WHAT IS THE PORTACLE?
The Portacle is a recasting of the cards of Wizards of the Coast’s Portal card game into standard Magic: The Gathering templates. The format is based heavily on WotC’s Oracle, which is a standardized text for all Magic cards.

WHY WAS THE PORTACLE CREATED?
Portal has been tremendously popular, and promises to be more so in the future. When a Portal player decides to move on to the larger world of Magic: The Gathering, most cards they’ve acquired become useless, causing a large waste of money. The Portacle is an attempt to rectify this circumstance by providing a template where Portal cards can be used alongside regular Magic cards.

WHOM IS THE PORTACLE FOR?
The Portacle is for anyone who would like to use Portal cards in regular Magic: The Gathering games. This can be either for casual, fun play, or non-sanctioned tournament formats.

IN WHAT FORMATS IS THE PORTACLE AVAILABLE?
The Portacle is available in nicely formatted HTML and fast-n-easy ASCII Text.

ARE PORTAL CARDS LEGAL IN TOURNAMENTS?
“Portal cards are not allowed unless they have the same name as a legal card. In this case, they play as the legal card text and not the Portal card.” [D’Angelo] The Portacle is designed for casual play and non-sanctioned tournaments. A list of tournament-legal Portal cards may be found here. The Portacle complies with the latest card text for these cards, either from the Oracle or the card itself.

MOVING FROM PORTAL TO MAGIC: THE GATHERING
To further ease the transition from Portal to regular Magic, there is the Portal to Magic Correspondence Table. This table matches up Portal cards with their corresponding Magic equivalents or near matches. You could substitute the appropriate Magic card for each Portal card, and have full-fledged legal Magic deck that plays just like your Portal deck.

NOTES
The Big News. Stephen D'Angelo's rulings summaries now include "oracle-ized" versions of Portal cards, thus making this site essentially obsolete. This is welcome news, and legitimizes what I've been doing these past few years. For "official" card texts and rulings, see his rulings pages on his Crystal Keep site. I've updated all information in these files to match his wordings (for the most part).

Sorceries played on opponent’s turn. In the wake of the printing of Blessed Reversal in Urza’s Legacy, all Sorceries that are played on the opponent’s turn have been changed to Instants. Note that in some cases the text indicating when to play the card has been retained in order to stay with the intent of the card. In addition, Sorceries that counter other spells have also been changed to Instants. I consider this event to be a rather “blessed reversal” to my previous stance on these cards.
Along the same lines, I have also removed the timing restriction on cards that tap for some effect. (For example, see Capricious Sorcerer.)

Bury versus Destroy effects. According to the Portal rulebook (pg. 25), “Destroy means ‘bury’ when a creature destroys itself or when a card specifically destroys one of your own creatures.” Accordingly, such cards in the Portacle have been changed to “bury”. (Note that I’ve switched to the post-Tempest “Destroy...cannot regenerate” template.) A few other cards that have close-matches with Magic cards have also been changed to a bury effect (e.g. Portal’s Hand of Death compared with Dark Banishing).

Sorceries versus Instants. In addition to the note above, there are several Portal cards that are functionally identical, or very similar, to Magic cards, with the exception that the Portal card is a sorcery and the Magic card is an instant (e.g. Last Chance and Final Fortune). In every case these cards have been left as sorceries to retain as much of the Portal functionality as possible. You are welcome to play these as instants, if you like.

Horsemanship. “Horsemanship” is a new evasion ability in Portal Three Kingdoms. Ruleswise, it is treated exactly as Flying. When intermixing P3K cards with other Magic cards, it is useful to treat Horsemanship as an intermediate evasion ability between groundpounders and fliers. You may use this chart to determine legal blocks:

Defending Creature (None) Flying H'ship Shadow Attacking Creature (None) Flying H'ship Shadow

If you don't like the concept of Horsemanship, feel free to substitute Flying for each instance of Horsemanship.

“Portacle” - new internet buzzword? Market research firm The Meta Group has invented some new internet buzzwords. Among them is “Portacle”, which is a “medium-size portal” (whatever that means). You can read the full story here.

LEGEND

	Card is Legal in Standard tournaments		Card also appears in Starter		Card has an equivalent Magic card
Card also appears in the following Magic The Gathering set
	Fourth Edition		Fifth Edition		Classic Sixth Edition
	Ice Age		Homelands		Alliances
	Mirage		Visions		Weatherlight
	Tempest		Stronghold		Exodus
	Urza's Saga		Urza's Legacy		Urza's Destiny
	Mercadian Masques		Nemesis		Prophecy
	Invasion		Planeshift		Apocalypse
	Odyssey		Torment		Judgment

COMMENTS, CORRECTIONS
These pages are maintained by Bob Flaminio. I welcome any comments on this work. I especially welcome any corrections from rules gurus.

E-mail Me!

DISCLAIMER
These pages are not published or endorsed by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Magic: The Gathering® and Portal® are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.