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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.
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.”')
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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 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.
@@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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
@@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 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 RU-vid 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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
@@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
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.
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'm a big fan of the "Formats" that are really rules variants that can be applied to basically any other format. Many of these are especially useful in EDH as they typically involve having a large number of players (5+) to function and can speed up the game by effectively reducing the number of actual opponents you have. I've played Emperor EDH and its a fun variant for 6 player games that can speed things up. Another additional bit of rules for it I've played with is that emperors can pass permanents to their lieutenants at sorcery speed after they've been out a turn. This allows the emperor to have more sway on the early game, and adds strategy in that the emperor wants to balance bolstering their lieutenants with having their own board state for later if a lieutenant falls. Pentagram sounded like a more restrictive version of a game I've called Star with friends. Star is a 5 player format that plays exactly like your format of choice would normally play, with the additional rule that the only players you need to eliminate to win are the two opposite you (imagining the 5 players are at a circular table, forming a star formation). No color restriction, no global effect restriction, and you are technically free to do anything to your neighbors, but thats rarely a good idea since each neighbor shares one opponent with you, making them more "frenemies" than direct opponents. It can lead to some interesting gameplay where certain players are actively helped by others to prevent another player from finishing off their second opponent and winning. King is, I think, a pretty popular and well known 5-8 player variant that uses hidden roles. If you've ever played the game BANG!, then you know about this format. One player is the King (Sheriff in BANG!), their role is the only known one, they start with 25% more life (ie +10 if in commander) and go first. The king wins if they are the last one standing, excluding the knight. The knight (deputy) wins if the king wins, even if the knight is already dead. The assassin (renagade) wins if the king dies AFTER the bandits die, and the two bandits win if the king dies before both of them are dead. With more than 5 players, you start to add duplicate roles, and there are many minor variants of this format, mostly that tweak the assassin role or add additional roles for more than 5 players, like the witch, who becomes the role of the first person they kill. This format is great for groups that like politics. Reverse Two-headed giant is exactly what it sounds like. Take all the things you typically share in two-headed giant, and those are now individual. Take all the things that are normally individual in two-headed giant, and those are shared. Players take individual turns and those turns are typically alternating (ie A1, B1, A2, B2, rather than an A1+A2 turn, then a B1+B2 turn). However, players share a board state. This means the mana-curve can grow much faster, and board states can get out of control quickly. A creature played on A1's turn can attack on A2's turn, and typically A2 will have access to 2 mana on their first turn (A1+A2's mana drops). The explosive growth tends to lead to shorter games compared to a free-for-all of the same size.
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.
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.
@@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.
There was a format called Big Deck where there were no lands. You played multicolor cards as tap lands and mono cards as basics. Then you used them to cast the other cards in your hand. Everyone played from the same deck. Bounce effects were really good as you could bounce a "land" and cast it as a spell.
We played a similar format called mental magic where you could play any card face down as a 5 color basic. We also had an optional rule that we didn't opt in on very often where you could play any card as any other card in magic with the same converted mana cost so for example dispel would become ancestral recall and your 2/2 bear would often be played as wild mongrel or naturalize in a pinch.
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
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!
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.
My group used to call pentagram "star" and included the restriction of only mono-coloured cards. So glad to see it on this list because NOBODY remembers it but it was a very cool format. A friend of mine even made 5 mono-coloured decks as basically a prefab set to play this format with. The hardest part was getting exactly 5 people together, no more no less 😄. Also played a LOT of emperor back in the day. Was a convenient was to play with larger groups without getting out of control. Even played a few 9- and 12-player emperor games, which was interesting because a whole team would die and suddenly you're facing a team you've had no interaction with all game.
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!
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).
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.
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.
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.
I was an avid reader of Inquest back in the late 90's/early 00's. I remember one issue where they had an article that detailed a bunch of different formats you could use for multi-player games. It was so awesome!
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.
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...)
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
@@Hartkn33 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.
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
My college Magic club had a format called Zen Magic where your deck was simply made from a Starter Box and three booster packs. Games were played for 1-3 cards ante, and if you won you had to add the ante cards to your deck. It was fun, chaotic, and a nice affordable casual format that I wish more people knew of. Sadly with the 75 card Starter Decks no longer being a thing, not expecting it to make a comeback any time soon.
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.
We played a variant of that Emperor: we called it Hidden King. It was a 3x3 game, where one of the players of each team was the Hidden King and the other two were his Towers. So at the beggining of the game, each team decided, in secrecy, each player's role on the team and wrote it down on a piece of paper. When a player was defeated, they revealed the paper. If it was the King, that whole team lost the game. It didn't had that "lanes rule" instead being sort of a "Three Headed Giant".
My favorite thing about magic is that it isn't a single game, it's many games with shared rules. Casual Emperor was a blast back in the day, I'd love to give commander emperor a shot. Same with Pentagram, I vaguely remember playing a 10 player version once where everyone was a guild. It was a hot mess, but it was just post ravnica block so everyone was really into it.
So this was sort of a Southwest Michigan thing in terms of a format that everyone used to play but doesn't anymore because it was displaced by EDH. We had a format called "BIG", which was a format based around the following rules: 1) Decks must be 300 cards minimum 2) Choose a central color. Then choose either it's allies or its enemies. These are the colors available to you and deck building. 3) A decks colored cards must be at least 50% the chosen central color. There was some discussion of requiring a certain percentage of the two other colors somewhere around 10% but it was never codified in the rule set (It was more of a philosophical argument between people who thought the format should be focused around the relationship between three colors versus people who felt it was more about focus on the central color). So e.g. Big Green Allies needed to be at least 50% green cards or it wasn't really a deck that was green with some white and red in it. 4) there was a banned and restricted list that I can't recall the specific items on at the moment but I know in terms of classes of cards all wishes were banned most cards that stated you won the game were banned and most of the good tutors were restricted. A lot of the stuff that was banned or restricted in legacy and vintage was on our list. Eventually everyone decided that EDH was very similar to just being a singleton version of BIG So everyone eventually made the switch in the format died.
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.
Pentagram is similar to what our group call Prism. The players to your left and right are allies, and the opposite players are enemies. It means one of your enemies is always an ally of one of your allies. You can play wubrg, but anything goes, we've played prism-commander-planechase before, lots of fun!
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.
When I was young back in the 96 -98 era we didn't know really how to play we played at the kitchen table. I remember our creatures didn't regain health after turns pass so you could widdle down a 6/6 wurm by throwing 1/1's at It over a few turns
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.
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
@@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...
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.
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.
@@travis_approved I have a Saheeli, Sublime Artificer deck that I love using in oath breaker. It uses Underworld Breach/ Brain Freeze combos to make a bunch of myrs and mill cards like Wonder and Anger into the bin for a combat finish or Thassa if the swarm gameplan isn't gonna cut it.
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
Would you consider Horde a forgotten format? I've never played it but it seemed like like a fun way to make Magic a co-op game instead of a free-for-all
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!
most 3cb events will either start with a banlist that definitely includes oracle; or have a growing banlist system that adds the top cards of the previous round, so oracle won't last for long.
Petagram is exactly like the variant that I used to play in college. It was called Waring States. It was best played with an odd number of players consisting of 5 or more. The players adjacent to you were your allies and everyone else was your enemy. Rules functioned almost the same as well but could be played with any deck, not specific to any one color. It was a favorite because of having so many people always wanting to play and this added a lot of politics to the game.
The best format of all time was Extended, and I preferred when we called Standard, "Type 2", also I enjoyed "1.5" as opposed Legacy, I also remember playing "Vanguard", "250", and "Cube Draft".
Extended had a Seismic Swans deck at one point, didn't it? I was around for the transition from Extended to Modern and I vaguely recall the Modern Swans deck I used to play being retooled from something I read about in an Extended article. Such an odd format, like early Modern but with rotation. I remember people jokingly calling it "Double Standard."
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.
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!
My friend and I recently started our own format called JankStart. We each purchased a box from Star City games which was curated 1000ct bulk to ensure variety and little duplication. We turned that into repacked booster packs with 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 10 commons. We do olay regular sealed too (using 6packs), but for JankStart we take 10 packs worth of card and then use that pool of cards to make as many Jumpstart type packs (minimum 5), each containing of 20 cards (8 lands, 12 spells, typically 7-9 creatures, and 5-3 other spells); which we mix and match and fight with. When we play we like to start with 10 cards in hand, because no one wants to see a friend hurt by flooding without enough playables or being mana screwed early. Great way to enjoy the game cheap and so much replay value. Cause you recycle and make new packs after the well of repack boosters dries up. ^^ Highly Recommend!
I'd love to design a single player or coop format that resembles a rpg campaign or let's say dungeon crawling. With progressing difficulty and a way to level up between stages. A format that works with every Deck, no matter if standard lagacy or even commander. Different Decks can play together against the different stages and bosses... the only thing i haven't quite figured out yet is how the enemy force behaves... what cards it can and can't use, what decisions it makes. It love to really flesh this mode out because i think it would be a great way to spend some awesome game nights.
Maybe have the enemy have a nonland only deck, each room has a set number of cards drawn for the rooms difficulty, each round the enemy gets an additional mana and casts everything it can for that mana value or less. Sounds like you would need someone to play the villain. Maybe not if you use sleeves to only show the mana cost. Also, it would be great if I could buy some equipment with treasure tokens in one of the rooms.
@@patrickm6009 i like these concepts. Maybe there would be some predetermined scripted campaigns, where what happens is always the same... but also an option to heavily customise the adventure. I also thought about a store system... maybe even a store and a level up system. In my version, permanents you either destroy or exile get put in your wallet and represent 1 currency. Between the rounds you can buy lightning bolts, or black lotus from different merchants. Maybe even themed ones. And level ups would be cards you get from some sort of sideboard you chose... where per level you get to put one of thise into your library on top of the main deck. It's all very rough still... but i think we got something here.
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 started (around 5th edition) we would meet to trade and build and play mostly in 1 on 1 games. But at the end of the meeting we would all gather around a big round table and have a massive battle. Building decks for 1 on 1 was always a group exercise (at least some group input on some decks was common), but the multi-player ones were always built in secret with great glee for the nasty combos you were thoroughly visualizing, BWA HA HAH!
I've been using Whatnot for months, and have spent way too much money getting singles for ridiculous prices, but I did a double take when I heard the professor mention the app for the ad. It has a great tight knit mtg community, I highly recommend it
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.
I remember playing Blitz and that was a wild way to play. Normal 60 card deck but you draw 10 cards, play every land in your hand, and during your draw step you drew up to 10 cards. Games were, wait for it .. fast. And really dumb. Good times
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.
There once was a magazine named InQuest - most of us oldtimers should remember - which sometimes had interesting goofy formats. One of them was a Risk-style campaign game. You had a world map with 20ish regions, each region, when occupied by player A and invaded by player B, modified the game for both players. The winner of the duel took the region and was granted the global bonus of the region (something like 'at the beginning of your turn, scry 1' or 'Get an Emblem with 'pay 1 life, add 1 mana of any color. Use only once each turn', or 'All your creatures get +0/+1') which was active as long as you controlled the region. Players take turns on the global map moving their champions on the map with some elaborate rules, the duels being fought with 40 card decks at 10 life. Winning the game required you to control three of five mana towers, which were hard regions to conquer. We modified the campaign rules a bit to make it a little more like the Shandalar MTG game, by allowing the champions to modify their decks on various occasions. Campaign games take one or even multple nights, but duels rarely take more than 15 minutes each.
Emperor is a special format for me because it's the type of game my Dad liked to play the most. His decks would get killed in traditional one on one games, but the team aspect really allowed his slower decks to shine more. When I was young he and I would play MTG almost every weeknight from 9pm until about 1am during Summer vacation. He passed away in 2007. I miss being able to share the game with him. I took his collection of cards and made three decks out them, improving the originals but holding true to the decks original overall design. We did have some slight rule variations though. Our emperors started at 30 life and you could cast spells that could target any player. Also, while his generals (as we called them) were still in the game, the emperor could cast creatures and share them with the generals. If a general died while he was in control of the emperor's creatures, those creatures would be removed from the game.
To be fair, the Standard Professor remembers might be forgotten by now. Technically every rotation, a standard that used to exist is being replaced and eventually is forgotten.
I remember Emperor and Pentagram fondly. There was also "Wizard's Chess", which came from InQuest magazine and was intended to mimic a game of chess. One that I still enjoy playing is "predator and prey", where you have to beat the person to one side of you while fending of the player on the other side. This is especially fun in multiplayer, where you gain a victory point each time your prey is eliminated and the last one standing isn't necessarily the winner.
Used to play a kitchen table format called: Highland King. Each player had to have 100 cards in their library that shared a “theme” (whether that be mechanic, type, color, or flavor). You started with 7 basic lands on the field but the kick was how you could cast spells. Apart from your first 1-drop of the game. You could only cast a spell if that spells’ CMC was equal to the CMC of your entire board. For example; because you start with seven mana available you could cast your first 1-drop, a second 1-drop, and then a 2-drop. But you could not cast three 1-drops because your third 1-drop did not have a CMC equal to 2. It was a fun format and it ended up being a neat way to turn chump blocking into a viable strategy for casting cards your opponent did not initially expect. Not sure if it would hold up in this day and age but kitchen table magic will never be a “forgotten” format.
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
Bang! The gathering (I believe it's also called something along the lines of Kingmaker or Kings and Assasins) is also a pretty fun way to play with optimally 5 people, but it can work with anywhere from 3 to 8 people. At the start of the game, each player gets a secret role, each with their own wincondition. The sherif/king's role is to eliminate the bandits and the renegade/usurper with the help of the deputy/kingsguard. The deputy/kingsguard's role is to help the sherif/king eliminate the bandits and renegade/usurper. If the king eliminates the deputy/kingsguard, their board is wiped. The bandits' role is to eliminate the sherif/king. The renegade/usurper's goal is to eliminate the sherif/king after the bandits have been eliminated. At the beginning of the game, the sherif is revealed as the starting player, and they have 10 extra life. All other roles are kept in secret, until that player is eliminated. For a 5 player game, there is 1 of each role, except for 2 bandits.
Similar to Prismatic, my favorite forgotten format was 5 Color. 250 card minimum decks and each deck had to have at least 20 cards of each color. It had a relatively big community in the early 2000s with some unofficial tournaments held at big cons. Unofficial because of the other rule in the format: 5 color was played for ante. Some might be taken aback by the thought of losing a rare when they lost a game but imo it made it a lot of fun. Plus every deck ran four copies of Contract From Below, a one sided Wheel of Time for one black mana and arguably the most op card ever printed. Great times.
I call it “star format” rather than pentagram, but several years ago i made a Praetor Star (original praetors) and got a group of friends to play. Extremely fun and interesting. All the decks were specifically built to be played together, so balance wasn’t an issue. I put each in a random deck box, then had everyone grab one at random (less to avoid picking “better” praetors, and more to avoid anyone choosing based on which player they thought would be a good ally). I took the last box and ended up with green. Blue and black won, but it was really close, and everyone had their Praetor on the field for at least a few turns at some point. I haven’t had a chance to play again because having 5 players is uncommon for me, but i really hope i get more chances in the future. I have decklists for a Theros star as well (mono-gods plus their weapons as partner commanders, though partner wasn’t actually a thing when i made the lists)
