(Originally published on 2026-08-15; last reviewed on 2026-08-15; last updated on 2026-08-15)

With each new set release, Wizards of the Coast update the Comprehensive Rules and the Oracle text of any number of cards. These updates include support for new mechanics, error fixes, and improvements to the wording of rules and cards. Wizards of the Coast also publish an update bulletin which summarizes and explains these changes.

From fall 2023 till the end of 2025, these update bulletins released only sporadically, which inspired me to start this series of unofficial update bulletins. While Wizards of the Coast seem to have returned to a regular release schedule in 2026, there are plenty of reasons to continue my own articles.

Primarily, I came to realize how superficial today’s official bulletins are: they merely note the introduction of new rules, with no comments or explanations as to their design; they often skip over fixes for existing errors; and they skip the vast majority of Oracle changes.

After reading one of those bulletins, my first thought happens to be “This wasn’t worth my time,” and often, that’s the only point I take from that bulletin. A simple diff on Academy Ruins now contains more information than the corresponding bulletin. Granted, a bulletin is supposed to be short, but these are too short. (Meanwhile, my own bulletins are so long that the word “bulletin” may be inaccurate; the phrase “update bulletin” has some value though and I’m not yet willing to abandon that.)

Older update bulletins (2020 and earlier) were longer and I remember them being more in depth, although the latter could simply be a mix of nostalgia goggles and my own abysmal rules comprehension at the time.

Maybe it’s also the timing: today’s bulletins release a week or two after their associated Comprehensive Rules update. Which means that the update and its changes have been thoroughly read and discussed by the time the bulletin releases. And at that point, a bare-bones bulletin brings nothing new to the table, so why bother?

What’s certain is that today’s official bulletins don’t cut it for me anymore, which shouldn’t be surprising: as a rules enthusiast, I want to understand Magic’s rules system, not just know it. Merely reading someone else’s summary won’t suffice; I need to perform my own, complete analysis.

So, who are the official bulletins for? No one with a desire to comprehend the rules system, that’s for certain. Beyond that, I’m not sure; someone who likes reading about the rules, but not reading the actual rules, perhaps? On second thought, this idea has some merit: this description applies to many players across the entire casual-competitive spectrum, and to many judges as well. I can see this being a large enough audience.

My own bulletins have a much smaller target audience. Strictly speaking, I write them with a single person in mind: me. “I write what I like to read myself” and all that. Anybody else is just a bonus.

Thus, I take a full inventory of changes, no matter how small and inconsequential: every single change in the Comprehensive Rules, all errata for the newly released cards, every change to Oracle text, every change to Gatherer rulings. And with a very small set of exceptions, I list all these changes in my bulletins. The exceptions are along the lines of “a nonbreaking space in a ruling becomes a normal space” or “a ruling’s trailing space gets deleted”; if you can’t live without knowing about such changes, better start scraping Gatherer yourself.

(Regarding Gatherer rulings: Of course, everybody knows that rulings are not part of Magic’s rules system, and that for understanding that system, Gatherer rulings should be avoided at all costs. Still, they are a constant source of amusement due to the sheer number of incorrect or misleading rulings, typos, and other absurdities. Wizards of the Coast’s rules team and editors are much too professional to commit these errors accidentally, so they must be deliberate choices meant to amuse the reader; as such, I think it unfair to Wizards of the Coast’s hardworking employees to not spread the word about their tireless attempts at making Magic fans laugh in these trying times.)

For each change, I present its primary consequences, side effects, historical background, and anything else I find noteworthy; if I find that an update omits an erratum or rules support for a new card or mechanic, the omission gets its own entry.

The reader can then choose which parts they find relevant, without me deciding for them what is and is not interesting (except for those whitespace changes).

What the reader gains from the text is up to them: it might just be another piece of content to kill time; it may be a resource for tracing the history of Magic’s rules system; for rules enthusiasts, it may be something to compare their own analysis against; maybe there are no readers at all and I’m yelling into the void.

Disclaimer: I have no special insight into the inner workings of Wizards of the Coast or their rules team; any observations are based solely on the published updates and my own knowledge and understanding of Magic’s rules system. While I strive for completeness and correctness, I may miss some changes; in particular, my process for archiving and comparing Gatherer revisions is constantly evolving, just like Gatherer itself. (Then again, Wizards of the Coast knowingly omit changes in their own bulletins, so I think I’m still ahead.)