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When you are exposed to a new format, is your gut reaction to start coming up with ways to break it? Do you want to find a way to win at all costs? Are you a format breaker?
So . . .
Are you a format breaker?
St. Patrick’s Day is coming up soon. (It’s a March holiday in places like the U.S.) A lot of folks all over will be decorating and wearing green all day long.
Do you know what would be fun? Why not have a St. Patrick’s Day Magic Night this year? You have an all-green format. Maybe you can have a Standard St. Patrick’s Format for your local Friday Night Magic. Or perhaps you just want an all-green casual night at your kitchen table that week. Whatever you want will work out fine.
Now, in order to facilitate this, your playgroup brainstorms together some rules for the format. And here is the rule you agree to:
So you may not play white, blue, black, or red stuff. That’s easy enough, right?
At your next casual Magic night, suppose you have some decks that are perfectly in flavor. Maybe Steve built a mono-green enchantment deck built around things like Eidolon of Blossoms and Verduran Enchantress. All right! Rachel brought a mono-green aggro Stompy deck that features early beaters, such as Troll Ascetic. Everybody has the cards to win.
I think we would all agree that this deck, featuring red mana making and red activations and kickers, is not in the flavor of St. Patrick’s Format. But it is certainly within the rules. It’s legal.
And let’s push that further. What if I showed up with a mono-artifact deck that didn’t have any green spells at all? It just had stuff like Steel Overseer, Darksteel Citadel, Myr Enforcer, Arcbound Ravager, and more. What would you think of that? Again, it’s not the flavor, but it is legal.
If I brought those decks, I’m a format breaker. I’m trying to break the format that we have agreed to play by testing the rules and finding ways of pushing past the flavor and into something else entirely—but all legally.
In Casual Land, things are very different. Flavor of the format matters more. You aren’t trying to win a prize. So if you bring a deck that is clearly out of sync with the concept of the format in order to win, people are going to question you.
Now, when I explained the rules of St. Patrick’s Format, were you instinctively looking for the loopholes? Did you see my off-color-activation question before we arrived there? Did you see the mono-artifact deck before I mentioned it? If so, you may be a format breaker. You probably have strong Spike tendencies, wanting cards and decks that win more than anything else.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with being a format breaker. That’s who you are. But you need to curb that stuff at the kitchen table (which we’ll talk about later).
In the meantime, here’s my preferred wording:
That way, you can’t use Masticores and Memory Jars, Clan Defiance, and so forth. This forces you to play with the strengths and weaknesses of your color, which is the whole point of the challenge after all!
Players often look at a new format and try to break it. We have it with Commander. If you have ever had the displeasure of going up against a second-turn combo kill in Magic Online multiplayer with someone’s Ad Nauseam combo that gives him or her a Tendrils of Agony kill (and takes fifteen minutes of clicking to perform), you’ll know precisely what I mean.
Some people just have to break casual formats. That’s their thing. That’s their raison d’etre. And that’s okay. It works in tournaments well, and people applaud them. They are puzzle breakers, decoders, and winners. There has to be a place under the Magic tent for every sort of player, and format breakers are players, too.
Welcome! Sit down and have a seat!
But I need to tell format breakers everywhere that it’s not that nice. It’s not that fun for everyone else. There is a reason some styles of play have become taboo in casual circles, and it’s often because of format breakers.
Let’s take a look to push this point home.
Suppose you are building a deck for next week’s Magic night. You and a group of four or five people come on by and want to spend some time playing cards and hanging out. Great! Your playgroup allows certain formats, and people are allowed to play whatever they own. So you decide to come with a deck that allows you to have some fun.
Your deck is a version of the Vintage Dredge deck that has Bridge from Below, Bazaar of Baghdad, and more. It takes a while to play out, and it uses Bridges to make a huge Zombie-token army to win the game very quickly.
Can you understand why your friends don’t want to sit there and just watch you play solitaire for ten minutes while playing all of these different cards? They feel you aren’t taking them into consideration when you built your Dredge deck.
Let me give you a non-Magic example.
How would you feel? You thought your opponent was going to show up for a game of chess, with the sides evenly matched. How do you respond? Are you going to argue that this rule doesn’t really refer to the numbers of pieces, even though it is vaguely worded enough to allow that interpretation? Are you going to refuse to play unless he goes back to the standard setup? Are you just going to get up and leave? Are you going to just let it go and play?
Here’s the thing: Many casual players feel that a format breaker, who shows up with the mono-artifact deck at a green Magic night, is the person with sixteen queens. Certainly not every non-breaker feels the same way. That’s okay. Again, there has to be space for everyone under the Magic tent.
So, if you are a format breaker, how do you practice what you love outside of tournaments? That’s an awesome question! Here are a few suggestions I can think of. If you can think of others, let us know!
- Write down the deck you would make—if this were a tournament—that finds that loophole in the rules. Look at how awesome you are at finding it! That is a nasty deck. Now actually build a second deck to go play. You can even show folks how clever you are at your casual Magic night by showing that decklist.
- E-mail that decklist out instead to see if others would be okay with it. If you don’t want to give away specifics, just ask about general themes.
- Bring two decks, and play the rules-breaking one first, for one game, and then the more relaxed, in-flavor version the rest of the evening. That way, you have a chance to show off your skills!
- You know what? Give yourself the ability to write the rules. Now write the rules in such a way as to prevent any loopholes from happening. Use your best format-breaking skills to imagine potential angles of attack, and cut them off in the rules. Make the best rules possible!
- Find a playgroup of people who try to push the rules each week. Hey, if breaking a variant of Magic is part of the culture, everyone is on the same playing field, right? Everyone has sixteen queens!
I think these different tactics are useful ways to provide a chance to use that side of you that loves Magic—that loves to push the boundaries of formats and games. It’s awesome you can do that in Magic, and you can do it outside of tournaments, too! But you need to make sure that your having fun doesn’t come at the expense of others, but instead enhances theirs.
Get ready to unbreak some things!
See you next week,
Abe Sargent
