Some changes will be coming to Realms soon. Among them, deck sizes will be more flexible, and milling out will no longer be a concern. Support cards will be restructured and become optional, though still suggested since mulligans are messy in Realms. I'm looking into an embedded draw mechanic that will keep people with things to do, and while monarch is an established mechanic, it has some experience problems that I think can be improved on.
Building a Realms Deck
When building for Realms, there are a number of factors you may want to consider, but the most important is the kinds of players you intend to play that Realm with. Individual Realms can be optimized for playing with heavily entrenched competitive players, players who have a looser grasp on the rules or who are just learning to play Magic, and players who just want to have a fun game with some goofy uncommons that are hard to find a home for.Each deck has a lot of moving parts and they all need to be doing their job to produce the best play experience. While the Realms rules set didn't finally start to gel until the year of this post, I've been actively brewing decks in this vein since the release of the original Zendikar set with the original ancient prototype created back around Kamigawa. I don't claim to be an expert and I don't presume to tell you or your play group what you'll find fun, but I have found a number of heuristics that I feel make games play better when building a deck to be shared between players.
Complexity
Remember the exposure problem: A relevantly sized portion of games will be the first time many players have played your particular Realms list. It may be the first time they've seen the cards and mechanics and they will have to spend more time than you'd anticipate simply reading what the cards they're dealt do. Even all but the most entrenched players will still have to consider the ways these cards they haven't seen interact with one another on the fly. This is all on top of players potentially learning the differences of Realms or multiplayer. Complexity is thus the top factor to consider when building a deck.
(Do note: Denizens being in a public zone can be read and discussed by all players, which loosens restrictions the exposure problem might otherwise put on, for example, a combat trick, which would be self-defeating to have to reveal to ask how a keyword or new mechanic works.)
Maro has excellent points on the different types of casual audiences.
Think about which audience you're building for. Are you trying to play pick up games at the end of FNM? Do you want to play with family you're going to visit? Are you expecting to play the deck between Grand Prix side events? If you're playing a lot of different decks or are playing with a mix of strangers on the go, the exposure problem will be a constant. Restrict the complexity for the audience you're aiming for and err on the side of less. You can have different decks for different audiences. And why not? More decks to brew!
If you're trying to include as many potential players as possible, tend to use cards only on the simpler end of the complexity scale. There can be exceptions, but be picky with the ones you keep. Try to use printings of cards that come with reminder text, even for things as simple as Flash. Protection is an example of a mechanic that can be excluded from these Realms decks for that reason. There is plenty to say on the topic of complexity when building for the broadest audience, but the main offenders are cards that a new player won't know what it does without asking and having to reveal that it's in their hand. These are the kinds of cards you should avoid the most.
If you're building for people who already know how to play Magic, you have a wider range of cards to choose from. Complexity creep can still be an issue, but it's more of a gradient and will be a factor more on a card-by card basis most of the time. Again, try to avoid cards (or printings without reminder text) that will force a player to reveal a card and ask what it does. The greatest complexity I've run into in my builds was a mill-oriented deck where milling was the main win condition and the final turns were managing on-board tricks with instants in hand and using the various contents of the graveyard to avoid milling out but making sure everyone else did. This was not an experience that was easy for most of the players at my LGS to grasp and I decided to overhaul that deck as a result.
One point I want to include here is avoiding the use of utility lands. In many of my previous builds, lands have served various utility roles and without the support cards/denizens, numerous dual lands, fetch lands, and utility lands had to be included to even out the problem of drawing too many excess lands than other players. Lands that turn into creatures. Lands that search the deck for other lands. Lands with Hideaway. These all add minutes of time when players have to read them to find out what they do on top of whatever mana producing powers they have. With the support cards, clean, basic, textless lands should be the default for the bottom level of complexity at minimum, and given the exposure problem, this should probably extend to the LGS level of complexity as well. Denizens make those lands not dead and the support cards should guarantee people access to their colors. Simply put, clean up your deck's complexity by just playing basic lands.
As a consequence of the exposure problem, try to avoid cards that search the deck. A card like Diabolic Tutor is cool, but nobody will know what it functionally does without knowing the contents of the deck and in trying to find something they want, will have to read dozens of new cards in the process. If you intend for Expedition Map to grab Bojuka Bog or Cabal Pit most of the time, players aren't going to realize that. Even with something as simple as Evolving Wilds will lead to a player looking through the deck mid-game and having to shuffle before the next player can draw. Knowing what is still in the deck will reveal what is in players' hands and that sort of card-counting edge should be avoided for decks being built for casual play and with the support cards and denizens, very few land-searching effects should be needed anyway.
As ever, play testing will give you valuable feedback for how to tweak things. When building for the lower level of complexity, it may be necessary to get fresh players to actually test the changes with since the previous players will already have their questions about cards answered.
I am going to break the decks I list into three broad categories for complexity:
Friends and Family: These decks are specifically intended to be easier to pick up and play with people who might not know how to play Magic or might have not played Magic very much or in a few years. It may be possible to build even simpler as an introduction to Magic product, but that's not an area I've yet to explore.
Local Gaming Store: These decks play more like a board game that you bring to the card shop to play after draft with players who definitely already know how to play Magic. If it's a regular group of players you play with, they'll quickly adjust to the card pool being used so you will quickly get past the exposure problem. The audience these decks are aiming for can handle added complexity, so that added complexity is fine.
Going Deep: These decks have an unusually high level of complexity for one reason or another. Perhaps there are a lot of on board tricks or are using cards in intuitive ways. They may include a large number of non-basic utility lands on top of this. These decks may require numerous games to understand all the working pieces and are not intended for a general audience. I would advise avoiding this level of complexity almost entirely, especially if you don't have easy access to players who can manage it and don't already have a simpler Realms option to play if your regular playgroup as a new addition.
(Do note: Denizens being in a public zone can be read and discussed by all players, which loosens restrictions the exposure problem might otherwise put on, for example, a combat trick, which would be self-defeating to have to reveal to ask how a keyword or new mechanic works.)
Maro has excellent points on the different types of casual audiences.
Think about which audience you're building for. Are you trying to play pick up games at the end of FNM? Do you want to play with family you're going to visit? Are you expecting to play the deck between Grand Prix side events? If you're playing a lot of different decks or are playing with a mix of strangers on the go, the exposure problem will be a constant. Restrict the complexity for the audience you're aiming for and err on the side of less. You can have different decks for different audiences. And why not? More decks to brew!
If you're trying to include as many potential players as possible, tend to use cards only on the simpler end of the complexity scale. There can be exceptions, but be picky with the ones you keep. Try to use printings of cards that come with reminder text, even for things as simple as Flash. Protection is an example of a mechanic that can be excluded from these Realms decks for that reason. There is plenty to say on the topic of complexity when building for the broadest audience, but the main offenders are cards that a new player won't know what it does without asking and having to reveal that it's in their hand. These are the kinds of cards you should avoid the most.
If you're building for people who already know how to play Magic, you have a wider range of cards to choose from. Complexity creep can still be an issue, but it's more of a gradient and will be a factor more on a card-by card basis most of the time. Again, try to avoid cards (or printings without reminder text) that will force a player to reveal a card and ask what it does. The greatest complexity I've run into in my builds was a mill-oriented deck where milling was the main win condition and the final turns were managing on-board tricks with instants in hand and using the various contents of the graveyard to avoid milling out but making sure everyone else did. This was not an experience that was easy for most of the players at my LGS to grasp and I decided to overhaul that deck as a result.
One point I want to include here is avoiding the use of utility lands. In many of my previous builds, lands have served various utility roles and without the support cards/denizens, numerous dual lands, fetch lands, and utility lands had to be included to even out the problem of drawing too many excess lands than other players. Lands that turn into creatures. Lands that search the deck for other lands. Lands with Hideaway. These all add minutes of time when players have to read them to find out what they do on top of whatever mana producing powers they have. With the support cards, clean, basic, textless lands should be the default for the bottom level of complexity at minimum, and given the exposure problem, this should probably extend to the LGS level of complexity as well. Denizens make those lands not dead and the support cards should guarantee people access to their colors. Simply put, clean up your deck's complexity by just playing basic lands.
As a consequence of the exposure problem, try to avoid cards that search the deck. A card like Diabolic Tutor is cool, but nobody will know what it functionally does without knowing the contents of the deck and in trying to find something they want, will have to read dozens of new cards in the process. If you intend for Expedition Map to grab Bojuka Bog or Cabal Pit most of the time, players aren't going to realize that. Even with something as simple as Evolving Wilds will lead to a player looking through the deck mid-game and having to shuffle before the next player can draw. Knowing what is still in the deck will reveal what is in players' hands and that sort of card-counting edge should be avoided for decks being built for casual play and with the support cards and denizens, very few land-searching effects should be needed anyway.
As ever, play testing will give you valuable feedback for how to tweak things. When building for the lower level of complexity, it may be necessary to get fresh players to actually test the changes with since the previous players will already have their questions about cards answered.
I am going to break the decks I list into three broad categories for complexity:
Friends and Family: These decks are specifically intended to be easier to pick up and play with people who might not know how to play Magic or might have not played Magic very much or in a few years. It may be possible to build even simpler as an introduction to Magic product, but that's not an area I've yet to explore.
Local Gaming Store: These decks play more like a board game that you bring to the card shop to play after draft with players who definitely already know how to play Magic. If it's a regular group of players you play with, they'll quickly adjust to the card pool being used so you will quickly get past the exposure problem. The audience these decks are aiming for can handle added complexity, so that added complexity is fine.
Going Deep: These decks have an unusually high level of complexity for one reason or another. Perhaps there are a lot of on board tricks or are using cards in intuitive ways. They may include a large number of non-basic utility lands on top of this. These decks may require numerous games to understand all the working pieces and are not intended for a general audience. I would advise avoiding this level of complexity almost entirely, especially if you don't have easy access to players who can manage it and don't already have a simpler Realms option to play if your regular playgroup as a new addition.
Portability
Portability is another large meta-factor which plays into a unique appeal of Realms: the ability to play with no other product needed. With a single Realms deck, a whole group of players can play. This can allow you to play when traveling, but the deck must be designed to be portable.
The largest factor in a deck's portability is the need for pieces outside of the cards themselves. A small number of tokens can be fine, since they can be squeezed into the deck box, but transporting dice is a larger commitment. Depending on the venue you are planning to play at, dice may already be something you plan to have on hand, but if you're taking a deck to play after dinner somewhere, you may not be able to count on dice being present. As such, counters of any kind will hurt a deck's portability, however once you've started using them, you can basically use any number of cards with counters since portability is already affected. (The reverse is true of tokens as each token will consume extra space in the deck box.)
Often, +1/+1 counters appear on spells that improve creatures or on creatures that get bigger on their own. If you are trying to improve the portability of your deck, consider looking for auras (possibly auras with flash) and creatures that can alter their stats either with mana or by checking some other condition like certain cards in the graveyard.
Managing complexity is also not to be underrated when making a deck portable. Especially when you don't know who you might end up playing with, trending towards the lower end of the complexity scale will allow cleaner games with a wider range of players.
For managing players' life totals, you can use a smartphone app. If you don't already have one, try MTG Familiar.
The largest factor in a deck's portability is the need for pieces outside of the cards themselves. A small number of tokens can be fine, since they can be squeezed into the deck box, but transporting dice is a larger commitment. Depending on the venue you are planning to play at, dice may already be something you plan to have on hand, but if you're taking a deck to play after dinner somewhere, you may not be able to count on dice being present. As such, counters of any kind will hurt a deck's portability, however once you've started using them, you can basically use any number of cards with counters since portability is already affected. (The reverse is true of tokens as each token will consume extra space in the deck box.)
Often, +1/+1 counters appear on spells that improve creatures or on creatures that get bigger on their own. If you are trying to improve the portability of your deck, consider looking for auras (possibly auras with flash) and creatures that can alter their stats either with mana or by checking some other condition like certain cards in the graveyard.
Managing complexity is also not to be underrated when making a deck portable. Especially when you don't know who you might end up playing with, trending towards the lower end of the complexity scale will allow cleaner games with a wider range of players.
For managing players' life totals, you can use a smartphone app. If you don't already have one, try MTG Familiar.
Support Cards
Support cards exist to make starting hands immediately playable without the need for mulligans which gets messy and unbalanced when sharing the library. These cards should not overwhelm the rest of the deck in their utility or complexity, so just keep it simple and you'll be fine. The support cards can be almost obvious after it's clear what colors the deck is going to be.
Firstly, for a deck aiming for very low complexity, especially for a new audience, simply use a single basic land of each color as the support cards and don't bother with a card selection spell. Some lists may be able to get away with a cycling land and a basic land or a guildgate equivalent and Blasted Landscape. A theme like heroic will want the Anticipate equivalent to make sure the theme actually comes up.
Consider using a land that can tap for any color of mana the deck needs.
: Meandering River, Azorius Guildgate
: Submerged Boneyard, Dimir Guildgate
: Cinder Barrens, Rakdos Guildgate
: Timber Gorge, Gruul Guildgate
: Tranquil Expanse, Selesnya Guildgate
: Forsaken Sanctuary, Orzhov Guildgate
: Foul Orchard, Golgari Guildgate
: Woodland Stream, Simic Guildgate
: Highland Lake, Izzet Guildgate
: Stone Quarry, Boros Guildgate
: Seaside Citadel
: Arcane Sanctum
: Crumbling Necropolis
: Savage Lands
: Jungle Shrine
: Sandsteppe Citadel
: Mystic Monastery
: Opulent Palace
: Nomad Outpost
: Frontier Bivouac
There ought to be two land support cards for each player. If the deck has several restrictive CC, 1CC, or 2CC costs, consider Shimmering Grotto and its variants as the second land option, when your audience is more entrenched and can more or less automatically skip reading and thinking about it.
(For a more competitive-oriented Realm, it may come up that grabbing as many lands as possible to get to a denizen first becomes disruptive. Either adjust the quality of the second land's fixing to make overloading on lands more costly or adjust the costs and efficiency of the denizens to make rushing for them less effective. It's possible to empower the rest of the Realm to compensate for highly efficient and powerful denizens, but it will require more effort empowering the ~90 library slots than depowering the ~15 denzien+support slots.)
Guildgate + Blasted landscape may suffice for some lists, but if you have a third support slot, that spell will serve the role of a wild card. It flexes between being an extra land or an extra spell depending on the needs of that starting hand and what it replaces. The spell you select should be something that can be cast using just the two guaranteed lands provided in the support slot. The spell probably shouldn't be a creature since that will have a ripple effect with every other card in the list. The spell should be easy to read and understand so as to not add any unnecessary complexity to the starting setup. The classic example here is Anticipate. The number of good support candidates is low. For ease of reference, I will list the best ones I've come across here.
Anticipate
Excellent default choice. Being an instant will add potentially unwanted complexity in places where the top of the library becomes known contents. Impulse and Shimmer of Possibility are stronger for digging but become more of an autopick which is potentially unwanted.
Strategic Planning
As a sorcery, avoids that aspect of Anticipate's complexity, but adds it back even more by dumping cards into the graveyard. I would only advise if that is a theme of your deck and only in certain cases.
Chart a Course
As a turn two play, this offers less card selection but can ditch unwanted cards already drawn. This encourages aggression, but very loudly favors the starting player in most cases which makes me avoid this, but I don't want to forget this exists.
Tormenting Voice
This is the only red support card I can remember finding that fits the criteria I had. It allows more hand fixing than Anticipate, but less reliability on finding a desired card. This style of looting is not ideal due to the slight complexity it adds but it's all red has at the moment.
Thrill of Possibility
Red now has an instant speed version of Tormenting Voice. This allows it to be cast on an end-step which lets a player wait to make their discard decision with as much information as possible. Being an instant potentially makes game play more complex if scrying is involved and another player interrupts. This can be an unexpected feelbad, so be mindful of your complexity goal.
Seek the Wilds
There are other green spells in this vein but this feels the best iteration of the ones that exist so far. It can only hit lands and creatures, meaning that it typically cannot find removal which may skew how a deck plays and how often it actually does the job it's trying to do, but this is serviceable.
Ransack the Lab
Modern Horizons offers black its first true option for a spell in this slot, kicking out Night's Whisper which would have been an autopick. It has the exact same play pattern as Strategic Planning. Any other option should be used instead. If Realms gains a rule to prevent players from losing to an empty library, this will end up being a fine inclusion given Black's many recursion-centric spells.
: Anticipate
: Anticipate (Strategic Planning)
: Tormenting Voice
: Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
: Seek the Wilds
: Ransack the Lab?
: Seek the Wilds
: Anticipate (Seek the Wilds)
: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
: Tormenting Voice
: Anticipate (Seek the Wilds)
: Anticipate
: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
: Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
: Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
: Seek the Wilds
: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
: Anticipate (Strategic Planning, Seek the Wilds)
: Tormenting Voice
: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice, Seek the Wilds)
It is worth pointing out here that I could not find any quality support spells for pure Night's Whisper is simple and is castable on 2, but is pure card draw so if going that route, the cost of 2 life would have to be notable since it would become an autopick based purely on power level which is undesirable. Something that cycles for might work but it offers no card selection at all and the spell it is attached to would affect the game. . I have not yet attempted to solve that problem, but one option is to add a third color for access to the support spell there, but that might muddle the theme.
Even a card like Scroll of Avacyn could potentially work as a way to simply cycle away an undesired card from the starting hand but it's not necessarily worth the added complexity when Blasted Landscape can offer that utility in all cases except a starting hand of 7 spells.
The basic pattern outlined here is a good default. There may end up deck-specific reasons to experiment with departing from this default. Sticking with the default keeps it simple to transition between playing one Realms deck and another.
Firstly, for a deck aiming for very low complexity, especially for a new audience, simply use a single basic land of each color as the support cards and don't bother with a card selection spell. Some lists may be able to get away with a cycling land and a basic land or a guildgate equivalent and Blasted Landscape. A theme like heroic will want the Anticipate equivalent to make sure the theme actually comes up.
Consider using a land that can tap for any color of mana the deck needs.
: Meandering River, Azorius Guildgate
: Submerged Boneyard, Dimir Guildgate
: Cinder Barrens, Rakdos Guildgate
: Timber Gorge, Gruul Guildgate
: Tranquil Expanse, Selesnya Guildgate
: Forsaken Sanctuary, Orzhov Guildgate
: Foul Orchard, Golgari Guildgate
: Woodland Stream, Simic Guildgate
: Highland Lake, Izzet Guildgate
: Stone Quarry, Boros Guildgate
: Seaside Citadel
: Arcane Sanctum
: Crumbling Necropolis
: Savage Lands
: Jungle Shrine
: Sandsteppe Citadel
: Mystic Monastery
: Opulent Palace
: Nomad Outpost
: Frontier Bivouac
There ought to be two land support cards for each player. If the deck has several restrictive CC, 1CC, or 2CC costs, consider Shimmering Grotto and its variants as the second land option, when your audience is more entrenched and can more or less automatically skip reading and thinking about it.
(For a more competitive-oriented Realm, it may come up that grabbing as many lands as possible to get to a denizen first becomes disruptive. Either adjust the quality of the second land's fixing to make overloading on lands more costly or adjust the costs and efficiency of the denizens to make rushing for them less effective. It's possible to empower the rest of the Realm to compensate for highly efficient and powerful denizens, but it will require more effort empowering the ~90 library slots than depowering the ~15 denzien+support slots.)
Guildgate + Blasted landscape may suffice for some lists, but if you have a third support slot, that spell will serve the role of a wild card. It flexes between being an extra land or an extra spell depending on the needs of that starting hand and what it replaces. The spell you select should be something that can be cast using just the two guaranteed lands provided in the support slot. The spell probably shouldn't be a creature since that will have a ripple effect with every other card in the list. The spell should be easy to read and understand so as to not add any unnecessary complexity to the starting setup. The classic example here is Anticipate. The number of good support candidates is low. For ease of reference, I will list the best ones I've come across here.
Anticipate
Excellent default choice. Being an instant will add potentially unwanted complexity in places where the top of the library becomes known contents. Impulse and Shimmer of Possibility are stronger for digging but become more of an autopick which is potentially unwanted.
Strategic Planning
As a sorcery, avoids that aspect of Anticipate's complexity, but adds it back even more by dumping cards into the graveyard. I would only advise if that is a theme of your deck and only in certain cases.
Chart a Course
As a turn two play, this offers less card selection but can ditch unwanted cards already drawn. This encourages aggression, but very loudly favors the starting player in most cases which makes me avoid this, but I don't want to forget this exists.
Tormenting Voice
This is the only red support card I can remember finding that fits the criteria I had. It allows more hand fixing than Anticipate, but less reliability on finding a desired card. This style of looting is not ideal due to the slight complexity it adds but it's all red has at the moment.
Thrill of Possibility
Red now has an instant speed version of Tormenting Voice. This allows it to be cast on an end-step which lets a player wait to make their discard decision with as much information as possible. Being an instant potentially makes game play more complex if scrying is involved and another player interrupts. This can be an unexpected feelbad, so be mindful of your complexity goal.
Seek the Wilds
There are other green spells in this vein but this feels the best iteration of the ones that exist so far. It can only hit lands and creatures, meaning that it typically cannot find removal which may skew how a deck plays and how often it actually does the job it's trying to do, but this is serviceable.
Ransack the Lab
Modern Horizons offers black its first true option for a spell in this slot, kicking out Night's Whisper which would have been an autopick. It has the exact same play pattern as Strategic Planning. Any other option should be used instead. If Realms gains a rule to prevent players from losing to an empty library, this will end up being a fine inclusion given Black's many recursion-centric spells.
: Anticipate
: Anticipate (Strategic Planning)
: Tormenting Voice
: Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
: Seek the Wilds
: Ransack the Lab?
: Seek the Wilds
: Anticipate (Seek the Wilds)
: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
: Tormenting Voice
: Anticipate (Seek the Wilds)
: Anticipate
: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
: Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
: Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
: Seek the Wilds
: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
: Anticipate (Strategic Planning, Seek the Wilds)
: Tormenting Voice
: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice, Seek the Wilds)
Even a card like Scroll of Avacyn could potentially work as a way to simply cycle away an undesired card from the starting hand but it's not necessarily worth the added complexity when Blasted Landscape can offer that utility in all cases except a starting hand of 7 spells.
The basic pattern outlined here is a good default. There may end up deck-specific reasons to experiment with departing from this default. Sticking with the default keeps it simple to transition between playing one Realms deck and another.
Denizens
Denizens ultimately serve the role of lessening the blow of drawing more lands than other players, keeping the person in the game rather than losing purely due to chance. In normal Magic, players are driven to tune their decks on their own to make their decks better, however Realms is a zero-sum format. One player drawing a strong spell means that other players cannot draw that strong spell. While efforts could be made in a normal deck to reduce the number of excess lands by other means, Realms can shift a portion of that responsibility to the Denizen slots. There are only so many mana sink mechanics and not all of them are always suitable for use in Realms due to either complexity or portability.
A consequence of shifting extreme top end to the denizen slots is that the curve of the remaining cards in the library should go down, increasing the playability of opening hands in general. Prior to Realms, I had been using creatures like Shoreline Ranger, but decks required a critical mass of these kinds of flexible pieces to solve the hand-fixing and flooding-out problems and the cards themselves weren't thematic to the deck.
To solve the intended role of denizens, denizens should be expensive. With rare exception, denizens ought to cost six or more mana. If denizens are too cheap, the first player gets a clear advantage in picking first when reaching the appropriate amount of mana, especially if the remaining denizens cost more. At around seven mana, there will be gaps between land draws and one player will simply draw more lands than the others, reaching the denizen threshold first. That player will also need the denizen the most having not drawn as many spells as the other players. On the flip side, low cost denizens can become irrelevant later in the game when players are flooding out and empty the denizen deck too quickly. From both ends, low cost creatures undercut the intended goal.
Denizens should push the game toward a conclusion. Typically expensive creatures do this, but not all of them do. Evasion helps with board stalls and vigilance helps encourage extra attacking when wanting to block. Denizens that are mostly defensive in nature are probably not the best choice. The 90-card library gives the game about 12 turns with the full four players, so stalling after 8 turns does not play well.
Denizens should not be so backbreaking that the rest of the deck doesn't matter. The decks they are in should be able to handle them reasonably well and that threshold of playability will depend on the quality of removal a color combination has access to. A typical uncommon 7-drop from a draft environment may be sufficient for comparison.
Care should be taken with denizens that can sacrifice themselves or fall into a chump-blocking pattern too easily.
It is possible to use non-creatures as denizens. In this space, I feel like auras work the best, but there aren't too many quality top-end auras. Artifacts and enchantments don't work well in most decks since it adds a layer of needed non-creature removal and planeswalkers will both need counters and act more as value-engines than as game-enders. I could see Elbrus, the Binding Blade work in very specific configurations.
Here are some options to consider:
A consequence of shifting extreme top end to the denizen slots is that the curve of the remaining cards in the library should go down, increasing the playability of opening hands in general. Prior to Realms, I had been using creatures like Shoreline Ranger, but decks required a critical mass of these kinds of flexible pieces to solve the hand-fixing and flooding-out problems and the cards themselves weren't thematic to the deck.
To solve the intended role of denizens, denizens should be expensive. With rare exception, denizens ought to cost six or more mana. If denizens are too cheap, the first player gets a clear advantage in picking first when reaching the appropriate amount of mana, especially if the remaining denizens cost more. At around seven mana, there will be gaps between land draws and one player will simply draw more lands than the others, reaching the denizen threshold first. That player will also need the denizen the most having not drawn as many spells as the other players. On the flip side, low cost denizens can become irrelevant later in the game when players are flooding out and empty the denizen deck too quickly. From both ends, low cost creatures undercut the intended goal.
Denizens should push the game toward a conclusion. Typically expensive creatures do this, but not all of them do. Evasion helps with board stalls and vigilance helps encourage extra attacking when wanting to block. Denizens that are mostly defensive in nature are probably not the best choice. The 90-card library gives the game about 12 turns with the full four players, so stalling after 8 turns does not play well.
Denizens should not be so backbreaking that the rest of the deck doesn't matter. The decks they are in should be able to handle them reasonably well and that threshold of playability will depend on the quality of removal a color combination has access to. A typical uncommon 7-drop from a draft environment may be sufficient for comparison.
Care should be taken with denizens that can sacrifice themselves or fall into a chump-blocking pattern too easily.
It is possible to use non-creatures as denizens. In this space, I feel like auras work the best, but there aren't too many quality top-end auras. Artifacts and enchantments don't work well in most decks since it adds a layer of needed non-creature removal and planeswalkers will both need counters and act more as value-engines than as game-enders. I could see Elbrus, the Binding Blade work in very specific configurations.
Here are some options to consider:
Not every card here is necessarily suitable as a denizen or may only be suitable in a specific deck due to the spells available to its color combination. Remember that it is important for denizens to not simply invalidate the rest of the deck: the library should contain multiple ways to favorably interact against the included denizens. In regular Magic, 7-drops have an opportunity cost where they get stuck in your hand for several turns so need to have huge effects to make up for it. Here, that is never the case, so to be balanced with the rest of the deck, denizens may need to be less efficient than the average 7-drop. Remember that your goal is not to pick the most efficient, winningest threats.
By Color
When building a Realms deck, you are curating a list from among the thousands of cards that have been printed over the years. You will be selecting the best cards to complete your list and each color has specific attributes in this context.
Faith Unbroken, Voidstone Gargoyle, Banishment Decree
Griptide, Anchor to the Aether
Sever the Bloodline
Mudbutton Torchrunner, Wrack with Madness
Clear Shot, Lace with Moonglove, Provoke
- WHITE
Faith Unbroken, Voidstone Gargoyle, Banishment Decree
- BLUE
Griptide, Anchor to the Aether
- BLACK
Sever the Bloodline
- RED
Mudbutton Torchrunner, Wrack with Madness
- GREEN
Clear Shot, Lace with Moonglove, Provoke
Combat Tricks
In multiplayer, attacking is hard. It typically only happens when there is a clear disparity of board states. Combat tricks create an element of surprise and the potential threat of activation. Multiplayer also needs some level of card advantage otherwise 1-for-1s are a net negative. Combat tricks that permanently enhance the creature they go on or combat tricks that can be a 2-for-1 are the ideal. Clear Shot is one of my favorites, able to destroy two creatures with the right placement, while still being a solid card on its own. There aren't many of these, but they add spice and surprise.
One important thing to do is look at how the combat tricks you're running interact with each other, with the creatures of various sizes, and with the removal in the deck. Combat tricks that protect creatures from removal can compound the zero-sum nature of the format since it favors the players who draw the larger creatures since they can maintain their board dominance.
I have also found it less than ideal if combat tricks simply boil down to which gives the biggest boost. Thankfully there are tricks that provide a variety of options, even in green. Lace with Moonglove is a combat trick I've been on for this format for several years since it allows a small creature to trade up while giving a large creature no bonus at all. The cantrip makes this a card-neutral trade. Provoke is another nice utility trick, able to pivot between a fight spell and a surprise blocker, often in a card-positive way.
Viable combat tricks are going to vary based on color and the spread of creature sizes. White and green naturally tend to have the most options but even blue has tricks if the creatures in the deck are all of a narrow band of sizes. If you want combat tricks to be a part of your deck, they will be one of the more constraining factors since the creature sizes and removal spells will have to hang around the ones you pick.
Defiant Strike, Phantasmal Form, Bladebrand, Needle Drop, Lace with Moonglove
One important thing to do is look at how the combat tricks you're running interact with each other, with the creatures of various sizes, and with the removal in the deck. Combat tricks that protect creatures from removal can compound the zero-sum nature of the format since it favors the players who draw the larger creatures since they can maintain their board dominance.
I have also found it less than ideal if combat tricks simply boil down to which gives the biggest boost. Thankfully there are tricks that provide a variety of options, even in green. Lace with Moonglove is a combat trick I've been on for this format for several years since it allows a small creature to trade up while giving a large creature no bonus at all. The cantrip makes this a card-neutral trade. Provoke is another nice utility trick, able to pivot between a fight spell and a surprise blocker, often in a card-positive way.
Viable combat tricks are going to vary based on color and the spread of creature sizes. White and green naturally tend to have the most options but even blue has tricks if the creatures in the deck are all of a narrow band of sizes. If you want combat tricks to be a part of your deck, they will be one of the more constraining factors since the creature sizes and removal spells will have to hang around the ones you pick.
Defiant Strike, Phantasmal Form, Bladebrand, Needle Drop, Lace with Moonglove
Removal
Removal is an immensely important factor in Realms. Any given Realms deck is its own closed environment. The deck opposes itself and the removal spells need to be able to interact with whatever it is doing. Every threat needs removal for it. The zero-sum nature of the deck means you don't want niche removal like Shock. If a spell is in the removal slot, it needs to interact with a large swath of the deck's threats, if not all of them. Naturalize is typically a bad spell since it can't interact with the majority of the threats in a deck, though it can get a small bit of added play if the deck or denizens contain more artifact creatures than normal. You want to be very careful of removal that punishes unusually small or unusually large creatures.
Pacifism variants are also off the table almost entirely, unfortunately. If a Claustrophobia is played on a denizen, the denizen remains in play preventing that player from casting any further denizens. This is really punishing to the mechanic and if that player had a denizen, it means that player also was beginning to flood out and it would be that much more punishing when they draw future lands. Unfortunately, adding sacrifice outlets and bounce effects in those same decks can be risky with how they interact with denizens and those are typically reasonable ways to deal with a creature being enchanted. Journey to Nowhere is a better tool here than Pacifism since it doesn't punish a fundamental aspect of the format.
If a particular deck's theme relies heavily on non-creature permanents, white has several catch-all spells like Banishing Light that can deal with a variety of threats reliably. For the most part, however, Realms decks need to be almost entirely creatures.
Pacifism variants are also off the table almost entirely, unfortunately. If a Claustrophobia is played on a denizen, the denizen remains in play preventing that player from casting any further denizens. This is really punishing to the mechanic and if that player had a denizen, it means that player also was beginning to flood out and it would be that much more punishing when they draw future lands. Unfortunately, adding sacrifice outlets and bounce effects in those same decks can be risky with how they interact with denizens and those are typically reasonable ways to deal with a creature being enchanted. Journey to Nowhere is a better tool here than Pacifism since it doesn't punish a fundamental aspect of the format.
If a particular deck's theme relies heavily on non-creature permanents, white has several catch-all spells like Banishing Light that can deal with a variety of threats reliably. For the most part, however, Realms decks need to be almost entirely creatures.
Effects which Transition Differently
A number of effects transition awkwardly into Realms and should be used with care.
If you feel your theme wants heavy tempo effects like this, consider running creatures that have a solid body attached to the effect or cards with cycling so they can be ditched when they aren't desirable.
With Flashback, instants should be almost entirely avoided. The nature of flashback means that priority comes sharply into focus whenever one enters the graveyard and just makes game play very awkward. Spells with high flashback costs actually work out pretty well, though, especially on spells that are desirable to cast from hand. This mimics Denizens helping players who flood out more. There aren't many hits here, but they are good.
Aftermath designs are varied, but the main thing here is what shows up with most other cards in this category: it feels bad to play cards that give your opponents options. Prepare // Fight no longer has the freedom to be a combat trick and has to be a 6-mana fight spell to be "safe". Planning out how to actually use these kinds of cards also adds a lot of complexity.
Unearth, Scavenge, Embalm, and Eternalize all share a game play element. The creatures with these mechanics tend to become more aggressive than defensive. The turn they die on gives the player whose turn it is more options. Players will not want to block these as much or block with them. Depending on the ability cost, they can feel effectively unusable when the controller doesn't have enough lands to use the ability but an opponent does, and that feels bad. On top of that, opponents can (and are incentivized to) use removal on these creatures so they can get a free effect for killing them which also feels bad when the cool thing your creature does is used against you. Unearth feels less bad here because it's just free damage and reverses the attacking/blocking interaction, but doesn't have any compelling designs. Scavenge plays more like an aura which can be easier to overcome. Embalm and Eternalize have the most extreme play pattern changes.
Dredge would also get a mention here, but is unsuitable for essentially every deck. It leads to milling out and drags the game into a repetitive state where the same thing happens.
Clash and Parley are similar in that they care about the top of the library. Revealing the top of the library doesn't change where cards are, so for these mechanics, only one card is ever revealed. This can defy expectations and makes these cards play out poorly. There's also a disconnect between which cards each player reveals and which cards players move. These should just be avoided entirely.
A more meta concern is that a Merfolk Looter will rapidly drain the deck, causing the game to end due to milling and that player can use the looter to adjust when that happens. This is not advisable for most decks.
Bestow is thwarted by the same things as the Denizen mechanic: aura-based removal. Once you remove that element, bestow becomes an all-upside mana sink mechanic. Not every design works well and some of the bodies are not quite suitable for play on their own, but the 4-drops scale quite well in this space. To make it play best, you'll want a few untap combat tricks, natural vigilance, and removal that scales to all sizes of creatures.
- Pacifism / Claustrophobia -style removal
- Unsummon effects
- Tempo-heavy or deck-specific spells
If you feel your theme wants heavy tempo effects like this, consider running creatures that have a solid body attached to the effect or cards with cycling so they can be ditched when they aren't desirable.
- Graveyard Mechanics
With Flashback, instants should be almost entirely avoided. The nature of flashback means that priority comes sharply into focus whenever one enters the graveyard and just makes game play very awkward. Spells with high flashback costs actually work out pretty well, though, especially on spells that are desirable to cast from hand. This mimics Denizens helping players who flood out more. There aren't many hits here, but they are good.
Aftermath designs are varied, but the main thing here is what shows up with most other cards in this category: it feels bad to play cards that give your opponents options. Prepare // Fight no longer has the freedom to be a combat trick and has to be a 6-mana fight spell to be "safe". Planning out how to actually use these kinds of cards also adds a lot of complexity.
Unearth, Scavenge, Embalm, and Eternalize all share a game play element. The creatures with these mechanics tend to become more aggressive than defensive. The turn they die on gives the player whose turn it is more options. Players will not want to block these as much or block with them. Depending on the ability cost, they can feel effectively unusable when the controller doesn't have enough lands to use the ability but an opponent does, and that feels bad. On top of that, opponents can (and are incentivized to) use removal on these creatures so they can get a free effect for killing them which also feels bad when the cool thing your creature does is used against you. Unearth feels less bad here because it's just free damage and reverses the attacking/blocking interaction, but doesn't have any compelling designs. Scavenge plays more like an aura which can be easier to overcome. Embalm and Eternalize have the most extreme play pattern changes.
Dredge would also get a mention here, but is unsuitable for essentially every deck. It leads to milling out and drags the game into a repetitive state where the same thing happens.
- Scry and similar library mechanics
Clash and Parley are similar in that they care about the top of the library. Revealing the top of the library doesn't change where cards are, so for these mechanics, only one card is ever revealed. This can defy expectations and makes these cards play out poorly. There's also a disconnect between which cards each player reveals and which cards players move. These should just be avoided entirely.
- Strong Card Flow
A more meta concern is that a Merfolk Looter will rapidly drain the deck, causing the game to end due to milling and that player can use the looter to adjust when that happens. This is not advisable for most decks.
- Go Wide Tokens
- Powerful Lifegain, Lifelink
- Cycling
- Mana Sink Mechanics
Bestow is thwarted by the same things as the Denizen mechanic: aura-based removal. Once you remove that element, bestow becomes an all-upside mana sink mechanic. Not every design works well and some of the bodies are not quite suitable for play on their own, but the 4-drops scale quite well in this space. To make it play best, you'll want a few untap combat tricks, natural vigilance, and removal that scales to all sizes of creatures.
Product Design
How might Wizards make this work as a product? There are a few points to touch on and these are just my thoughts.
Storage space should also be allocated for a rules insert, any minimal number of tokens, and any number of reminder cards explaining three basic parts that makes Realms different from other formats.
It may also be desirable to alter deck requirements by either removing two denizens or removing two cards from the main library. This would keep the natural deck size at 100 to stick to the normal sleeve counts that are sold for Commander. Those products typically include a few extra spares, but that can't be guaranteed. I personally prefer putting denizens in alternate colored sleeves that were leftover from excessive draft play but not every player will have otherwise unused sleeves for this purpose.
The support cards will be the odd cards out for this since even with the library and denizen deck totaling 100 cards, no sleeve product will be able to include the twelve support cards as well. I don't think play would work with shrinking the library by another 12 cards however unless basic lands were used as the lands and the support spell be allowed to stay in the library/graveyard, though this may be fine? The basic parameters of the format could change to accommodate real world forces. The spell would want a similar frame treatment as the denizens if that were the case for ease of locating them from a shuffled pile of cards.
One possibility that could allow a product to still be attractive to established players as well as provide a small pool of safe replacement options would be to include a seeded booster pack with each deck that could contain on-theme cards that have looser constraints or that would be more valuable outside of the context of Realms, allowing the product to contain valuable reprints without making it unplayable when those elements are stripped out for use elsewhere.
An example of this would be a Rune-Scarred Demon reprint among the pool of cards that could appear in the seeded booster pack. It would make a reasonable denizen in any black deck, but due to its utility in commander, the player may want to use it there instead. If not, they could always replace one of the preconstructed denizens with it to make their Realms deck more unique than the stock list with the safe suggestion from the seeded pack. To stay in line with the previous points, any denizen alternatives that would be included in these seeded packs would need special frame treatment to match.
Additionally, if the seeded booster contained cards functionally similar to different pieces in the stock list, any cards the player might want to cannibalize would have a functionally similar replacement in the seeded booster to patch the hole with. Decks that are more modular would be easier to replace parts for in general. The seeded booster could also contain cards that are overall more complex but not suitable for a first play through of the format. For example, Anchor to the Aether introduces players to the concept of putting an opponent's creature back into the library. It could later be upgraded to the Griptide or Metamorphose from the seeded booster once they understand the interaction. This also allows a sliding scale of complexity put in the hands of the player after purchase but without the need to research and track down alternatives that play well with the stock list.
Many cards in my example lists below may be suboptimal due to the lack of available alternative options. Specifically designed new cards would also allow any Realm's theme to be supplemented if the existing card pool is too slim on suitable inclusions. Being constrained by existing cards also artificially raises complexity when multiple keyword mechanics get used on single cards to fill the deck out. With the ability to design cards for a specific deck, the number of keywords could be better controlled to keep complexity in check.
- Storage
Storage space should also be allocated for a rules insert, any minimal number of tokens, and any number of reminder cards explaining three basic parts that makes Realms different from other formats.
- Lack of Sleeves / Denizen identification
It may also be desirable to alter deck requirements by either removing two denizens or removing two cards from the main library. This would keep the natural deck size at 100 to stick to the normal sleeve counts that are sold for Commander. Those products typically include a few extra spares, but that can't be guaranteed. I personally prefer putting denizens in alternate colored sleeves that were leftover from excessive draft play but not every player will have otherwise unused sleeves for this purpose.
The support cards will be the odd cards out for this since even with the library and denizen deck totaling 100 cards, no sleeve product will be able to include the twelve support cards as well. I don't think play would work with shrinking the library by another 12 cards however unless basic lands were used as the lands and the support spell be allowed to stay in the library/graveyard, though this may be fine? The basic parameters of the format could change to accommodate real world forces. The spell would want a similar frame treatment as the denizens if that were the case for ease of locating them from a shuffled pile of cards.
- Resistance to Cannibalization / Alternative Monetization
One possibility that could allow a product to still be attractive to established players as well as provide a small pool of safe replacement options would be to include a seeded booster pack with each deck that could contain on-theme cards that have looser constraints or that would be more valuable outside of the context of Realms, allowing the product to contain valuable reprints without making it unplayable when those elements are stripped out for use elsewhere.
An example of this would be a Rune-Scarred Demon reprint among the pool of cards that could appear in the seeded booster pack. It would make a reasonable denizen in any black deck, but due to its utility in commander, the player may want to use it there instead. If not, they could always replace one of the preconstructed denizens with it to make their Realms deck more unique than the stock list with the safe suggestion from the seeded pack. To stay in line with the previous points, any denizen alternatives that would be included in these seeded packs would need special frame treatment to match.
Additionally, if the seeded booster contained cards functionally similar to different pieces in the stock list, any cards the player might want to cannibalize would have a functionally similar replacement in the seeded booster to patch the hole with. Decks that are more modular would be easier to replace parts for in general. The seeded booster could also contain cards that are overall more complex but not suitable for a first play through of the format. For example, Anchor to the Aether introduces players to the concept of putting an opponent's creature back into the library. It could later be upgraded to the Griptide or Metamorphose from the seeded booster once they understand the interaction. This also allows a sliding scale of complexity put in the hands of the player after purchase but without the need to research and track down alternatives that play well with the stock list.
- Designing to Portability
Many cards in my example lists below may be suboptimal due to the lack of available alternative options. Specifically designed new cards would also allow any Realm's theme to be supplemented if the existing card pool is too slim on suitable inclusions. Being constrained by existing cards also artificially raises complexity when multiple keyword mechanics get used on single cards to fill the deck out. With the ability to design cards for a specific deck, the number of keywords could be better controlled to keep complexity in check.
1
Trample and afflict seem more elegant and much less mathy.
Soulmender seems to be granting bad lifelink.
I don't know about pierce.
1
Good point. Edit: That's a new aspect combo players would themselves consider more.
1
Legendary Creature — Human Ninja ( M )
As long as it's your turn, Kasumi has deathtouch, menace, and hexproof.
T: Choose one —
• Tap up to one target creature an opponent controls. That creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
• Destroy target tapped creature.
As a creature I think UB, T to activate might feel right. Hmm
1
Creature – Eldrazi Elk
Emerge 5G (You may cast this spell by sacrificing a creature and paying the emerge cost reduced by that creature’s converted mana cost.)
When you cast Essence of the Woods, you gain 5 life.
Vigilance
game rules
Next: Weirdscape, eternal, existence, outrider
1
Sorcery (U)
Converge — Add CC for each color of mana spent to cast Mana Cleanse.
Draw a card.
iiw: Cat Beast
1
Spell cost
Sorcery
Create a phased out 2/2 green Bear creature token.
Perhaps
Spell cost
Sorcery
Create a 2/2 green Bear creature token that phases out as it enters the battlefield.
Perhaps
Name cost
Creature - Bear
~ enters the battlefield phased out.
2/2
2
1
I've played a ton with Muldrotha already and I'll be posting a thread soon with my list. There are going to be a million ways to build Muldrotha. What follows are cards that are in my list or ice considered or may add in the future.
Reanimation
Muldrotha Protection (very important to run at least two of these. Probably at least three though. Vanishing has been absolutely amazing with Muldrotha. Why? Because you get to protect your engine without paying for Muldrotha again.)
Control
Destroy/Permanent Control
- Ratchet Bomb
- Oblivion Stone
- Sinister Concoction
- Boompile
- Woodfall Primus
- Massacre Wurm
- Shriekmaw
- Acidic Slime
- Reclamation Sage
- Ravenous Chupacabra
- Merciless Executioner
- Vindictive Lich
- Seal of Removal
Seal of Doom is bad. Don't run it. Sinister Concoction is much better and it fuels the yard. The same is true with Executioner's Capsule. This is not a Glissa deck.Tutor
- Sidisi, Undead Vizier
- Tezzeret the Seeker
- Trinket Mage
- Eternal Witness
E Wit obviously not tutor but when you have a full yard it's very good as a stand in tutor.Ramp
1
Etani G
Legendary Creature — Human Druid
Vigilance, deathtouch
1/2
Lera is a lot easier for me. I like it. I wonder what sort of things you could pull off with it. It feels like a card that would get printed in response to a powerful standard deck.
Nice cards HB
Edit: Maybe Etani could T: Add W if life gain. Add B if life loss. Add WB if both.
1
Artifact
Crescendo (At the beginning of your upkeep, put a verse counter on this. Whenever a triggered ability of this permanent triggers, if it's not this ability, it triggers an additional time for each verse counter on it.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, add G to your mana pool. This mana doesn't empty from your mana pool as steps and phases end.
At the beginning of your end step, if there are three or more verse counters on Monster Egg, sacrifice it. An opponent creates a 5/5 green Beast creature token with trample.
The way you have these cards worded needs tuned up quite a bit. Monster Egg ought to serve as a template for all of the others. However, I suggest we keep working on this until it comes to a more realistic point. I'm not even sure what i've suggested works as intended but I think it's close.