MTG Salvation

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.

Remember the exposure problem: A large percentage of games will be the first time most players have played your Realms deck. 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. Complexity is thus the top factor to consider when building a deck.

Think about what 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? Remember that most of the players you will play with will have never played using your particular Realms deck before and may not know the inner workings of Magic as well as you. You can have different decks for different audiences.

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 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.

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 should be almost entirely obvious after it's clear what colors the deck is going to be.

Always include a land that can tap for any color of mana the deck needs.
WU: Meandering River, Azorius Guildgate
UB: Submerged Boneyard, Dimir Guildgate
BR: Cinder Barrens, Rakdos Guildgate
RG: Timber Gorge, Gruul Guildgate
GW: Tranquil Expanse, Selesnya Guildgate
WB: Forsaken Sanctuary, Orzhov Guildgate
BG: Foul Orchard, Golgari Guildgate
GU: Woodland Stream, Simic Guildgate
UR: Highland Lake, Izzet Guildgate
RW: Stone Quarry, Boros Guildgate
(G/W)(W/U): Seaside Citadel
(W/U)(U/B): Arcane Sanctum
(U/B)(B/R): Crumbling Necropolis
(B/R)(R/G): Savage Lands
(R/G)(G/W): Jungle Shrine
(W/B)(B/G): Sandsteppe Citadel
(U/R)(R/W): Mystic Monastery
(B/G)(G/U): Opulent Palace
(R/W)(W/B): Nomad Outpost
(G/U)(U/R): Frontier Bivouac

There should be two total land cards in the support cards. I have taken a liking to Shimmering Grotto and its variants as the second land option since it provides a second land if one is necessary, but isn't a good land, providing a slight cost to taking excessive land cards if a deck's denizen package ends up being a bit too strong. There is a case to be made that for two color decks, two basic lands should occupy the land slots for the support cards and that may actually be correct, especially at Friends and Family level of complexity. This could use more testing, though for cards with double colored costs, the combination of dual land and Shimmering Grotto guarantees that a 3WW card can be cast off of four mountains which is why I am favoring it at the moment. Grotto over having two dual lands also ensures that a starting hand will have its colors and can cast a 2-drop on-curve.

The spell in the support slot serves the role of a wild card. It flexes between being an extra land or an extra spell depending on the rest of the cards in the starting hand at the time that it's cast. The spell you select should be something that can be cast using just the two guaranteed lands provided in the support slot. The spell shouldn't be a creature since that will affect the playability of other low-cost creatures. The spell should be very easy to read and understand so as to not add any unnecessary complexity to the starting hand. 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.

U 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.

U 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.

U 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.

R 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.

R 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.

G 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.

B 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.

WU: Anticipate
UB: Anticipate (Strategic Planning)
BR: Tormenting Voice
RG: Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
GW: Seek the Wilds
WB: Ransack the Lab?
BG: Seek the Wilds
GU: Anticipate (Seek the Wilds)
UR: Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
RW: Tormenting Voice
(G/W)(W/U): Anticipate (Seek the Wilds)
(W/U)(U/B): Anticipate
(U/B)(B/R): Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
(B/R)(R/G): Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
(R/G)(G/W): Tormenting Voice (Seek the Wilds)
(W/B)(B/G): Seek the Wilds
(U/R)(R/W): Anticipate (Tormenting Voice)
(B/G)(G/U): Anticipate (Strategic Planning, Seek the Wilds)
(R/W)(W/B): Tormenting Voice
(G/U)(U/R): Anticipate (Tormenting Voice, Seek the Wilds)

It is worth pointing out here that I could not find any quality support spells for pure WB. 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. 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 2 might work but it offers no card selection at all and the spell it is attached to would affect the game.

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 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:

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.

• WHITE

White overall has a lot of depth. It has many small creatures to choose from which the main library will care about the most. White also has a lot of combat tricks to choose from that help creatures get through slightly larger blockers. White also has the most flexible removal options with various Banishing Light variants that scale to creatures with any size and allow you to also interact with artifacts and enchantments without including specialized removal. This gives white the ability to fill the holes left by the other color in your deck. As Magic's card pool grows, these effects will continue to be printed, giving more options to build with at a regular pace.

Faith Unbroken, Voidstone Gargoyle, Banishment Decree

• BLUE

Blue feels tricky to build with. The nature of how denizens work with Claustrophobia enchantments cuts out a lot of the common space for blue removal. The slots will have to be filled with very specific an unusual designs like Illusory Wrappings which still allow a denizen to chump block to get off the table or Anchor to the Aether. There are probably enough options for a deck if you dig hard enough, but very few new ones get printed with regularity. Blue's combat tricks are even more sparse with almost none of them offering a way for small creatures to beat larger creatures. Blue will end up more reliant on its partner color in that regard. It may also be preferable to design blue decks with a smaller, flatter creature size spread to allow these narrower interactions to play out, but will also require more care to make sure games can end on time.

Griptide, Anchor to the Aether

• BLACK

The most unique part of black is that it has a long and deep history of disentomb effects which are stronger and more reliable in Realms, though in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor element. Black has a long history of removal, much of which doesn't work in Realms. Fortunately, modern design has become more flexible, though this has also lead to more of black's removal caring about creature size. Black also has access to deathtouch and relevant combat tricks. Black feels quite average in terms of its card selection with the possible exception of the depth of creatures based on exact power and toughness needs.

Sever the Bloodline

• RED

Red can be a tough color to work with. Smaller burn spells only work on the least relevant threats when the list is mismanaged. It's important to be careful of including too many spells that simply invalidate red's removal since it leads to a more luck-based play experience where the player who drew the biggest creatures can just keep board supremacy. The zero-sum nature of Realms makes this less satisfying though I haven't looked at this issue since Denizens removed the largest creatures out of the main library. Red has a small number of removal spells that ignore attempts to save creatures with combat tricks. Combined with the nature of burn, red feels like it plays best when creature sizes don't get too large. Like black, red feels like it has gaps in creature sizes at the low end and has to go deep to find some diversity. Unfortunately, red lacks access to deathtouch which makes it even harder to find bodies that scale.

Mudbutton Torchrunner, Wrack with Madness

• GREEN

Despite traditionally having negligible amounts of removal, green feels like a rather solid color. Green has creatures of all types of efficiency at the lower end and a lot of combat trick options. Deathtouch gives green access to a way to interact with its own large creatures without having to completely rely on another color and modern design has been giving green a slow trickle of fight spells from which to choose. Green also has more larger creature options which are a helpful tool for making games end. The only problem with green is that it feels like too many of the options are samey brute force damage stats which reduces the actual number of interesting pieces from which to choose.

Clear Shot, Lace with Moonglove, Provoke

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

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.

A number of effects transition awkwardly into Realms and should be used with care.

• Pacifism / Claustrophobia -style removal

This is covered in the removal section but I am echoing it here. The decks are designed with less topend so the denizen deck can add it back in. This really cripples a core aspect of the format. Consider Compulsory Rest or Singing Bell Strike instead. A singular Faith's Fetters might be ok, but it could easily be a Banishing Light or Quarantine Field.

• Unsummon effects

Bounce spells typically have the basic play pattern of saving creatures from removal, countering combat tricks, or dismantling auras and counters. When saving big threats from removal or combat tricks, this is a snowball effect in Realms due to the zero-sum nature. This may be less of a factor now that the large creatures are largely available to anyone who draws enough lands, but denizens now make bounce spells have the option to turn into large creatures. If you bounce your own denizen, you can play a land and then play another denizen and can end up controlling two at once. This is not necessarily an intuitive interaction and it's not clear if this makes bounce spells too strong. Use with care. (In a similar case, slow flicker effects share this problem.)

• Tempo-heavy or deck-specific spells

In limited, Frost Breath and Trumpet Blast find play in very specific, focused decks that are typically doing something very different from the opposing decks. The disparity between the two decks is being preyed on by these cards. Realms simply does not have this kind of interaction. Every card in a Realms deck needs to be useful both on offense and defense in most situations. Be careful with creatures that are only good for defense.

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

I've tried Flashback, Unearth, Scavenge, Aftermath, Embalm, and Eternalize and the cards all tend to fall in the same pattern: the cards become much more awkward to play than they are in normal formats. Use a lot of scrutiny.

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

Scry itself is a reasonable card flow mechanic, but in Realms, most scry effects just never happen at the time they would perform that job. The only time Scry can be used as a card flow mechanic is when it is on an instant cast during an opponent's end step or in combination with another card draw effect like cycling. Outside of this, Scry ends up turning into Fateseal, which can be interesting, but defies expectation and isn't what most decks really care about. (Awkwardly, Spin into Myth does actually play well.)

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

If you DO want a cardflow mechanic, single-shot looting is probably the best, though this tends to really be what cycling is. Repeatable looting is even stronger than in draft or sealed due to the zero-sum nature of card power in Realms. Divinations chain into themselves, making the first player to draw a card flow effect snowball and control the rest of the card draw effects.

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

Specifically something like Beetleback Chief. Tokens tend to end up sitting around clogging the board until they can multiblock since they can't attack profitably. Tokens themselves also end up as time-wasting chump blockers. All of this is aside from consuming precious box space for something to represent them on the battlefield.

• Powerful Lifegain, Lifelink

Lifegain of any kind, especially repeatable scaling lifelink needs to be tested very carefully with any particular configuration to ensure it isn't making games run long or that there are other forces which scale damage the longer the game drags on. The denizens can sometimes handle this but it is important to test. You don't want the game to come down to drawing the last card. It's possible that Realms could use an extra rule to handle this when it comes up naturally, but the environment can also just be crafted to avoid it.

• Cycling

Cycling plays spectacularly. It plays better than even in other formats. Players don't have control over what they draw and when, so being able to replace cards that show up in the wrong order is perfect. Before the Realms rules set gelled, I made a lot of use out of cards with landcycling since they played extremely well. However, with Support Cards fixing the starting hands and denizens pulling top end out of the main library, the need here has dropped considerably and allows decks to diversify based on their themes. If your deck ends up with a slew of cycling cards, monitor that the rest of the deck is doing enough to end the game before the library runs out. The largest danger of cycling is added strategic complexity if too many cards make the top of the library known information and players start to fall in a pattern of fighting over who will draw which cards. This can be an interesting subgame, but should be kept out of decks aiming for a lower level of complexity.

• Mana Sink Mechanics

Natural mana sinks are desirable in leveling out differences in spell counts. Monstrous is the best mechanic in this vein since it lets you cast the creature immediately and then later make it bigger. Level Up is in a similar space but these mechanics require the use of dice which makes them inherently less portable. The trade off can be worth it though since the deck will have a larger threat density and can end games easier. Kicker and variants are also in this space. Unlike monstrous, however, players on the cusp cannot use their cards right away if they need the added oomph for their card to be relevant.

• Bestow

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.

How might Wizards make this work as a product? There are a few points to touch on and these are just my thoughts.

• Storage

Obviously whatever packaging the product is displayed in would be able to contain the entirety of the cards, however many players like playing with sleeves, so if the extra space they consume is not accounted for, the packaging may not suffice for those players. Realms being intentionally a portable product, the packaging would ideally contain a box that isn't any larger than it has to be to hold all the cards needed. It could be argued that if players are going to sleeve the cards, they'll likely also have the means to acquire something else to store the deck in. Either way, this should at least be considered in the packaging design.

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

If the product is truly intended to be playable out of the box, then it will need to adopt the pattern of playing with identical sleeves for both the denizen deck and the main library. As such, denizens will have to have a card frame alteration such that the denizens themselves are easily identifiable. Due to legendary creatures already having a frame treatment, the simplest solution I can think of is having a modified ring around the expansion symbol, similar to how the Power 9 were identified in the Magic Online power cube. Since the kinds of cards that make good denizens do not make good main library cards, this would solve the issue out of the box.

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

Board games do not work if they are missing components. As Realms plays closer to a board game than other preconstructed decks, it would be preferable for the standard list not to include cards that people want to strip out simply as a valuable reprint. Magic Game Night did this though it did include cards unique to Magic in the decks that came with it. While stock Commander decks are intended to be a starting point for a player to change a deck to their desired form of play, Realms is much more heavily curated and modifying the lists too heavily without forethought or testing can quickly lead to less desirable play patterns. The stock list would need to avoid valuable reprints or efficient or flexible new cards that could conceivably be attractive to Commander or Legacy to avoid being cannibalized immediately, especially if the deck hinges on specific interactions.

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

As ever, portability strongly prefers the cards included to not involve dice and as few tokens as possible. R&D is in the unique situation of being able to print new cards designed specifically to suit the needs of the product. Mechanics like Bestow and Soulbond offer a glimpse into the kinds of mechanics that might be able to exist in a diceless world, but also any creatures whose stats can be improved based on the battlefield or graveyard. Bestow and Kicker are excellent examples of mana sink mechanics. Bestow in particular is one of the few, if only, existing mana sink mechanics that can improve your board without the use of dice. It would be nice to see what the freedom of a self-contained product with its own needs would produce.

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.

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Complexity: Local Gaming Store, lower end, but not quite Friends and Family
Portability: Requires Opaque Sleeves for DFCs
Cards still using counters: Wildfire Cerberus, Honor's Reward, Sheer Drop, Grim Poppet

After experimenting with several multiplayer ideas in this space, this is the first deck I have completed with the Realms rule set proper. It is intended to on the easier end of complexity to grasp compared to the other decks I've built having realized that most players don't know what any of the cards in the deck do when they themselves didn't build it. Until I can retrofit my other multiplayer decks to fit Realms, this is the only example deck I have.

I experimented with Crater Hellion, Cyclops of Eternal Fury, Seraph of the Suns, Howling Golem, Gang of Devils, Bloodshot Cyclops, and Markov Warlord as denizens. If you need a budget replacement for any of the ones I've listed, Seraph of the Suns, Cyclops of Eternal Fury, Markov Warlord, and Boldwyr Intimidator are easy stand-ins.

Ghitu Chronicler can be a budget replacement for Dire Fleet Daredevil. I experimented with Act of Aggression, but the play pattern of stealing an opponent's creature to block is not something new or more casual players are all that familiar with which is what I'm trying to optimize for with this particular deck since it's the one I'm trying to make the most hyperportable.

I tried Inferno Hellion in place of Lightning Shrieker as a card with more options, but it ended up just being a defender that traded up which slowed the game down, didn't actually push the game towards a conclusion, and didn't even get to do the shuffle effect as a result. This deck is having a bit of trouble with ending the game before the deck runs out so I'm trying less life gain and reverting this to the splashy surprise dragon that anyone might draw again at any time.

Changes:
Spit Flame replaces Chandra's Revolution, Perfect for Lightning Shrieker
Street Spasm replaces Riddle of Lightning, Street Spasm is still not ideal.
Adamant Will replaces Alley Evasion, Cleaner

Cards on the chopping block: Wildfire Cerberus, Lightform, Blood Fued, Honor's Reward, Swift Justice, Dazzling Reflection

Seeker of the Way could work as a complexity creep'd Mesa Unicorn.

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Complexity Goal: Local Gaming Store, a lot of +1/+1 counter math
Portability: Heavy Use of Dice

This list is a retrofit version of a much older Panglacial Wurm deck I built and as such may still need tuning to work well for Realms. (Some interesting cards in past builds include Rhys the Redeemed, Marshal's Anthem, Unstable Obelisk, Evolution Charm.) This deck was originally built on the idea of making sure everyone hit land drops and giving everyone mana sinks for all that mana. Panglacial Wurm was a card that turned excess ramp and fetch lands into a threat for whoever flooded out or ramped the hardest and thus Panglacial Wurm is directly responsible for the pushing me down the experimental path that led to Realms. As the deck is presently, I'm trying to play up the battlecruiser elements of the original list since that aspect felt like it transitioned the best.

Changes:
-

Cards on the chopping block: Mul Daya Channelers, Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, Jade Mage, two basic lands

Cards on stand by: Unstable Obelisk, Burrenton Bombardier, Boon Satyr

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Complexity: Local Gaming Store, lower end
Portability: Hyperportable, no counters or tokens needed

This is a completely reworked UB list to be maintained entirely separate from Sanitarium's mill-centric list. At present, this is technically just a rough draft.

Nephalia is a thematic UB list capturing elements of the setting on Innistrad with lots of morbid and disentomb effects with shipwreck flavor.

Changes:
Crystalline Nautilus replaces Silumgar Butcher
Slimebind replaces Torpor Dust
Bladebrand replaces Abnormal Endurance
Foul Renewal replaces Eviscerate
Clear the Stage replaces Artful Takedown
Graveblade Marauder replaces Rotfeaster Maggot

Cards on the chopping block:
Nyxborn Triton, Nephalia Seakite, Sedraxis Alchemist, Air Servant, Passwall Adept, Warden of Evos Isle

Cards on stand by:
Polymorphist's Jest, Man-o'-War

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Complexity: Going Deep, not even as complex as it could be
Portability: Complex, Requires Opaque Sleeves for DFCs, Otherwise portable, no dice needed

Play time can be unusually long. Even non-basic utility lands removed, this can be uncomfortably complex to share.

Denizens ought to be sleeved in the same sleeves as the main library due to several shuffling effects.

*This list is being cleaved from Nephalia since any amount of self-mill theme drags the entire rest of the deck with it.

This list makes many exceptions and is the fourth or fifth iteration of this general concept. A UB mill-centric deck in this spirit goes back almost a decade for me at this point and I've been trying to make it more approachable with each iteration. The deep concept of milling, fighting over control of the better cards, and tipping the deck at the right time to cause an opponent to mill out while preventing it from happening to yourself is interesting, but the audience that can handle that extreme complexity is just too narrow. Even as it is presently, the deck has a lot of moving parts and everyone has to pay attention to anything that ends up in the graveyard and explicit priority passes are much common than in any of the other decks. The individual cards complexity isn't that much higher than Setessa, but how they interact with everything else and the number of things that have to be tracked makes lines of play very cerebral. There are many on-board interactions which generate extreme amounts of board complexity, even after stripping down earlier lists. As such, this is more of a pet project than a quality Realms example, but it has a distinct play experience that I just can't stop tuning.

Not all of the cards in the deck are fixed, but quality pieces to replace them do not yet exist. I'm looking for more varied black board wipes, combat tricks that can deal with large fliers, and top-end which plays better to replace some of the denizens. Even so, the lines of play that emerge are very interesting to me and I expect to tune it more as more cards are printed.

Older versions of this list intended for the game to end via milling 90% of the time but as changes have been made, this has dropped significantly. The present configuration is less about killing with mill and more about pressing players to use tools to save themselves early rather than safe them to stop themselves from milling out. Vortex Elemental is a perfect example. It will stop you from milling out indefinitely, but you can pressure the controller to pop it by attacking them. The other interesting element of older lists is that you can invalidate a board advantage by milling the deck out if none of those cards are endgame relevant. It's hard to capture that aspect when milling isn't happening as much but threats like Liliana's Elite can be nullified by removing cards from the graveyard.

Changes:
Skaab Goliath replaces Sutured Ghoul, Ghoul didn't play as desired
Fleet Swallower replaces Angler Drake, CMC+, Minus Evasion, +Mill
Elder Deep-Fiend replaces Vexing Scuttler, tempo threat from value body
Szadek, Lord of Secrets replaces Vampire Charmseeker, mill threat from value blocker

Cards on the chopping block:

Cards on stand by:
Bladebrand

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Complexity Goal: Local Gaming Store*
Portability: Hyperportable

*Bestow is complex, it applies to several cards and combines with french vanilla creatures cleanly. Having a teammate to ask alleviates some of the mental burden, though 2-headed giant comes with a few added wrinkles as is.

Skarrg plays up the Realms' ability to be used as a 2-Headed Giant format. The deck is designed primarily with 2-Headed Giant play in mind. Red-Green seemed to be the most obvious color pairing for explicit 2-Headed Giant support and auras tended to drive the core of the decision-making here both with the kinds of creatures to put them on and the interaction suite.

I have yet to amass the components and give this list a proper test and tuning but it looks reasonable though likely will feel fast given that buffs tend to invalidate blockers and come with "haste".

Entangling Vines is an interesting case here as that is the kind of card which punishes Denizens hard, but I feel it's able to squeeze in here both due to multiple combat tricks causing it to fall off but also the large presence of auras allowing Naturalize Variants to be reliable combat tricks that can opt into removing the pacifism. The vines also has the play pattern where it doesn't prevent a denizen from blocking until it starts to attack. The slot also bolsters the number of removal spells that can actually deal with large creatures which was a severe constraint in crafting this list.

Changes:

Cards on the chopping block:
Laccolith Grunt - In a 2HG environment, the potential political angle is nonexistent. It's cute for the free for all variant and there are auras to support it but if the expected play pattern is 2HG, there may be better options for that environment.

Cards on stand by:
Spellwild Ouphe, Akki Coalflinger, Clear Shot, Valduk, Keeper of the Flame, Wary Okapi, Grab the Reins, Fight with Fire, Skullwinder, Smeltward Minotaur, Crater Elemental, Orchard Spirit, Snapping Creeper, Skullwinder, Boon Satyr, Roots, Krosan Vorine, Setessan Tactics, Ghitu Chronicler, Boulder Salvo, End-Raze Forerunners, Brontotherium

Disentomb effects can return a creature card to your hand that an opponent previously cast since that card will also be in your graveyard.

You may end up drawing an opponent's creature card that you targeted with Griptide effects.

If you Unsummon your denizen, you will no longer control a denizen. If you play a land and cast a new one from the command zone, nothing prevents you from then casting the one in your hand. As a result, you will not be able to cast a denizen from the command zone until both of those denizens have left the battlefield.

Soaring Show-Off makes each player draw a card. The order players draw cards matter. As per normal rules, players do so in turn order starting with the active player, the player whose turn it is. Words of Wisdom works slightly different: the caster draws two then the other players draw in turn order starting with whoever's turn it is, which can vary since it is an instant.

When a player loses, it is handled similarly to normal play.
When a player loses in Realms, effectively all of the permanents that player "owned" and the cards they had in hand cease to exist. They are technically not exiled since a minority of cards can interact with cards that have been exiled. They are definitely not put into the graveyard and the graveyard and library itself are unaffected by a player losing.

Be careful if you happen to include abilities which change control of permanents on the battlefield as they will need to be accounted for when a player loses.

Triggered abilities that trigger when a permanent leaves the battlefield do not trigger for a player who has lost. To make play clean and intuitive for all players you might encounter, avoid using cards templated like Oblivion Ring (which will not trigger when a player loses, leaving the card in exile) and instead use cards templated like Banishing Light instead where applicable.

When playing with cards that make a player the monarch, remember how to handle this if the monarch dies for a reason other than combat damage.

Teams start with 30 life. Helpfully, this significantly reduces the amount of damage that needs to be done in a game of four (from 60 to 30) in order for the game to end. Consider playing this way if your four-player games aren't concluding quickly enough.

The starting team does not draw cards on their first turn. This is just a reminder when switching from four-player free-for-all since the game only has two opposing sides.

The denizen casting limitation happens at the team level as opposed to the player level. Essentially, each team can only control one denizen at a time. The denizen can be under the control of either player, but while the team has one, no player on the team can cast additional denizens from the command zone. (Again, the same caveats with disentomb and unsummon variants.) Casting a denizen from the command zone still requires playing a land by the specific player that intends to cast one. Your teammate playing a land doesn't allow you to cast your team's denizen: your teammate will have to cast it.

Drawing for turn during the draw step can occur in either order. During the draw step, players on the team may draw cards in either order. This may become relevant when the library's contents become known due to certain cards or scry effects.

For cards like Howling Mine, Soaring Show-Off, and Fleshbag Marauder, please consult this excerpt from the comprehensive rules:

For Soaring Show-Off, for example, the players on the active team each draw a card in any order they choose. Then each player on the non-active team draws a card in any order they choose. For Fleshbag Marauder, the active player announces their creature choices, then the nonactive team does the same, then all the chosen creatures are sacrificed simultaneously. Howling Mine triggers once for each player on the team and can be put on the stack in any order.