A couple years ago I started toying with the format Mini Magic. It was a budget draft format where one pack is drafted per player and then 15 card decks were constructed out of it. The only real reference I can find on it is on the Wiki for casual formats, where the source is a 404 wizards page. Most of what my end result is was designed via my own device and shaping, with a lot of tweaking and playtesting. This was done primarily with a cube I've been managing for a while now (http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/53271 ) which has actually gotten to a point where I am very happy with it with the budget/cards I have. That being said, I wanted to push Mini Magic further; constructed.
After labbing for a LOT of time, I have nailed down some rules, regulations, and bannings. While a lot of time has been put into this, a format and meta requires a diversity of players. Currently it is mostly me and a few others… then this happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7lSvWnFgPM&t=1s.
Mini magic is intended to be fun, quick, but still have some sense of competitiveness and meta. The rules have been designed to try and satisfy this. Decks are 15 card singleton with a sideboard of 5 cards. Typically sets will be best 2 out of 3, but players playing casually can play as they see fit. Player’s starting life total is 10 and maximum hand size is 7. Once player order is determined, players draw 3 cards then settle mulligans. Mulligans are traditional minus a few nuances; if a player draws a hand with no land or all land, they may reveal their hand to their opponent and take a free mulligan. This free mulligan can be done a maximum of 3 times, then normal mulligan rules apply regardless of land presence in hand. This is to ensure that the small hand does not cripple hand consistency as draw odds are drastically changed, but still limit mulligans to avoid card fixing strategies (thank you to Reddit user Vovix1 for digging into mulligan strategies). Once each player has kept, the game begins. From here on out, the rules are the same as any traditional format, with one tweak: drawing out your library does not cause you to lose, instead a player will take 1 damage for every card they attempt to draw and cannot. This is to prevent grindy/stally games from resulting in a premature loss, as a 15 (12 after starting hand draw) card deck won’t last very long.
Other rulings:
-The Infect threshold is currently set to 7 for death, but this is very prone to tweaking as Infect has yet to appear in the meta.
Ban List
This is very much an early list, mostly dealing with some archetypes that might quickly become busted in the format like mill and burn. Prone to a lot of change, though banlists are usually fluid.
Overview
A couple years ago I started toying with the format Mini Magic. It was a budget draft format where one pack is drafted per player and then 15 card decks were constructed out of it. The only real reference I can find on it is on the Wiki for casual formats, where the source is a 404 wizards page. Most of what my end result is was designed via my own device and shaping, with a lot of tweaking and playtesting. This was done primarily with a cube I've been managing for a while now (http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/53271 ) which has actually gotten to a point where I am very happy with it with the budget/cards I have. That being said, I wanted to push Mini Magic further; constructed.
After labbing for a LOT of time, I have nailed down some rules, regulations, and bannings. While a lot of time has been put into this, a format and meta requires a diversity of players. Currently it is mostly me and a few others… then this happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7lSvWnFgPM&t=1s.
So I felt it was time to go public! A subreddit was created just for this format https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniMagic/
Rules
Mini magic is intended to be fun, quick, but still have some sense of competitiveness and meta. The rules have been designed to try and satisfy this. Decks are 15 card singleton with a sideboard of 5 cards. Typically sets will be best 2 out of 3, but players playing casually can play as they see fit. Player’s starting life total is 10 and maximum hand size is 7. Once player order is determined, players draw 3 cards then settle mulligans. Mulligans are traditional minus a few nuances; if a player draws a hand with no land or all land, they may reveal their hand to their opponent and take a free mulligan. This free mulligan can be done a maximum of 3 times, then normal mulligan rules apply regardless of land presence in hand. This is to ensure that the small hand does not cripple hand consistency as draw odds are drastically changed, but still limit mulligans to avoid card fixing strategies (thank you to Reddit user Vovix1 for digging into mulligan strategies). Once each player has kept, the game begins. From here on out, the rules are the same as any traditional format, with one tweak: drawing out your library does not cause you to lose, instead a player will take 1 damage for every card they attempt to draw and cannot. This is to prevent grindy/stally games from resulting in a premature loss, as a 15 (12 after starting hand draw) card deck won’t last very long.
Other rulings:
-The Infect threshold is currently set to 7 for death, but this is very prone to tweaking as Infect has yet to appear in the meta.
Ban List
This is very much an early list, mostly dealing with some archetypes that might quickly become busted in the format like mill and burn. Prone to a lot of change, though banlists are usually fluid.
https://tinyurl.com/MiniMagicBans