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Judge Tower is aMagic: The Gatheringformat created by MTG judges to improve their understanding of the rules of the game. It is played by both official judges and advanced players as a format that challenges your attention to detail, mechanical understanding, and ability to shuffle a 250 card deck.
Players share a single library, graveyard, and responsibility to monitor and call out rules violations. If a player makes a mistake and that mistake is noticed by an opponent, they immediately lose the round. Learn the detailed rules of Judge Tower to try out this unique and challenging format.
Explanation
One Library
All players draw from a single deck known as The Tower. The deck size is up to the group playing, but often includes 250+ cards.
One Graveyard
All cards go into a single graveyard that all players share.
Undying
You cannot lose the game by having zero life. (You still have life and have to keep track of it.)
Unlimited Mana
Everyone has access to an infinite amount of all types and colours of mana.
Start With No Cards
You start the game with zero cards. (MTG Judges start the game with one card per judge level.)
You play judge tower with your hands revealed.
Must Play Cards
Each player must play every card as soon as it is legally possible to do so.
Pay To Play
When playing a card, players must pay all alternative and additional costs if possible.
Must Activate Abilities
Players must activate each ability of a card each turn if able, but can only activate each ability once per turn.
Bottom To Top
When a card has multiple abilities, they must be activated in a bottom to top order as written on the card. The last ability first and the first ability last.
X = Five
If a card has X in its cost, X is always five.
One And Done
Players cannot play the same card more than once a turn. An example of this would be Flashback cannot be activated on the same turn that card was played.
Must Block
Players must block with all possible blockers.
Remember to activate your land cards. Manynew players lose Judge Tower by forgetting to tap their landsfor mana immediately after playing them (mainly due to having unlimited mana in the format). Keep an eye out for your opponent not tapping their basic land cards and secure that round win.
How To Play Judge Tower?
We recommend assembling a250 card deckthat all players will share. You can increase or reduce this deck’s size based on the number of players or the desired length of game. Assuming your playgroup has no official MTG judges, everyone starts the game with20 life and zero cardsin hand.
The phases of turns are standard; play Magic withall its regular rules in effect, as well as all theJudge Tower rules in addition.
Players share a graveyard, therefore all rules text involving entering “your graveyard” affects everyone playing, and each player is responsible to react accordingly.
How To Win Judge Tower?
A player loses the round if theycommit a rules violationof any official Magic: The Gathering rules or Judge Tower rules, and that violation isnoticed and called outby a player on the turn the violation happened. In other words, you have to notice your opponents' mistakebefore they end their turn, or it’s too late to call them out on it.
If you notice someone miss a step, make a mistake, or otherwise violate the rules, it is your duty to stop the game and point out the mistake. If players disagree about a violation, you canreference the official MTG rulesand Judge Tower rules to confirm if the elimination of that player is warranted.
A player is eliminated after being caught violating the rules, and the round continues until only one player remains. When a round ends, the last player remaining earns one point. All remaining cards in hand, on the field, graveyard cards, and exiled cards areremoved from the game.
A new round begins with the remaining cards left in the deck, life points are reset, and the person who won the last round goes first. The game continues this way until the Tower hasno cards remaining. The player with the most points at the end wins the game.
Are Their Alternative Ways To Play Judge Tower?
Like all Magic formats, playgroups have come up with home-brews and house rules that modify Judge Tower to suit their home games. Here are a few alt-rules that we enjoy playing with.
What Are The Best Cards To Use In A Judge Tower Deck?
There are many different cards that can be fun andchallenging additions to your deck,and plenty of cards can become deceptive curveballs when used in the Judge Tower format.
Here are somecards to watch out forthat caused more than a few eliminations in our playgroup.
Dress Down
Dress Down does not affect the abilities of creature cards in hand, as they aren’t technically creatures yet. However, Dress down will stopactivated or triggered abilitiesof creatures in play from occurring.
Due to thelayer rulesin Magic: The Gathering, spells that change a card’s type, take control of creatures, copy targets, alter abilities, and spells that change a card’s colour will still occur, because Dress Down’s ability-removing effects happen on a higher order layer. You also need to be mindful of timestamps, as later abilities might overwrite Dress Down.
Thelayer systemin MTG handles theinteractions of continuous effectsand understanding the order they occur in is vital to playing this card correctly. If that wasn’t complicated enough for you, this card has Flash, so don’t forget to cast it as soon as you have priority.
Spellskite
Spellskite lets youchange the targetof target spell or ability to Spellskite. While this seems straight-forward, Spellskite can actually targetany spell or abilityon the stack, even if it isn’t a target spell or even if that spell can’t target spellskite.
You must activate Spellskite’s abilityeven on spells that won’t be affectedby it. But remember, as per Judge Tower rules, you can only activate it once per turn.
Conjured Currency
When drawing from a single library, keeping track of ‘owned’ cards can get hectic. Conjured Currency ups the ante byexchanging controlof cards. Conjured Currency targetspermanents owned and controlledby other players.
Keep in mind that the owner and the controllerdo not have to be the same player. This becomes important to keep track of the longer Conjured Currency remains in play, as control of cards continues to be swapped between different players from turn to turn.
You do not have to control Conjured Currency when its ability resolves for an exchange of cards to resolve. If another player gains control of Conjured Currency on the stack, and yet another player controls its target,you mustchoose tohave those two opponents exchangecontrol of cards.
In regular Magic, Conjured Currency is a ‘you may’ optional action, but in Judge Toweryou must.
Portent
Sometimes the simplest card can be your downfall in Judge Tower. You look at the top three cards, put them back, shuffle the library and go about enjoying an invigorating game of Judge Tower. Your next turn, youforget to draw a cardat the beginning of the upkeep and lose the game.
Keeping track of detailsis what Judge Tower is all about. Sometimes cards will haveeffects that happen on a later turnthat can trip you up. Be mindful of cards like Portent.
