Custom Magic Formats

Anybody on here ever make an MTG format, either an actual format, or a variant you can staple onto another format (like how you can mix vanguard or planechase with basically any other format)?

Contemplating making a custom format for fun (to play with friends), and contemplating different ways of doing it.

Other urls found in this thread:

discord.gg/hcut9sP
discord.gg/013gVNhXUxwOvYrw6
mtg.wikia.com/wiki/Skittles
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/frontier-magic-2010-05-24
mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/World_Championship_Decks
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

We play vanguard EDH with semi-randomly selected vanguards.

You get three at random, replace up to two of them, then take your pick of the three.

Planar map is a variant of planechase where you lay out a 3x3 grid of face down, flip the middle and start there. Whenever you planeswalk, you pick an adjacent card and flip it if it's face down, move there, then lay face down cards in any adjacent spots that are empty.

Ooh, I like that. Can't go back to the same plane twice though right?

Two,
Penniless: you can't play cards worth more than a $1.50 thus creating an ever rotating format thats cheap to enter.
Millionaire: you can't play cards worthless than $10 dollars that includes basic lands unless they are like john avon lands or whatever. That printing/ that card has to break the price mark.

I only collect casually so at home i play 40 card singleton decks.

My play group sometimes plays a format we call Pre-Modern. Only cards before 8th edition are legal. We use the vintage banned/restricted list.

New idea for a sealed format. You write the contents of your packs down, put them all together and shuffle it into a monumental landless deck. Everyone draws their opening hand and all draw phase cards from the deck. The graveyard is also shared. Each player may once a turn put any card on the battlefield as if it were a land that can be tapped for any of the symbols in its casting cost. I'm thinking of calling it "Tower" because it'll be a massive fucking stack of cards.

We had some threads a while ago about a format called Adversary. It was pretty similar to vanguard, but the whole fun part was that the community made the cards. The decks were 60 card singleton with modern cardlist and commander-style color identity. I had a blast with it, but it eventually just died out. I kept all the Adversaries on my cockatrice though. Here is about half of the ones we made.

Sounds interesting. What kind of decks do you play?

Nothing too outrageous. My go-to deck is a mono-U prison deck. We also have slivers, MBC, a few combos

>Old Calico used to start with 4 cards

SERAAAAAPH

For the uninitiated, the number where the casting cost should be is an indication of the Adversary's tier. (Very) loose power rating. The symbols where the set symbol should be represent color identity, as in EDH. The placement of these symbols was debated a fucking lot, but Seraph, the dude who came up with and was curating Adversary, refused to put them anywhere else.

The bottom leggy is starting life,and bottom right is starting and maximum hand size.

Adversaries are not cards and cannot be interacted with in any way, and are placed in the command zone before the game begins.

So many busted designs... That was a fun winter.

Oh whoops. Hawk was the curator guy. Seraph was his waifu.

Glad at least some of you freaks are still around.
I cannot believe how long Elania was around, basically unbeatable, same with old Hez and old Entity.
Too bad the project shut down before I could get my land destruction adversary in.

Clusterfuck
It's Commander+Archenemy+Planechase, but the Archenemy gets switched based on the plane we're on.

Its 50 card singleton with a commander. The commander has to match a color of basic land in your deck is the only restriction. Its pure cancer and great fun. Definately a legacy-lite format.

Elania burn.. Now that was some shit.

>Char
>Mana Clash
>Orcish Artillery
god bless america it was too good

Nothing me REEEEEE harder than using existing MTG card art for adversaries.

>Ananta Seshou

She's not my bloody waifu!

>Goblin Tossin' Jim
Got a kek out of me.

Adversary revival when
>urndal is just an anagram for dralnu
who made these cards anyways

>Adversary revival when
Working on something new right now, actually. Closer to a board game than a format, but it utilizes Adversaries.

Edh emperor. Its a lot longer than a normal edh game. But the fight gets brutal fast. Plus seeing the full color wheel in action on one side of the table alone is pretty nifty. And no five color decks dont count.

Link me up pham, I want to break your games again.
Here's the rest for people who want them.

Me and my brother's once made a game where Cards were like pieces on a board that you had to move space by space. Depending on the surrounding lands certain creatures would get bonuses or negatives. I should really put some time into that again, it's been 15 years

There's nothing to link to at the moment, it's only in the planning stages. You can add me on Discord or Skype if you want me to keep you posted, though, I already had one past Adversary player added and that's how I heard it was being mentioned.

Prebuilt Theme Decks.

Historical Standard Champion Decks.

Planar League- Risk + Cube, you get a prebuilt deck. Gets boosters of your colorpie as Army reinforcements after each round.

Dang, I'd love to be a part of that stuff but I don't use either of those programs.

Oh, you can use Discord without downloading anything as a browser-based thing. I don't think you even have to make an account.
discord.gg/hcut9sP
Click that and you'll go straight to the Veeky Forums discord server.

well I'll be, learn something new every day

>That nerf to Seraph's starting hand size

WHY

SHE WAS BALANCED FOR LEVEL 3

A Telepathy and the ability to not only nuke a combo piece for free but to play it against the other dude is whack my man.

Compare that shit to other level 3's, though. Makra has ridiculous digging ability to find combo pieces and can just remove pretty much any creature. Galossa is... Well, Galossa. Khan and Elania, I'd say, are honorary level 3's, and either of those could definitely fight Seraph.

Makra starts with 5 cards in her hand man, and honestly I'd rate the damage higher than the digging. I don't think I've ever seen a Galossa deck, and Khan and Elania are both gross and have a hard time losing in general. Khan probably shouldn't be 4 colors, but that debate has gone on long enough.

Maximum cards with same name in deck being less than 4.

Contemplating a format where you get a "hero power" of sorts. Pay two mana, activate an ability. Looking into what kind of abilities would work, and for what colours.

Mostly just doing mono colour abilities for now.

White has a choice to generate a 1/1 soldier. It counts as a card being cast so it us counterable but will also trigger doors of destiny and the like. That, or give a creature +1/+1 counter.

Blue is just draw a card. Seems basic enough.

Red I'm thinking should be deal 1 dmg to target creature or player. Or give a creature haste

Green can give something trample, or scry 3 and put a land or creature into hand.

Black would be gain 1 life, your opponent loses 1. Or target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.

Thoughts?

>The "Cubelets" variant of the "danger room" format, but with boosters which you recover afterwards.

Yeah, that's one way to do it. I'd inclined to just go with either Cubelets or danger room though.

Neat. Sounds fun, it is just vanguard with color identities and custom cards though.

How does this switching work? You just pass them the archenemy deck?

Just in case anyone new is interested in Adversary: discord.gg/013gVNhXUxwOvYrw6

>Adventurer
Two decks are added to the game.
A five color deck filled with adventurer cards (wizard, barbarian, scout, etc) and a magic item Mart deck (equipment, consumables, auras, and artifacts that are 1-use).
Each deck is 100 cards.

Each deck has a hand of 5 cards, face down. Every turn you put one card from the hand on the bottom, and draw until there are 5 cards again.

On your turn you can pay 3 to be able to look at the adventurers hand until eot or pay 1 to see the magic item mart hand.

If you hire an adventurer, roll 1d6-4. If you get >0, the adventurer comes with that many items from the item mart, drawn off the top of the deck.

All mana costs on cards in either deck can be played by their CMC using any colored mana. I have also played around with the idea it costing +1 for each color of mana in the cost beyond the first. So a card that's R costs 1, and a card that's UR costs 3.

When these cards are destroyed or the like, they go into a discard pile for their appropriate deck.

The format has proven fun.

Weve combined it with edh.

Oh.

Everything in the magic item mart deck has CMC

Contemplating a format where decks are broken down into price tiers, and point-costed like Warhammer. The points would be based on card price (cheapest printing). Basic lands would be free. Singleton. Legacy banlist.

So, a $20 deck might be 100 pts.

Building for a different point total would be different weight categories, and you couldn't mix and match weight categories, is like showing up to a 2k point Warhammer tournament with a 1k point army.

The point costs of cards would be generated automatically with a web app I'd write, that pulls data from the main online MTG marketplaces. You could search for cards and sort by point-cost. For deck building, maybe a plugin for tappedout.

The work would be in writing with the Web app.

I wanna play a post M15 only format.
Delete current modern and make M15 card frame the new modern. (Excluding supplemental sets.)
Could wait two blocks to do it.
Hopefully wotc plans this.

What are you specifically looking to get rid of from modern?

Would play. Seems like a good way to get friends into mtg.

And instead of banning cards, you could override/adjust the point costs upwards where needed.

I like using the fiscal price as a starting place for the point costs though, gives a low barrier to entry, and a more reasonably level playing field.

Sets since m15 are much more "balanced" and starting hands are less important.
Games don't end before they begin.
Sure you could go as far back as to original Innistrad and get same results, but M15 card frame is more coherent.

I have an idea for one that I've been working on. Basically, you get a bunch of cards from a set, and split them up in to separate decks. One for each multicolor faction, a deck for generic cards, and a deck for basic and generic lands. Everyone gets 7 cards from the 2 generic decks, and you can draw from any deck as long as your mana matches it.

Not sure how well it would play, but I imagine it being a bit like drafting mid-game as you have to pick a color pair and strategy to aim for with the cards you're dealt.

I would look up 1 mana spells and go based on those.

That's not a matter of the sets themselves being better, that's a matter of a smallish number of crazy good cards dominating modern.

If you got rid of those to top tier cards from modern (which accumulated slowly over several sets) you'd achieve basically the same result.

What you're talking about will eventually happen to any eternal format as it grows.

Basically any single block , or any couple blocks, will yield a more balanced meta than an eternal format does.

Also "no" color pie violations.
Everything after Innistrad is just better made.

That would be a tad broken. White alone has path to exile at a 1cost. There'd never be anything on the board.

The idea is to go with a commander planeschase l, giving those with low mana/no creatures a bit of an early game buffer, and for some fun things. Bolts for free are not fun.

Although, paying mana and rolling for a random spell of a chosen CMC might be fun.

Interesting.

That would take a lot of cards and building many decks. It would probably perform best if curated like a cube.

Yeah. That's basically what I did. Got 50 or so cards from each guild of ravnica, a bunch of gateless cards, and a deck full of ravnica lands.

I'm tentaviely calling it Towers. It is quite similar to a cube in terms of the number of cards needed, though isn't as hard to get started and reset as everything is in its own deck

my old shop used to run skittles tournaments.

Skittles is a 5-colour Highlander pauper-type format for Magic the Gathering, with decks built of a minimum 60 cards, 15 card sideboards, with the following card restrictions: You must balance all five colours and artifacts equally. So with six blue cards, you must have six B, W, G, R and Artifact too. Sometimes people add a couple more land and play ~62 cards. Gold/Split/Guild cards contribute half to each of the two colours they share.

No cards that have ever been rare may be played. For example, Urza's Armour is an Uncommon in Urza's Saga, but is rare in 8th Edition, and so cannot be played.

mtg.wikia.com/wiki/Skittles

I didn't mean to just pick the best 1 mana spells ever and go with those. It'd be better to pick something that fits thematically for what that color wants to do.

Red could get Shock, White could get a 2/1, stuff like that. You want the effects to feel meaningful.

Yeah sure, but if you'd ban all tier 0.5 cards in modern you'll get yourself assassinate by some madman.
There are some modern playable cards in post-M15, but are these cards as powerful without the pre-M15 bases?
And as I said, post-M15 has lower power level and coherent color pie.
Modern is still not as powerful as legacy.
The same way a post-m15 format will never be as powerful as current modern.

Age to disagree.

But then, my favourite blocks are Odyssey>Khans>Ravnica>Tempest>Invasion

Thought up something else to go with it. There's a deck of "Power" Cards, and these cards get dealt to a player. They can choose 3 out of a draw of 5. You pay the spells CMC and tap it, and it stays in play even if countered etc. To add a new power, you pay 2 mana and exile the current power.

I've thought an idea for one power.

"Pay X, then choose a set that is legal within the current format. Cast a random spell from within that set with CMC X minus 1. If the spell is not legal, repeat until legal spell is chosen"

anyone else remember frontier magic?

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/frontier-magic-2010-05-24

Sure the atmosphere is better in older sets.
And maybe more "fun".

But you have to be a madman to think pos-M15 doesn't have a stronger color pie?
The very existence of Time Spiral block...
Most sets between 2000 and 2010 are cluster fucks.

>colour pie
As far as I'm concerned they're always handled the color pie well enough. This point doesn't matter to me.
>Since by default eternal formats are cumulative , making a new eternal format will have a lower let level than the current ones ever will.

I suppose. But then you need to add a new eternal format every x years.

I'd rather play legacy with the top x tier cards banned, if I'm looking for a lower power eternal format.

The price calculated point-buy deckbuilding would do that pretty well. Good luck building a deck full of top tier modern cards when you've got a $50 budget for your deck.

Time spiral block notwithstanding, I think the older sets have as good of a color-pie as you'd ever need. If anything I'd argue the current color pie approach is too restrictive.

Legacy with the top X tier cards banned and have the rest of the good cards reprinted would be a gift from god.
But it's risky, cause "no one" know what broken overpowerd decks would replace them?
And wotc won't do it, not in another 10 years.

If any new eternal format will ever be made, it will be based on M15 frame.
I just want it now, not in 3 years.

Current pie is a bit too tight.
But they're starting too loosen it.
I bet in a year you'll see polymorph in red.

>Legacy with the top x tier cards banned
You don't need wotc for that. You just need one guy to curate a new, more restrictive banlist, either manually or using a computer program. If using a computer program, manual adjustments, or computer program recalibrating would need to be made in the future based on what happens within the format.

>the rest of the cards reprinted
That, you'd need WotC for.

And you're right , WotC won't do it.

Really, WotC doesn't care about eternal formats. Why should they? Their money comes from limited and standard. Modern is an after thought, legacy even more so.

>The Adversary I made is still there

Yay I did something that lasted!

My friend made one he called "Rebalance."

Basically it was normally MTG except that if any player called a card for being off color you had to prove it was on color. Other players could then offer counters to your argument such as saying that that card is much more suited as another color and not the one it is. If you couldn't defend your card it was banned or "Rebalanced" You hand write out a new card to fit into the sleeve changing the mana cost to the colors it fit.

We played it like two times before getting annoyed. Turns out in a lot of cases you could say a card could be in any color.

That does sound awful. Most cards can easily be argued into being another color. The only safe deck to play would be all hybrid cards.

>mother may I, the format
>kangaroo court, the format

How did you not immediately recognize it was a bad idea?

Something called "Wargames", a format that challenges you and helps you refine and playtest your deck. Kind of like challenge decks and event decks, but with way more variability.

Print sealed decks from Tiers 3 to 1 of Standard, Modern, and Legacy. Make these decks powerful but worthless. Make the cards from these decks not legal for tournament play.

Start at Tier 3 of any format and pick a deck to go against with the deck you're playtesting. You'll need a buddy for this. Best 2 out of 3, and if you win against all of the decks at Tier 3, move up to Tier 2 and so on.

It's a rough idea, I just came up with it really. But it could help balance the Top 8's more I think when it's time for GP and PT.

In addition, it could help improve the quality of the competitive scene I believe. It could also help with studying to become a Judge, or overall memorizing for real tournament play.

I see how this would make you better at deckbuilding and tournament play.

Having talked to a couple pro players, many of them do this.

Not really a new format though. More a means to get better at a given competitive format.

Thanks for the feedback, I think if Wizards makes it mass available it could really explode. Plus, worthless reprints are easier to read than ink on paper

>it already exists. It's not really a format so much as a means of deck testing against common decks.
>it could really explode if wizards made this mass available.
What?

>worthless reprints
You want wotc to just mass reprint stuff, and just make it not tournament legal? Don't they already do that with the world championship decks?

If you mean
>print the hell out of recent top 8 regional decks in time to use them to practice
That's never going to be practical.

Just test your decks against printed proxies like everyone else. If you want pretty proxies, just take the time to make them pretty.

You could also do like my friends do , and test your decks against whatever you want using cockatrice offline, with your deck on paper vs the deck on screen.

Though that does remind me of a fun format my friends and i sometimes did with octgn or cockatrice back when I used that regularly:

>Each player chooses/drafts a year.
>Each player gets to choose one of the top 8 standard legal decks from that year.

You then play with those highly refined decks.

Works with any rotating format.

No setup time because it's an exercise in gameplay tactics instead of deckbuilding.

Though studying the world championship decks to play them effectively will help, and studying how they're built will certainly make you better at deckbuilding.

They stopped printing non-legal world championship decks in 2004. Evidently they weren't selling.

mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/World_Championship_Decks

The decklists are made public, but you'll have to either make proxies or use cockatrice, as you suggested for regional tournaments.

Building off of this idea, what if you used the Battlemage abilities from shards of Alara? They're all one mana with the ability to only be used once. Just give people the option to have one of them once per turn for 2 mana.

Some might be a bit better than others though

The best way to handle something like this (and the way Hearthstone handles it) is to make the powers equal to a 0-mana effect due to the value inherent in consistency and not costing a card. In Magic, you find these effects most often by looking at cantrip spells.

Which was yours?

>be me
>play uril the miststalker
>be the emperor
>to my right, a daghatar counter deck, to my left, a ghoul caller zombie deck
>I believe we were playing against narset and some other deck I don't remember
>solid dozen turns before one of my vassals is killed
>in that time, I've pumped Uril up to retarded levels
>daghatar eventually goes under
>"ok, I swing for 40 (or somewhere thereabouts) with unblockable double strike, lifelink, trample, deathtouch, flying, annihilator 2, and my life total doubles, with commander damage"

>be me
Go and stay go.

60 card singleton without reserved list. Fuck highlander and 100 card formats.

I remember this, at first those adversary cards were too broken or too underwhelming that my interest died out immediately.

This

Didn't go over these super closely, but the Pestilence guy (Ignis) seems broken in most normal games, better than 2-tier anyway.

This seems like a good place to raise the topic:

Has anyone else thought of making a variant of wizards tower that specifically uses cards from the Conspiracy block(s)? The conspiracy cards are cool as shit, but a lot of them only work in a draft and are useless in constructed, so they sort of expire after the first time you draft with them.

It feels like you should be able to so some substitution by replacing references to the pack you are drafting to instead apply to the face-up cards available for public picks as a part of Wizards tower. And replace 'when you draft' with 'when you draw'.