MTG or so // A new Format?

Or maybe ... a game of cards using the Witch Tarot cards?
Well, mayhap ... I mean, all we need is to name the various sequences and come up with a scoring system and most card games should be at least somewhat transferrable. But I'm thinking of a game like Magic, where ... You might bring Your own deck of WT ... and so it could be played that way. Alternatively, some might find it easier to make their own "WT deck" using Magic Cards, while in between that, one could use proxy cards to then say what each card of their deck is supposed to represent.


But anyway. I was thinking, that MAYBE, "proper Magic" should be a little bit more like chess. And so, rather than banning cards or any such thing, to maintain some sense of "feeble balance", there should be stricter rules of what goes into a deck and how the various cards can operate; Such that matters of personal flavor and expression don't negatively mingle with the competitive sadism of power players.

And a first such measure would be to just declare all mana values ... practically invalid ... because, yea ... that's what they basically are.

Maybe, at some point, this could lead to an even newer format, where all players draw from the same deck; But ... before that, we need some ground rules.


So, what defines Magic to the point where it has to be in the rules? And what defines "Fair Play" (i.e. Chess) to the point that it should be cornerstones of them?

To the first question, I would put forth lands and spells (any type, so, Creatures, Enchantments, such and such); And to the latter I would put forth an equal army. I mean, at some point Magic devolves into a game of having a board full of Queens.

So ... we have four groups of Cards: The Symbols 1-5, The Symbol Avatars, The Element Cards and the Convergence Cards. To say we're playing with 86 or 91 cards is to say whether or not we want to play Planeswalkers - or "Commanders"; Where if we say that the Element Cards are Land Cards we have 30 of them in the deck.

Which is a little lower than the 'ideal' ratio of the game. But, Purple_Haze posted on Reddit 5 years ago: "If your strategy involves playing a land on turns one, two, and three then you need at least 20 in a 60 card deck. If playing a land on turn four is part of your strategy then you need at least 24, and for turn five at least 27.

Decks that reliably draw extra cards can shave these numbers, but usually these types of deck do not and instead make playing lands on turn six and seven part of the strategy." - Which I suppose is a reasonable hint to keep in mind. To say, as we on one end want to shave down on variability while on the other creating a fair way to deal with the power creep of the game, we might find a good middle ground here somewhere.


So, my inspiration took me and said: OK, let's start with ... Swords. We have after all 4 sets of 5, or 5 sets of 4 - which could be a choice, leaving You with either 5 types or 4 types as Your "general army". Where I arrived at: 1 Sword, 2 Swords, Sword and Shield, Staff and Staff and Shield.

And now we have to translate those symbols into meaningful points, to see which Magic cards could fill those slots. So, I'm thinking, swords would be abilities like haste or flying, staffs could be tapped abilities and shields could be effects (magecraft, landfall, mutate, anything that's not either of the above) or a stat boost (strength/toughness). Then we could say ... sword and staff cost one mana, shields cost 2 - or, because this gets too complicated maybe, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 mana respectively - where each mana corresponds to a fixed value - where, 1 mana is a 1/1 with an ability, for instance. Or, ... hmmm ...

Anyhow. Next we have the Avatars. So, if the Numbers are the Soldiers, here we have the spells. Or ... freedom. Or your bag of tricks. Whether they're cheap or expensive ... [shrugs]? So, Sorceries, Instants, Enchantments and Artifacts ... hmm .

Or whatever. Food for thought.

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So, say ... I want to convert my Syn-Draw deck into this, which has to be 91 card deck because I need Liliana or at least the "when creature dies" effect alongside the zombie spawn ability. To that I'll have my basic pawns, the banehound (1 sword), the skullport merchant (staff), vizier of the skorpion ... and here it goes. It has two effects, the "when enters" and "zombie tokens have deathtouch" - though this again is different to GE Oketra's effect that is an active effect, not a one time effect. Here I would say, that the exact function of the card - in cases like this - should be a matter of what slot it occupies. So, permanent effects should not go on soldier cards. And maybe neither should two shields. Or else ... it's a 4 mana creature.
Which, if we limit soldiers to 3, is again a way of saying: Bag of tricks. Where I have ... then, GE Oketra, Eternal Skylord, Vizier of the Skorpion and the Wizard Class. Liliana Vess - Dreadhorde General however COULD work as a Staff+Shield card.

Leaving me with ... either one or two open soldier slots.
For lack of a better idea, I would throw in the Herald of the Dreadhorde, sword and shield, to say, I want the sword to be a strength boost, and the shield to be the "when creature dies" effect.

Then we have the convergent cards; Where ... for once we can say that - I mean, I had two ideas here. And this is to maybe play some more with the symbols. So, here we could have anything, but still things that sit apart from the "main board". So, if for simplicity we ignored color association for the former two, here I feel like it makes sense to have it. And while it made sense to cut down the abilities of the former two - here it also makes sense to (re-)enable certain things, or have boost abilities.
But the simplest idea is probably to lock certain spells here to the board-state. So, if I want to play a Dragon Card, I either need a dragon land, or a creature of the corresponding symbol. Which means, we play with 4 sets of 5. So I play ... Sword, Staff, Sword+Shield and Staff+Shield.
Or ... we simply go by colors. To have that sorted out. If I have only black creatures on the board, I can't play Cathar's Crusade.

And there's ... stuff. I mean ... we don't want Omniscience to be like ... easy to cast. So, what are the rules? How about Magecraft? I mean, my White Aggro Deck wouldn't work without it ... but sure, "whenever You cast an Instant or Sorcery, all creatures You control get +1/+1" is ... I mean, that creature gets a lot of hate for good reason I suppose. As per the previous rules, that ability would translate into a "when enters" effect; But so I feel like there should be a card that says "Creatures You control have Magecraft/Landfall".
Further, depending on whether You play 4 of 5 or 5 of 4, would determine whether the convergent cards are read as signs or symbols. But I assume, here we already leave the ... scope of traditional magic.

But so, what would I pack? So, I'm then looking at three candidates for removal, I also almost forgot to throw in lazotep plating, I might want to play icon of ancestry, but well. Let's look at removal:
There is Fracture, there is Mortify and there's ... that Eldraine Zombie that has 'destroy target creature' on it, and can then be played as a Zombie with Lifelink. Alternatively You'd have things like Exile and Burn spells. And to have some ... restrictive rules here ... I would assume it gets rather complicated. So, having the aforementioned restrictions accounted for, to say: "Land-Locked and Color-Locked" - maybe that's too restrictive. So, the simplest way to go would be to say 'color locked' for single use spells, land-locked for creatures, and both for other permanents. Which ... no. I mean, enchantments like auras or exile, that have a specific target should maybe count as creatures. So, Land locked. Hmm ... Land Lock is super restrictive ... . Kind of too much.

But so I would have ... Lazotep Plating, which would require me to have either Wizard or Eternal Skylord on the board, Fracture or Mortify would require me to have Oketra on the board (as my only white Permanent in the bag), but so I'd go with Zombie Dude and Fracture - leaving me with two ... where my mind wanders a bit. I mean, for now I'd go with Icon of Ancestry and Cathar's Crusade because ... that's where I'm at right now; But ... Gravedigger Giza and some card that would allow me to play Zombies from the Graveyard ... that would definitely also make a good combo.


As for Lands ... . I mean, I suppose there's something to be said about whether we're then playing MTG or WTG - 'Witchcraft' - which could then also influence whether we want to play "restrictive" or "open" - to say then that in Magic it also matters which lands You pack because ... duh. But I'm also thinking that ... there's room for special lands ... like scry lands or what. Like, Darkness would be Basics, the Elements could be something else ... where, we might even go as far as to associate standard abilities to each element, like ... wind (which is in my book also associated with knowledge) makes for good scry lands, water might have cycle on it, ... though it would make more sense to have water have scry, to give air the ability to give creatures haste, fire might make instants and sorceries cost 1 less, and earth to allow playing an additional land maybe (when tapped for it) - but then ... there's a lot of variability, so ... maybe not. But still like ... having abilities linked to lands/elements should/could be fun. But ... somehow I want to say: "But that's a different story".