Magic Formats, Part VI

Revolutionaries

There are also formats which are decidedly more difficult to get into. These formats usually have deck construction requirements which require multiple players to create specific decks in order to play, in addition to having tweaked play rules.

Singleton is a deck building restriction for duels or multiplayer that say that with the exception of basic lands, you may only have one of each card in your deck. Just like the Limited formats, Singleton ensures that a deck is overall less consistent than it could be and encourages a player to work with cards they might not normally work with.

Commander is the much loved granddaddy of alternative formats. It’s a Singleton format the proscribes a 99 card deck with a 100th, Legendary Creature card (The eponymous Commander) that limits what other colors can be included (or even referenced) by other cards in the deck. The Commander hangs out in the Command Zone where he/she can be cast whenever their owner could cast a creature spell. If the commander would be exiled or destroyed, they may be put into the Command Zone again. The rules of Commander are myriad, but intuitive and fun. Each player starts with 40 life, and that goes a long way towards keeping games long, swingy, and exciting.

Star is quite possibly the least revolutionary of the revolutionaries, simply requiring five monocolored decks of each of the five colors. Players square off in a circle representing the colors on the back of a Magic card: white, blue, black, red, and green. The goal of each color is to kill off their enemy colors. A player doesn’t have to do this themselves; if the White and Red players have both been eliminated, then the White player can win if the Black player is eliminated and the Red player can win if the Blue player is eliminated. Green in this scenario is screwed. It’s a flavorful format that tends to be quicker than most multiplayer formats as there isn’t much hidden information and objectives-based games tend to be quicker than “last man standing” matches.

Godzilla is a format built for fatties. In each 75 card deck, at least 20 of them must be 4/4 creatures or larger. Each player has three individual turns where they can’t interact with another player. Players earn a point for removing other players, being the last man standing, votes from other players for good gamesmanship, and of course, for constructing your deck to have the biggest creatures you can (every total 40 points of power and toughness [above 140] of creatures in your deck gives you an additional point).

Then, before we get to the depressing formats, we get to The Cube. The Cube is a draft format designed to accommodate eight players. It’s a singleton format composed of cards hand selected to create a specific play environment. Each player takes three ‘packs’ of fifteen cards at random from The Cube and drafts normally to make a deck. Players then play normally.