Over a decade ago, I built a deck to take to high school with me that would let me play Magic with one of my friends without having to worry about whether he brought a deck and without having to worry about one of us having a better deck. While crude, this filled a role and I continued building and refining these when I went to college and they continued to be handy for games between classes. It's now the primary lens through which I evaluate new commons and uncommons.
The basic premise is that all players playing are drawing from the same library and sharing the same graveyard. I'm sure this has been discovered by many players before but I don't hear about it or decks being designed with this premise so it's been hard describing it to people as there isn't much to reference. I've recently settled on the concept of this way of playing as using Magic as as a board game which pretty cleanly gets to the crux of it. Each deck has its own style of play, making them experiences in a bottle.
I built seven 60-card 1v1 decks in this vein and transitioned two of them to 100-card 4-player decks. They have all had a lot of revisions over the years as I've found what works and what doesn't as well as what makes satisfying play. I have determined a lot of my own deck-building heuristics which I may go into another time if there's interest.
You might find this useful if:
You like playing Magic when/where others might not bring a deck.
You like playing limited, but don't have time to draft when you want to play.
You don't want to worry about having a bad match-up.
You want to recapture the play of certain limited environments.
You like building decks.
You want something to play Magic with a friend who has a small collection.
However, I have noticed that this is not ideal for:
Capturing archetype vs different archetype play.
Capturing game play that is all-in on some particular strategy.
Allowing each player to express themselves through deck choice.
Certain types of cards that are typically played purely tempo.
Capturing the game play present in most other constructed formats.
I feel like the main strengths are being able to play anywhere you can find players, regardless of how many other cards anyone else brings.
Here's an example deck which encapsulates a ramp environment, centering on Panglacial Wurm as a ramp target / mana sink that any player who floods out can reach with an Evolving Wilds. The rest of the game play is battlecruiser / voltron-esque Magic.
This deck started out with the expressed intention of making a deck suitable for Panglacial Wurm. The original attempt had problems with creatures of varying sizes and was basically stuck with what removal Green had access to around the time of Alara. It didn't work and was eventually rebuilt around creatures that could scale in size and white's removal that didn't care how big they were. Pieces have come and gone as new cards have been printed and the most recent revision has cleaned out the last of the stragglers that had been held over from the 1v1 version of the deck. I'm pretty happy with where the deck is now. The deck is playable with around 4 mana, but even the eigth and ninth mana sources can be functional. There's a lot of things to do with your mana, which tends to make all draws of roughly card quality — it's about as hard as it'll get to draw too many lands.
This is certainly not the only style of deck that can be built with the initial premise of both players drawing from the same deck. The most successful decks feel like they have a game play hook that is unique to the deck. The other memorable ones for me have been morph-themed, mill-themed, and splashing-themed. I'd like to build a deck for silver-bordered play using Unstabled but due to the small card pool, that will be tricky.
Have you played Magic where everyone shares the same deck? Have you built decks specifically for that purpose? I'm curious to hear your experiences.
My playgroup has a similar style of play when we want to use my cube but don't want to take the time to draft.
We simply shuffle the cube (that itself is not simple, for anyone who knows cube) then each draw our hands from the cube. So far we've done anywhere from 2-4 players (my cube is 240 cards). The cube is the communal deck, a single graveyard is shared, and the "owner" of card is considered to be whoever last controlled it. There are only nonbasic multicolor, multifunctional lands in the cube, and they are only maybe 15% of the entire cube, so a modified rule is that any player may place any card from their hand face down as a land card, and lands placed in this manner produce any color of mana.
It makes for quick games, crazy interactions (since everyone can be running 5-color), and unusual lines of play, since you need to consider that your opponents may reuse cards you dump into the graveyard if they get Snapcaster Mage or Unburial Rites.
Overall I give your thread a big fat +1.. great work
We simply shuffle the cube (that itself is not simple, for anyone who knows cube) then each draw our hands from the cube. So far we've done anywhere from 2-4 players (my cube is 240 cards). The cube is the communal deck, a single graveyard is shared, and the "owner" of card is considered to be whoever last controlled it. There are only nonbasic multicolor, multifunctional lands in the cube, and they are only maybe 15% of the entire cube, so a modified rule is that any player may place any card from their hand face down as a land card, and lands placed in this manner produce any color of mana.
It makes for quick games, crazy interactions (since everyone can be running 5-color), and unusual lines of play, since you need to consider that your opponents may reuse cards you dump into the graveyard if they get Snapcaster Mage or Unburial Rites.
Overall I give your thread a big fat +1.. great work
I like that you do this, though do consider designing something specific to this style of play. The cards drawn are always relevant in the context of other cards that could be drawn or could be on the other side of the table, unlike the random storm 1-of or cube-focused combo piece. I expect there's a lot of replayability with the cube as it's very large. I assume it's only something you can do at a game shop since the cube is likely very valuable and hard to transport.
Building something more focused also lets you focus on very specific mechanical themes, like a madness or morph deck which really need a high percentage of the cards with the mechanic to work well in their respective environments. It can be useful for revisiting old mechanics that played well.
It's close, yes. I used to label what I do as stacks or microstacks, but that name is not very useful for getting the point across. Telling someone that this is basically a board game more clearly communicates that they don't need to have their own deck without even explaining that the library is shared. Also Stack and Type 4 have very different rules regarding mana than what I build, which is always built intending players to draw lands. This does introduce the possibility of mana screw which is bad for a board game to have, but I definitely work on that by trying to include both mana sinks and ways to get lands or make lands valuable in general. The landcyclers that Wizards has printed are usually pretty good about playing well.
I don't like deviating from normal Magic too much. The game play of finding your splash color and off-color activations is something I like. I'm likely also building at a lower power/complexity level than most Stacks do. I think Type 4 also includes something about infinite mana?
One other thing is that this deck is a perfectly functional casual deck is nearly Commander-legal as is, albeit very low-power level. I like that flexibility if I'm bringing it along.
Certainly if you and your play group prefer playing something, by all means do so!
The way I've always wanted to try this concept is as a sort of Commander-variant, where at the start of the game players each choose a Commander (or get one at random) from a pre-chosen pile of Legendary creatures (ones that work best with this format). Each player would also start the game with a Command Tower to ease mana problems. So everyone draws/plays from the same deck but has their own Commander to make the gameplay a bit more personalized for everybody, plus a manasink. I don't know how fun it would be in practice though.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Over a decade ago, I built a deck to take to high school with me that would let me play Magic with one of my friends without having to worry about whether he brought a deck and without having to worry about one of us having a better deck. While crude, this filled a role and I continued building and refining these when I went to college and they continued to be handy for games between classes. It's now the primary lens through which I evaluate new commons and uncommons.
The basic premise is that all players playing are drawing from the same library and sharing the same graveyard. I'm sure this has been discovered by many players before but I don't hear about it or decks being designed with this premise so it's been hard describing it to people as there isn't much to reference. I've recently settled on the concept of this way of playing as using Magic as as a board game which pretty cleanly gets to the crux of it. Each deck has its own style of play, making them experiences in a bottle.
I built seven 60-card 1v1 decks in this vein and transitioned two of them to 100-card 4-player decks. They have all had a lot of revisions over the years as I've found what works and what doesn't as well as what makes satisfying play. I have determined a lot of my own deck-building heuristics which I may go into another time if there's interest.
You might find this useful if:
However, I have noticed that this is not ideal for:
I feel like the main strengths are being able to play anywhere you can find players, regardless of how many other cards anyone else brings.
Here's an example deck which encapsulates a ramp environment, centering on Panglacial Wurm as a ramp target / mana sink that any player who floods out can reach with an Evolving Wilds. The rest of the game play is battlecruiser / voltron-esque Magic.
(View on TappedOut)
1x Panglacial Wurm
Creatures (37)
1x Dawntreader Elk
1x Joraga Treespeaker
1x Werebear
1x Deathcap Cultivator
1x Topplegeist
1x Obsessive Skinner
1x Gnarlwood Dryad
1x Ambush Viper
1x Rhys the Redeemed
1x Jade Mage
1x Chronomaton
1x Caravan Escort
1x Ainok Bond-Kin
1x Knight of Cliffhaven
1x Knight of the Skyward Eye
1x Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
1x Serrated Biskelion
1x Sickleslicer
1x Citadel Castellan
1x Skyhunter Skirmisher
1x Elder of Laurels
1x Mul Daya Channelers
1x Wolfir Avenger
1x Dawnglare Invoker
1x Feral Hydra
1x Golgari Decoy
1x Conifer Strider
1x Benevolent Offering
1x Dragonscale General
1x Domesticated Hydra
1x Hundred-Handed One
1x Heliod's Emissary
1x Wildheart Invoker
1x Voidstone Gargoyle
1x Pale Recluse
1x Krosan Tusker
1x Sentinel of the Eternal Watch
1x Expedition Map
1x Unstable Obelisk
1x Brittle Effigy
1x Banishing Light
1x Faith Unbroken
1x Vow of Wildness
1x Choking Restraints
1x Prison Term
1x Faith's Fetters
1x Lignify
1x Provoke
1x Lace with Moonglove
1x Prepare // Fight
1x Become Immense
1x Clear Shot
1x Blessed Alliance
1x Divine Verdict
1x Divine Deflection
1x Banishment Decree
1x Evolution Charm
1x Martial's Anthem
1x Primal Command
1x Austere Command
1x Hallowed Burial
Lands (38)
1x Canopy Vista
1x Scattered Groves
1x Sunpetal Grove
1x Stirring Wildwood
1x Razorverge Thicket
1x Selesnya Sanctuary
1x Saltcrusted Steppe
1x Krosan Verge
1x Grasslands
1x Evolving Wilds
1x Terramorphic Expanse
1x Ash Barrens
7x Forest
1x Mosswort Bridge
1x Treetop Village
1x Llanowar Reborn
1x Tranquil Thicket
7x Plains
1x Windbrisk Heights
1x Forbidding Watchtower
1x Sejiri Steppe
1x Secluded Steppe
1x Mistveil Plains
1x Grove of the Guardian
1x Nantuko Monastery
1x Ghost Quarter
This deck started out with the expressed intention of making a deck suitable for Panglacial Wurm. The original attempt had problems with creatures of varying sizes and was basically stuck with what removal Green had access to around the time of Alara. It didn't work and was eventually rebuilt around creatures that could scale in size and white's removal that didn't care how big they were. Pieces have come and gone as new cards have been printed and the most recent revision has cleaned out the last of the stragglers that had been held over from the 1v1 version of the deck. I'm pretty happy with where the deck is now. The deck is playable with around 4 mana, but even the eigth and ninth mana sources can be functional. There's a lot of things to do with your mana, which tends to make all draws of roughly card quality — it's about as hard as it'll get to draw too many lands.
This is certainly not the only style of deck that can be built with the initial premise of both players drawing from the same deck. The most successful decks feel like they have a game play hook that is unique to the deck. The other memorable ones for me have been morph-themed, mill-themed, and splashing-themed. I'd like to build a deck for silver-bordered play using Unstabled but due to the small card pool, that will be tricky.
Have you played Magic where everyone shares the same deck? Have you built decks specifically for that purpose? I'm curious to hear your experiences.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
We simply shuffle the cube (that itself is not simple, for anyone who knows cube) then each draw our hands from the cube. So far we've done anywhere from 2-4 players (my cube is 240 cards). The cube is the communal deck, a single graveyard is shared, and the "owner" of card is considered to be whoever last controlled it. There are only nonbasic multicolor, multifunctional lands in the cube, and they are only maybe 15% of the entire cube, so a modified rule is that any player may place any card from their hand face down as a land card, and lands placed in this manner produce any color of mana.
It makes for quick games, crazy interactions (since everyone can be running 5-color), and unusual lines of play, since you need to consider that your opponents may reuse cards you dump into the graveyard if they get Snapcaster Mage or Unburial Rites.
Overall I give your thread a big fat +1.. great work
Draft My Cube!
Building something more focused also lets you focus on very specific mechanical themes, like a madness or morph deck which really need a high percentage of the cards with the mechanic to work well in their respective environments. It can be useful for revisiting old mechanics that played well. It's close, yes. I used to label what I do as stacks or microstacks, but that name is not very useful for getting the point across. Telling someone that this is basically a board game more clearly communicates that they don't need to have their own deck without even explaining that the library is shared. Also Stack and Type 4 have very different rules regarding mana than what I build, which is always built intending players to draw lands. This does introduce the possibility of mana screw which is bad for a board game to have, but I definitely work on that by trying to include both mana sinks and ways to get lands or make lands valuable in general. The landcyclers that Wizards has printed are usually pretty good about playing well.
I don't like deviating from normal Magic too much. The game play of finding your splash color and off-color activations is something I like. I'm likely also building at a lower power/complexity level than most Stacks do. I think Type 4 also includes something about infinite mana?
One other thing is that this deck is a perfectly functional casual deck is nearly Commander-legal as is, albeit very low-power level. I like that flexibility if I'm bringing it along.
Certainly if you and your play group prefer playing something, by all means do so!
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill