Foundations of Magic - Episode 002- Formats 1/27/2025

00:00:14 Nicole Alfaro: Hello and welcome to the Foundations of Magic, the Gathering Podcast with Denis and Nick, a podcast dedicated to leveling up the magic, the Gathering Playerbase. So if you are a new or experienced player that wants to show your play group who's boss, win a few packs at your local game store win some gems on arena. Or just stay up to date on the latest in the World of Magic. The Gathering. You have come to the right place. Hey, Nick. What's going on, Dennis? Have you been? Oh, you know, just good. Good. It's warmed up a little bit. T shirt weather out here now. It was 35 degrees today. If anything, it got cold over here. Went down to like The. 55 Los Angeles Oh, man, that's a scorcher. where she had yeah, we actually had rain over the weekend, so it actually did help with Congratulations. all these L.A. fires going on. Yeah. So it was a good weekend, though. So today we're going to talk about magic, the gathering formats. So there are two main ways to play magic. The gathering one is limited, which means you open a sealed product and play with just that. And the other is constructed, which is where you bring your cards in your constructed deck and you play it at the event and or tournament. So I think we're going to start with limited because. We like it. It's So the best. I mean, the. we're biased. This is the best format for Very us. nice. We play. We play very often. But we'll try not to, you know, take up most of the time with these formats here. Actually, on a recent one of Marc Rosewater podcasts, he was just talking about how the longer someone plays magic, the more likely their favorite format is draft. I mean, that kind of checks off for me. You know, the last episode sort of been playing for like over 25 years. You two for that long, huh? Yeah. And the reason he said was it's the easiest one to get back into. Like, if you're going to get back in the game and you don't have like current standard cards, you can always show up and do a draft. You can always show up to a prerelease. Like even when I wasn't actively playing, I was still going to like every other prerelease to do a sealed event. Whether I was keeping up with the game and like during that time too, it was really fun. Like, I wouldn't even look at the set ahead of time. I would just show up to the prerelease, Okay. figure it out as I went and, you know, do okay. Yeah. You Like I think you can do homework, a few of those said, but. yeah, you don't have to if Yeah, you have you the could. fundamentals You could do homework, down. but you could just you could just show up and and kind of improvise. So I think we start with Sealed because that's the most straightforward of the limited formats and it's the most like. I guarantee that there will be an event coming up because we have prerelease upon us in a couple of weeks here Yeah. So for the either sealed drift is to. like if you ever done a prerelease, you get a little prerelease kit, you know, with dice and a little promo card in it that is sealed. Everyone calls it a prerelease, but it's sealed. So generally sealed as you start with six booster packs and you build your deck from there, you want to build a 40 card deck, generally 17 lands, 18 lands depending on your deck and try to stick to your two strongest colors, maybe throw in a little bit of a third. your main goals for deck building your main priorities are going to be creatures and ways to remove creatures. you want less expensive cards because you want to be able to cast spells every turn on time. That's the basic, basic, basic template for how sealed is played and how sealed strategy begins. There's a lot more nuance to it, and you can go basically as deep as you want. Like Sealed is very straightforward as as Dennis was saying, you just get your prerelease kit or get your six packs. You could do this at home with your buddy if you have a box of cars and you just, you know, let's say you bought a new set coming out either drift. You each have six packs, open them up and whatever you have in front of you, you could just build a deck out of you can do two colors. You can if you need to go into a third color, you could do five like whatever deck you want to build. Is pretty much using. You're Is. using the crisis in front of you. both with sealed and with trapped, whoever is the one that's organizing or hosting this event. You want to have a bunch of spare basic land. So ready to use basic lands are the only cars that are provided or given to you in order to play this tech. Because you might get like one land or two lands per pack, but it's not going to be enough to build a deck. So if you want to do sealed have, let's say as a 15 lands now, well, it really depends. Like you won't have enough lands to where you could just build whatever kind of deck you want to when you want to build. I have a, tournament box that I keep for when I go to play sealed or draft tournaments, I keep ten of each basically in my box. Sleeved and ready to go. And then a bunch of extra sleeves to put the rest of my deck in. So that's a good number per person is kind of what you want to have. People are obviously going to be playing a little bit different colors, but. I think that's a good rule to have is about ten basics per person. In the event that you, you know, maybe you just happened to open a lot of blue cards you might want to do, like, you know, 12 islands and six swamps Yeah. or five swamps or whatever the case is, maybe have a little bit of extra or something, but that's really up to you. then alternatively to sealed, we have booster draft, which is my personal favorite way to play. Yep. Generally, you Same thing. have a table of eight players, but six is fine. You could do it with six, but eight players. You each have three packs. And simultaneously each player sitting around the table will open the first pack, pick one card and pass the rest to their left. And you do that all the way around the table until the packs are exhausted. Then. You open the next pack, pick one card, pass it to the right. Repeat that process again So all cards are exhausted once again. And then finally you get to the third pack. You open. You pick one card, you pass the rest, and you work your way around the table. So at the end of the draft, you have 42 cards that you picked with current play boosters, previous sets before play boosters were a thing. It was 15 cards per pack, so you'd have 45 cards. So for drafting the first pack you pass to the left, second pack to the right, third pack to the left. This is very important that you alternate to get a wider variety of cards. You can and you have to take one. It doesn't matter if there's, like, two valuable cards in their order. Nothing for your dad. You always have to take one card and pass it down. you're pretty much cherry picking the exact sort of cards that you plan on building your deck with. Like, if I open up a pack and I find a really cool red card, I probably want to take that one and then pass the other remaining cards down to the left. Meanwhile, keep in mind, if Dennis is next to me, maybe he also opened a really good red card in his pack. Of course, you know, we all have all the cards that are pink or face down and kept quiet. Some people might react and say, Oh, my God, I pulled this and that card. Try to keep that quiet. But if Denis open the red card also and then he passes his stuff to me. Chances are he's probably going to have the same gameplan as I am and he's going to take the red cards, which means I'm going to be stuck with either the left over weaker red cards or just nothing. So you have Yep. to keep an open mind and see what's in the pack and It's. try to take the best cards that are there until you start recognizing patterns and say, You know what? There's a lot of green cards that I don't think people are taking here. So need to start going for the green cards or the blue cards or whatever color it is. When you pass to Yep. the opposite direction and right, it's going to feel a bit different. All of a sudden you might see a whole bunch of white cars that you never saw before because the people on the other side had a different game plan. Once you pick all the cards because we said we'll have 40 to you, end the building again, a 40 card deck, about 17 lands, which means the other 23 your spells, then you play magic with the same people that you draft with. And anything you drafted that is not in your main deck is your sideboard. So you can switch cards out in between games, in between rounds and such. This is true as well for In. steel. Anything that in your deck Yes. is considered your sideboard. if you see someone that's playing a lot of artifacts, bring in all your artifact hate or whatever you need to do to make your deck better against your opponent. That's perfectly acceptable and strategically advisable. Every set that comes out that is addressable will have entirely different themes to it. For example, if you want to do black white in foundations that cares about the life gains stuff, if you want to black, white and dust worn that cares about having enchantments, if you want to do black, white and Bloomberg, that cares about having bats as creatures. So every time you play a different set, it's a whole new, different environment. Except for blue green. That's always ramp and draw Yeah. And then Red White's always, like, aggro and whatever. equipment or something. But yeah, I'm just kidding. Yeah. What's important about draft, though, is recognizing priorities. you may be tempted to take like some cool flashy card that does something crazy. But generally what you want to take in draft is efficient creature removal and efficient creatures. Oftentimes rares and mythic rares can be completely useless in a draft, even though they might even be valuable or really good in commander or constructed. That doesn't make them good in draft. So it's really important just to kind of stick to your guns and. Pick cards based on. How it affects the board state within an average game. So you want to be able to play spells, play creatures in your first few turns of the game, every game. You want to build a consistent deck with a lower man. A curve. You want. Two cost creatures. Three cost creatures mostly, and then a few ones, a couple of fours, maybe a five or a six. And you want as much creature removal as you can because your opponent is going to be playing creatures and trying to turn them sideways and trying to kill you with them. So you want to be able to stop them from doing that. Yeah, every card and a deck really needs to follow the same game plan. It's really tough to have. Let's say you're But. doing like a blue, red, like spell slingers theme draft. You can do that. That's actually the draft I did a couple of days ago with no strawberry massad. I had maybe about ten creatures, but about eight of those creatures really cared about when I cast a saucer and sent or got one of those back or had prowess or something like that where all of my remaining like 13 spells. They just benefited after benefit after benefit in addition to whatever that spelt already did. So I had a really solid game plan. And just by just, you know, playing simple spells like think twice that counts as two instance and sorcery basically. So I got really Yeah. benefitted off of one simple card. So those two formats draft and steal, are your limited formats. 60 card constructed formats will start with. So the easiest one to get into would be standard. Standard uses the most recent sets and the deck building rules are as follows. You can have four of any one card except for basic lands. You can have as many as you need of basic lans, and you have a minimum 60 card deck and up to A 15 card sideboard. Standard uses the most recent sets right now. I think it's the most recent three years. Is that correct? It's going to change a little They bit just changed it last year. and it's going to change again at the end of this year with the unit versus Beyonce stuff. Okay. But I'll give I have a list here in front Okay. of me and I could just kind of list you off So these following sets are illegal and standard domino are united. The brothers war freaks here. I'll be one martial. The machine martial. The machine aftermath. Possible drain lost carriers of excellence. Merci Karloff Manor House of Thunder Junction. The big score which was a bonus. You didn't pass Bloomberg, Tusk, mourn and foundations. This will also include either drift coming up and can few weeks and then there's more sets coming out in the future. The. so what happens is after a certain time period, it's usually like the fall release, a group of those sets will fall out of standard and rotate out. So it's a rotating format. What that kind of does is keeps things fresh. It keeps things new and exciting. It makes it easier for the newest set to have an impact on the format and kind of change what people are playing as each set comes out. So it's a good way to kind of familiarize yourself with all of the cards as they come out, because there's always things that are going to make an impact and be better than a previous iteration of that type of card. That's that kind of already exists or does something more efficiently or. More specific to a strategy that that strategy didn't have as a tool before. It also lets other cards that you may have forgotten about shine once again. Let's say you had a couple like, no pun intended, pet cards and Bloomberg, you know, you really like Mm hmm. the raccoon themes or something. Once standard rotates out, it usually in one shot, gets rid of more cards Yeah. than it brings cards in. So with a smaller Mm hmm. card pool, the individual power that a card has increases. So that kind of gives you a chance Yeah. to say, Oh, you know what, this tech wasn't really good before, but now with a big shift and everything, maybe this, maybe this will be better. forgotten Yeah. themes and archetypes. Now it's time to play. honestly that's my favorite time for building and brewing is right after a standard rotation Yep. where Early season. anything's possible you can it yeah for like there's like two weeks to a month where like you could just try stuff and try things that you know, weren't popular before but might work now with the new set of tools or the lack of But. old staples that are no longer there. It makes room in the format for new things, and it's a really fun time. That's when I like playing standard the most. Everything's a little How bit often unpredictable. do you play standard on? Everything becomes a little bit unpredictable. Everything is kind of like up in the air. Everything feels good. But at the same time, everything can feel bad because it's just it almost feels like a coin flip. How often do you play standard? I haven't played standard, actually. I haven't played any constructor format in quite some time, but I do Okay. keep up with like the professional magic scene and Mm hmm. we'll say that like, I guess professional magic is standard pioneer and modern. We'll get to those others in a moment. Mm hmm. But if you want to be. Like a pro magic player, which is a thing if you want to be competitive, if you want to. People call sweaty. If you want to be at the top of the of the leaderboard, you should learn how to play. Actually, all three of those formats and I do enjoy keeping up with like was the hottest tech right now. What is this weakness? What is a strength? What cards is a play? Mm hmm. Did this new set bring anything new to the to the existing decks? Is there a brand new deck that came out and it just burst onto the scene? I like keeping up with that sort of thing. How Yeah. about you? I played standard, honestly, every day. It's not necessarily because it's my favorite format, but it's because it's the most convenient format for me. So like an arena, I do my daily quests to get my gold. And I just use I play standard for that. And, you know, if I have the quest that says play. You know, 25 red and green spells. I'll figure out the most popular red green deck and play that for a while. Or if I have the blue black one, I will play the most popular blue black deck just to see what's up, see what's popular. So I keep up on it that way where I just kind of try to work my way through what the popular decks are and get comfortable with them. in doing that, I kind of figure out what makes each deck tick. So not only do I learn how to pilot each of those decks, I also learn how to play against those decks because I know what cards are important. I know what is a must kill, I know what I can ignore. I think it's a really good practice strategy, just trying to work your way through the different decks in the format that are popular because those are the decks you're going to face, even if you like brewing and like playing home and whatnot, I think it's still important and just as educational and skillful to also play those popular decks and learn how to pilot them. Learn the rules so you'll know how to break them properly. Yeah. Take down that strategy when it's when you're faced with it because you're paired with people at random. So you're going to find one of those decks at random, and you're going to need to know how to play against that deck if you want to do well. So next we have Pioneer. So Pioneer is a non rotating format that starts with. Any set released into standard. Starting with return to rabbinical. for the main block and magic 2014 as the main course So anything after that released into standard is legal in Pioneer. There is a banned list, a relatively short banned list compared to all of the other ones, and that goes all the way through current sets. What happens occasionally is that someone has a pretty nice standard deck. Then they take a break or that deck just rotates out of standard. You can take that same deck and then go play Pioneer or maybe some other format in there because Pioneer has a bigger card pool. Like we mentioned, it goes back Mm hmm. pretty far until 12 and 14. So you have like 11 years worth of cards that you can play compared to standard, which is about three years. And to put the numbers in perspective, I just looked at it for a quick standard, has about a little bit over 3000 different cards you can play with. Pioneer is 12,000 cards and modern. We're getting There's a couple more. smarter. We're getting close to 20,000. So clearly the more cards Wow. you have access to, the more powerful decks you can make. Pioneer is also a former that is very popular in the tournament scene. My opinion, unfortunately, pioneers seems to be kind of taking a backseat this year or at least for the next couple of months, meaning Mm there's hmm. more focus on standard and modern, but that's not Mm really hmm. in our control. Still, at some point when they decide, Hey, is pioneer season again, it was going to be right back into Yeah. it to start playing it again. it is one of those formats that is most popular when there is like a Pioneer Pro Tour or a pioneer Qualifying RC something. Regional Championship if you don't know RC means. Regional Championship. I was trying to remember what it means. Yeah. So think. Yeah. RC Is Regional Championship in the RC Hughes Regional Championship Qualifier. So that's your prerequisite, as we alluded it. to. Modern is even bigger, about 20,000 Yep. cards. This goes back to what, 2000 to 23, I think. More specifically. Yeah. So is mirrored in block and eighth edition. So essentially when they released the new card frame. most things printed except for a lot of exceptions, not with the commander products, but with the modern card frame should be legal in that if it was released in a standard set. on top of the standard sets, this format also has direct to modern sets that were released, such as Lord of the Rings. Modern Masters Modern Horizons. we don't have modern masters, actually. Yeah, I think he meant to say modern horizons, but yeah, we do have a water masters. That was, that was early on in the format. They they did that. Yeah. So as the name implies, modern horizons. One, two, three, and probably four and five in the future. Those go directly into modern and older formats, but they don't touch standard or pioneer. Yeah. Some people don't really like that, but that's a different conversation. there's definitely a debate about. If a format like Modern should essentially rotate by all this new influx of cards because they've done things like a they print a bunch of new powerful cards directly to the format that shake the format up. And another thing they've done is reprint in those sets. Older cards. Into that format. So like for example, counter spell, counter spell was never released in a standard set since eighth edition. They would make it legal in modern, but it was printed before that. So before the only place you could play counter spell was in legacy even further back and Modern didn't have counter spell until it was printed in one of the modern masters or modern horizon sets. So they can bring those older, powerful cards into the format, too. So there's a debate whether, you know, it was okay to do that. But I think overall people enjoy it. Yeah. I definitely like playing with. Yeah. People do enjoy playing with powerful cards. That's that's a bigger Yeah. to modern compared to, you know, pioneer even standard is that you could just you get to play with some of the most powerful Mm stuff hmm. in the game. Of course, if Mm hmm. you have all this power, that means the games can go very quickly if you aren't prepared. Which means it's much more skill intensive. And you have to be aware of lots and lots of combination of cards and possibilities and themes and archetypes and so on. Yet. It can be very difficult Mm hmm. to keep up with modern because it can change real quick. And at the same time with that, though, you can still play your modern deck for a pretty long time for example, I have a blue red. Is it Merck tired Raghavan. Deck that I can still take to a modern tournament and do decently well with because the fundamentals of that deck don't really change. It's probably not poised to win a giant tournament. But I could because I know how to pilot it well. And a lot of times just knowing how to pilot your deck and knowing how to play against the other decks is the edge. You need to make it through the rounds and rounds of that kind of tournament. you can generally hang on to your cards and your favorite pat cards that are in whatever deck for a long time because they don't rotate out. Sometimes they get banned and sometimes they become a little obsolete. But that's the difference between a deck going from Tier one to Tier 1.5 to Tier two, which isn't that big of a jump depending on what your goals are when playing. If you're just going up to your local event, you know you're probably going to do all right if you, are consistent with your strategies. Yeah. But the real key to modern is that any of the cards are generally accessible. It might be the more expensive format of the ones that we've talked about so far as a barrier to entry. However, any card that is legal in that format. Can see a reprint in future sets. So you know that there's not going to be some $600 cards down the road that you just can't get a hold of because there are so few copies of it. They can reprint cards that are popular and make sure that people have access to the popular cards in that format throughout time. So that is the benefit and that is why Modern eventually took the place of what legacy used to be legacy used to be the place for people to play all of the cards, all of their older cards, their favorite deck. now Modern has taken that spot. So before we get into, the next format, which is legacy, I just want to emphasize that if you want to be, I guess, quote unquote, professional magic player, you want to know standard pioneer and modern and you want to know draft of pretty much whatever the newest format is. All of those formats, including everything we're about to talk to in the next coming segments. You can still play those casually. You don't have to build the best standard deck or the best pioneer deck possible. You can just throw some cards together like you just like a bunch of rabbit cards and just go to an event or just play casually with your friends. I it has a very high ceiling of competitiveness and a very low floor of just casual. I just have these cards in my folder and I want to put them in a deck. So however you want to play, Mm that's hmm. perfectly fine. So legacy. I used to play a lot of legacy back in the day. For a while that was my main format. When I wasn't drafting, I was playing legacy. So what makes legacy what it is? Is any set ever printed in magic is legal. So all that includes the modern horizon sets, the commander only sets. All of those sets are legal all the way back to Alpha. Legacy is defined by. A specific banned list. there's a huge list of cards that have been banned in legacy for whatever reason, whether it be taking too much time in tournaments, cards like Sensei's Divining Top Yeah. or shahrazad the how is it? Close. Close enough. And cards that, take dexterity like chaos orb. as well as cards that are just too powerful and are only legal in the next format. We talk about called vintage. But like like the power nine is not legal, which are the five marks, time, walk time, twister and soul And ring. so for recall Those are not legal and ancestral recall. Yeah, man. Black Lotus, those of course. are not legal. The fast mana. Yeah. Fast mana in general is not legal in legacy like that. I think dark ritual still is. I think time was legal. But that's a workshop. No, it's not. Oh, it is, ban. Okay. Just getting. Yeah. It's banned in legacy. It is not banned in commander. That's like the one piece of power Oh, nine right, that is right, not right. banned in commander. that format is defined by its manner base. So you have the original dual ends in Alpha Beta Unlimited and revised. As the core to most decks. So that's the real barrier to entry because a lot of times these decks use modern creatures and modern spells, but they have that original mana base, which is very powerful. It's, you know, dual lens that are searchable with fetch lands. They have no drawback, like the shock aliens that are the staple of modern wear. If you want it untapped, You pay to life. But if you. Don't it comes into play tapped. The original dual ends don't have that drawback, so it makes the format just a little bit faster. And it's not just So a dual in that. lens. It also has cards Yeah. like Ancient Tomb that Oh. just add to cover the span of Mm which hmm. you take two damage. And it's not just lands Yeah. as other cards as well. Right. Like, I like guess. force of will you have a free counter spell Yeah. which they kind of touched on a little bit in modern just kind of as a a failsafe but force of will is a big one brainstorm like really powerful can trips. The risk of playing and staying in that format is that Those core cards will never really see a reprint. Like because of the reserved list. So Yeah. that's We can get into the difference the reserve list between at another time, but legacy these are. and modern. Yeah. Yeah. Reserve list is like Cards a list that of are cars not allowed that to be are printed. just. Yeah. Which I'm not a fan of, but that's not none of our business. But because of that, the, the dual bands Mm hmm. and the Power nine stuff, they're never going to get a reprint. So it means if you want to keep if you want to play this format, you either need to get access to these cards somehow or don't use them. kind of puts you at a disadvantage. Yeah, but both legacy and vintage are actually very popular, or at least more more commonly played with magic online. This is different than Magic Arena. Mm hmm. You can play these formats on Magic Online, which has a much bigger community for these two, where it is easier to access Black Lotus and and Moxon and all that stuff because they're not printing it. It's just a digital object. So you could pay. Honestly, I Hmm. think it's just a couple of bucks to get a Black Lotus on magic online. Yeah. I think you could spend like $50 and get the entire power line. Last time Yeah. I looked, I'm looking it's at real been a quick. while. I think. I think Black Lotus. Yeah, I think the Black Lotus on magic online for for 40 bucks. Compare it to like an in-person one. It's like, I don't know, several hundred thousand. Thousands. Legacy uses a banned list, but Vintage uses a band list and a restricted list. It is the only format that actually restricts cards, meaning you can play with these, but only one per deck. Like Black Lotus Mm is hmm. restricted to one copy. All five marks and restricted to one copy. Access for recall research to one copy. So you are allowed to play with like the most positive boss of cars of all time. Of course it's going to cost a ton of money, but because of this, the power is even much higher than legacy. another thing about these older formats that is important to know, is a lot of times the games aren't necessarily quicker, there are fewer turns, but there are more decisions to make per turn. Yes, actually. So Yeah. like in, in a standard game, let's say like the average standard game is nine turns. The average pioneer game is going to be. Seven or eight turns, the average modern game is going to be. Five or six turns, the average legacy game is going to be 4 to 5 turns. The average vintage game is going to be three turns. And it's not necessarily that it's going to take that few of turns, but that's where the most important decisions in the game are taking place. You have a little more time and a little more breathing room, oftentimes in standard. To set up your deck and to do your strategy as where in vintage you're playing zero cost spells, you're playing fast mana where you could play more powerful things early. So there's a lot more interaction going on in those early turns that set the stage for how the rest of the game is going to play out. And the further back you go with these older formats, the more decisions on the early returns are made per turn. Like you're not just playing, you know, a mountain and then tapping it to play some to one creature and then passing a turn. you're playing a fetch land, then searching up for a duel land. And then you have options there. You have a couple of free spells in your hand already. You have some something in the river that you can use for fuel. There's a lot of things going Mm hmm. on that you have to keep in mind at all times. So the legality of Popper is any set. And if it's been printed at common, it is legal in Popper. It also has a banned list of things that have proven to be problems over time. And so that makes an entirely different feel to the format as well. Because there are a lot of types of cards that just have not been printed at common. notably, there aren't a lot of cards that are sweepers that destroy all creatures or deal to damage to all creatures, Your answers are much more varied compared to the threats. And generally the threats are a little more over costed compared to other formats. I played in a couple Popper tournaments not long ago. My, my local game store does, I think, a monthly popper event. And it gets a pretty good turnout. It's a lot of fun. Like the most expensive card in Popper is like $8 or something like that. It's like a red elemental blast or something. Oh, yeah. I mean, as the name implies, if you're using comments only, you generally would think. Low powered, low complexity stuff. But if you're using cards from day one to today, you'll find that it's actually sold a lot of cards out there that are pretty complex. Once you put the deck together and Mm hmm. when it comes to comments, if the card has ever existed as a common, you can use any version. So for example, or Mm new software, hmm. that's a common card if you want to get fancy and use the calabash invention's version of the myth or in the software, you can do that. That's I mean, it's $85 as opposed to a dime, but you can do that if you want to Yeah. as long as the card exists. Is a common is legal. Legacy Vintage and Popper are called eternal formats. They go to day one to today. All right. So those are competitive formats. So those are the tournament formats and then we have the casual constructed. So what's the main one, Monique? Your favorite one, right? Uh, no. Everyone else's favorite format. Commander. Okay. So I have a confession to make. I've been playing commander recently. That's all the time Gasp. we've got for this episode, I guys. know. I'll see you later. Yeah. That makes this our last All right. episode So I've been playing Commander. I found a local playgroup that can meet on a day that I was available, and so I started playing with them. And the first thing we did was. They gave me a title challenge. So. I was assigned to build a rats deck. We were told that they rolled the die and said, You're going to build a rat deck. So I built a wake of the world mind Greeks, this Okay. rat deck, and it did pretty well. It was pretty cool. Let's go. I became the target very quickly each time because I don't know if you know what Wick does, but essentially it makes it's a rat that makes a slug that gets bigger every time you play a rat. And then you could pay black, red, blue, sacrifice the slug, draw a card for the power of that slug. And each opponent loses that much life. Yes. Interesting. So like a55 slug will make everyone lose five life. And I drive five And cards. you drop off. Yeah. That's nice. What could go wrong To. for three men? Not bad. Yeah. So it's been pretty fun, honestly. I'm still getting used to the the politics, But it's been pretty fun. Yeah. So, So Commander, all it all the former, is. as we've mentioned Yeah, so go far. ahead. Standard pioneer, modern legacy, eternal the sorry legacy vintage corporate. Those are all 60 card one on one formats commander has different deck building requirements to wear. It cares about color identity which is different than a cards color color identity Hmm. Hmm. looks at the mana cost of the card and what color symbols it has. It also looks at the many symbols that are in the rules text of the card, like a pass kicker or flashback and a different color that counts. It also looks at like the little color identifier thing, which usually comes up on like, you know, spells that have no amount of costs like packet navigation Mm hmm. or some interest factor whatever. I think Or. that's a green one. Or cards Yeah. that flipped Or the to backside the other side. of a transformation. Yep. I think just one more minor thing. I think it's like characteristic defining ability. I think that's a thing, too. But pretty much those Yeah. are your you're a commander who cares about that thing because you have you choose one legendary creature to be your commander. And whatever colors the color identity of that is your entire techniques to match those be within that that color identity. So as Dennis said he had Wik which is a black card, but it has a a red blue and black activation cost. So therefore it is those colors which is known as Pyxis. So you can have any cars that are red, black and blue in that deck. It Mm is hmm. a 100 card deck. All singleton meaning one copy maximum excluding basic lands, which are always going to be unlimited. And it is a four player multiplayer game. Typically four player you can play with three could put a five, you can do one on one, but it is honestly best suited for a four player experience. the other difference is you always have access to your commander. So that starts off in the command zone and each time you cast it from the command zone, it costs two colorless men a more to cast. And you also start with 40 life mulligans or a little different Like the first mulligans. Always free. Another thing Commander has it's different than any other form. It is Commander Damage, which is if your Oh, yeah. commander feels more than 20 points of damage to a single player. I guess more specifically Combat is whenever damage. a yes, whenever a commander deals 20 or more combat damage. Sorry, more than 20. Because you can. There are times two where you can like gain control of someone else's commander. But if you do Mm hmm. damage to someone else's commander and your commander to a particular player, those are tracked separately. Which is weird Correct. for me to keep track of. Like that's that's extra rules. I don't care Yeah. about that. It's basically it's basically a failsafe against infinite life game decks. That's Yes, how I see actually. it. Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't matter what the life total is. You can have like 500 life as long as you get your 21 August 20, more than 25, then that counts Yeah. as 21. a lost. Physical damage? Commander is the most But this popular way year. to play magic there. I mean, there are three cons is like two or 4%. Sometimes I'll just print a set exclusively for commander players, which is mostly just reprints anyway, it makes it more accessible. Like you can buy reconstructed decks at Walmart. That's the epitome of Excel accessible. You can buy a deck Yes. out at a big box store and play that day without doing anything else. And it's it does. Okay. Yeah. You really can't do that with any other format. Except for limited because you just you know, you just open Yeah. in practice and there you go. Here's your hatch. Have deck. So everything we've talked about Oh, this that brings. up to this point is. Go ahead. Oh, okay. I was going to say adjacent to that. I wanted to mention commander draft because those sets that go straight to commander Okay. have a have a different pack and draft style also. commander, master's draft or the Baldur's Gate set. Those had a toe card booster pack that you could draft So you end up actually playing a 60 card commander deck, right? Yeah. That's 60 car. Color identity mattered. The singleton rule did not apply. you draft by picking by doing the same way is a regular draft except for you pick two cards at a time from the pack instead of one. And I think you said it at the table with four players. Is that correct? That sounds right. You still you still draft with eight but Or do you do parts it of four when you. you when you play the game. that was most of the way I played Commander over the last few years was Commander Draft, which I personally still like a little better than Commander, but. I'll give it to Commander Honestly for being, the same. you know. Okay. Okay to play. Because I did I did do Commander Masters draft before. Real quick, Side Story. I, I totally forgot that you still have to adhere to the commander identity rules. So I was drafting a green Oh, black yeah. deck and I had red cards in my draft pile. And then I realized, Oh, wait, I don't even have a red commander. So I kind of had to entirely Yeah. ditch every single red card because I couldn't put that in my deck in a regular draft. Yeah. You could do that. You could do whatever you want. But for Yeah. Commander Draft, you have to still stick with the commander identity rules. So Commander Popper and Legacy Pioneer, all those formats are constructed formats to where they have a set deck building rule or requirement and deck size and whatever. Let's say that's all too much for you. You don't care about that sort of stuff. You just have a bunch of cards. You don't want to look up what's legal. You don't care about that stuff. And you just put cards in a deck. That's fine. That's pretty much called kitchen table. It's kind of a format that doesn't really have rules to it. You can do almost what basically whatever you want. You can have up to like six copies of a car. You can have cars from like day one to today. You can have cars are aren't legal. You can you can use band cards. You can use cars from those on the sets, like infinity, unglued, unhinged. It's almost anything goes It. if you want to play kitchen table. You might you kind of need to let your opponent know or your play group or your friend saying, hey, I'm using a deck where anything goes. Is that cool? Chances are they might, Mm like, hmm. ask, Well, what are you playing with? Because maybe you're using a bunch of weird, powerful stuff. They might flip through the deck and say, Oh, yeah, this is fine. Whatever is cool is a deck. You're just playing magic. You're just putting cards No. in a deck and playing. Nothing else to worry about. Yeah. These are cars that I own, Yeah. and I put them in a deck, and we're good to go. Very Yep. simple. And kitchen table is actually. Which might secretly it might secretly be the most popular format without anyone It is. knowing, because there's no Yeah. real way to crack it. Because like maybe, people who don't even know where their local game stories They is. just went to Wal-Mart. They saw Commander Dick. Maybe they start taking some cards out of it. Maybe they put some in. Maybe they ended up with three commanders. Maybe they just doing some weird things doesn't matter. They're still playing magic. Are they following the rules? Mm hmm. Maybe they're making up or improvising where some of these abilities do like to them in on their kitchen table. Those are all cool and valid because they're playing magic and they're having We? fun and they're they're playing the same game we are. We're just playing with the rules, which, you know, if one of those strangers, you kind of need to be on the same page. But if you're playing just Yeah. casually for An fun. agreed set of deck building restrictions. Yeah. Yeah. You just doing whatever you want. That's all. And a. Cool. Because when I started playing magic 1,000%, I was in kitchen table. I had. I really didn't. I just had cords. Just put them in a deck. Here we go. I know for a fact my brother had, like eight or ten lightning bolts in his neck. Well, that'll get the point across. Yeah. So all of these are basically your paper ways to play magic. And I say paper because of course we use physical cards. But you have magic on arena, which uses digital cards. Arena still has standard. It still has drafting. And it has probably, I think, one or two other formats in common with, I guess, quote unquote, the real world. But it also pictures this arena because as a digital product, it also makes use of digital cards and rebalance cards and couple of things that you just can't duplicate in the real world, like true randomization or things that keep track of. How many times your deck has shuffled or weird thing is that like it's just impossible to keep track of. So I just want to Right. quickly go. Or just things that rely on, hidden information. And the computer can track the hidden information. without Yeah. actually cheating, if that makes sense. Like, maybe there is some card So, like. that says, like, you know, you gain one life for each for a half the amount of cards you have left in your deck. How are we supposed to know that in paper? I mean, maybe if you had a checklist Yeah. Without ahead going of time. through and showing your opponent and your deck. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to had you have to prove it. Like maybe you, you know, you have exactly 40 elves in this deck and you've drawn five of them. So you have 35 left or something. But Yeah. are you going to prove that to your opponent here? And here's the cards of my hand. on arena it just it knows attracts it and it doesn't automatically and it's a system to where it's not going to try to cheat you or your opponent. It just it's just a program. Which. the formats on arena, there's alchemy, which is about to the last two years worth. It's kind of like standard, but a little bit smaller. Plus uses digital cards. There's historic which uses I think, everything that's available on arena, but it also uses Mm hmm. a heavier RB, a bigger band list. Mm hmm. You have timeless which is a zero band cards. So everything's Mm legal hmm. and I think only two cards are restricted in a similar way that vintage has cards restricted. Mm hmm. Keep in mind, Erina does not go to day one of Magic's history. Arena has like ten years worth, 12 years worth of cards with a couple other pockets of cards here and there. So it's not as powerful as legacy and vintage, but for arena standards will say it is still pretty powerful. Yeah. Arena It's essentially also. the vintage of an arena. Yeah, pretty much. Arena also has brawl, which is basically commander but one on one. And with that restricted carpool that you're, you know, you're confined to whatever you can get access to on arena as opposed to in person. And then Mm hmm. kind of weird one is a format called Explorer, which is basically the same thing as Pioneer in paper. The only difference is is that it might explore on arena is probably missing maybe like. I would guess in the range of like a 100 to 150 cars. But those cards are the ones that, like no one really looks twice at, like the common cars from this one random set that you totally forgot even existed, that no one that plays with a deck because it's just a bad card. Arena still missing some of those The little, Kurds. little cards. So that's why it's not full pioneer. Yeah. It's just called explore, but it's basically competitively the same thing. Okay. So these are what I guess we would consider But. the most popular formats in Magic. So that's draft field standard pioneer, modern legacy, vintage pop or Commander Kitchen table. As far as a paper format, us 1234, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten then another five Mm on hmm. arena which is Alchemy historic. Timeless from Explorer. That's 15. There are, I guess not huge, that is. But like in general, whoever's listening. Guess how many more forms I can quickly go over? 24. There are lots and lots of ways to play magic. So total on my list that I have 39 and that's I'm still probably missing a few of them. So let's categorize them real quick. So in this category, other limited formats that are similar to sealed and draft. And our number one favorite cube. Kube is the same thing as Yeah. drafting. Like you draft Bloomberg, you draft ducks for you draft foundations, but instead of using packs from a specific set, you, the person have designed your own set. This set can have Yes. whatever you want in there. It could be like only cards from in a straight sets, only cards that have a manner value of three or less, only cards that are just artifacts like any kind of rule or just only cards from my collection. You could do this. And the idea is that you just take whatever these cards that you have or whatever theme you want to go for, shuffle it up. You are recreating packs to kind of replicate a draft experience and you draft from there. Yeah. One of the most popular ways to play that is Vintage Cube, and they have that on magic online. There's also the Arena Cube and Magic Arena. If you ever want to get a taste of cube, I personally, I have a vintage cube. I use proxies for the really expensive parts because. Who wants a bunch of random people playing with really expensive cards like that. But it's so much fun. It is one of the best. It's you can almost consider it if you want it to be like a greatest hits set of magic. Or I also build set cubes, so I'll take the entire set of like Kanagawa Neon Dynasty and build that at a ratio to recreate what the actual booster packs were like. So the same amount of commons on Commons Rares, mythic rares per pack, shuffled up together to make it feel like you're opening fresh packs without actually having to go find a sealed product somewhere because that could get expensive. You were like, if you really like drafting a particular set. So there's lots of ways to build a cube. I have a cube. Mine's arena based, you know, to me is pretty much nothing but bangers. Of course, a cube is something that I have created or something that Dennis has created. So when we share this with our friends, we keep the cards. So of course, you're not going home with our cards in a regular draft. Mm hmm. Whatever you take, you go home with us. Yours to keep with the draft, with a cube is meant to be replayed over and over and over again. And you can update the cube along the way to, let's say, a new set comes out. You want to have a bunch of new stuff from the new set. Put that in your cube. Updated that way. So that's a cube. Then you have a chaos draft, which is using existing packs from sets but different sets. Instead of having all three foundations or all three of just one, you can have one from comic hour, one from innocent remastered and one from either drift. That's just you. The person I next mean. to you can has one from foundations, one from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, one from Merge Sakala Manor. Everyone has different packs. You can even use collector boosters Mm if hmm. you want to. Whatever you want to do. That's. It's Yep, chaos. It's yep, kind of crazy. yep. That is honestly a really fun way to play too. We do that at at my LGS like in the later weeks of the format, like before a new set comes out when we're kind of tired of the current set. Everyone will just go buy three packs of whatever they want and we'll play with those. Another way that they do it at like the bigger events, like the magic cons, is where you draft the packs that you're then going to draft with, which sounds that sounds really fun too. But those events fill up real fast. If you have seen or had access to a mystery booster or mystery booster two, that's the chaos draft because the set has like 1500 or 1800 cards. It's a massive set where cars from all over the place that's Mm basically hmm. chaos draft to. that has cards that that not only has a bunch of reprints in it, but it has cards that have never been printed. It has like these fake Oh, yeah. test print cards Oh, yeah. that have Yeah, never I been remember printed those. in any other format. Yeah. Yeah. Other ways to play limited. There is conspiracy, which is its own set, where you kind of take actions during the actual draft process. You have a team draft where it's kind of like a three on three is a six person draft, but you kind of alternating seats to where like, you know, instead of like one, two, three, four, five, six is more like a, a, B, a, B, and then And. team A plays against team B by 1 to 1 is kind of like a giant best of five sort of thing. You have a rush hazard Mm draft, hmm. you have rotisserie draft, you have a Solomon draft, you have a Winchester draft. These are all there's many masters, which is something I didn't even have listed. So now I want the formats. There's so many different Mm ways hmm. to play. Limit it just with Here's a pack of cards. What can you do with it? Next up in the other four main categories. Commander. Commander. Base Category. Commander base formats. The biggest one. Competitive commander or C. Eddie H. This is the same thing as commander. But you're playing to win. You don't care Yup. about doing your cutesy set up. How many elves can I make? Let's find out. And not attack for 17 turns because I want to have 17 million elves. These games Yeah. are like, again, lots of decisions to be made in a short amount of time and you just basically playing to win. Same exact Yeah. rules And as commander though it's. I want to emphasize that. The difference is the approach more than anything. Yeah. The approach, the mentality. So if you're playing Mm hmm. with a very, very juiced and high powered commander deck, some people might say, Hey, that's C ed, that's competitive. So if you think you're at that level, you might want to have a discussion with your play group before you start playing like like let's say a very, very upgraded pre con could start get into C territory. So just keep that in mind. Yeah. And generally those decks, they have a lot of interaction, a lot of combos, a lot of ways to just win the game outright with the right, you know, series of plays. And so it's important to be able to stop your opponent from doing that, and it's important to have a way to end the game. Should you choose or should you have an opportunity to. Then after that there is oath breaker, which is technically a official sanctioned format, but it's so unpopular compared to Commander. It's the same same thing as Commander. But you also have a signature spell, which is a saucer or instant, that you can also play out of the command zone. That also is subject to commander attacks. There might be another rule or two that I don't know of because I don't really mess with that. But as basically oath breaker in a super nutshell, You really only play with your close friends along with these other things. Dual commander, that's strictly one on one commander, which actually they had a ban in a restricted announcement today, which I totally forgot about. Yeah. There's a there's a different banned list, right? There's Yeah. specific ones banned from being commanders. Right. Yep. They do have. They do Stuff use like. a rule Yeah. to wear a band as commander only. That Yeah. regular commander doesn't do you have proper commander, which is, I think, comments like kind of like pop or just comments only and your commander can be uncommon. There's Canadian Highlander, which isn't actually commander, but I put it in this category because you build a deck as if as a commander deck, just without the commander. I don't think you pay attention to the color identity, but it's just another way to play magic. So Did is it he have. that that is one card, singleton? Is that correct Yes. or is it. Yes. Yeah. Did you have tiny liters, which I think the entire deck needs to have. Each individual car needs to have a man of value of three and less. And then other formats, there's artisan, which is this a nut commander? This is just other ways to play. And there's artisan, which is just commerce. And uncommon is only there's peasant, which is commons only, and you can have maximum five on commons. There's Penny, which is a magic online format that actually continuously updates based off of the economy of magic online to where if a card is valued at a penny or maybe like two or $0.03 is legal, but it's a card becomes a bit more popular, it gets more expensive and then becomes no longer legal. It's kind of a weird thing, but as magic Yeah. online only. There's old school, which I suppose you can say the exact opposite of modern. So anything before a certain date is legal for all. It's old school. Mm hmm. Then you have other multiplayer formats to head. A giant is teams to versus to what deck you use. I guess you can use standard, you can use commander, you can use modern whatever you want to use. The most popular way I see to head a giant played is sealed during prerelease. Yes. Yeah, I get So. that too. I'm just not a fan of it personally, but yeah. To hit a Giants field, I think each team gets 12 picks or nine. I forget what it was. Well, I the think way it's. the way it usually works now because it's prerelease, each person just gets their own prerelease kit. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. So you have a combined Yeah. So. pool between like so like as Dennis and I are going to do it, we each have our own prerelease kit membership together and into 12 And. packs and we make our own two decks, Mm hmm. those combined total packs. And also, honestly, that's a good way to bring a buddy to a prerelease. Like if you have a buddy that's a little less experienced and you want to kind of show them what's going on like at the LGS. Drag a friend along that kind of knows how to play and play to had a giant with them and it's a good way to ambassador the game a little bit. There's an emperor, which is a team three verse three format that's mostly played on magic online. It's good. Hmm. It is positional. I don't know if that's the right word, but the person in the middle is like the one that you want to Is. take down. And then you have the player to the left and to the right of you who are your defenders or knights or whatever. You usually build a deck in a certain way to take advantage of. Of like each opponent or like loss or removal, while the one in the middle does a lot of stuff, I forget the rules of it. But there's you go look up Emperor for Magic online and kind of see the rules from there. I know it's a thing. That's why I'm mentioning Mm hmm. it. Mm hmm. I have a there are two shared deck formats, You know. one being Judges Tower or Judge Tower, which is basically a deck so overly complicated and confusing. Two, where it challenges you to play by the rules as often as possible and you kind of lose points if you get a ruling wrong. These cards are intentionally confusing and like, how does this card even work? How does this interact with these things? Lots of layers. Also weird things like that's judge us tower. It's it's it's a mess. And people who are really That good at sounds the rules like a mess. love this thing. Yeah, it's. It's crazy. There is forgetful fish, which is also known as dentin. I think it's 80 cards in a deck, but it's a very, very specific deck list of This. 80 cards that, you know, one person brings. You share it. I actually played this in the last magic on. there's an old card called Denton. It's a41 creature that cost two blue men at that basically has island home, meaning it can only attack if your opponent has an island. And if you have no islands it dies. There are lots of ways to counter spells. It's like memory lapse, Karnataka spell. But instead of going to the graveyard, it goes on top of the library because you're sharing decks. If you kind of the spell, they're probably going to draw that car to the next turn. And there's brainstorm Mm hmm. too, where you Where think, you are? Yeah. Yeah, there is. There's free software we can manipulate on top of the library. Just there's a lot of different ways. There's a lot of play to this shared tech experience. It is very interesting. And then these two these last two formats, I guess you can call them extra decks formats. There's plane chase, which I actually have the magic on Black Lotus VIP plane chase packet here, which is a kind Oh. of like a third deck, but it's not in it's not regular cards. It's kind of like worlds that the players are on that have like extra bonuses, like, let's say, like All Creatures Cup plus impulse one or something. And then you roll a dice and six sorry, four of the six sides are blanks. One side is chaos ensues, which has a very specific thing to where all players take this action. And then another side is playing walk or playing chase or whatever is called to where you just go to the next world to where now like you're landed on a tap except for one at the beginning of your on top step that has a different set of rules, is very interesting and is very popular. Way to play it. Hmm. Not very popular, but it is popular. you can combine that with other ones too. Yeah. You can combine playing Plane chess chasers. with commander or whatever else it. Yes. Yeah. Planes just come and go, actually very well together. And a very, very last one as Vanguard, which uses like super old school cars. They weren't really cars. Mm hmm. They're kind of like twice the size of a magic card. That kind of was like an avatar of sorts that you had a an alternate starting hand size, an alternate starting laughs total like plus two cards and have Yeah. a minus six life and. You had some ability, like all your creatures, that haste Yeah. I used to have one vanguard card and I had no idea what to do with it. I think I got it in a copy of Scribe magazine. Years and years ago, and I had no idea how to get more of them. in Magic online, when it early Days of Magic online, there was a vanguard format. There And was actually. I think that's Yeah. where the I think that's where the more vig avatar the Yes. more vig format came from Yes. was Yes. because your Yes. ability Yes. was your deck is all lands, discard a land and pay x mana to generate a random creature, which was the first digital only format. And it's still on like they do it on midweek magic or whatever every once in a while an arena. And it used to be it might still be a regular format on MTG. Oh. Yeah, but that was that was a cool format. So those are all the formats that I can think of will be lists like formats of magic That's fairly easy, like the plenty, first. that's for sure. You know, like ten forms, 15 forms if you want to include arena. Like those are by far the most popular way to play magic. We'll say that's like 99.9% of magic. And then everything else is like the point one, which now Yeah. maybe a little bit more than that because Cube and competitive commander is a decent portion of that. Those are formats as much of a nutshell Yeah. as we can cram into this hour or whatever we're at right now. Yeah. So I think that just speaks volumes of how robust this game actually is and kind of sheds light that it's not just one game. It's a game system that can be an infinite number of games. And I think that's what makes it so special and so popular and it's just so customizable and so malleable. Like it's always been encouraged to do your house rules play in a way that makes sense for you it's your game. Every time you Exactly. pick up your cards, it's yours. And you can express yourself through your commander deck. Because, hey, I like cats. I'm going to build a cat deck. You can express your competitive prowess by taking down a draft event at your local game store. You can keep up with all the latest stuff with standard. Like, it's so robust and there's so many different ways to play I mean, like, like, like we said that there are so many different ways to use the same cards. There's literally infinite ways to play. Like, you could just make something up on the spot and it'll probably work just fine. Boom. New format. Yeah. Exactly. Like you can maybe make a format. Actually, my friends made a format of like a standard format to where they call the standard, but they just picked three rent like three or five random sets and you can only use those cards. All right. Yeah. All right. I'm Dennis. I'm Monique. And this is the Foundations of Magic podcast. Thanks for listening.

01:08:16 Onnik: Okay. So I wanted to tell a little story of a draft that I did the other night in a solitary massage. And I did this on Friday, so just a couple of days ago. I go to my LGS to do a draft and we have 15 people for the draft, so we split up into two pods, eight and seven, and I'm in a seven pod and I got a one of my regular friends is in the pod with me and then I have two other regular friends who are on the other part. So seven of us are there. We got the packs of innocent remastered in front of us and the, you know, historically tournament organizer judge, whatever that guy says, has everyone here drafted before? Everyone says yes. All right, cool. If you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, you guys are good. Good to begin. And I've kind of turned to the public to our part saying, all right, let's go back, you know. So we open the first pack. Look through the cards. Take a person down, take a pass, sit down, take a pass down. And then around the fourth pick. Or maybe the fifth pick. I realize that the cards that I'm being passed or the next package being passed are significantly less cards. Not all, not off by one or Like, you know, if

01:09:37 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah.

01:09:37 Onnik: if someone to my right is passing me their pack, it should have 13, then 12, then ten then nine. But this had six.

01:09:49 Nicole Alfaro: Oh, no.

01:09:49 Onnik: And I was like, Wait, hold up. And I took the part like, a lot of guys like it. Someone, something messed up with these packs because like I have a lot less packs, less us cars in this pack. I was like, I'm getting past like, does someone go out of order to someone like take, you know, grab the wrong pack or something and everyone kind of like looks around and shrugs and was like, I don't know and it's not. And I was like, All right, just like, we'll continue, I guess, and we'll just count the cards at the end of the pack.

01:10:26 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah. Usually when that happens. Yeah. Usually when that happens, it's like, okay, everybody count their cards.

01:10:33 Onnik: Yeah.

01:10:33 Nicole Alfaro: Everyone

01:10:33 Onnik: Which is

01:10:34 Nicole Alfaro: should

01:10:34 Onnik: what

01:10:34 Nicole Alfaro: have,

01:10:34 Onnik: we did.

01:10:34 Nicole Alfaro: you know, X amount of cards by now. Yeah.

01:10:37 Onnik: Well, we were about to do that, but I'm like, let's let's just keep going. maybe it'll kind of self-correct or something. And so then I take

01:10:45 Nicole Alfaro: Mm

01:10:45 Onnik: this

01:10:45 Nicole Alfaro: hmm. Yeah. Sometimes

01:10:46 Onnik: remaining.

01:10:46 Nicole Alfaro: a pecks out of order and it works out.

01:10:49 Onnik: Yeah. So I think it's like Romania, you know, six cards in a pack or whatever. Shrug, take one, pass it down and then they can next pack. It's like four. Am I? Okay, now hold up. There's something really wrong here. I guess not. Before cars left in this pack. And as I notice this, but I don't think I said anything yet at the moment as I noticed this. I kind of like because the pic was easy for me, like I said, the cards then and I kind of look at down at the rest of the table because I was at the end and I kind of see what everyone else is doing and I see one guy at the end, look through his pack, put one face down, look through the same pack. I put a second, one face on and then pass it over. And I'm like, All right. Time out. You there? What

01:11:37 Nicole Alfaro: Among

01:11:37 Onnik: are you

01:11:37 Nicole Alfaro: the.

01:11:37 Onnik: doing? I mean, I wasn't like accusing him, but like being basically like, hey, he'll hold up.

01:11:42 Nicole Alfaro: Right

01:11:43 Onnik: you just take two

01:11:44 Nicole Alfaro: it.

01:11:44 Onnik: cars from the park? He's like, Yeah, like, okay,

01:11:49 Nicole Alfaro: No.

01:11:50 Onnik: you're supposed to take one. Have you been taking two for everything sake? Yeah. Like, oh, so in a Commander Masters draft, you do take

01:12:04 Nicole Alfaro: And again.

01:12:04 Onnik: two at a time and all other drafts you only take one. And then he and the person next to him both say, Oh, I'm like, Wait, hold up. You were taking too

01:12:16 Nicole Alfaro: Oh, Oh,

01:12:19 Onnik: So

01:12:19 Nicole Alfaro: no.

01:12:20 Onnik: yeah, exactly. And I'm like, I

01:12:23 Nicole Alfaro: And

01:12:23 Onnik: don't know how to continue from

01:12:24 Nicole Alfaro: how you

01:12:25 Onnik: This

01:12:25 Nicole Alfaro: correct

01:12:25 Onnik: is pack one.

01:12:25 Nicole Alfaro: that? Yeah.

01:12:27 Onnik: So I'm like, like, you know, like I can apologize. Like, guys, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to, like, get a judge in here because this is just so, like, awkward or lopsided or his right hand judge comes over and he's like, Hey, what's going on? And then I'm like, a lot pack one is. A mess because I say those words. I tried not to, like, make them feel bad, but I said they

01:12:50 Nicole Alfaro: Right. Right.

01:12:51 Onnik: were underneath. Those two places at the end were kind of under the assumption that it was commander masks or draft style. So they've been making deep and taking two pics per pack. And then he asked like, how far into the pack are you guys? And I think they counted the cards and they had like 18 or something.

01:13:09 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah.

01:13:09 Onnik: And keep

01:13:10 Nicole Alfaro: Some

01:13:10 Onnik: in mind,

01:13:10 Nicole Alfaro: of us

01:13:10 Onnik: this

01:13:10 Nicole Alfaro: halfway

01:13:10 Onnik: like.

01:13:11 Nicole Alfaro: through, and they're all the

01:13:13 Onnik: Yeah.

01:13:13 Nicole Alfaro: way through.

01:13:14 Onnik: Yeah. So they have 18 cards still more to pick because we've been taking two at a time. And then,

01:13:20 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah.

01:13:20 Onnik: like, the judges kind of like faced palms and he's like like, oh, no. And we were trying to figure out what the best corrective action was, as another judge added at the and the other part of eight who is also trying to give their opinion of like how to remedy this because he heard it was going on

01:13:37 Nicole Alfaro: hmm.

01:13:38 Onnik: one or two had a little talk to each other and. Any thing we do is fly. There's just no real way to fix this. But what

01:13:49 Nicole Alfaro: No.

01:13:49 Onnik: ended up happening was that we surrendered everything from pack one, all of our picks, all the remaining packs, everything was surrendered. The store took them back. They gave us a fresh pack. So starting back at zero.

01:14:03 Nicole Alfaro: Okay.

01:14:04 Onnik: All right, that's.

01:14:04 Nicole Alfaro: That seems the best way to do it.

01:14:07 Onnik: Like, all right, that's fine. In the meantime, the other part of it or like, I'm back to maybe two and a half or something. All right, cool.

01:14:14 Nicole Alfaro: Mm hmm.

01:14:15 Onnik: The judge one more time says, All right, take one card. And, you know, put a face on and then pass the rest out. And then I say also, please be sure to take out the token card or the advertisement card or the art card, the card that you cannot play magic with. Take it out of the bag. So you just have regular playing cards. Everyone's cool. Cool. All right. A new pack will take one and 4 minutes. Two people actually passed to the right thinking that we're on pack, too. But that was quickly corrected because that could have been also a mess.

01:14:49 Nicole Alfaro: Uh huh. Mm

01:14:50 Onnik: passing

01:14:50 Nicole Alfaro: hmm.

01:14:50 Onnik: to the left because this is pack one, a repack one. 13 cards. 12 cards. 11 cards. Nine cards. No. No. Why? What? Again.

01:15:03 Nicole Alfaro: Oh, no.

01:15:03 Onnik: The cards are. Out of order. And I said, Guys, it's happening again. Like something's missing. And again, I'm just. It's just. Just keep going. Please take one. Please try to keep things in order. And I'm trying not to get frustrated.

01:15:24 Nicole Alfaro: Mm hmm.

01:15:25 Onnik: then we. We keep going. We finish the first pack, and I'm like, All right, guys, before we touch back to Everett, please count your cards. 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 13 and 13. What the hell? How are two cards missing? Just entirely missing, like if someone had 13 and 15. Okay. That at least averages out.

01:15:49 Nicole Alfaro: Uh huh.

01:15:50 Onnik: But two cars are entirely missing from the pack. I'm like, How is this possible? How are you? Short a card? And again, attorney and organizer, judge, she kind of over here. Is this any kind of walks, offers like like they're going to go with with the draft so far. And I'm like these two guys at the end, another one who double drafted her first time, but the other two guys that shoot the other end are missing a card. And then he just has a giant sigh. And then we do figure out that they also took out the basic LAN card instead of keeping

01:16:23 Nicole Alfaro: Okay.

01:16:23 Onnik: in a pack. So we're like, All right, at least we kind of figured that out. So, all right. So, you know, they're offering you all by this is not like not just just just please keep your cards to yourself. Don't pass things around. Let's just move on to pack two. In the meantime, the other pod is already finished with the draft, I think. All right, we're finally starting to open a card, take a person and take them. Pass it on, take them. Pass it on. Doing the thing again and once again. But packs

01:16:56 Nicole Alfaro: Oh,

01:16:56 Onnik: are of order. And I'm like, How is this happening again? Like, I don't understand this. Like, this is. This is insane. This is madness. And again, I'm like, just I just shrug it off and I'm like, let's just keep going. Please go slow. Please take a time pass. Only when the person you're passing to is ready to receive the pack. And at the end of pack two, I said, All right, everyone, stop. Please get your cards. I ended up with 29 because I was passed a last pick twice, which is just two basic lines. But

01:17:31 Nicole Alfaro: Mm.

01:17:32 Onnik: still some people had 27, some people are 28. And I'm like just like, I don't know what's happening here. Pack three. Please don't pass until. Or don't pick up the next pack until like everyone's done. And I literally held like I basically held the hand of everyone else in the pod. And I kind of leaned over

01:17:54 Nicole Alfaro: Mm hmm.

01:17:55 Onnik: like, all right, no, I got the first pick. Cool. All right, pass. We got to

01:18:01 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah.

01:18:01 Onnik: pick

01:18:01 Nicole Alfaro: You have to start calling

01:18:01 Onnik: past.

01:18:02 Nicole Alfaro: the draft like it's a pro tour.

01:18:03 Onnik: We got to pick. All right, everyone, give to your good now. All right, cool. Pass. And we. And then finally, it was like. Clean three pack. And by the time we finish our draft, the other part has already finished deck building and sleeping and all that.

01:18:20 Nicole Alfaro: Mm hmm.

01:18:21 Onnik: And that was the only pack that went right. It's our finally we finally finished the draft portion that. I don't think I've ever had such a, I guess, a catastrophe of a foot traffic. And again, I tried not to show that I was so upset because, like, I apologize. I was like, no, like, I don't care. I'm cool. It's fine. I just want to be sure that we all draft the same way, the right way, because this is a casual event.

01:18:49 Nicole Alfaro: Mm

01:18:49 Onnik: If

01:18:49 Nicole Alfaro: hmm.

01:18:50 Onnik: this was maybe something a little more people might get angry. Like

01:18:55 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah.

01:18:55 Onnik: the store was cool

01:18:56 Nicole Alfaro: Get.

01:18:56 Onnik: enough to, like, literally give everyone an extra, extra pack because they just basically put the board and, you know. You know, open seven packs

01:19:04 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah.

01:19:04 Onnik: just for

01:19:05 Nicole Alfaro: Put singles into their inventory.

01:19:06 Onnik: Yeah,

01:19:08 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah.

01:19:10 Onnik: but it was just like time after time after time. Something I messed up. And besides the first one where the two guys admitted to where the double drafted. I don't know how I don't know where everything else went wrong. And it was just so frustrating. It was so

01:19:29 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah. I've seen similar things happen with like, like we always have a rule that like there's three zones, there's what's in your hand, there's the pack being passed to you and there's the pack you've passed. Never put a second pack. If they, if the person after you has not picked up that pack

01:19:46 Onnik: Yeah.

01:19:46 Nicole Alfaro: and never pick up a pack if you're not that far. So like you

01:19:51 Onnik: Which is called

01:19:52 Nicole Alfaro: it.

01:19:52 Onnik: zone drafting. Yeah.

01:19:53 Nicole Alfaro: that's how we've always done it. But still things happen. Like sometimes you'll get someone that they get passed out of order, like number seven and number eight get switched. Or like I've had someone accidentally pass their

01:20:10 Onnik: yeah. Yep.

01:20:12 Nicole Alfaro: Which is awful. But like, there's a point where it's like too late. What can you do about it? This person now has, like, some random pick.

01:20:23 Onnik: Yeah. Ran a pack of, like, calling cards of two colors sort of thing.

01:20:28 Nicole Alfaro: Yeah. Or like. Yeah. Now. And what they have in their pile of their picks is just a random half of a pack.

01:20:38 Onnik: Yep.

01:20:39 Nicole Alfaro: So I've seen it. I've seen it be a real mess like that before it too. Yep.

01:20:44 Onnik: they got messy. I ended up drafting this a blue by spells archetype in a of remastered it was I had three

01:20:54 Nicole Alfaro: Okay.

01:20:54 Onnik: thermal alchemists which is pretty nice

01:20:57 Nicole Alfaro: Okay.

01:20:57 Onnik: but I was like really struggling for. Useful spells.

01:21:03 Nicole Alfaro: Did you get a burning vengeance or anything like that?

01:21:07 Onnik: in the third pack. HAGEL But I literally just had to think twice in a silent departure, and that was it.

01:21:14 Nicole Alfaro: Oh.

01:21:14 Onnik: I didn't

01:21:14 Nicole Alfaro: Okay.

01:21:14 Onnik: have a whole lot of flashbacks, so I ended up making two combat tricks that I just needed

01:21:19 Nicole Alfaro: Okay.

01:21:20 Onnik: to sort of, you know, threshold saucers, in essence, just kind of make that connection And it was it was

01:21:25 Nicole Alfaro: Right.

01:21:26 Onnik: fine. It played okay, but not the the creatures are great, too. Spells. I need a little bit of work.