One of the things I find most fun about Magic The Gathering is exploring deck construction under new constraints. Me and some friends are currently exploring a format which have these rules.
Rules
- Normal constructed magic rules. Decks are 60 cards, players start with 20 life, 15 card sideboards, and so on.
- Only cards that are legal in Pauper and not on the Pauper tribal ban list can be played.
- The deck must at all times contain 20 cards from the same tribe. Tribal instants and changeling cards count towards this total.
- The chosen tribe can not be Elf, Human or Goblin. This restriction is to ensure other tribes are feasible.
Ban list
The point of a format is to explore magic in an interesting way. If single cards dominate or are too obvious choices, they might end up here.
- Nettle Sentinel – Too cheap and easy to abuse.
- Lightning bolt – Lightning bolt is banned because it makes burn choices too easy.
- Ancient Den, Seat of the Synod, Vault of Whispers, Great furnace, Tree of Tales – Artifact lands makes the format too fast. Darksteel citadel is allowed since it does not allow the all artifact land decks.
My thoughts so far
I really like that the constraints for this format are so simple. It is easy to make a format that is fresh, but where the constraints are complex. For some reason such complex constraints make a format feel inelegant and less appealing to me.
