Happy Holidays! We are living in exciting times with Magic growing by the day. With new players, sets and rules come unavoidable ambiguity. Most recently manifested in the form of players using multiple checklist cards to represent fewer double-faced Origins cards in their deck (e.g., using 4 Checklist cards for Jace, but only having one actual Jace in the deck box). From an exclusively cost-savings standpoint, this might appear to be genius. However, it is against the rules and a bit unsavory. You must have exactly one actual double-faced card for each checklist card in your deck.

If a player is found using more checklist cards than they have real double-faced cards, they will be asked to either find an appropriate number of real double-faced cards to keep with the deck, or to replace the checklist cards that don’t match up to a real card with basic lands. If a judge determines a player knew it was illegal to include more checklist cards in their deck than they have real cards, they will be disqualified from the tournament. If determined to be unintentional, at Competitive REL, they player will receive a game loss.

Please also note that The checklist card must be clearly marked for the card they represent. An unmarked checklist card in your deck is basically treated like having a token in your deck, so you have a deck/decklist problem (even if you only have one double-faced card on your decklist).

Topical: If you plan to use checklist cards in your deck, you must use them for all cards that use them. Example: It is not ok to use checklist cards for Jace, Vyrn’s Prodigy and not use them for Nissa, Vastwood Seer (or any combination of Origins and Innistrad block cards that use checklist cards).

If you are using actual cards with opaque sleeves in your deck, you may also keep an additional copy of each double-faced card (in different sleeves) in your deck box, which you can use for the other face of the card, so you can avoid having to take your cards out of sleeves to turn them around.

Hope you learned something new today! Spread the knowledge and remember that knowing is half the battlefield.

Today’s Tournament Tip written by Daniel Clarke