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Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

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Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#51

Post by hibikir »

zeafoamrun wrote: post #20
quora wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty common format called cube. You can grab a list from somewhere like cube cobra. Buy the cards, or use an online draft tool or print a bunch of proxies and play. Its a fun way to play with cards that are just sitting in bulk boxes and play without having to buy a whole booster box

Hmmm sounds cool, I had heard about this before and since forgotten. I think part of what I would like is to give some of the old and weird cards in my collection some play though, rather than just playing a well known cube- but then if they're too weird they might not work at all together.

You can absolutely make your own cube, even designed so that some weird cards have good uses, or are working combos. You can have a very low powered cube where people draft something janky like Chamber of Manipulation highly if you slow down the game enough. But at that point you need quite a bit of testing/game design skills, because cubes become unbalanced pretty easily. Hell, even the magic online cubes sometimes have big mistakes, with cards that never get played, or situations where a color combination is just too viable, while others are outright traps.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#52

Post by the_af »

lukifer wrote: post #46
snikeris wrote: post #30

This is my favorite alternative form of Magic: https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/the-danger-room/ "I have a feeling that roughly 25% of games are decided by a player drawing too few lands, 25% of games are decided by a player drawing too many lands, 25% of games are decided by a player having a legitimate bomb not get answered immediately, and the last 25% of games are the ones that everybody hopes for wher…

My biggest beef with Magic isn't the lands system, but that the game is fundamentally stingy with cards, leading to many non-games, and/or turns where you pray for the right top-deck and don't get it. (This is one major reason I play Netrunner instead, where your action economy can be spent on draw. You might have weak turns, but never non-turns.) Given the huge cardpool, there's no real way to "fix" MtG that couldn'…

> (This is one major reason I play Netrunner instead, where your action economy can be spent on draw. You might have weak turns, but never non-turns.)

Is Netrunner something you can get into these days, or is it hopelessly OOP? I remember hearing good things about it.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#53

Post by hibikir »

yifanl wrote: post #9
jbverschoor wrote: post #8

FUN? How can it be fun without discard and land destruction? Sounds like Gen-Z mtg

Including Moxen and no hand interaction is certainly a choice. The Battlecruiser to battle all cruisers.

See how the newest cards he gets to show there are... quite old. The moxes were great back in alpha, but what made them really broken was the increase in quality of what you could cast early. An environment where Serra Angel is viable is far more tolerant to moxes than, say, one where Flametongue Kavu is on the weak side. Oops, turn 1 blightsteel colossus off of tinker: You better have artifact removal!

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#54

Post by AemusK »

adahn6 wrote: post #42

i wish this gave more details about the format! would love to know what the overall card pool ended up being, and which decks performed best. small plug but i run a format of magic of my own, a (non-Commander) multiplayer format that lets players play three games with side boarding. i think it's pretty cool, if anyone here wants to check it out! it's called Coalition, and we have rules and decks at https://mtgcoaliti…

I like the format, very cool idea. However, this rule:

First player draw The first player does draw a card.

Not sure if its a good idea? Gives first player a HUGE advantage.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#55

Post by olivierestsage »

Is there any reasonably practical way to play a "restricted" version of MtG with physical cards and a somewhat stable ruleset, reminiscent of what play was like in the late 90s (as I remember it)? I like what's being proposed here, but I don't have access to old cards.

I'm not averse to buying new cards, I just don't want to be on an infinite treadmill of buying new cards and learning new rules forever, it's just not fun in my opinion

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#56

Post by butlike »

olivierestsage wrote: post #55

Is there any reasonably practical way to play a "restricted" version of MtG with physical cards and a somewhat stable ruleset, reminiscent of what play was like in the late 90s (as I remember it)? I like what's being proposed here, but I don't have access to old cards. I'm not averse to buying new cards, I just don't want to be on an infinite treadmill of buying new cards and learning new rules forever, it's just not…

You should look into "cube" formats and cube drafts. You might be able to go to your local LGS (gaming store) to set up a cube draft. If it's a cube that uses vintage cards you can usually print proxies for the ultra expensive cards

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#57

Post by dfltr »

olivierestsage wrote: post #55

Is there any reasonably practical way to play a "restricted" version of MtG with physical cards and a somewhat stable ruleset, reminiscent of what play was like in the late 90s (as I remember it)? I like what's being proposed here, but I don't have access to old cards. I'm not averse to buying new cards, I just don't want to be on an infinite treadmill of buying new cards and learning new rules forever, it's just not…

Yes: Premodern and Legacy. Personally I like Modern and don't mind having things shaken up fairly regularly, but if you want more stability play Legacy and if you want ultimate stability with no new cards ever, play Premodern.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#58

Post by CuriouslyC »

belval wrote: post #38
Pikamander2 wrote: post #24

> What is fun? > Here is a list of things that make a game of Magic The Gathering fun to us. > No Discard. It sucks to have no spells to play. > No Land destruction. It sucks to be unable to cast spells. I've always enjoyed these kinds of house rules that let you customize TCGs to your own liking. A while back, I bought a bulk box of common Pokemon cards and put together some decks where I limited the cards to basic…

> No Land destruction. It sucks to be unable to cast spells. I have yet to find someone actually running land destruction in their deck, it's such a hated mechanic.

That's because WOTC's balance team makes it bad on purpose. Most land destruction is either hilariously overcosted or limited to nonbasics.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#59

Post by dfxm12 »

olivierestsage wrote: post #55

Is there any reasonably practical way to play a "restricted" version of MtG with physical cards and a somewhat stable ruleset, reminiscent of what play was like in the late 90s (as I remember it)? I like what's being proposed here, but I don't have access to old cards. I'm not averse to buying new cards, I just don't want to be on an infinite treadmill of buying new cards and learning new rules forever, it's just not…

If you want to restrict yourself to cards printed before a certain date, why not ask your play group to do just that? If you need more inspiration, there are unofficial formats like 93-94, Old Frame Vintage, Premodern, etc.

ETA: I don't know what gameplay is like as you remember it, but you might be interested in Pauper, especially if you are looking for a more official format. A good number of old school cards are relevant in that format, and these cards won't rotate out. Sometimes new cards enter the meta, but because you're limited to commons, it's not expensive. You also can just keep a deck around for a while. It's ok if you're not at the cutting edge of the meta...

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#60

Post by sfRattan »

My brother and I made up a version of Magic as kids where all the mana is laid out sideways in staggered rows between the players, creating a sort of hex grid landscape. You drew and played from your deck, but placed cards on the "map" created by the mana on the board, only where the adjacent mana matched their cost, and moved around attacking each other. Six adjacencies meant cards could cost up to seven and work in the format.

It was great fun, and also completely unbalanced. Once you knew your opponent's powerful card, it focused battles around the intersections where they could spawn. I've heard of other people doing similar things, but never an official format that used mana as a landscape game board.

We mostly did it that way because we didn't know the actual rules, which I recall being widely true of both Magic and Pokémon among kids who collected the cards in the 2000s.

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