In the modern history of Competitive Magic policy document releases, there’ve been some big changes, and there’ve been some times where there were only a few things to talk about.

Then there’s today. If you’re ever going to ignore a document update, today is that day. A few words have changed here and there for clarity. The definition of Improper Drawing at Start of Game got rewritten (but didn’t change). Spectators now have to be physically present at the event (so people watching at home no longer need to be quiet during deckbuilds!). Seriously, I’m reaching here. Oh yeah, we fixed the loophole to make shocklands legal to draft in Dragon’s Maze.

We actually have some interesting things we’re working on, so I’d expect some updates for M14. But there’s been a lot of upheaval recently – especially around the trigger rules, which I’m happy to report seem to have found a sweet spot – so we figured a bit of a break would be nice.

There is, however, a new version of the JAR being released. Big props to Kim Warren for taking it on and shepherding through a rewrite that had stalled on more than one occasion. Again, philosophically not much has changed, but it incorporates things we’ve learned over the last few years and is hopefully easier to read. It packs a lot of good advice on judging Regular REL tournaments into a mere two pages.

Enjoy the prereleases, and may you have success traversing the maze… especially if you’re Simic.