I have come up with a homebrew spin on Pauper Commander called Rags to Riches. In this format you start with a Pauper Commander deck and after winning you earn and trade in points to upgrade the rarity of the cards in your deck. This idea is not completely original. I have seen other variants of it mentioned before -- usually without much detail. But what I have done to make it more cohesive and manageable is I've created an app to facilitate tracking the points & trading in points. It is free on Google Play & has no ads or anything - called MTG Rags to Riches. It also lets you change the difficulty on how fast you gain points, because at the default difficulty it would take quite a few games before your deck really gets leveled up to a normal strength non-pauper commander deck.
I am looking for feedback from others on the point values & rewards. Currently this is how I outlined everything.
buy a new common : costs 5 points
buy an uncommon : costs 10 points
buy a rare: costs 20 points
buy a mythic: costs 30 points
promote a card to general: costs 20 points
The point reward list is a bit longer. What I tried to do is balance rewarding a small amount for losing, more for winning, and even more if you win if unusual circumstances.
lost game: 5 points
won game: 10 points
flawless win: 15 points
game was a draw: +9
opponent decked: +20
Knock out more than one opponent at once: +15
win with one attack phase: +20
win a game with over 80 life: + 15
win a game with over 100 life: + 20
win a game while at negative health: +40
Anyway, as I said, this is an experiment. Me and my friend are going to try it out so I'll be refining the points values as I go.
Since a point system is used to create decks but doesn't appear to have a some sort of limiter, it might be prudent to include some sort of detriment value on mismatched decks.
To use an arbitrary example, let's say deck "A" is valued at 400 points and deck B is valued at 175 points. This can happen either because player B has not been playing long enough to earn the points or simply chooses to play a crippled deck. Now if deck A plays against deck B then it's a higher likelihood that Deck A will win over deck B all things being equal. One solution is to add a multiplier of <1 to the winning points if Deck A wins and/or a multiplier of >1 to Deck B. This can help weaker decks and prevents more powerful decks from grinding out points against weaker decks.
The "Promote to General" is for, let's say, you've added a rare legendary into your deck spending 20 points. The promotion cost is an additional cost on top of that to move that card into the position as your deck's general. This seemed like a good thing to put a point cost value on because promoting a powerful Voltron style general could give you a big advantage against other low power decks.
Your idea about mismatched decks is a good point. I need to think of a good way to work something like that in. Now that I think about it, you could just add in some arbitrary starting amount of points to build your deck on a point/buy system.
Rewarding the winner more makes intuitive sense, but in practice I think that will just cause one deck to snowball.
Or is this more of a personal challenge?
I would revise some of the bonus conditions. Winning in a single combat phase, for example, is actually more likely than the alternative for some decks (e.g. Kiki-Jiki combo).
I have come up with a homebrew spin on Pauper Commander called Rags to Riches. In this format you start with a Pauper Commander deck and after winning you earn and trade in points to upgrade the rarity of the cards in your deck. This idea is not completely original. I have seen other variants of it mentioned before -- usually without much detail. But what I have done to make it more cohesive and manageable is I've created an app to facilitate tracking the points & trading in points. It is free on Google Play & has no ads or anything - called MTG Rags to Riches. It also lets you change the difficulty on how fast you gain points, because at the default difficulty it would take quite a few games before your deck really gets leveled up to a normal strength non-pauper commander deck.
I am looking for feedback from others on the point values & rewards. Currently this is how I outlined everything.
The point reward list is a bit longer. What I tried to do is balance rewarding a small amount for losing, more for winning, and even more if you win if unusual circumstances.
Anyway, as I said, this is an experiment. Me and my friend are going to try it out so I'll be refining the points values as I go.
I have a couple suggestions....
What is "promote to general"?
Since a point system is used to create decks but doesn't appear to have a some sort of limiter, it might be prudent to include some sort of detriment value on mismatched decks.
To use an arbitrary example, let's say deck "A" is valued at 400 points and deck B is valued at 175 points. This can happen either because player B has not been playing long enough to earn the points or simply chooses to play a crippled deck. Now if deck A plays against deck B then it's a higher likelihood that Deck A will win over deck B all things being equal. One solution is to add a multiplier of <1 to the winning points if Deck A wins and/or a multiplier of >1 to Deck B. This can help weaker decks and prevents more powerful decks from grinding out points against weaker decks.
Your idea about mismatched decks is a good point. I need to think of a good way to work something like that in. Now that I think about it, you could just add in some arbitrary starting amount of points to build your deck on a point/buy system.
Thanks for the tips.
Or is this more of a personal challenge?
I would revise some of the bonus conditions. Winning in a single combat phase, for example, is actually more likely than the alternative for some decks (e.g. Kiki-Jiki combo).
- Rabid Wombat