Taunting involves a main mechanic (Taunt) and a helper mechanic (Psi).

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501.TAU. Taunt

501.TAUa To taunt, a player chooses a card from his or her hand and places it face down on the table. He or she is now a taunter and the card is a taunt card until the taunting contest ends.

501.TAUb "To taunt an opponent" means "Choose an opponent. You and that opponent each taunt."

501.TAUc After every taunter has chosen his or her taunt card, all taunt cards are revealed. Each taunter gets psi points equal to his or her taunt card's converted mana cost or total psi value, whichever is higher. If a taunter has no cards in hand to place face down, that taunter starts with 0 psi points. Then, starting with the active player, each player may discard a card from his or her hand and choose to increase any taunter's psi points, until no one discards any more cards. A card discarded this way adds points equal to its total psi value; if it has no psi value, it adds points equal to its converted mana cost but at least 1 point. A taunter wins if he or she has more psi points than every other taunter. After the winner is determined, all taunt cards are discarded, and the taunting contest ends.

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502.PSI. Psi

502.PSIa Psi is a triggered ability that functions while the card is in a player's hand. Psi N means "When this card is discarded, you may have target player displace N cards." *

503.PSIb Cards with Psi are also used in a taunting contest. See Taunt.

502.PSIc If a permanent has multiple instances of Psi, each triggers separately. For example, when a card with Psi 2 and Psi 3 is discarded, two triggered abilities are created. Also, this card would grant 5 total psi points during taunts.

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501.DIS. Displace

501.DISa To "displace N cards" means to put the top N cards from the top of your library into your graveyard.

501.DISb If an effect tells you to put a displaced card to another zone besides the graveyard, that card goes from the library directly to the other zone. The card is still considered to have been displaced.

e.g. Humiliating Loss

I'd love to see you try to fit reminder text for this on a card.

what is with this obsession with reminder text? here's the reminder text RTFM

Things that are not intuitive generally need reminder text to function.

At least half the players don't read the manual, though. That means that half the players will not like your product unless it is intuitive, or spelled out on the game parts.

That doesn't mean that a complicated mechanic that requires reading the rules isn't worth it. It's just a major strike against the game until it is overcome. It's a lot like having a game with terrible art, then saying "Oh, but artwork doesn't make the game good. Good games stand on their own." It's true. But poor artwork stops people from picking the game up in the first place. Who cares how good a game is if no one plays it?

You're making something very different, and you're asking your audience to take some time out, and learn the rules. As a game player (and reviewer), I don't mind that, and am more than happy to comply. But it shouldn't surprise you that many people have better things to do than to read the rules. They could be watching an episode of Dr. Who instead. That being the case, the end result must be worth the work of the extra time people spent reading the rules. That's only fair.

Take a look at all the new mechanics Wizards have introduced in the past 10 years. All the keyword mechanics, new frames, DFCs, miracle, all that madness. For all the rules madness of them, new players who don't read manuals will be able to play every single one mostly correctly most of the time, thanks to reminder text; with the sole exception of planeswalkers.

The introduction of planeswalker cards was an utterly unique event in Magic's history. It was inseparably bound to the most powerful characters from Magic's long history, and designed to allow Wizards to bring that kind of character into card form. In other words, it wasn't an arbitrary new mechanic; it was tied in with a key concept of Magic that had existed since the game's beginning.

Oh, and you may also note that planeswalkers only exist at mythic rare (or before mythics existed, only at rare). That's for assorted reasons, but one of them is to make sure that new players and very-casual players don't see many of them, because guess what? They're very confusing.

Every other new mechanic has had reminder text. Even those that only exist at uncommon and above such as Fuse, Miracle and Imprint. Even those that only exist at rare such as Hideaway, Offering or Epic. Not one nonplaneswalker card in the past 10 years has effectively told the players "RTFM".

Now there will always be rules subtleties, and complicated rules interactions. (That's what a number of players love about this game.) The rules for Clones of DFCs, for example, probably don't work the way a lot of new players would guess they would. But the proportion of DFC games that also include a Clone effect is going to be small, and that's partly because Clone effects have been kept rare precisely because they do have a number of unintuitive interactions.

Now, of course, Multiverse is a place for cards designed by people not working at Wizards of the Coast. But we do tend to try to make our designed mechanics compatible with Wizards' design philosophy, or else at least state upfront "I know this isn't something Wizards would ever print because they like cards to be understandable by new players who open them in boosters. I'm choosing to ignore that consideration for the moment."

Not to belabor the argument, but I have heard from a couple of people who found Planeswalkers in their Lorwyn packs, didn't recognize what they were, and threw them in the trash, because they thought they were weird promotional tokens or something. Two different players who never met each other. Ridiculous.

Well, I'm reading multiverse; do read your text - and my eyes glaze over and I skip over all the cards with these new words on as fiddly and incomprehensible.

Planeswalkers obviously had SOME rules text on them. Thinking they were promotional character art seems... foolish. Understandable though, since it hijacked exiting flavour and a pre-existing word.

Still - rules-text cards were done; back in Legends. Not a great idea, but also not the worst possible way to let people know how the new stuff worked.

So this can work.

But don't try and putt the full compules on. Short simple readable rules on the actual cards, comprules... well, comprules where you've got them is a great idea.

Taunting seems somewhat L5R inspired. Suggested simple explanation for the reminder text: "Simultaneously, players may exile face-down a card from their hand. Do this repeatedly, until all but one player stops selecting cards. The winner of the taunt is the player with highest CMC of cards exiled this way."

PSI. A card with a PSI value contributes its PSI instead of CMC to a taunt total.

Displace n. Put the top N cards from the top of your library into your graveyard (or to another specified zone)

Edit: Yeah, I know I changed how the rules work slightly, to make the rules text smaller. Personally, I'd try the changed rules; but you can always make it comp-rules that the exile happens at the end in one go etc. if you like.

Thanks Vitenka. See how short that reminder text is? It's only a bit longer than cipher's reminder text. Of course the comprules will be more explicit and comprehensive than that, but it still gets the idea across. Instead of writing off a mechanic just because the rules seem complicated at first sight. Reminder text is the final step of templating, after you have worked out the rules and playtesting as best as possible.

Yea people mention reminder text for recent mechanics. But if you compare them to actual rules, some of the mechanics wouldn't seem possible to be put in reminder text either. Infect has rules in several places in the CR. Did they spell all that out in the reminder text? Even better example, double strike. You telling me they spelled out all of 702.4b? In short, there are a bunch of mechanics and keywords with a lot of complicated rules behind the scene. Reminder text shouldn't be a deterrent nor requirement for a mechanic cough Planeswalkers, double faced cards

*You're making something very different, and you're asking your audience to take some time out, and learn the rules. *

This is exactly what this set is about. Go read the foreword. This is not even a set. It's more of a warehouse of unusual yet plausible ideas. But not quite unglued territory (which is aimed more toward humor). I mean double faced cards might have seemed pretty weird and implausible, especially the considering the logistics headaches involved (ie printing process, drafts, etc.).

I think the need for succinct, sufficient reminder text should be a deterrent for overly complicated mechanics, but not an absolute one. A sufficiently compelling mechanic could get away with insufficient reminder text, especially if the flavour helps. Reminder text doesn't need to be finalised until the final step of templating, but whether a mechanic is feasibly simple enough to be given reminder text surely has to be a factor in deciding whether it makes it beyond the brainstorming meeting into a set design.

I think if you can find a resonant flavour for this set of mechanics that'll make a world of difference. I personally don't see how "taunt", "psi", "discarding cards" and "converted mana cost" go together, and "to taunt" doesn't sound like the same thing as "to initiate a taunting contest". Wizards were very careful with their terminology on "clash" to make the template clearly indicate that both players are clashing, so e.g. if you Lash Out at me then my Entangling Trap still triggers.

The fight you face with this mechanic is to get it simple and resonant enough to be grokkable, compelling, memorable, intuitive. For that reason, "psi" definitely shouldn't additionally mill even if you can fit that into the reminder text. The random extra mill clause is the opposite of intuitive and grokkable.

(On the side note about DFCs: I wouldn't have said intuitiveness/grokkability was one of their biggest problems. But it is a problem that there wasn't reminder text for "transform", I'll give you that. I personally think they're horrible for 15 different reasons, so I'm certainly not going to jump to their defence, but I wouldn't have expected I'd find a 16th problem with DFCs after all this time :D )

Oh, don't get me wrong, amuseum, I don't have a problem with your theories. It's just, when you ask a basic question like "What is the obsession with reminder text?", I'm prone to answer. It doesn't mean I agree with the answer I'm giving.

Personally, I think the game could take some time off to grow and expand. Part of 'the problem with Magic' is that it's stuck in a continuous loop of minor changes, forever nudging along one small break-through at a time. I like big leaps. I also know Wizards can't afford to take big risks. So, yeah, this all ends up under the category of experimental. And, yes, my response to that is also "So what?"

Actually, Wizards has been very bold with experiments in recent years. DFC is a huge experiment. So are level up, colorless non-artifact spells, fuse, etc. As for mechanics and keywords go, I like the direction they're going. Especially with indirect game text like devotion and devour. They did some minigames like Clash, but there's room for other types of minigames. Which is sort of what taunt is aiming for.

Reminder text is just that, reminder. It's up to the designer and template editor to think up a reasonable text even if most of the legal text is left out. e.g. see new Bestow which leaves out a lot of rules. On the flip side, just because a concept is simple, doesn't mean reminder text is (see Time Stop).

Psi of course makes more sense within my set. But even outside of a specialized set, it's still a flavorful enabler and win condition for black and blue decks, the two colors that deal with discard and milling.

I've been rather happy with Wizards the last few years, it's true. Magic products starting hitting my group's podcast because of their innovations (Planechase, Archenemy, Commander, plus the occasional pre-release review.) Before Planechase, it wouldn't occur to us to cover Magic sets (man... have I really been podcasting so long that I remember what our policy was before Planechase? Crazy.) Those are the type of products I'd like to see Magic spend more time digging their toes into. DFCs, Level Up and Fuse are cool and interesting innovations, but don't really change the way you think about playing the game.

But, yeah, I'm happy as long as they mess with the format, even occasionally. I'm looking forward to the pre-release 'Fight the Hydra' game coming up in Theros. Here's hoping it will continue to be fun to play well after the pre-release.

yea i was just thinking about the pre-release and release events for the new sets. besides working on the actual cards, they are also trying to make playing the game more fun and social. look at all the casual products like commander, archenemy, planes and schemes. etc.

forgot to mention Planeswalkers themselves as another huge design paradigm shift for Magic (also hugely affecting how lore and storytelling is done for new sets and blocks.)

but don't really change the way you think about playing the game.

in order to do that, would require almost creating a new game. magic's successful because it is what it is. there's no safe, rational reason to suddenly make it become something else just for the sake of change. risking to alienate the current player base and possibly dismantle the entire foundation of what makes magic great. (i'm thinking of terrain here. while cool and effective in other ccgs which build their entire game around them, it's not what magic needs or wants. and i haven't yet seen a version that works for magic.)