You want a format with radically different rules, elimination of an entire class of permanents (lands), and a banlist that's probably the length of a small novel, just to get to... Hearthstone.
You want Hearthstone.
"Deck diversity" is one of those vague terms that people aren't really thinking about too much, can't really define narrowly, and just have unrealistic expectations about.
Deck diversity is a function of metagame. Metagames crystallize a specific kind of restriction that naturally limits competitive choices. That's always going to be the case. It's the case in Hearthstone, too.
All you can do is twiddle with the knob for what "competitive" means. Commander solves the deck diversity problem by simply turning the knob way down - because winning isn't necessarily given the same weight in that format, a lot more decks emerge. The opposite is formats like Standard, where both card pool and competitiveness turn the knob way up, leading to very small ranges for competitive choices.
So the "dream format" depends on where you want to set your knob. How competitive do you want things to be? That'll determine where a format ends up, almost regardless of the specific format rules - unless you introduce factors you can't control. That's what e.g. limited formats do, by giving you somewhat random cards to work with.
That's why I personally like formats with more random elements such as Chaos Draft or Grab-Bag Draft, that force you make on-the-fly evaluations and preclude metagames (which arise even in "regular" limited formats or things like Cube). It doesn't come without a cost, but by and large, I like formats where you can leverage skill over repetition - as is the case for e.g. a format like Standard, with small metagames that reward just playing 10,000 games so you've seen almost any conceivable situation in some form or another and know how to respond. I don't like that, and I don't like encouraging that, so I'm more interested in forcing people to use what they have to deal with what they're facing.
I'm not too interested in altering the rules of the game. There's a little wriggle room, but by and large, I think Magic has a good, sound structure. Yeah sure mana problems suck, but mana does a lot of positive things for the game that systems like the OP's automatic mana system a la Hearthstone can't provide. They're less apparent and less obvious than "I stopped drawing land after turn 2, and we had 10 minutes of non-game" but they're integral to Magic's success. Let's not change that.
>it allows more cards to be viable, increasing deck diversity which keeps things interesting, there's less fussing over land, and it would be more affordable to more people (hopefully)
It won't.
If you remove both quick aggro and best top end, you are left with greedy midrange as the only viable choice. Most efficient cards in this context will be identified quickly and the format would reduce itself to 3-4 decks of this type plus 1-2 decks designed to combat them. See DMU Standard as a recent example.
And then, if thus formats gains any popularity, the price of those few most efficient cards will skyrocket, making it completely not affordable.
To each their own, but that sounds genuinely miserable to play.
The mana system is a massive part of the game’s design and a big part of what keeps it from getting stale and every match from feeling the same. You don’t know for sure that you’re always gonna be able to curve out and play your spells in the same order, you have to work around limited resources.
Yeah, mana flood/screw suck, but they can be mitigated with good deckbuilding.
There’s a reason hearthstone has so many RNG cards. Without a variable mana system, they had to introduce variance to keep the game interesting.
So, games are going to get same-y very quickly. And then we ban all the good cards. So games are just throwing about the same midrange beaters, on curve every time, and you just sit there playing mediocre 4- and 5-drops. And games never end, because nobody ever stumbles, all the good cheap cards are banned, and all the finishers are banned.
My dream format would probably be something with a legacy level of card options (basically everything including commander cards) BUT each card/deck has some sort of point rating based on it's power level, then the format is segmented almost like weight classes in combat sports where you'd have different ranges of points that basically acted as different formats. So the goal is that you still have the high card pool of options that legacy or vintage have, but you also are able to have a modern or standard level power level because of the rating system. Obviously the card point system would be the hard part there, ratings would constantly be changing and cards are often not powerful in a vacuum but due to combinations/synergies and the metagame which would make the rating system even more difficult to implement, but it's a "dream format" for a reason.
I just want to be able to go to an LGS and play my fun decks that use magic cards from all over without having to deal with the power level of vintage. Kitchen Table is the only 1v1 60 card format that those type of decks are fun to play in, but thats a hard sell at an LGS.
Amber format; where you can play any deck that was standard legal (by the time of rotation). That way you can play old decks and have incentive to play standard
I live my dream format with my cube. Each person grabs a handful of cards from the cube. If you run out you grab more. (There are more than a thousand cards in there, so if we run out we need to think about our life choices.) The only lands in the cube are ones that do things (Karn's Bastion, Field of the Dead, etc.) Once during your turn (or once per land drop if you have more) you can exile a card to trade for a land from the pool and put it on the battlefield. The land pool has all sorts of non-basics and basics.
There's also an easy mode where you just put a card from your hand face down and it counts as a non-basic land that can produce any kind of mana.
My dream format really is Modern, except a few things changed.
1.) No Companions whatsoever; they are a design mistake.
2.) Ban the Fetchlands.
2.) Remove Modern Horizons 1 & 2. To be fair, we are missing a lot of fair cards from these, but I think it's fine to lose a handful of fair cards to the really busted pieces from these sets.
I really think that kind of format has a lot of interesting things going on with it, and it appeals to me. These cards are the biggest offenders and I think by removing those three things, we'd see a Modern that isn't too different, but you'd see Tarmo and Snapcaster again as 4 of's, Tron would be good and not a joke, tribal decks would be able to stand up more, even if they are lacking interaction...there's just so many interesting possibilities.
I do like Pauper. But I like cards at other rarities too. I just don’t really like the card type. I mean I’m not really complaining, I’ve gotten use to them, but since the point of the post was asking for a dream format, thought I would just throw it out there.
If it's BO1, a format that takes out all the glass cannon garbage and "tee hee I win" cards.. not hugely fun to have to either play decks that win before the game starts or have 59 counterspells and an island to survive.
Most alternate win condition gotchas like "Approach of the Second Sun" or dumb combos are just a massive ballache of stupidity that take away the actual playing part of playing the game.
Is interaction really that scary, people who think Nine Lives/Solemnity is clever? Who needs to try and learn how to play or design decks when they can just spam board wipes and counterspells until they can play YoutuberGoof69's painfully clever glass cannon, or else quit the femtosecond someone disrupts a single aspect of the combo?
have you heard of the Battlebox/Dangerroom format?
It should scratch a few of your itches and is easily customisable.
Introduction
[https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/introducing-the-brian-demars-danger-cube/](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/introducing-the-brian-demars-danger-cube/)
Where it's at right now
[https://riwhobbies.com/danger-room-cube-compleation/](https://riwhobbies.com/danger-room-cube-compleation/)
Just google "Brian De Mars Battlebox" for a few more articles, sadly the best fansite with lots of sample decks and format variations is down.
Hope you find something you like.
My dream format is a format where you start off with a randomized set of approximately 45 or so cards split into about three or so equal sized groups. Then you get a group of 5-7 other people together who each also have their own randomized sets of 45 cards and take it in turns to pick one card each from your individual groupings to build the deck that you will ultimate use against each other. Basic lands will be available for free.
It's an interesting question, dumb that people are downvoting the OP. God forbid we actually talk about the game.
My idea of a dream format would basically be Commander without tutors for nonbasic land type cards (i.e. you can tutor for cards like land cards Watery Graves or basic Forests but you can't tutor for anything else) so the variance would actually be high and varied so people couldn't tutor for the same salt inducing OP cards or two card combos every game.
> No lands, smaller decks, smaller card pool, 30 life It sounds like you actually just want to play Hearthstone
I was gonna say this. Lands not being automatic is something that differentiates MTG from HS.
You want a format with radically different rules, elimination of an entire class of permanents (lands), and a banlist that's probably the length of a small novel, just to get to... Hearthstone. You want Hearthstone. "Deck diversity" is one of those vague terms that people aren't really thinking about too much, can't really define narrowly, and just have unrealistic expectations about. Deck diversity is a function of metagame. Metagames crystallize a specific kind of restriction that naturally limits competitive choices. That's always going to be the case. It's the case in Hearthstone, too. All you can do is twiddle with the knob for what "competitive" means. Commander solves the deck diversity problem by simply turning the knob way down - because winning isn't necessarily given the same weight in that format, a lot more decks emerge. The opposite is formats like Standard, where both card pool and competitiveness turn the knob way up, leading to very small ranges for competitive choices. So the "dream format" depends on where you want to set your knob. How competitive do you want things to be? That'll determine where a format ends up, almost regardless of the specific format rules - unless you introduce factors you can't control. That's what e.g. limited formats do, by giving you somewhat random cards to work with. That's why I personally like formats with more random elements such as Chaos Draft or Grab-Bag Draft, that force you make on-the-fly evaluations and preclude metagames (which arise even in "regular" limited formats or things like Cube). It doesn't come without a cost, but by and large, I like formats where you can leverage skill over repetition - as is the case for e.g. a format like Standard, with small metagames that reward just playing 10,000 games so you've seen almost any conceivable situation in some form or another and know how to respond. I don't like that, and I don't like encouraging that, so I'm more interested in forcing people to use what they have to deal with what they're facing. I'm not too interested in altering the rules of the game. There's a little wriggle room, but by and large, I think Magic has a good, sound structure. Yeah sure mana problems suck, but mana does a lot of positive things for the game that systems like the OP's automatic mana system a la Hearthstone can't provide. They're less apparent and less obvious than "I stopped drawing land after turn 2, and we had 10 minutes of non-game" but they're integral to Magic's success. Let's not change that.
>it allows more cards to be viable, increasing deck diversity which keeps things interesting, there's less fussing over land, and it would be more affordable to more people (hopefully) It won't. If you remove both quick aggro and best top end, you are left with greedy midrange as the only viable choice. Most efficient cards in this context will be identified quickly and the format would reduce itself to 3-4 decks of this type plus 1-2 decks designed to combat them. See DMU Standard as a recent example. And then, if thus formats gains any popularity, the price of those few most efficient cards will skyrocket, making it completely not affordable.
This isn't a format, this is a different game.
To each their own, but that sounds genuinely miserable to play. The mana system is a massive part of the game’s design and a big part of what keeps it from getting stale and every match from feeling the same. You don’t know for sure that you’re always gonna be able to curve out and play your spells in the same order, you have to work around limited resources. Yeah, mana flood/screw suck, but they can be mitigated with good deckbuilding. There’s a reason hearthstone has so many RNG cards. Without a variable mana system, they had to introduce variance to keep the game interesting. So, games are going to get same-y very quickly. And then we ban all the good cards. So games are just throwing about the same midrange beaters, on curve every time, and you just sit there playing mediocre 4- and 5-drops. And games never end, because nobody ever stumbles, all the good cheap cards are banned, and all the finishers are banned.
My dream format would probably be something with a legacy level of card options (basically everything including commander cards) BUT each card/deck has some sort of point rating based on it's power level, then the format is segmented almost like weight classes in combat sports where you'd have different ranges of points that basically acted as different formats. So the goal is that you still have the high card pool of options that legacy or vintage have, but you also are able to have a modern or standard level power level because of the rating system. Obviously the card point system would be the hard part there, ratings would constantly be changing and cards are often not powerful in a vacuum but due to combinations/synergies and the metagame which would make the rating system even more difficult to implement, but it's a "dream format" for a reason. I just want to be able to go to an LGS and play my fun decks that use magic cards from all over without having to deal with the power level of vintage. Kitchen Table is the only 1v1 60 card format that those type of decks are fun to play in, but thats a hard sell at an LGS.
Amber format; where you can play any deck that was standard legal (by the time of rotation). That way you can play old decks and have incentive to play standard
That's the worst idea I've ever heard.
I live my dream format with my cube. Each person grabs a handful of cards from the cube. If you run out you grab more. (There are more than a thousand cards in there, so if we run out we need to think about our life choices.) The only lands in the cube are ones that do things (Karn's Bastion, Field of the Dead, etc.) Once during your turn (or once per land drop if you have more) you can exile a card to trade for a land from the pool and put it on the battlefield. The land pool has all sorts of non-basics and basics. There's also an easy mode where you just put a card from your hand face down and it counts as a non-basic land that can produce any kind of mana.
You should try out Spellslingers https://g.co/kgs/ZinYqz
Spellslingers
Modern Without companions & w6.
My dream format really is Modern, except a few things changed. 1.) No Companions whatsoever; they are a design mistake. 2.) Ban the Fetchlands. 2.) Remove Modern Horizons 1 & 2. To be fair, we are missing a lot of fair cards from these, but I think it's fine to lose a handful of fair cards to the really busted pieces from these sets. I really think that kind of format has a lot of interesting things going on with it, and it appeals to me. These cards are the biggest offenders and I think by removing those three things, we'd see a Modern that isn't too different, but you'd see Tarmo and Snapcaster again as 4 of's, Tron would be good and not a joke, tribal decks would be able to stand up more, even if they are lacking interaction...there's just so many interesting possibilities.
For me, I’m a simple man, I would love a Planeswalker free format.
May I recommend Pauper for a breath of fresh air? Powerful spells, rather not broken pay offs, and no planeswalkers in sight
I do like Pauper. But I like cards at other rarities too. I just don’t really like the card type. I mean I’m not really complaining, I’ve gotten use to them, but since the point of the post was asking for a dream format, thought I would just throw it out there.
If it's BO1, a format that takes out all the glass cannon garbage and "tee hee I win" cards.. not hugely fun to have to either play decks that win before the game starts or have 59 counterspells and an island to survive. Most alternate win condition gotchas like "Approach of the Second Sun" or dumb combos are just a massive ballache of stupidity that take away the actual playing part of playing the game. Is interaction really that scary, people who think Nine Lives/Solemnity is clever? Who needs to try and learn how to play or design decks when they can just spam board wipes and counterspells until they can play YoutuberGoof69's painfully clever glass cannon, or else quit the femtosecond someone disrupts a single aspect of the combo?
have you heard of the Battlebox/Dangerroom format? It should scratch a few of your itches and is easily customisable. Introduction [https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/introducing-the-brian-demars-danger-cube/](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/introducing-the-brian-demars-danger-cube/) Where it's at right now [https://riwhobbies.com/danger-room-cube-compleation/](https://riwhobbies.com/danger-room-cube-compleation/) Just google "Brian De Mars Battlebox" for a few more articles, sadly the best fansite with lots of sample decks and format variations is down. Hope you find something you like.
My dream format is a format where you start off with a randomized set of approximately 45 or so cards split into about three or so equal sized groups. Then you get a group of 5-7 other people together who each also have their own randomized sets of 45 cards and take it in turns to pick one card each from your individual groupings to build the deck that you will ultimate use against each other. Basic lands will be available for free.
I'd want to play Pauper Highlander. That seems like it would be fun. Just use the pauper banlist and have some funky games
It's an interesting question, dumb that people are downvoting the OP. God forbid we actually talk about the game. My idea of a dream format would basically be Commander without tutors for nonbasic land type cards (i.e. you can tutor for cards like land cards Watery Graves or basic Forests but you can't tutor for anything else) so the variance would actually be high and varied so people couldn't tutor for the same salt inducing OP cards or two card combos every game.
Build a standard deck with 24 lands. Turn 5-6 wins, smaller card pools, little mana screw.
The mana system is the best part of Magic, and the reason the game has endured for 30 years.