MtG "box" formats are great. Cube is the most popular of these formats. Sit down, draft, play. Fun. Danger Room is another box format where everyone draws from the same deck and has guaranteed land drops. Both of these formats have advantages and disadvantages. While cube requires some serious set up time before you actually start playing, Danger Room requires very little. On the flipside, in Danger Room everyone is essentially playing 5 color magic, while cube rewards commitment to synergy and color restriction through it's inherent deck building element. There is a format that falls somewhere between Cube and Danger Room called "Commie Box". I have not played this format myself, but many members of this forum have and it seems to be a good marriage of the two formats. There are 5 decks, 1 for each color, and you pick which colors you are going to play before the game starts by selecting your basic lands. One downside I see in Commie Box is that multi-colored cards don't work very well. The question is, how can one have a box format that requires minimal set up time (board game style), but still allows players to play to a theme AND allows for gold cards? I'm in the process of designing and testing a new box format that supports all of these elements called Guild Wars (for now, I think the name sucks). The basic rules of Guild Wars are as follows:
1. There are 10 guild decks, 1 for each color pair.
Each deck contains a mix of mono colored cards and gold cards from that guild. Right now we are thinking 10 Gold cards and 20 of each mono color for a total of 50 cards per deck. If you are drawing from the UR deck, you have a chance to draw a red card, a blue card, or a UR gold card.
2. There is 1 brown deck, consisting entirely of artifacts.
3. Players can play a maximum of 7 lands, and can play as many of one color basic as they want. For instance, by turn seven a player could have 3 Mountains, 3 Plains, and 2 Islands. Or 7 Forests, but that would be dumb.
4. Players "unlock" libraries by playing a basic land of one of it's colors. Players cannot draw from decks that are not "unlocked". For instance, it's turn two and player A has a Forest and an Island in play. They can draw from the GU, GR, GB, GW, UW, UR, UB libraries, and cannot draw from the BR, WB, WR libraries.
5. Libraries will be constructed to reward players for committing to specific colors and themes. For instance, the WR librabry will contain cards that support a Boros deck and are generally aggressive in nature, as well as powerful mono colored cards that have color intensive casting costs. The idea is that players settle in on pursuing a specific theme and are drawing from 2 or 3 of the libraries once their mana base is developed.
That's pretty much it for the rules. So how to design this thing? The format requires 10 separate libraries, each playing to a specific theme but built in a way that there are synergies between libraries. If each library is 50 cards, we are talking 500 hand picked colored cards that will fit together into a glorious board game like puzzle, not to mention the artifact deck. This is a significant undertaking that will require lots of thought, testing, and (likely) trial and error. I think this format could be a ton of fun, but it will require a good bit of work to get off the ground. Hence this thread. Forum member NathanIW and I have been discussing this format on my Danger Room thread, but I felt it was time create a separate thread and start designing this thing in earnest!
Everyone may as well grab a deck and put it in front of them. How often are two people really going to go for the same guild? Just imagine sitting around the table and the other people go: Mountain, draw from Boros. Swamp, draw from Rakdos. Forest, draw from Gruul. Are you really going to go for any of those? When you have seven others to pick from where it's all yours?
It seems that there might be a lack of interactivity in deck choices.
Thats a good point, but you are assuming the cards in their opening hand are not leading them in a specific direction. I don't have any concrete rules for how players draw their opening hands, but I do have a couple ideas:
1: Players draw their opening 7 from 7 different libraries. While this could have the negative result of generating an opening hand of 7 multi colored cards that are impossible to play without screwing your mana-base, I think it's worth considering. If each library is 20% multicolored (10 of 50) the odds of drawing 7 multicolored cards is like 0.001%. Not really a great indicator because drawing 5 multi colored cards or even just cards of all 5 colors could be equally bad for a starting hand. If we were to use this method, there would likely need to be a built in mechanic to make up for the randomness of an opening draw.
2. Players start with no opening hands and the first 3 turns of a game follow special draw rules. Like turn one draw 3 cards from one library, turn two draw 3 cards from another library, turn three draw 2 cards from a third library. There are lots of ways this could work, but the idea is that the cards you draw suggest decisions and generate some interesting choices.
Ultimately I don't know how we'd make the decision interesting but I think with proper library design and a good starting hand mechanic the problem could be solved.
On the flip side, is it really a problem if a player wants to commit 100% to a single library? In a two player game if both players choose one library and don't deviate, there are 45 different ways they could match up the guilds, with each player playing every deck against every other deck. 45 different games for a 1v1 match. That's a lot of replay value, and that number doesn't consider adding in other libraries.
I think having your thoughts about the opening hand are definitely on the right track. That'll set the tone in terms of what direction people go. Having all 7 opening cards be from different libraries probably will solve the issue. But it also ensures that there will be dead cards in the opening hand (as you pointed out).
Even if you choose artifacts and 6 other guilds, the odds of getting cards of only two or three colours are pretty low. If I go boros, rakdos, orzhov, I'll likely have three colours, if I add in golgari, I have a 60% chance of drawing something needing green mana. And I still have two more to go. In a given hand, I'll have an artifact, 3 cards in 3 different colours and 3 cards that each have a 60% chance of being in yet another colour.
What about if you draw one card from each of all 11 libraries and then for a mulligan you can discard three cards to draw from a library of your choice? So 11 goes to 9 and then to 7 and you can probably drill down to three colours reliably (you are afterall, discarding 6 cards out of your 11 original). And if you really want to go down to two colour, you can. If you choose not to mulligan, you're still going to end up dumping down to 7 cards at the end of your first turn (unless you can turn 1 play a card that changes your maximum hand size), so you won't get massive card advantage for going five colour.
That is a solid idea. So you start with 11 cards, pitch 3 draw 1, pitch 3 draw 1. It's not like you can sculpt the perfect hand but it definitely gives players a direction. That is definitely cleaner than either of my ideas. For the sake of not giving colors with reanimation spells an unfair advantage, the pitched cards should be set aside face down then shuffled into their respective libraries before the game actually starts.
Another small thought. On turn one there are no lands in play, therefore no libraries are available except for brown. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if players mulligan down to a good opening seven it might feel anti climactic to be forced to draw from the artifact deck when you really want to draw from Simic. I think for the sake of turn one we would need to create an optional land only main phase after the upkeep, before the draw. You could still play your land during your main phase, but I feel like the option to drop a land pre-draw would be good in a format where your options are directly tied to playing lands.
What about if you just ignore the draw restrictions for turn one? If you want to put it in rules parlance, some sort of "On the first turn of the game players skip their draw step but draw a card from a library of their choice at the beginning of their upkeep phase" or something like that.
Or revisit the restricted deck thing at all. Are people really going to go off into left field drawing outside of their played colours? And if they do decide to make a last minute splash, how is that bad? What's the goal for the unlocking thing as far as the experience of play goes?
I think it'd be cleaner to just allow players to play lands before they draw. The fact we have a "land cache" that isn't part of the library is altering the fundamental game enough, I don't think playing lands early would harm anything.
Good question about "unlocking" libraries. To me it just feels cool. "Acheivement unlocked!" kind of cool. Ultimately it's not a huge deal because with two different lands in play you can draw from 7 of 10 guild libraries, and with 3 different lands you can draw form 9 of 10 guild libraries. Functionally it will likely almost never effect the game play as I think it will be rare that a player committed to Bant colors will be interested in drawing from Rakdos anyway.
So, how do we make the "unlocking" mechanism count? I like the idea in theory, if it were to actually affect gameplay. Maybe we could change it so you have to have both lands in play to unlock a library, and the first time you unlock it you draw an extra card? That would be wierd because players could draw three extra cards by turn three if they play 3 different lands. Also libraries wouldn't be unlocked until the second turn. We could offset this by adding another mulligan step so the starting hand size is smaller, or find another way. Or just leave it as is because it's simple and feels good, even if it doesn't affect the game beyond the first three turns.
However it's accomplished, this is a pretty simple issue. I'm probably going to not bother with unlocking as while it is neat, it seems to not do much.
And if it gets rewarded, I see unlocking as an achievement to be pretty much at odds with the desire to encourage a guild focused approach. It's strange to mulligan down to a more focused colour selection and then get rewarded for playing more colours through an unlocking bonus.
And if it gets rewarded, I see unlocking as an achievement to be pretty much at odds with the desire to encourage a guild focused approach. It's strange to mulligan down to a more focused colour selection and then get rewarded for playing more colours through an unlocking bonus.
Ha. Good point, it's counterintuitive. I was firing from the hip there.
@ludd_gang: Have you found the researcher to be necessary? What is the game like when played without a researcher emblem? I've been thinking about the fact that even if a player draws from only two libraries, they are effectively playing with a 100 card deck. My goal is to make the guild decks singleton (but allow repeats between decks), so this could create some inconsistent draws. If a player draws 9 cards in a game and splits them evenly between three decks, they are drawing 3 cards from a deck, which might not be enough for a consistent theme to be developed. If this is an issue I'm hoping I can design it away in my card selection process.
As far as mono colored cards go, I'm thinking we'll just find/make guild specific stickers that can be placed on the bottom corner of the front face of a sleeve, kind of like those Ultra-pro shiny things. I might double sleeve and place the stickers on the inside sleeve so shuffling doesn't mess with them.
What has experience taught you is too strong/weak in the artifact deck? I'd like to keep the deck separate but I haven't given much thought to it's design.
I wasn't planning on making my artifact deck have anything like a viable combination of creatures and non-creatures that you could just play. It's literally going to be equipment and other utility artifacts that largely require draws from the other decks to function properly. And everyone will be told up front that the artifact deck doesn't have the type of stuff you need to do artifacts only, but instead has supplemental stuff.
I wasn't planning on making my artifact deck have anything like a viable combination of creatures and non-creatures that you could just play. It's literally going to be equipment and other utility artifacts that largely require draws from the other decks to function properly. And everyone will be told up front that the artifact deck doesn't have the type of stuff you need to do artifacts only, but instead has supplemental stuff.
I've been thinking along the same lines. Lower level equipment and stuff that smooths out draws while providing incremental value. I'm guessing there are enough cheap cantrip artifacts to make it work well. Stuff like Chromatic Star and Mishra's Bauble. Mana filter type artifacts would also enable players to temporarily reach beyond their manabases, which could be cool.
Thanks for the insights. I suspect whether or not we need an additional way to improve card selection will become apparent as we playtest. Initially I'll try the mulligan rules NathanIW came up with.
I'm still going to try and keep the artifact deck separate. I'm already putting some serious time into designing and trying to balance the individual decks, and I'll take the same approach with the artifact deck. If it doesn't work out I think sliding artifacts into the guild decks could be a good solution.
I agree about deck sharing. I am ok with zero deck sharing in some games if it plays out that way. The majority of the "interaction" will come from the personal decision of where to draw your cards which, will be informed by the opening hand. Additionally, if the decks are balanced there will be a good bit strategy involved with playing to the opponents signals. For example, if they seem to be going heavy Boros aggro, I might want to shift to Gruul or Simic and take a midrange route.
I'm working on the Selesnya and Gruul decklists, and am curious how including mana dorks would effect the format. I still wouldn't include any cards that cost > 7, but having a few mana elves in each grean library could still provide a sense of ramp and acceleration. Mana acceleration is one of green's primary strengths in the color pie and I wonder if not including mana ramp could put green at a disadvantage. On the other hand it could provide an unfair advantage given the closed environment. ludd_gang, do you play with mana elves in your Commie Box?
I look at ramp as a legitimate archetype I want to support in my casual ready-to-go boxes. So I'm not going to cut things like Axebane Guardian at all.
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1. There are 10 guild decks, 1 for each color pair.
Each deck contains a mix of mono colored cards and gold cards from that guild. Right now we are thinking 10 Gold cards and 20 of each mono color for a total of 50 cards per deck. If you are drawing from the UR deck, you have a chance to draw a red card, a blue card, or a UR gold card.
2. There is 1 brown deck, consisting entirely of artifacts.
3. Players can play a maximum of 7 lands, and can play as many of one color basic as they want. For instance, by turn seven a player could have 3 Mountains, 3 Plains, and 2 Islands. Or 7 Forests, but that would be dumb.
4. Players "unlock" libraries by playing a basic land of one of it's colors. Players cannot draw from decks that are not "unlocked". For instance, it's turn two and player A has a Forest and an Island in play. They can draw from the GU, GR, GB, GW, UW, UR, UB libraries, and cannot draw from the BR, WB, WR libraries.
5. Libraries will be constructed to reward players for committing to specific colors and themes. For instance, the WR librabry will contain cards that support a Boros deck and are generally aggressive in nature, as well as powerful mono colored cards that have color intensive casting costs. The idea is that players settle in on pursuing a specific theme and are drawing from 2 or 3 of the libraries once their mana base is developed.
That's pretty much it for the rules. So how to design this thing? The format requires 10 separate libraries, each playing to a specific theme but built in a way that there are synergies between libraries. If each library is 50 cards, we are talking 500 hand picked colored cards that will fit together into a glorious board game like puzzle, not to mention the artifact deck. This is a significant undertaking that will require lots of thought, testing, and (likely) trial and error. I think this format could be a ton of fun, but it will require a good bit of work to get off the ground. Hence this thread. Forum member NathanIW and I have been discussing this format on my Danger Room thread, but I felt it was time create a separate thread and start designing this thing in earnest!
Everyone may as well grab a deck and put it in front of them. How often are two people really going to go for the same guild? Just imagine sitting around the table and the other people go: Mountain, draw from Boros. Swamp, draw from Rakdos. Forest, draw from Gruul. Are you really going to go for any of those? When you have seven others to pick from where it's all yours?
It seems that there might be a lack of interactivity in deck choices.
1: Players draw their opening 7 from 7 different libraries. While this could have the negative result of generating an opening hand of 7 multi colored cards that are impossible to play without screwing your mana-base, I think it's worth considering. If each library is 20% multicolored (10 of 50) the odds of drawing 7 multicolored cards is like 0.001%. Not really a great indicator because drawing 5 multi colored cards or even just cards of all 5 colors could be equally bad for a starting hand. If we were to use this method, there would likely need to be a built in mechanic to make up for the randomness of an opening draw.
2. Players start with no opening hands and the first 3 turns of a game follow special draw rules. Like turn one draw 3 cards from one library, turn two draw 3 cards from another library, turn three draw 2 cards from a third library. There are lots of ways this could work, but the idea is that the cards you draw suggest decisions and generate some interesting choices.
Ultimately I don't know how we'd make the decision interesting but I think with proper library design and a good starting hand mechanic the problem could be solved.
On the flip side, is it really a problem if a player wants to commit 100% to a single library? In a two player game if both players choose one library and don't deviate, there are 45 different ways they could match up the guilds, with each player playing every deck against every other deck. 45 different games for a 1v1 match. That's a lot of replay value, and that number doesn't consider adding in other libraries.
Even if you choose artifacts and 6 other guilds, the odds of getting cards of only two or three colours are pretty low. If I go boros, rakdos, orzhov, I'll likely have three colours, if I add in golgari, I have a 60% chance of drawing something needing green mana. And I still have two more to go. In a given hand, I'll have an artifact, 3 cards in 3 different colours and 3 cards that each have a 60% chance of being in yet another colour.
What about if you draw one card from each of all 11 libraries and then for a mulligan you can discard three cards to draw from a library of your choice? So 11 goes to 9 and then to 7 and you can probably drill down to three colours reliably (you are afterall, discarding 6 cards out of your 11 original). And if you really want to go down to two colour, you can. If you choose not to mulligan, you're still going to end up dumping down to 7 cards at the end of your first turn (unless you can turn 1 play a card that changes your maximum hand size), so you won't get massive card advantage for going five colour.
As for names:
Gold Room?
Guild Danger?
Guild Box?
Another small thought. On turn one there are no lands in play, therefore no libraries are available except for brown. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if players mulligan down to a good opening seven it might feel anti climactic to be forced to draw from the artifact deck when you really want to draw from Simic. I think for the sake of turn one we would need to create an optional land only main phase after the upkeep, before the draw. You could still play your land during your main phase, but I feel like the option to drop a land pre-draw would be good in a format where your options are directly tied to playing lands.
Or revisit the restricted deck thing at all. Are people really going to go off into left field drawing outside of their played colours? And if they do decide to make a last minute splash, how is that bad? What's the goal for the unlocking thing as far as the experience of play goes?
Good question about "unlocking" libraries. To me it just feels cool. "Acheivement unlocked!" kind of cool. Ultimately it's not a huge deal because with two different lands in play you can draw from 7 of 10 guild libraries, and with 3 different lands you can draw form 9 of 10 guild libraries. Functionally it will likely almost never effect the game play as I think it will be rare that a player committed to Bant colors will be interested in drawing from Rakdos anyway.
So, how do we make the "unlocking" mechanism count? I like the idea in theory, if it were to actually affect gameplay. Maybe we could change it so you have to have both lands in play to unlock a library, and the first time you unlock it you draw an extra card? That would be wierd because players could draw three extra cards by turn three if they play 3 different lands. Also libraries wouldn't be unlocked until the second turn. We could offset this by adding another mulligan step so the starting hand size is smaller, or find another way. Or just leave it as is because it's simple and feels good, even if it doesn't affect the game beyond the first three turns.
And if it gets rewarded, I see unlocking as an achievement to be pretty much at odds with the desire to encourage a guild focused approach. It's strange to mulligan down to a more focused colour selection and then get rewarded for playing more colours through an unlocking bonus.
Ha. Good point, it's counterintuitive. I was firing from the hip there.
@ludd_gang: Have you found the researcher to be necessary? What is the game like when played without a researcher emblem? I've been thinking about the fact that even if a player draws from only two libraries, they are effectively playing with a 100 card deck. My goal is to make the guild decks singleton (but allow repeats between decks), so this could create some inconsistent draws. If a player draws 9 cards in a game and splits them evenly between three decks, they are drawing 3 cards from a deck, which might not be enough for a consistent theme to be developed. If this is an issue I'm hoping I can design it away in my card selection process.
As far as mono colored cards go, I'm thinking we'll just find/make guild specific stickers that can be placed on the bottom corner of the front face of a sleeve, kind of like those Ultra-pro shiny things. I might double sleeve and place the stickers on the inside sleeve so shuffling doesn't mess with them.
What has experience taught you is too strong/weak in the artifact deck? I'd like to keep the deck separate but I haven't given much thought to it's design.
I've been thinking along the same lines. Lower level equipment and stuff that smooths out draws while providing incremental value. I'm guessing there are enough cheap cantrip artifacts to make it work well. Stuff like Chromatic Star and Mishra's Bauble. Mana filter type artifacts would also enable players to temporarily reach beyond their manabases, which could be cool.
I'm still going to try and keep the artifact deck separate. I'm already putting some serious time into designing and trying to balance the individual decks, and I'll take the same approach with the artifact deck. If it doesn't work out I think sliding artifacts into the guild decks could be a good solution.
I agree about deck sharing. I am ok with zero deck sharing in some games if it plays out that way. The majority of the "interaction" will come from the personal decision of where to draw your cards which, will be informed by the opening hand. Additionally, if the decks are balanced there will be a good bit strategy involved with playing to the opponents signals. For example, if they seem to be going heavy Boros aggro, I might want to shift to Gruul or Simic and take a midrange route.
I'm working on the Selesnya and Gruul decklists, and am curious how including mana dorks would effect the format. I still wouldn't include any cards that cost > 7, but having a few mana elves in each grean library could still provide a sense of ramp and acceleration. Mana acceleration is one of green's primary strengths in the color pie and I wonder if not including mana ramp could put green at a disadvantage. On the other hand it could provide an unfair advantage given the closed environment. ludd_gang, do you play with mana elves in your Commie Box?