Mental Mage Wars

[Sailor Vulcan]

Each player starts the game with no cards in their spellbook and 120 unspent spellbook points.

During the planning phase, you prepare spells from the card pool, and must pay spellbook points equal to the combined spellbook costs of all your planned cards. The amount deducted is recorded on your spellbook tracker.

After paying spellbook costs, you can transform one or more of your planned cards into any spells in the game that share their spellbook costs. When you transform a planned card, you must record the name of the original spell and the spell it transforms into on your spellbook tracker.

When a card would return to your spellbook, it instead returns to the card pool, and you gain spellbook points equal to its spellbook cost.

When you have no spellbook points you cannot prepare spells, but the game still continues; you can still cast spells through a card effect you control, such as spellbind, force pull, arcane zap, Restore, Healing Light, Staff of Beasts's melee+2/heal 2 ability, etc.

Each epic spell can only be cast by each mage up to once per game.

You cannot cast mage class or school only spells not compatible with your mage's training.

You cannot cast more than six copies of each level 1 spell and 4 copies of each level 2+ spell per game. Since spells are already transformed when they are cast, this rule only applies to spells after transformation.

[BoomFrog]

Why not just play Murphy's Mage Wars. All secret information is the worst possibility for your opponent every time.

1) You do not prepare a spellbook nor do you plan spells in the planning phase. You may cast any two spells a round and must count SP spent. You may not spend more then 120 in a game just like normal.

2) An enchant can become any enchant you wish when revealed except mandatory reveal enchants that would have already been revealed. (You may use little "not a negate" post it notes to remind yourself if nessesary).

[Sailor Vulcan]

Why not just play Murphy's Mage Wars. All secret information is the worst possibility for your opponent every time.

1) You do not prepare a spellbook nor do you plan spells in the planning phase. You may cast any two spells a round and must count SP spent. You may not spend more then 120 in a game just like normal.

2) An enchant can become any enchant you wish when revealed except mandatory reveal enchants that would have already been revealed. (You may use little "not a negate" post it notes to remind yourself if nessesary).

Because then there would be problems. For one, there'd be no such thing as mandatory enchantments. People wouldn't decide that their card was a nullify until they wanted to reveal it. If it's only mandatory because they decided it was, isn't really mandatory. That would break a lot of mandatory enchantments, since now they can save their potential nullifies to counter more threatening spells.

I don't think eliminating the planning phase is a good idea. It gives players time to think and strategize and plan out ahead of time. Furthermore, if players could change their mind any time about what their spells are, that's like replanning, which is a particular effect in the game that has a particular amount of power in it. Wizard's tower is the only object with spellbind that can replan, for instance (unless you count the wands spell switching ability which costs 3 mana and isn't TECHNICALLY replanning).

Once the planning phase ends, you normally can't change what spell a familiar is going to cast, since it would be a lot more powerful if you could--sometimes too powerful.

Imagine your opponent plays a Sardonyx and you have Felella out with a planned spell. You originally planned for her to cast bear strength on you. Now that your opponent has cast Sardy, you want to change your mind and have her cast an immediate Turn to Stone on Sardy to keep the thing from mauling you, rather than letting it maul you now and cast turn to stone next round, like you would in any other game of mage wars. (Assuming you don't have a way to save yourself already planned or in the arena.)

[Sailor Vulcan]

Edit: mana cost is now irrelevant to spell transformation. Only spellbook points matter now. I realized that keeping mana costs the same was only necessary in mental mtg (the original format this one is based on) because  the deck composition and the power level of spells in mtg is very closely tied to mana cost, in part because of the existence of lands. This is not the case in mage wars. The level of a spell combined with the type of mage using it is much more important to spellbook composition and power levels.