The Forgotten Ways To Play Magic: The Gathering
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- Опубликовано: 30 апр 2024
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Rainbow Stairwell: www.coolstuffinc.com/a/abesar...
Army Magic: kingfatty.blogspot.com/2009/03...
Prismatic: magic.wizards.com/en/articles...
Emperor: magic.wizards.com/en/articles...
Tribal Wars: / tribal_wars_we_reanima...
3 Card Blind: mtg.fandom.com/wiki/3-Card_Blind
5 Point: magic.wizards.com/en/articles...
Wizard's Tower: www.wizardtower.com/
#MagicTheGathering #MTG #commander
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Meet Post Malone. Play Magic: The Gathering against Post Malone. Take home $100,000!? To be randomly selected, join Post Malone's livestream on August 4th at 9pm ET / 6pm PT, only on WhatNot! See postmalone.whatnot.com for all the details! Sponsored by WhatNot.
I applied for it the moment I saw it. It'd be an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience! Nevermind the cash-- that's just icing on the cake!
I would love too but I'm a bit warry on what the app does when I'm not looking
This might be the first advertisement I've ever watched all the way through, just to watch the professor's face, hahaha
Im signin up even if i have a trash commander deck, maybe going all in on pioneer wasnt a good idea...
@n99 diddo that would be awesome to see regularly
Okay, I didn't see anyone mention Horde. Just like it sounds, you and your fellow players are on a team against the Horde deck. The Horde deck is typically large, like 100 cards per player, and is themed around tokens. The deck would be mostly tokens, such as Zombies, and a few other cards to fit the theme. Players take their turn together, while the Horde deck has it's own turn. During the Horde deck's turn, it flips cards until it hits a nontoken card. That card is cast for free and all the tokens are put into play. The tokens have haste and attacked each turn if able. Any spells that target or choices on who to attack are done at random. Your goal is to survive. Dealing damage to a horde deck mills that many cards. And you just try and get the deck to zero, kind of to simulate a horde based video game. Designing the Horde deck can be pretty fun too, and I think Wizards even did a variant of this as a promotion for Theros/Born of the Gods/Journey into Nyx with Minotaurs.
This was actually my introduction to MtG. I started playing with some friends in 2015.
Horde is awsome
Best way to play magic
Well, technically the hydra and xenagos also a horde game. WOTC should make horde variant again, as it is a fun solitaire and multiplayer co-op
Always wanted to try this one.
I almost choked on a piece of pizza when you said standard. Laughing while eating is dangerous it turns out
Yes, oxygen is important.
@@wolfdwarf standard isnt
I’m just getting into MTG. What is the normal format to play MTG? Why is standard so hated ?
@@newjerseyjustin normal is whatever your playgroup plays most often. People dont generally hate standard they're disappointed in it, because Wizards has decided to focus on designing cards for more "casual" Commander play. I put casual in quotations because whenever i hear about the decks Commander players use it's always turn 1 or turn 2 win decks, which doesnt seem casual to me.
@newjerseyjustin Most common format are Standard, Booster Draft (Limited), and EDH.
Standard is mostly hated only ironically. Altho some reasons to hate it include: that it's rotating meaning only the last year or so(?) of cards are allowed, so it can be expensive and intensive to keep up sometimes. With rotation there can be times where the available card-pool has cards that some may not enjoy to play, and also some claim that some standard formats/card pools are badly balanced.
I still love Emperor, though I'm used to spells resolving via 'spell range'. where Lieutenants have a spell range of 1 (themselves, their Emperor, and their closes opponent) and Emperors have a spell range of 2 (themselves, each of their lieutenants, the opposing lieutenants, and the opposing Emperor should any Lieutenant exit the game.). Similarly, creatures can only attack the closest enemy, but Emperors have the ability to 'march' their units to a lieutenant during the attack step, shifting control.
Emperor is actually defined in the Comprehensive Rules (at 809, just next to Two-Headed Giant, in fact), and basically what you said is given as the default way to play it there. I'm a little surprised that the Professor is (and some other comments here are) giving a different version considering that. (in particular, the Limited Range of Influence Option which Emperor makes use of *does* affect board wipes despite what the Professor claims, per 801.10; and I'm a little sad he didn't mention anything about the Deploy Creatures option, which is simply: '804.2. Each creature has the ability “{T}: Target teammate gains control of this creature. Activate only as a sorcery.”')
thats how i played as well. We also allowed you to tap and pass any permanent to a player one position away
I love the Emperor too. Our Holy Emperor protects us from Chaos and the nasty xenos
Pentagram is a fantastic way to play the game! The fact that eliminating your enemies is what wins you the game, means that it's possible for two players to win (not tie) at the same time. Depending on the personalities at your table, this can lead to hilarious shenanigans. Some players are happy to share the win, and others want to go for the solo win. We often play that you *are* allowed to attack your allies, even though doing so can't win you the game. It introduces an additional layer of politics, if your playgroup likes that side of multiplayer.
This was always my favorite way to play Magic.
we had been doing that muliplayer format since 1995. Started out as a rainbow idea as I had built 5 mono colour revised decks to battle each other ...essentially a constructed cube
My longest ever game of MTG I've played was a 10 person game of Emperor... it started around 1am, and ended around 9am. We were all taking naps between rounds at one point. It cemented friendships for me, but I will *never* do that again!
we did one at a teen leadership retreat at night. "tower defense" style where you had 3 decks, two of which were towers and one general deck. you could only attack towers until both towers were gone on one player, if your general deck died, you lost. it took all week.
The opposite of a 4 hour game of Mario Party or Risk.
did you play two headed emperor?
@@RedDawn430 it was 2 teams of 5 battling for dominance. Or, battling for nap rotation...
That sounds fun
Pentagram actually has a variant called Star Magic. It basically did not have the color restriction and focus only on the sitting chart. It played the same as pentagram, where people beside you are allies and the one across are enemies. Played that a lot with my play group as we tend to have 5 people to play with.
Way easier to play that way in general too since people don't have to bring custom decks to play it. Just sit down with a pod of 5 and play.
Yeah, for us for a long while star games were the default when we had 5 players.
I recall a comment once that had the idea to have the people beside you as the enemies, as that makes it much easier to read their board states, which is difficult with five players at the table, as either people are more spread out around a round one or one player's too far from two others at a rectangular/square one.
Just played star last Halloween with terrible tribal decks
Star is one of the best ways to play commander with 5 players.
I learned of a rather silly format of game that I've always wanted to play called "Kangaroo Court".
The premise is it is a 3 person format, with two playing and the third as the "judge". As you play and have interactions you argue for how things should go in your favor. Your opponent gets to respond then you get a rebuttal. At that point the judge makes a call in favor of one side or the other. These come in the form of "rulings" and "laws". Rulings only affect that one instance, while laws affect future events as well.
As an example:
Player A plays a [[Bad Moon]]. Player B later plays a [[Blood Moon]] and argues that the other card should be destroyed since there can only be one moon in the sky. Player A returns that there is no reason to assume the fight is taking place on earth and there may be many moons in the sky. Player B then gets an chance to respond, arguing that this is a perfect time to establish what plane they're on and how many moons should be there, aiming for only one to allow for his request to be fulfilled.
At this point the judge makes their decision. They could rule that there is only one moon/there are many moons, leaving which plane they're on open for later, or they can make a law setting a defined limit on any part of the situation. Judges are encouraged to take into account things like the artwork and type of a card; a human can't wield more then two weapons due to only having two hands as an example.
After each match the judge position rotates to the next player, disinclining favouritism between players due to retaliation against them later.
I remember this. It was in an old issue of Inquest magazine.
Flavor judge but as a game mode
I remember playing Emperor a lot. We had the special rule that the emperor could "transfer" one of the own creatures on the battlefield to a lieutenant or one from a lieutenant to the own battlefield during main phase one. Off course, summoning sickness applied. So you could shift forces slowly. Pretty funny to "retreat" and save important creatures when a lieutenant was almost beaten.
I like the implication that Post Malone knows more about the Professor's channel than the Professor does Post's music.
I as a subscriber would love to see an episode of shuffle up & play using the Army format. It just sounds so fun, definitely going to try it with my friends this evening!
I haven’t seen anyone mention Judge Tower, perhaps the most headache-inducing format (players play off one massive library, infinite mana and you must make all legal plays, a player who misses a play or a rules event loses/gets a “point”) or chaos commander sheriff draft, an extremely fun format I had the pleasure of playing a few times when I lived in Connecticut. It is what it sounds like, with the sheriff aspect being a few different roles (sheriff, outlaw, townsfolk, etc.) and the color pie not applying. That was some of the most fun I have ever had playing Magic.
Judge tower is absurd lmao xD
@@magnuslayton8827 it is truly as close as Magic gets to pure masochism. The one time I played, the deck creator included several foreign versions of cards to make the experience arbitrarily harder.
I taught Kingdom to my high school magic club. It is essentially like Bang! if you've played that. You can play with 5 or 6 players, and we usually played with Commander decks. There's 6 roles: King, Knight, 2x Bandits, Rogue, and Usurper. If playing with 5, you randomly select one of the last two without anyone knowing which. Every blindly selects a role and does NOT reveal it during the game (but they can verbally claim to be any role). The Kind is the only one who reveals their rule. They start at 50 life and go first, and they become the monarch at the end of their first turn. The king and knight win if they or at least the king is the last surviving. The bandits win if one of them is alive and the king is defeated. The rogue is trying to be the last one standing, so they usually help get the bandits first. The usurper is interesting; if they deal the killing blow to the king, 2 things happen: the king is instead set at 1 life, and then trades roles with the king. The only exception is if they are the only two players, then the original king just dies. A lot of the fun is trying to figure out who's on whose side, trying not to give away your loyalties too soon, and making moves to make sure your team wins.
I actually played that at my LGS last week. Someone brought in little cards with the different roles on them and everything.
We call it Sheriff where I live
Two headed giant needs to come back. It's the best format for teaching new players and by having a teammate encourages you to play cards that you wouldn't normally play
with thg you just end up with the more experienced players piloting 2 decks at once while the new player has no idea whats going on.
If you're goal is to be a competitive jerk, yeah sure. That's not been my experience.
too true...I wish arena had it
My local LGS now has Two Headed Giant as the last event scheduled on the weekend of pre-release
Agreed. It was the only format people at my high school and college would play. I have a lot of fond memories meeting people through the format without ever going to a LGS.
I have a playgroup of 6 that play Prismatic every Friday and have been for several years.
Forgot about Planechase, a legitimate Wizards supported format.
Yeah but Planechase is more recent and not really forgotten.
If mentioning Planechase, gotta also mention Archenemy.
My playgroup still plays plain chase not as its own format but as a modifier for anything else.
@@TDMicrodork I played it for the first time in a while recently. I had a blast.
@@stoogeslap I miss archenemy
Idk why, but in my area we played Pentagram all the time, but we called it A Gathering, because it was like a gathering of each type or color of mage. And people would get really into the character and traits associated with their color. Probably the closest I've seen to players trying to roleplay in their Magic game haha.
It kinda makes me sad to hear emperor isn’t really played any more. Back in middle school it was one of the most fun formats we regularly played. Highly recommend trying it if you get the chance.
Archenemy was a cool magic attempt at the wow raid format. I remember in college some friends and I played a game of EDH plainchase, emperor. Anyone could just drop in mid game. It ended when one person was left. The game lasted several hours with rotating players.
+1 archenemy
yeah archenemy and plainschase require either apps or cards that don't even really exist in other formats to run though, and I wouldn't really call them forgotten since they are fairly popular at gatherings/card shops.
@@bradjones7491 I assumed in this case, the term forgotten was more like forgotten by wizards. The last archenemy was the NB vs the 4 Planeswalker decks.
Not sure when the last plainchase addition was.
@@antoniomromo no it's forgotten by the player base, none of these game modes are recognized by wizards of the coast as official.
@@bradjones7491 cool, but they did actually create the and release the products. I mean if we are getting really technical, no format is forgotten as long as one player remembers it.
So happy to see the mention of Wizard's Tower! Truly the lazy man's cube. It's a really fun option when you have a few Magic playing friends over and somebody is about to suggest a board game.
I've spent a significant amount of time curating a "Wizard's Tower" cube of sorts. It's lots of fun without having to crack packs every time! And like you said, a great alternative to a board game as it's self-contained, it feels like a "MTG Board Game."
Vanguard is one that I loved back in the day that was dropped in favor of EDH. For those unaware of it, you chose a character card, based off the various storyline characters, who all had an ability of some kind and changed your starting life total and max number of cards in your hand. Some were incredibly unbalanced even at the time and only got worse as the power level of the game went up.
Loved Vanguard
At least Momir gets some love on MTGO, thats a fun, silly format that I just adore.
I played so much Vanguard in Arena League to finish my playsets of Alt art Disenchant and Fireball back in the day. Back then an alternate art common was just the coolest thing imaginable, plus the 5 basic lands for Arena league were beautiful as well. Cards I would love to still have just for the sentimental value and time spent earning them at my local stores. Or was that the Counterspell and Incinerate days by the time Vanguard started? Hard to remember honestly, it's been so long.
OYG! I totally forgot about the Vanguard cards! I loved that style of play. A friend of mine had all those Vanguards. Damn good times.
I've got a bunch of the oversized vanguard cards nobody ever wanted them
I play W40k for almost 30 years and I am going to learn EDH because a good friend showed me that there will be some MtG product associated with my favourite lore. Never played before and looking forward. We exist.
It might be a bit of a pain to track down all the packs, but you might also want to take a look at Warhammer 40k Conquest, (if there's still any sealed product out there at all.) It was back when GW was working with FFG, and is another really good card game interpretation of 40k.
If you enjoy commander and want to explore outside of the W40K decks, wheel and fling decks are my favorite decks to build.
I used to play Emperor, but in my playgroup back in the day, we didn't have the "only attack adjacent" rule. The guards/lieutenants in the version my playgroup played were able to attack any opponent except an emperor until one of the guards fell. Shows how rules can drift as they disseminate across to a variety of local playgroups.
Emperor especially for being so simple seems to have a different set of rules every time you talk to someone who used to play it. Ours was you could only attack adjacent but you could cast targeted spells anywhere, but I've heard of rules where you can only target adjacent too. And there was one set of rules I heard of where every creature gained an ability where you could tap them to pass control of them to one of your teammates, so you could shore up one of your lieutenants if they needed help.
@@doctordistracto8390 In my group you could only attack adjacent, there was no rule to pass creatures, and generals could only interact with adjacent players, but Emperors could reach 2 players away with their spells. So that meant that the Emperor's job was control and building up big game winning combos while the enemies couldn't interact with them.
@@falconJB we had something similar. With the addition that the 4-of rules applied to all 3 decks. So it was often the lieutenant’s job to kill and the emperor’s to support. No moving creatures. Trample damage went to the emperor. There are some other little rules I’m forgetting. I hope I still have my notebook from back when, so I can look them back up. This gave me some incentive to start an emperor group again. Maybe add some planechase cards in the rules. And some archenemy ones for the emperors.
Id love to see all of these played in shuffle up and play. Its one of my favourite things about those videos, no other games channel Im subscribed to really mix up the type of magic they are playing outside of maybe picking their commanders from the latest sets.
That kind of magic when you first learned to play, where your deck was 80 cards, and you understood some of the mechanics wrong, where house rules were plentiful and rares were not. Better times.
We didn't know you weren't supposed to put all of your cards in one deck. It would be turn twenty and I would be playing my second mountain to cast a spell I've had since the start of the game
I love Auction format, where all the players put their decks in the middle, and then bid starting life totals and starting cards in hand to use a certain deck. It's great if your friends are too cheap to make their own decks so they just use yours
One fun add-on with emperor (or as we called it, General): You can pass untapped creatures and artifacts to your neighbors, which get tapped upon passing. It lets the center player be more interactive and the feeling of reinforcing their two lieutenants. Up to you how to handle summoning sickness. We allowed the passed creatures to untap like normal, but summoning sickness was kept if passing to the left but not to the right (because the opponents had a full turn).
This is how my playgroup does it too
When I read about Emperor and played it once five years ago, marching creatures to your ally's battlefield was not an add-on, but an integral part of the format. Can't remember where I picked it from up though.
I think passing creatures is a baked in rule that the Prof. just forgot or doesn't know about.
@@TheJohtaja , there are rules for Emperor in the Comp Rules. rule 809. It specifically states (809.3b) that it uses the "deploy creatures" rule, rule 804.
Ooooh, I almost forgot about that wrinkle. Emperor is supremely fun, especially when your deck isn't optimized for it and you're learning what the hell you can do on the fly.
I remember Army magic. I may talk to my playgroup to see if they'd be up for it.
They are not forgotten in my playgroup. Teamplay, Emperor and Pentagram are among our main ways of playing Magic. I think it's odd that it turned out that individual play got so much supported and promoted in Magic, even though it's a great teamplay game. Well, now that a popular figure is mentioning them on his channel, maybe they will get the boost they deserve...
my casual playgroup has always had multiplayer focus... playing like that for 29 years now. They never played / still dont play any sanctioned duals magic...
I would love to see a video from TCC about the magic format that become it’s own game: “Landless Magic”. I believe it was another format that has it’s start in the duelist magazine. Landless magic is when you build a deck with no land or just take all of the land out of an existing deck, but when you are playing the game, can play any card in your hand upside down as a basic land instead. Later this concept would be developed further by wizards into the game Duel Masters and then later rebooted under the name Kaijudo.
I learned a format from Clonehead RUclips channel they called "Big Deck". It used five hundred cards as a communal pool. No lands and each card was also a land if you wanted. Single color cards where basics and came in untapped and multicolor cards where played tapped and used like a guild gate. Tapping for one of it's multiple colors. Well I made a deck of over seven hundred cards balancing the colors as best as I could. WE PLAYED THE FUCK OUT OF IT. I wound up sleaving the whole thing. We typically started with fifty life and played with groups of four or five. The deck was divided into hundred cards piles so when you"Search your library" you pick just one hundred card pile to search. It's as blast to play because you never miss a land drop and everyone gets to play all kinds of spells. The ONLY thing i don't like is I feel physical pain when I play a Nicol Bolas God Pharoh as a non-basic. Lol
Though I can't say it's ridiculously obscure, I'd say that Oathbreaker was kind of cool while it was a fad.
That came and went really fast.
I liked the 2 games of Oathbreaker I played
I really liked Oathbreaker. Don't understand why it didn't gain popularity.
@@RaunienTheFirst Yeah it's a shame it wasn't viable to play at my LGS
@@RaunienTheFirst how many casual format started by players that gained popularity do you know? Exactly, one. Commander. And its popularity boost came when Wizards started backing it. Commander is the exception, not the rule. It's nearly impossible for a casual format to gain popularity.
More of a deck construction restriction than a format, but I did like the deck building scheme with further limited number of copies based on rarity - up to 4 commons, 3 uncommon, 2 rare and 1 mythic. Gave a more "limited" feeling and more varying gameplay when jamming many games in a row.
I believe it was also used in Duels of the Planeswalkers games, before Arena was a thing.
Check out Primordial it’s very similar with a more limited feel and they even have a discord
Wow this is fantastic. Love learning about weird and forgotten element of the actual game. Puts mtg in context with other popular table top games
Me and my brother created a format that's crazy fun and blazing fast.
We call it.. 💠 *Hypercube* 💠
(Somewhat similar to wizards Tower, or Fat Stack but with some key differences.)
You start with a large stack of cards that will act as a shared Library. This stack will include everything but basic land cards. This includes mana producers and non-basiclands. Any cards that search the library are probably best being left out.
I like to have at least 200 cards with an equal number of each color, colorless, and a balanced curve of mana costs. Plus some balanced multicolor cycles as well. Tho, it doesn't matter. I also like to give the cards some focus with archetypes and synergy; but again it really doesn't matter. In the end it's just a random stack of cards.
Basic lands are where it gets crazy. In the center of the table, arrange a supply of each basic land. These supplies do not run out. If you physically run out of Mountains, players can just simulate more Mountains.
To play the game, each player will draw seven cards from the shared Library. You will not have any basic lands in hand. From then on, whenever a player draws a card, they made take one from the library, or a Basic Land of their choice. Yes, of their choosing..
Players maintain their own graveyards.
Everything else is MTG as usual.
-----
This might not sound like much but it's absolutely the best way to play with random cards. Choosing your basic lands sounds broken at first glance, but that immediately crashes to a halt once your hand starts to empty and you realize you need more cards. Having strong multicolor spells makes it even more nail biting. Worthless rares and jank artifacts really get a chance to shine. Even mana dorks and scry get a whole new dimension to them.
And the best part is when you finish a game you can just push everything to the side, reset the basic lands and roll right into a fresh game without shuffling. You can just steamroll lightning fast games of wacky random fun and surprise tactics.
Kudos on mentioning Emperor. I remember seeing it explained in an old issue of InQuest Gamer and have participated in ONE game of Emperor Commander.
Emperor is cool on paper, then a few players figure out they can just use the guards as meatshields until the Emperor gets 10,000 Squirrels and Goblin Bombardment in play :/. Granted, you can do gentlemen's agreements (like don't build 4 fireballs and 56 mountains for All Mana Out), but it seems like the format is especially susceptible to it.
@@dapperghastmeowregard That is kind of the point though, the generals act as guards while the Emperors try to put together a game ending combos.
@@dapperghastmeowregard Slivers...
I just got an idea: Pentagram draft. Each player is randomly assigned a secret color and must draft at least that color, then play Pentagram.
If you are going to do that you probably want to just crack all the packs pass all the mono-color cards to the appropriate person and then just draft the colorless and multicolor cards or give each player a color theme booster and then draft a couple packs.
Of these, as a kid, I remember playing emperor quite bit. It was our favorite whenever we had 6 or more players. I remember rainbow stairwell being played at my LGS(s), yet the complicated deck requirements prevented me from getting into it. I just didn't have enough power spells/lands to make 5 color work. It seems we did dabble in a 5-point variant as well. Later on, I think we once or twice did a version of cube wizard tower! Sooo much fun, thanks for the throwback!
I've never had the chance to play it, but I always thought Type 4 looked like a cool way to play! It's basically multiplayer cube draft, but the gimmick is that each player has access to unlimited mana of every color and can only play one card each turn.
Also, battle box is a very fun and extremely skill testing format! I spent a few happy hours burning my brain with a good friend of mine who put one together.
Thanks for another excellent video, Prof!
I remember hearing a couple of these! I remember trying Emperor back in 2015 and wow, it was a hell of a game. The Emperors played control decks and the lieutenants had midrange decks.
I was a lieutenant with Kresh The Bloodbraided against Yisan the Wandering Bard and we traded blows for 45 minutes with spot-controlling spells "sailing over our battlefields" as aid. The other pair of lieutenants had a more one-sided experience but my "match" was a roller-coaster of a ride. Tightest sequence of plays I had ever made. Definitely big recommend if you want that massive epic game feel.
A famous forgotten format: Historic on Arena, but without Alchemy
:(
Magic the Puzzling, the version where you have a pile of random basic land and a pile of random other cards and each player draws from the pile of their choice each turn. This is one of my favorite videos you have ever made. Great job and thank you!
Great video Brian! I oftentimes get people playing Star (a variant of Pentagram) and Emperor at Mox with their commander decks.
Some fun and obscure, I think, ones you definitely missed are Type 4 and Chaos Magic (not the Chaos format Wizards talks about).
Type 4 is a multiplayer format that drafts from a stack of cards (like a cube) and they build 60 card decks. What makes the format unique is that everyone has an arbitrarily large amount of mana at all times and can only play 1 spell per turn. Iirc the variant I played was called D20 or D40 or something like that. It's the same format but everyone shared the stack as a communal library instead of drafting mainly to save time.
Chaos Magic is a variant that had a list of wacky effects on a sheet of paper with a corresponding number next to them. Each player got a Chaos Phase that (like Phasing) happened before the untap phase. No one could cast spells or respond during the chaos phase. The active player would roll a d20 and then whatever number they rolled would enable the effect on the list. For example, if a player rolled a 6, and on the sheet a 6 was a Wheel of Fortune, then everyone would discard their hands and draw 7. There were separate lists for when people would roll certain numbers (like a 20 for example) and then they would roll again and apply effects on those even crazier lists.
It got pretty complicated even when I started trying it out 20 years ago, but even a basic d20 list of insane effects could add a lot of fun variance to the game.
Speaking of forgotten format, does anyone remember that thing called... Alchemy, I think it was?
Ahahahahhahahahhaha lol I am dieing
I think that one is best left to the sands of time
alchemy should stay forgotten
Hahahaha top comedy xDDDDDdddd
Its not a format. It a Wotc wallet tax.
My favorite obscure forgotten format is the "Basic Lands game" The most innexpensive format you can play.
Each player has a deck of 60 cards, consisting of 12 of each basic lands. They can be played as spells, but each one has three options. one creature option and two spells. You can play as many cards as you want, but only one creature per turn
The choices for each land are:
Plains:
2/2 first strike
Healing Salve - Gain 3 life or prevent 3 damage to target creature - Instant
Chastise - Destroy target attacking creature, you gain life equal to it's power - Instant
Island:
2/2 Flying
Opt - Scry 1, draw a card - Instant
Negate - Counter target noncreature spell - Instant
Swamp:
2/2 "Pay 3 life: This creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn"
Doom Blade - Destroy target nonblack creature - Instant
worse Night's Whisper - Draw 2 cards, lose life equal to the number of cards in your hand - Sorcery
Mountain
2/2 Haste
Shock - Shock deals 2 damage to any target - Instant
Earthquake X=2 - This spell Deals 2 damage to each nonflying creature and each player - Sorcery
Forest
3/3
Giant Growth - Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn - Instant
Small overrun - Put a +1/+1 counter on up to two target creatures, they gain trample until end of turn - Sorcery
That's really cool I think I'll try that out! How does the red earthquake work though, I was a little confused?
@@Mrshadowman460 looks like its just the earthquake spell but x always = 2
@@abitofsupport601 right
I didn't find anything when searching "Basic Lands game".
You sure you didn't just make that up? Lol.
@@LinkEX I remember seeing it in an old SCG article where the author describe discovering it at an event where some japanese players were playing it.
This was many years ago, so the article might no longer be up.
regardless I think it's a fun format to play sometimes
Thank you so much for this video, prof! My cube has been collecting dust since gathering 8 people to play it is hard, but some of these could work using its card pool! The only format I knew about was Prismatic, back from the MTG Salvation days. That site used to run tournaments in a ton of alternative formats. My favorite one was called Block Party. It was just block constructed decks battling each other, outside of their block. For example, you could have a Ravnica block Gruul aggro deck vs a Masques block rebels deck. The ban list for the block would still apply.
I absolutely love this!! One the most attractive things of magic to me is the fact that it has so many possible formats. I have cubelets, themed micro/pai gow cubes, a pauper cube, a DC10/Type4 stack, a horde deck, a pauper Battlebox, and will be working on army magic from today on! Thanks :)
Keep making great content professor! We need an honest and in the mtg community telling it straight
Very interesting formats, I like them. This makes me think back to some awesome both Two-Headed and Emperor games.
Excited to watch this. My friends and I always played draw 2 all lands down. sometimes we'd wait until turn 5 before anyone could attack. This was during 4th edition, and there wasn't net decks and we were kids. The e games were crazy, especially with cards like fog.
Yes! I've been waiting for the Standard mention. Great show Prof.
You forgot Extended.
I would have loved if they put out another set of planar chase. or maybe did some planechase midweek magic events on arena (and added 4 player formats to arena...)
I love Wizards Tower! I've got an Unstable Tower that's a real blast - I did 10 packs because of the contraptions, filled the contraption deck with all of them, and made sure to add one Secret Base of each watermark.
This was really entertaining and informative! I'd love to see you cover Sorceror (like Commander except you use an Instant or Sorcery as your Commander) or Mental Magic (probably requires its own video!)
I really like the format loose alliances. You play with like 5 or more people and you are allied with the people directly to your left and right. You don’t attack those people and you win the game when only you and as many of your ally’s are the only ones left alive. Whoever that is wins the game and so do their ally’s. The format is fun because you are allied with the person to your left and right who are allied with your enemies. Real fun for many many player games
My old LGS used to have emperor commander nights occasionally. Was really wacky and a fun time
I'm just glad that my beloved Extended is apparently fondly remembered enough to not be considered a forgotten way to play Magic.
Golden age of magic was Extended right about the time Ravnica came out.
💜 this is one of my most favorite videos or yours. Love learning/remembering magic history
Would love more players to know what Type 4/Limited Infinity are. Wizards has published a couple of articles on the format, but so many players have no idea what it is. It eliminates the most frustrating part of the game (limited resources) by having unlimited mana, but a restriction of 1 spell per turn (with exceptions).
Is this the format with the shared library and graveyard?
If so my playgroup plays a version, but instead of infinite mana and only one spell per turn, we have a rule where anytime you would draw a card you can either draw from the deck OR take any basic land from the land box. And other than that, basic rules. My deck for this is now pushing 2500 cards, with zero lands and zero mana fixing (and zero tutors).
Heck yeah! I remember playing that back in high school, since one of the guys had a stack for it. I remember we had a slight variant so you could cast two spells if one of them was a "you can cast a sorcery or creature at instant speed" effect. Was a fun, wacky way to play.
emperor was some of the most fun I ever had playing magic...wish it would make a come back!
We played emperor slightly differently. We used a "sphere of influence" where emperors had a sphere of influence of 2 while lieutenants had a sphere of influence of 1. So a lieutenant's spells would affect only the boards of their emperor and their immediate opponent while an emperor would affect all lieutenants (assuming they were all still in the game).
I remember that me and my old magic group would do games of what we “Mini Magic” it was kind of like Tiny Leaders but for regular magic. Each player could only have a deck of exactly 30 cards and a side board of 7 cards with all players still starting at 20 life. To spice things up we made rules for deck construction where each deck must have 12 lands, 10 creatures, and 8 non creature or land cards. While it seems like a heavily restricted format the combos that we were still able to make were surprising.
When I was in college, we played Prismatic (I remember us just calling it "5 color 250") at least weekly. I always thought it was the most fun way to play. We played Pentagram quite a bit as well, although we did sit in and take turns in WUBRG order.
seems prismatic is different. prof calls it 2 player and 5 color was multiplayer.
Pentagram is my absolute all time favorite way of playing magic. Also, Rainbow Stairwell and a variation on Wizard’s Tower, we just call Tower. Love this video, thanks for reminding me of all these formats, Emperor is also a lot of fun.
Edit: Forgot to mention you didn’t didn’t mention the variant Arch Enemy.
I'm happy to see you teaching these old formats
Pentagram is an excellent format to play with the Game Night boxes. I did it with my fraternity brothers before finals one year and it was a ton of fun.
As much as tiny leaders suffered when it first came out, when it's approached from a more casual perspective, it's super fun still! Especially since we've gotten so many new options for it. So many cheap legends every set, it's super fun! Also let's you run some of the commanders who aren't normally powerful enough for commander, or run strategies that don't normally work! Mono Red burn in particular I've found to be fun, with Flip Chandra at the helm!
I grew up with Pentagram (we never bothered with that turn order and just went clockwise based on who sat where) and a variant of Modern Tribal Wars where the options from your chosen creature type are expanded to Legacy
Similar to the pentagram you mentioned, my playgroup and I usually play what we call "Star". With either 5 or 6 points, decks can be any colors but you win when the 2 or 3 players not adjacent to you are dead (if you are still alive). All players are considered opponents for card effects and you can attack your "allies" adjacent to you. Some players are happy sharing a victory if a shared enemy is the last while some prefer to kill their allies to truly win. It can be necessary to prevent your "ally" from winning before you do via kill spells or killing them.
Super informative prof! I'm just finishing my first Reject Rare Draft Cube and I was looking for more alternative ways to deck building!
I remember playing something that was basically wizards tower. They used a cube and instead of flip 7 it was reveal 1 an your draw could either be the revealed card or draw blind. I feel like there was some other rule, like it was draw 1, discard 1, and that discard became the new revealed card. They called it Fountain i think. Was really fun. That must have been 2008?
Doubt Slith is a viable tribal wars option. Ill join Spice8Rack in the sad corner
it could be argued that it's maybe too well known and that it's just BECOME Modern but I feel a fair shake of mtg players have no clue what Extended ever was, or Block Constructed, since they never really do that anymore either. There's also all the interesting draft formats from old school Pro Tours, like Auction of the People and Rochester Draft, which although it's officially sanctioned still I don't know of a large-ish or bigger tournament playing one since 2018. though ofc, amazing vid as always, Prof.
Block constructed always seemed great, I loved watching Andrea Mengucci's debut during Theros block constructed. Never got a chance to play it though, and likely never will (unless they bring back blocks which I would love).
Same goes for Rochester, Patrick Sullivan talks a lot about it.
Excellent video, Professor. Thank you for shouting out some older, forgotten formats. Definitely gave me a moment of "oh yeah! Tribal Wars! I remember that!". That said, I kind of wish the last format you talked about was "Type 2", only to be told unceremoniously about the "news" of its name change and continued existence.
Years ago WotC published a variant in their magazine called Conquer Dominara. It combined Risk and MtG. Iirc your initial deck was either drafted or made ala sealed. Then you fought other players for territory. Each location had a stack of cards on them, face down. When you took a territory you could draw a card from there each turn and use those to update your deck.
My favourite forgotten way to play Magic is carefully balanced and designed draft formats unaffected by wordy, complicated cards designed for other formats...
But seriously, Chaos Magic was my jam at recess in the mid-90s. Before Upkeep was the Chaos phase where you roll a d100 and consult a table to get a random effect (and sometimes sub-rolls on sub-tables). I think there's still an Android app and it existed as well in...one of the old programs like Apprentice or Cockatrice or something.
There was a variant called chaos magic that we played back in the day with a printed out table of 100 events. Players would roll a d100 at the start of their turn before they untap and look up what would happen on that table of things. It was a ton of fun and we played games of up to about 15 players, around '96/'97. Yeah you could die or even win before your turn.
A fun note. Back where I lived emperor started off as a format called generals, though some peoples called it 'royal magic' and the center person was king. Eventually there was a 5v5 variant developed and that we called emperor. It worked with the similar distance mechanics, but "all players" meant a distance of 3, the other distances for attacking and spells were the same for modern emperor.
Generals had the mechanic that either killing the general/king or both lieutenants would win you the game. The 5 player emperor always was kill the emperor only as far as I can remember.
A horrifying variant to people now days was Ironman magic. In that variant destroyed cards were somehow destroyed in real life. Torn up etc. This may be the origin of the chaos confetti urban legend. Raise dead and things of that nature required prospective necromancers to bring their own scotch tape.
A variant for limited that I rarely see anymore (though I've heard stories of some constructed tournaments trying something similar) is the winner takes all variant. In this game each player starts with a small sealed pool of 3 packs to build a 40 card deck. You would play your opponent in a match with the winner taking all of the cards. Further time was then given to the winners to build a better deck from both card pools. Rinse and repeat until one player had all of the cards.
This was when most limited tournaments were single elimination anyways so it wasn't too different at the time. There was no prize beyond what you got too so it as pretty easy to organize. I knew a number of people who would buy a box and gather some friends who would do this over a weekend. It just took a bit of time unless you were playing the fast version which only allowed single game matches.
I played a nicer version of this where the winner of the match got to pick any one card of their choice from the loser's pool unless the loser vetoed. The winner got to get two other cards instead from the loser if they vetoed though. Did that with Eldritch Moon. There was a second tier bracket that did the same with the left over cards in their decks.
Hey Prof and learned scribes of the college!
My son and I have come up with a format (does it have a name) that was created because the randomness of land draw was frustrating. In short, lands are removed from the deck and are stacked in a row (5 total stacks), no non basics in the stack, though non basics are allowed in the deck build. From there, it's normal play, but on any draw, the player can elect to draw from his/her deck or one of the land stacks. Obviously there are certain card types/deck types that don't play nice with this format, but we love it for a lot of reasons, and when we go back to playing 'normal' rules, it just feels less fun. After 18+ years, mana screw/flood still is very unfun and for when we are just having some relaxed play, this is way more fun focusing on the spells in the deck vs hoping I have the land I need in the next two cards. Playing Sealed or the Playable Booster packs works great with this method, which in turn leads to some hilarious and memorable games that never would have happened otherwise.
Anyway, is there a name for this variant?
Loved playing Emperor. It was what we always played back in the 90s
I remember playing a format we called mental magic that solved mana screw by letting you play any card face down as a 5 color basic land with an additional optional rule to ignore names printed on the cards and play the cards as any card in magic's history with the same converted mana cost. We played sealed and draft versions of the format and sometimes we kept going until the sun came up. Usually we would play the cards as printed when drinking because it get's complicated too fast when using imaginary cards while under the influence.
I wanted him to cover this one… I remember hearing about it when I first ever played magic in 2000 and thought how impressive it would be to play because you would have to have so much memorized. Nowadays we have TCGplayer and whatnot, so it’d be easier. Not then, though!
this is a very different version of mental magic than i know, the version i know is literally just magic played mentally, you gotta remember the game state and board and all that in your head, but since you're playing in your head, its entirely down to game knowledge and skill, with no luck at all.
Playing humans? well your opponent remembered a silver bullet legal in your mental magic format, did you play around that and keep 2 cards in hand for FoW? or has your opponent found a game state where you need those cards to not lose next turn
That's that name of it! I was desperately trying to remember the name of this format. It was really fun to do at a lgs by just grabbing a bunch of the bulk cards.
We also played that. But there was an additional rule, that each magic card may only be played once. So not every card with a mana cost of U would become Ancestral Recall etc. Also it gets harder and harder to think of more obscure cards with common mana costs after a couple spells have been cast
These formats sound interesting. I'll never have anyone agree to actually try it but it was very fun learning about it!
Pentagram and emperor fit rather well with commander decks. 5 people? You have two friends and two enemies, game ends with either a 1v1 or an “alliance victory” (which can easily turn into a winner take all ending). 6 people? Emperor it up!
I remember Rainbow Stairwell vary fondly... was a really fun format there's a few more rules that this video tells but it got the most of it.... honestly a lot of fun
Pentagram is the favourite play style at my table so I'm glad to see it get some recognition. I'd love to see a Shuffle Up and Play episode with Pentagram.
Another format I love not covered in the video is "Assassin", a "mafia" esque game where you have to weed out who the assassin is in the game.
If I could make a suggestion for a future episode of Shuffle up and Play. For the Brother's War release in the July 1995 Inquest magazine they had a version of Emporor themed around the Brother's War. Proxy up some cards and have fun.
Emperor is easily my favorite casual format. Wizards’ Tower sounds really, really interesting, though.
ohhhh I remember playing emporer in pre commander times after reading about it in a newspaper. I loved the format it was really fun
The first format that came to mind when I saw the title was Emperor and I'm happy to see it mentioned! I played it way back in high school with friends and had it was a great time. We also played a 5 point variant called Diplomacy where you weren't color locked and while you still had to defeat the two players across from you, you could also attack adjacent "allied" players. So it created another level of political intrigue with alliances and betrayals. It was a lot of fun.
Iron man if a card goes to the grave it's instead ripped many a black lotus was destroyed for this format.
Also because cards are ripped means no grave recursion. :P
I almost mentioned this, but figured many would mark it off as an urban legend. I've heard rumors of Lotus's getting the rip, but never witnessed it. I played it a few times in high school (mid-90's). We would only use pauper decks as we (my HS buddies/play group) didn't want to risk anything over a common to the shred.
I witnessed a game of Iron Man at Spellenspektakel games convention in the Netherlands. I think it was in 1996. One unlimited Lotus was used to cast a beta Uthden Troll, and all of the participants ate a small piece of the Lotus. They saved all the scraps to make a collage as a prize for the next year, but I think it never happened. Most participants were employees of the vendors there. The most brutal part wasn't the Lotus, but the Armageddon that destroyed 20+ duals including a beta, and 2 Winter Mishra's. I also remember standing at Mark Poole's signing booth and see a guy getting half an Ali from Cairo get signed.
@@stoogeslap Definitely not an urban legend. It was mentioned in WotC's magazine The Duelist. The first time it was played in my store was either late 1994 or early 1995. It certainly wasn't played much, just as something different to do to get people's attention. It probably lasted a week.
I used to play Ironman while camping. Our firepit was the graveyard.
@@robertn6214 The Duelist wasn't exactly a reliable source back in the day it spread a lot of rumors.
Hearing about Tribal Wars is pretty interesting. I am a pretty lazy deckbuilder, so almost all my decks (especially in commander) are various tribal decks. I know one forgotten format I like to play is Horde Magic. I made a pretty fun Zombie horde deck, and I really enjoy the cooperative game mode. I wonder if there is any other formats like that
what's stopping Sliver from dominating Tribal Wars i wonder..
@@crh18 It all depends on the format that you're in with Tribal Wars because you can make those restrictions. I played a Premodern version of Tribal Wars and went with simic elfball. Premodern, if you don't know, is a format with a card pool from 1995 to 2003 (or from Ice Age/4th Edition up to Scourge). I had a blast going infinite with Chain Stasis on Wirewood Channeler among other degenerate things.
@@crh18 nothing is stopping it, Slivers are tribal to the extreme. Make sure to get a couple of legendary Slivers.
Slivers as emperor is outrageous. I know from experience with my own deck. Ways to make Slivers indestructible, unblockable, and can't be targeted by spells... throw in a Worldslayer and board wipe every turn...
Pentagram is actually a really interesting way to handle the imbalances in power level between red and white compared to green blue and black, since you give both of them green as an ally and make them each other's enemies
Thanks for reminding playing in the 90's. Played a lot of Emperor , Pentagram (or more often 5Star), Twoheaded Giant or Melee then. The best games allways were at the New Years Highlander Ironman tournament at my favorite card shop then
I miss the good old oathbreaker. Haha it was so fastly forgotten. I may build an oath breaker cube.
Mountain dew it
I’m so here for an army magic game!
Great video, might give Pentagram a try when my play group has 5 players.
Though funny enough we did play Emperor with commander decks, definitely interesting and lots of fun.
would be great if you did a dedicated video on each forgotten format of how they play
If you have eight players and all night try this; Two-Headed Giant Commander, Archenemy, Planechase. One team is the Archenemy starting with 120 life and the other teams have 60 life each. Otherwise it's pretty self explanatory. For extra value, include Vanguard.
Currently developing Postmodern, it's basically a multi-player version of the Modern format that seeks to encourage brewing and collaboration by focusing on 3-player pods and 100 card-minimum decks with the classic playset of four rule. Life totals start at 20, there's no free mull, and for the time being we're using the modern banlist and cardpool (but the banlist is definitely going to change). Been having a lot of fun with it, and I hope more people try it out!
How well do the 3 player pods work in play test?
It seems to me like that would encourage ganging up on the one person who's ahead even more than, say, edh does.
But maybe 100 card modern decks are strong enough to survive a 2 vs 1 idk
@@JHart69 It's been great! The ganging-up actually works out to be really balanced, particularly given the prominence of combo decks in the format so far. If another archetype truly gets out far enough ahead to act as a lightning rod, so far they seem resilient enough to power through or at the very least still feel competitive even in a 2v1.
@@christopherahrens7110 that's really cool!
Maybe I'll have to get my play group to try this out
I've recently told about Pentagon to my Commander group. Although I wasn't able to attend, it seems that it was a success since they are currently planning on Pentagon with Ravnica guilds split into two 5-guild pods, with grand finale 2HG duel between winners of the pods who can take an ally with them from the original pod.
This was very informative! The only one I had already heard of was Emporer. All the others seem quite interesting. I may have to build decks around some of these formats...
It would be great to see a video on battlebox. I think it’s a great way to play a lot of janky cards, negates flood/mana screw, and is a great casual 1v1 format!
What's battlebox? Reckon googling that will take forever to find what you're on about lol
I remember the first time watching a match of Iron Man Magic at my LGS.
Fresh Draft of Modern Masters, they called out for an Iron Man match, we were all cringing so hard, I couldn't believe they legit tore up the cards 😢
Good times though.
It'sxa good format for reminding players that MTG is a game.
I thought I was the last person who remembers playing IRONMAN
@@godspeedhero3671 Its mostly just a way to show off how rich you are.
Alex from LRR once talked about a format that I believe he made where you take a pile of cards, no lands in it, and both players share said pile as a deck.
You play as normal but any card may be played face down as a land that taps for one of any color.
This format has always been a super fun time killer after a draft or when you're done cracking packs.