“Beginning with the release of M10 the rules of Magic: the Gathering will change. In our effort to constantly widen our range of players we now want to target the other marketing brands player base. To achieve this we will change a basic rule in Magic: the Gathering.

Starting with the prereleases of M10 a player can once per turn choose to play a land from his hand or remove a card from his hand from the game instead (aka: put it into limbo) to put a land token of any color into the game. These land tokens (explanation below) do not count towards the card count of the deck and they are not part of the sideboard, and if the player uses sleeves do not have to be in the same sleeves as the deck or sideboard itself. Minimum decksize will not be affected, although, as you already know, that might change in the future.”

“There are several things noteworthy about this:

1. These tokens will be distributed via the token card slot in the booster packs. The boosters will still contain one basic land card, because those tokens do NOT count as basic lands. The rulespeople are still working on the exact wording, but we wanted to inform you guys about the change up front and now. The rules will be explained on the back of every second land token card, the other half will contain marketing for Zevinkar.
   
2. This is another reason why tournament packs will not be needed in the future. We already knew that, now we can tell the customers, too. Use this information as reasoning for your upcoming articles.
   
3. Our research did show that casual players are eagerly waiting for a ruleschange like this. Manascrew always had a negative impact on the game of Magic especially for new players, because of the learning curve being too steep regarding manacurve and landcount and such.
   
4. Having this rule enables us to battle the surge of the WoW TCG. We now have the mythic rares to attract Yu-Gi-Oh folks and the new landrule to make switching over easier for WoW players. We will have a new online marketing campaign up and running by the time M10 hits the shelves, especially targeting those people.”

„We know, again through our research, that this will be a very tough sale for the tournament players. They will protest vehemently, and they will give us a hard time online in forums and on the main websites.

It will be the task of Aaron and MaRo during the next few weeks to sell this to the players. Mike can do a lot for us on this sector, as he is the main resource for tournament analysis on the site, so he will be commiting at least two of his columns to this subject before previews start.

We are still negotiating with SCG if they want to play an extended role in the preview process if they, in exchange, help us communicate the new land rule in our favor. MTGSalvation will help too, as they will be fed a little more new cards than during the last two preview seasons as a kind of distraction for the internet base.

I must remind you that this email is not to be made public in any case, because it would severely damage our efforts of selling this as a new and exciting invention to make Magic even more attractive for new players and be ready for the future.

Magic Online beta testing of this new rule will start one week in advance to the prereleases online, and the new land tokens will be part of the online boosters starting with the online prerelease of M10. Land tokens will then be included in all boosters, not only M10 boosters.

As for M10, there will only be land tokens available to get these tokens to the players, no other tokens are planned. Starting with Zevinkar we will again have other tokens in the boosters.”

Fotomontage: So könnte ein Land Token aussehen.