Last week's announcement of a new format, Pioneer, by the powers that be reminded me of something pretty important. With all of the Brawl/Commander, Pioneer/Historic, Vintage/Legacy and Standard and Modern too, there are a lot of formats out there. Just two of them are kitchen tables, but they are there.

Brawl was introduced by Wizards, and then I think most folks played it, didn't like it, and moved on. It can feel like a weak Commander to me, with its lower starting life and 60 card deck size. Instead you could do 40 life, 100 cards, Standard legal, and allow planeswalkers as leaders of a deck as the main difference between formats.

You also have variants of these formats too, like Oathbreaker, Brawl, Commander '95 and Tiny Leaders that are all various spins from Commander. You can unearth kitchen table brews such as Pauper that are pretty keen cool.

Take Pioneer as a good example. Is there room for a new Modern? And is starting with a set that's seven years old the way to go? Knowing the format will expand like Modern with around a 1,000 new cards annually, wouldn't starting with five years out's Khans of Tarkir instead have made more sense? You could pull the fetch lands by moving to four years and Battle for Zendikar or three years if you wanted to pull the 2nd trip to Eldrazi Town. (I don't really have any issues with it.) But I feel that if Pioneer digs too far back, you'll have the same issue in a few years' time. Pioneer will be the new Modern and then another format arrives on the block called Caravan. At least Frontier began in 2015, not 2012, and was based around the introduction of the third and current card frame, much how Modern was around the new card frame as well.

Interested in running some cool and forgotten formats at your kitchen table? Getting tired of Commander? Want to try something new? Great!

10. Pauper

Pauper is great! Playing with all commons is the ultimate budget format (although there are some formats that allow cards by their cheapness of cost and not rarity, like the Penny Dreadful an online format that allows only those cards that cost 0.01 tickets each). Commons give you loads of options, but will lack a lot of powerful game-changing cards like planeswalkers, sweeping effects, and more. When your format can't run nasty equipment, or Stoneforge Mystic, any planeswalkers, and more, it tends to be a lot more interesting and fair.

There are lots of eligible decks for the format. The format was bifurcated for a long time into an online and offline version, but they were recently brought together by the powers that be over at Wizards. The format just banned Arcum's Astrolabe. The banned list includes free cards like Gush, Daze, and Gitaxian Probe, some storm cards like Empty the Warrens, and more. Only four cards that are banned aren't so in order to keep the storm decks down or are free.

You can read more about it here!

9.5. Super-Secret Tech - Acid Magic

I adore Acid Magic. It began online on MODO as a deck that required you to be Pauper, Prismatic, and Singleton. People would advertise those decks as PPS online. I loved it. As a reminder, Singleton is online for "Highlander" the format where you cannot run more than one of any card, other than basic lands. Prismatic requires decks of at least 250 cards and 20 cards of each color. Gold cards can count for only one of their colors. I discussed moving this to real life, and using their real life names, of Five Color, Pauper, and Highlander and thus the initials for the real life format was 5PH. This name resonated with the community, and two people started naming it Acid Magic, as 5 on the pH scale is acidic. The real-life version of this format is awesome! It's sensitive to card advantage, plays very smoothly, and gives you all of the awesomeness of all of the three variants combined into one fun format. Any card banned in any of those formats is banned here (Pauper and Five are the only ones with banned lists.)

9. Extended

Extended was a rotating format that was basically the last two Standards combined. It was supported as a full-fledged tournament format, but was removed as an officially supported format by Wizards. That doesn't mean you can't keep on playing it!

As of right now, that would mean these sets are legal:

Kaladesh Block, Ixalan Block, Amonkhet Block, Dominaria, Throne of Eldraine, Core Set 2020, Core Set 2019, Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, and War of the Spark. That's a lot of sets! Any cards that were banned at any time during their Standard run during this time are also banned now.

That's these cards:

• Field of the Dead
• Smuggler's Copter
• Rogue Refiner
• Ramunap Ruins
• Rampaging Ferocidon
• Felidar Guardian
• Attune with Aether
• Aetherworks Marvel

There are tons of fun cards and archetypes you can dig into there! Combine Treasure and Food! Have the Gods from Amonkhet Block and their God-Eternal version in the same deck! Run Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord with actual Vampires! Fun awaits!

Extended may not have been hotly desired as much by tournament folks, but there ain't no reason not to run it today.

8. Ancient

Ancient is probably best described as the Anti-Modern. Any card that was initially printed prior to Mirrodin is legal for Ancient. It was created around the same time as Modern as a way to highlight older cards. Many cards are legal in both if they've been reprinted, such as Lightning Bolt, Wall of Blossoms, and Thallid.

Note that cards printed in the starter sets like Portal Second Age are also legal for Ancient

Due to the uniqueness of the format, it does have its own banned and restricted list which you can find here, as well as more about Ancient (the banned list is very similar to, but not identical to, that of Legacy).

7. Alphabet Format

What's your name? Not your full name, or the name your parent gave you. (although those could be the same.) What's your actual name? I was born Wesley Abraham Sargent, and I go by Abe. Abe is my real name, not the name that just happened to be first on the birth certificate. Your real name.

Because my real name is Abe, I can only build decks in this format with cards that begin with the letter "A." The only exemption? Basic lands. With almost 20,000 unique cards out there now, there are a lot of cards for most of these. For example, cards that begin with "J"? Roughly 300. Note that it has to begin with it, a card like Flame Jet won't count as "J".

I actually built a Commander deck using this format, and it's a Boros Angel themed deck around Archangel Avacyn. It's fun!

Get your Alphabet name on.

6. Arena Radiant League

Back in the '90s, the powers that be created in-store events and support for something called Arena League. They had various stickers they made for the formats and styles that you could put on the back of your DCI Card. I still carry mine in my wallet. You could get promo basic lands, oversized cards, Vanguard cards and lots more as prizes. It was a lot of fun.

There was a format they did that was really, really cool. It was launched during Rath Block. Here is how it worked.

Purchase a Preconstructed deck. You can add a 15-card sideboard to that deck (you can remove up to 15 cards from the deck, and push them into the sideboard instead of adding them to the 'board.) It has to be Standard legal. Then you play these pre-cons with 15 card additions. Taking a theme deck and then layering in 15 cards of your choice was really cool!

If you were to do it today, you could run it with duel decks or other decks that are legal. You could also slide to Modern, Pioneer, Extended or other formats from older. You could also run it with Commander decks or something too, grab a Commander deck, swap 15 cards, and then play. The four Brawl decks feel like a cool way to try this out!

Good luck.

5. Ravnica Elite

The Elite people of Ravnica have spoken! The power brokers and powers that be have ordained that you cannot run any cards but theirs! In this format, only cards from the nine Ravnica sets are legal. (That means the first Ravnica block, the Return block, and the three sets just printed including War of the Spark).

I think this is a cool idea for a format, so let's pause the article a moment just to build a deck for you that's Ravnica Elite!

There are tons of cards in Ravnica Elite that are legal too, more than 2000!

Let's do a fun guild - Simic!

Elite Simic | Ravnica Elite| Abe Sargent

• Creatures (24)
• 2 Frilled Mystic
• 2 Hydroid Krasis
• 2 Master Biomancer
• 2 Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
• 2 Prime Speaker Zegana
• 2 Simic Sky Swallower
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Coiling Oracle
• 4 Trygon Predator

• Instants (6)
• 2 Mystic Genesis
• 2 Simic Charm
• 2 Voidslime

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Urban Evolution

• Lands (26)
• 9 Forest
• 9 Island
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 4 Simic Growth Chamber

Buy This Deck Export text format

There you go, a quick little build that features only cards printed in Ravnica sets! Now does that look like fun? I agree! Head on over to Ravnica for the night!

4. Star Magic

Unlike the other formats here, this one is a play variant as well. You'll need five players. Pick a format like Commander or Standard. Everyone builds a mono-colored deck that's legal, and each of the colors needs to be represented.

Shuffle, and sit in the star pattern of the color wheel, so White is next to Blue and Green, and Green is need to White and Red, etc. Your enemies are across from you, and your allies are next to you. You win the game when your two enemies die. You keep playing though, if your allies are still brawling. There can be two winners. Sure, Black's allies of Blue and Red want to kill each other, but they also want to kill others. Your allies are also allied with your enemies, so killing them may not be as easy as you think.

And that's Star Magic. Note that the normal rules only require you to run mono-colored decks, so a deck can run Eldrazi, artifacts, etc that shore up that color's weaknesses. What I'd suggest doing is removing that. Every card played must have that color identity. You could run Lifecrafter's Bestiary in a mono-Green deck as it has a Green color identity, but not Staff of Nin in that deck as it doesn't. This allows you to see the powers, and weaknesses, lo each color as they truly are.

3. Five Color AND Centurion

If you know me, you knew that Five Color would be here somewhere, right? Right!

Five Color features a fat format with fat spells and fat decks. Today it clocks in at 300 cards, and 25 of each color. You can see more about it here! It has just 8 banned cards. Most are restricted. Note that it's one of the formats where you are allowed to run Chaos Orb and Falling Star. Enjoy yourselves. Multicolored color cards can count as one.

Centurion is a basically a lighter version of Five Color that's similar to players of commander. 100 card sized decks, 15 cards of each color, and like Commander and Highlander, it has no duplicates.

2. Tribal Wars

You know what's fun? Nothing is more kitchen table than decks built around tribal creature type themes like Elves, Merfolk, Zombies, Goblins, and Knights. In this format, you must build a Tribal deck. In this case, a tribal deck is defined as having at least one-third of your deck sharing a creature type, so in a 60-card deck, that's 20 cards.

The format uses the ban list of Legacy, and adds in these cards:

• Arboria
• Circle of Solace
• Endemic Plague
• Engineered Plague
• Moat
• Peer Pressure
• The Abyss
• Tsabo's Decree
• Umezawa's Jitte
• Unnatural Selection

The official WOTC list hasn't been updated in a while. I would also encourage you strongly to ban these:

• Cavern of Souls
• Extinction
• Witch's Vengeance

I'd also put Selective Snare on my watch list for being too problematic in case it was overpowered.

1. Rainbow Stairwell

Welcome to Rainbow Stairwell!

You are going to climb up a prismatic stairwell. The goal is to run one card for each converted casting cost 1-6. You could run Llanowar Elves, Quirion Elves, Fyndhorn Elder, Argothian Elder, Elvish Bard, and Elegant Edgecrafters. Those have mana costs 1-6.

Now here are the key additions to Stairwell.

1. You can only run a single copy of each card. You can't run 4 Llanowar Elves or something.
2. You must run 1-6 of each color. This includes colorless cards as well, so artifacts and colorless cards with mana costs from 1-6.
3. You can run any 24 lands you wish.

Total? 60 card deck.

In order to help with deck-building, don't run multicolored/gold cards. (Later on, once your playgroup is used to Stairwell, you might want to try them out. But for now, it's hard enough as a format to toss them in too, this will prevent someone from running a Mono-colored deck with a bunch of hybrid stuff).

I adore Stairwell! Any card with a casting cost fewer than 7 and more than zero is legal. That's basically anything you can think of!

And there you are! We have a ton of formats there that will really help to shake up your evening! Let's be honest, did you forget about one of them? That's okay!

P.S. - As a fun meta-comment on the lack of play of non-Commander formats at the kitchen table, I actually created one of the formats in this article entitled "Formats You Forgot About" to see if some of you thought you might have forgotten it. Which one do you suspect I created?