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The rules of Magic: The Gathering are no joke. The official rule book spans over 300 pages at this time of writing. And as it turns out, everyone struggles with the rules of Magic when they’re starting out with the game - even the game’s developers themselves. 

At MagicCon Las Vegas 2026, one of the original minds of Magic’s R&D department, Skaff Elias, looked back on how he and the rest of the team tackled the problem of when cards total contradict each other. Like any of us, they rang the customer service department.  

“What used to happen is that when we knew in R&D… when there was actually literally no answer to the rules, and we didn’t know what to do, what we would do is that we would call our own customer service,” Elias began.

“We would call customer service and say, ‘Hey, what happens when this card interacts with this card?’ And they would come up with some bullshit answer which wasn’t correct. But then we would be like, ‘Oh, okay.’ And then we would call them again and ask the same question, and we would use their answers as our answers, and change the rules.” 

There’s a saying that it takes a village to raise a child, and perhaps the same can be said for hammering out the rules of the world’s first trading card game. We love the spirit of collaboration. 

Whether you are a Commander player, a regular at your local game shop's FNM event, or simply love collecting Magic: The Gathering cards, you've landed in the right place. From Universes Beyond to the furthest reaches of the Magic Multiverse, we've got you covered here at Popverse. 

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