3 ms·

I don't play Magic much anymore, but the Commander format is a good balance. The decks stay competitive longer, and the format is mostly casual anyway so most p

I don't play Magic much anymore, but the Commander format is a good balance. The decks stay competitive longer, and the format is mostly casual anyway so most players are there to have fun rather than to win. The format encourages a lot of jank and fun play styles that aren't possible in competitive games, and the cards needed are therefore a lot cheaper. Even outside of Commander, most players keep a few "casual" decks around which aren't especially competitive, but are designed to play with interesting ideas. If you ask someone to pull out a casual deck, they'll usually agree.

Fnoord 7y ago
Sounds like a fun format. Yes, formats can (somewhat) work around the P2W issue. I've played various experimental formats (back then these were suggested in mags such as Inquest). There's also a format where you pay for packs. You open a pack, grab one card, and then pass it on to the player left of you. Repeat. Sealed deck or something it is called, but sealed deck itself involves too much around RNG. I had very expensive Type I decks, and could not be bothered with the hypes around Type II because I disliked how I suddenly wasn't allowed to use certain cards. Which sucks if you got them not right away but later in the game (hence the hype to "buy a box" in start). The most fun for me, with MtG, was trying to build decks, and win with them (or polish them, and then win with them). Unfortunately, we later found out that the competition was skewed: we had to pay 1 guilder (~half an EUR) to enroll, but the guy who ran it always opened the packs and replaced expensive rares with cheap ones something he previously denied doing. I had a faerie deck back in the days, with only one expensive card: Pendelhaven. It was a quick weenie deck, and I could add some more expensive cards if my opponent had these as well, such as Nevinyrral's Disk.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  > There's also a format where you pay for packs. You open a pack, grab one card, and then pass it on to the player left of you. Repeat. Sealed deck or something it is called, but sealed deck itself involves too much around RNG. Close. Sealed is when you get 6 packs yourelf, and construct the best deck you can out of the cards therein. You are thinking of limited, in which everyone gets 3 packs, and takes one card, and passes the rest along, until every person has 45 cards they use to construct a deck. These are both fun, but as you said, it adds additional RNG to the RNG already present in the gameplay. There are strategies that come with that additional RNG, but there are certainly players who simply find it a turn off. More importantly to me is that it requires buying 3/6 packs per person (~$12/$24) every time to play. Cube formats are becoming a popular alternative. Instead of opening a set of brand new packs to play, players construct their own card pools and simulate a limited or sealed event from it. This eliminates the need to rebuy new (and potentially already owned) cards, and also allows for players to create interesting card pools that aren't available from packs. But it requires significant upfront investment in terms of planning. Probably the best format these days for those not interested in the steep costs is Pauper. Its traditional Magic in that you construct your own deck from the pool of all existing cards, but it's unique in that only Common rarity cards are legal. This eliminates a lot of the flashier cards out there, but Magic has been around long enough that there is still lots of creative space in terms of designing unique strategies. There can still be expensive cards, as some are quite old, but because they are all common rarity, really expensive decks tend to cost in the tens of dollars rather than the hundreds.

Fnoord 7y ago

Sounds like a fun format. Yes, formats can (somewhat) work around the P2W issue. I've played various experimental formats (back then these were suggested in mags such as Inquest). There's also a format where you pay for packs. You open a pack, grab one card, and then pass it on to the player left of you. Repeat. Sealed deck or something it is called, but sealed deck itself involves too much around RNG. I had very expensive Type I decks, and could not be bothered with the hypes around Type II because I disliked how I suddenly wasn't allowed to use certain cards. Which sucks if you got them not right away but later in the game (hence the hype to "buy a box" in start). The most fun for me, with MtG, was trying to build decks, and win with them (or polish them, and then win with them). Unfortunately, we later found out that the competition was skewed: we had to pay 1 guilder (~half an EUR) to enroll, but the guy who ran it always opened the packs and replaced expensive rares with cheap ones something he previously denied doing. I had a faerie deck back in the days, with only one expensive card: Pendelhaven. It was a quick weenie deck, and I could add some more expensive cards if my opponent had these as well, such as Nevinyrral's Disk.

bart_spoon 7y ago
> There's also a format where you pay for packs. You open a pack, grab one card, and then pass it on to the player left of you. Repeat. Sealed deck or something it is called, but sealed deck itself involves too much around RNG. Close. Sealed is when you get 6 packs yourelf, and construct the best deck you can out of the cards therein. You are thinking of limited, in which everyone gets 3 packs, and takes one card, and passes the rest along, until every person has 45 cards they use to construct a deck. These are both fun, but as you said, it adds additional RNG to the RNG already present in the gameplay. There are strategies that come with that additional RNG, but there are certainly players who simply find it a turn off. More importantly to me is that it requires buying 3/6 packs per person (~$12/$24) every time to play. Cube formats are becoming a popular alternative. Instead of opening a set of brand new packs to play, players construct their own card pools and simulate a limited or sealed event from it. This eliminates the need to rebuy new (and potentially already owned) cards, and also allows for players to create interesting card pools that aren't available from packs. But it requires significant upfront investment in terms of planning. Probably the best format these days for those not interested in the steep costs is Pauper. Its traditional Magic in that you construct your own deck from the pool of all existing cards, but it's unique in that only Common rarity cards are legal. This eliminates a lot of the flashier cards out there, but Magic has been around long enough that there is still lots of creative space in terms of designing unique strategies. There can still be expensive cards, as some are quite old, but because they are all common rarity, really expensive decks tend to cost in the tens of dollars rather than the hundreds.