5-Color Rules & Guidelines

Minimum deck size and color requirements:

Mulligans:

  1. There are four different 5-Color mulligans, 0-Land, 1-Land, All-Land (land-based), and Paris. For the purposes of mulliganing, there is absolutely no distinction at all between mana-producing lands and non-mana-producing lands.
  2. After the players have determined which player goes first and shuffled, players may mulligan.
  3. The first player examines her opening hand and if she qualifies to take a land-based mulligan and wants to, she reveals her hand and announces which mulligan she is taking. The second player may then declare that he “rides” the mulligan. The first player then reshuffles her deck and draws a new hand of seven cards. If the second player “rides” the mulligan he also reshuffles and draws a new hand of seven cards, and this does not count towards the second player’s mulligans. Repeat this process until one of the following cases is true: The first player chooses to keep her hand, or has taken all three Land-based mulligans, or is ineligible for any more land-based mulligans (e.g. has 2-6 lands in hand).
  4. Once the first player is done with her land-based mulligans, the second player repeats this process in the same way. The first player may ride the second player’s mulligans as above.
  5. Once both players have completed their land-based mulligans, the first player may take as many “paris” mulligans as she wants. To “paris”, a player announces that they are taking a paris mulligan and then reshuffles their deck and draws a hand of one fewer cards. The other player may not ride a paris mulligan. No land-based mulligans are allowed after paris mulligans.
  6. After the first player has announced that she will take no more paris mulligans the second player may take as many paris mulligans as he wants. Once the second player announces that he will take no more paris mulligans the game begins.

Tournament Guidelines:

In tournanent play, 5-Color games should be the standard first to two game wins, and each round should have a time limit of at least 50 minutes, with a recommended time limit of 60 minutes.

Other 5-Color Specific Rulings:

Card Eligibility

New cards are legal on the day of their respective prerelease event.

Having No Permanents

Players with no permanents may not speak.

Chaos Orb & Falling Star

At any point if Chaos Orb or Falling Star is involved in any spell or ability, no permanents may move from their locations in play. (Essentially, everything has a "pin" in the center around which the card can turn to tap.) This condition remains for as long as there is a Chaos Orb in play. If a Chaos Orb or Falling Star lands on a stack of cards, the following 5-Color ruling applies: If cards are stacked and a Chaos Orb or Falling Star lands on top of those stacked cards, any cards that are under that area of the Orb or Star are affected, including cards underneath other cards. Only cards that would touch the Orb or Star are destroyed in this way. [29 Jun 2008]

If you would flip a card onto the playing area, you must remove the card from any sleeves before flipping. [15 Nov 2008]

Ring of Ma'Ruf and Judgment Wishes

In addition to the limitations on the cards themselves, Ring of Ma'Ruf and the fives Wishes from Judgment™ may search only for a) a card you own, b) a card within your immediate range of motion, and c) a card that does not make your deck illegal. Ring of Ma’Ruf and the Wishes may not affect cards in the ante zone.

5-Color Legal Promotional Cards

The following cards are legal in all 5-Color play: