I invented a “little” format that creates a harmonious and friendly experience for new players as they learn the game for the first time. This creates incredibly fun Commander-like free-for-alls and interesting 1v1 games, whichever you prefer.

Key defining features:

• Combat-centric. Those decks focus on combat and all win with combat in one way or another.
• Considerate. Those decks contain single and multi-target removal, but they don’t feature wipes. The entire format is balanced in a way that allows for this, and the outcome is faster, incremental games that end with a bang, relatively quickly.
  • A good, other example of this is that those decks won’t go after your graveyard and will very rarely exile stuff, instead destroying it. Graveyard decks have to be balanced with this in mind.
• Simple, easy to learn. Those decks favor cards that have simple wording, don’t require understanding of the stack, and allow a new player to understand the board’s state without a degree in Magic rules. They also aim to only feature so many core magic concepts per deck - so the learning curve can be incremental.
• Focused (enough). While those decks are not by any means optimized, they are focused. Setup+Payoff pairs are well-represented and make the player feel awesome as they get to consistently execute the deck’s plan. Even if cards that do represent said plan are low-power, they get to work together in a tandem and create a fun match.
• (slightly) RNG card quality. Many cards in those decks are to be acceptable at best. Few are to be obviously better than others. Balance until it feels good. Because decks have removal, whoever goes ahead with a better quality hand will face the other players and their tools to deal with their better hand. That headstart won’t at all secure their victory if they’re not careful about it.

Decks that follow the format

If you feel like fleshing out a nice deck that plays pleasantly at this level, here are all the rules I followed:

Banned:

• Cards that grow / create value exponentially (I hope you know what I mean) → linear growth is fine

  • This rule exists to help new players learn what they consider a threat… slightly after the fact. So a new player doesn’t have to think in the future tense → “if I let Hydra’s Growth sit on the board for 3 of that player’s turns, that Aura will create so many resources that they’ll have a clear path to wipe the whole table.”

  Big no-no

  

  All good

  

• Cards that do too much at once or cost way too little for what they do

• Cards with complicated and hard-to-understand effects for a new person, or interactions that require knowledge of less obvious mechanics like the stack (Negate passes because it implicitly suggests the stack’s existence, but bigger stack shenanigans are something we avoid)

• More than 3 legendary creatures → generally should be two, unless the rest of the deck is still slightly lagging behind or is intentionally a bit weaker so you make space for 3

• Sagas, Classes, Battles, double-faced cards, adventures, in general card types outside the ‘basic’ ones

• Nonbasic lands beyond four ‘enters tapped, when this land enters you gain 1 life’ or six tap triomes in a 3-color deck

• Stax

• Any kind of boardwipes, mass shrink or mass damage effects (still, make sure something in your deck can at least slightly counter a go-wide strategy, we can’t only have answers to going tall)

  • An answer to go-wide without wiping

    

• Exiling graveyards - we simply don’t do this, and the graveyard deck should be balanced assuming nothing will ‘disrupt’ it in this avenue → it should be appropriately not overpowered