- Eric