Forging A Format: Shard Wars

Usually, on Thursdays, I write an article about the deck that I’m currently playing. I generally show off a decklist, and chat a bit about why I think it’s the best deck to be shuffling up right now. I do this primarily to prepare for a tournament that weekend. However, I won’t be attending any tournaments this weekend, and while I’ve been very happy with the way that Tokens has preformed over the weeks, I’m beginning to think that switching to some version of Naya may be beneficial. While I hammer out the particulars of my list, I figured that I would use today to discuss one of the projects that I’ve been working on recently.

Once a month, give or take, my friend Marshall invites a number of people over to play Magic. For the most part, these are people who met during our stint playing World of Warcraft, and a good time is had by all. When we started, one of the most common formats for us to play was “Color War”. The rules were fairly simple. Using preconstructed decks that Marshall provided – all monocolored – you would sit in color order around the table: WUBRG. Your goal was to kill the two people across from you, and you won when both of them were eliminated.

There were a number of other rules, clarifying who was an opponent, and who were your allies (allied colors), but the important thing was really how Marshall balanced the five decks against each other. The Color War decks are lovingly updated each time a new set comes out, but always careful not to increase their power level too much. When it was discovered that blue could go infinite on mana and Capsize-lock the board (by casting and buying back Capsize an arbitrarily large number of times) the deck was altered to weaken it. Now, the end result is that the five decks are each paragons of their color, featuring all-stars like Morphling.

A while ago, I had an idea – well, a set of ideas – all rotating around the central core of a ‘new’ color war. It wasn’t that I disliked Marshall’s decks – far from it. I think they’re spectacular. I just wanted to try my own hand at a similar, but mostly non-rotating endeavor. The conclusion I came to?

Shard Wars

For those of you who are unaware, Alara was the central location of the Shards of Alara block. In ancient times, a battle between Asha and Malfegor sundered the plane into five parts, each devoid of two types of Mana. Bant lacked Black and Red, Esper was without Green and Red, Grixis devoid of White and Green, Jund eschewed White and Blue, and Naya forsook Black and Blue. The result was five fully fleshed out worlds, each highlighting a completely different style of play. With abundant mana fixing, playing three colors wasn’t difficult at all, and the mechanical ties that bound each shard together rewarded strong synergistic play.

Exalted - get more of it.

I want to capture that feel in a constructed format, building a set of five decks that are based around the Shards. These decks would be designed to be played against each other with the idea of ‘imperfect symmetry’ at the forefront.

For those who don’t know about imperfect symmetry, you should watch Penny Arcade’s recent discussion on the topic (Here). The basic concept is that in order to have a balanced game, one does not need to create it like chess – with everyone having equal resources. You can instead make multiple completely different forces that happen to pair well against each other. Diplomacy is a good example of this, if you’ve ever played that (exceptionally good) board game. The Starcraft series is another spectacular example, and even World of Warcraft could invoke the concept – with 8 classes of varying skills and talents, the end goal is still to have each able to complete their goals in a manner individual to that class.

No one wants their format to feel like Grixis

I spoke to Marshall, and he thought that it was a great idea as long as we differentiated it from Color War significantly enough that one did not necessarily obsolete the other. Neither of us wanted to put significant work into this format only to have it be ignored for one that already exists, and neither of us wanted all of Marshall’s hard work on the Color War decks to be squandered.

This isn’t a topic that I can fully treat in a single article, so I’m just going to go over some of my initial ideas to try and show how I approach creating a format.

The Format

Kresh wouldn't mind bashing in some Grixis and Naya Skulls.

When we’re first starting off, a lot of questions existed about how the decks were to be constructed. Highlander (Where there can be only one of each card), Standard 4-of-per deck? Some mixture of these? Should they be sixty cards or 100? Should ‘allied’ shards be able to attack one another, or no?

All of that is very important, and I haven’t worked any of it out at all because I’ve been focused instead on something that I personally think is much more important to the overall endeavor.

Each deck needs a flavor.

It would be easy for me to throw all the cards affiliated with each shard into a deck and call it a day. It wouldn’t be balanced, but we could work on that and get it roughly to a balanced state. That, however, is not what I’m planning on doing. Instead, the core of the deck should be a key interaction – one thing that each deck really wants to do above all else.

In the original block, each Shard had a mechanic associated with it.

Bant: Exalted

Esper: Colored Artifacts

Grixis: Unearth

Jund: Devour

Naya: ‘Gargantuan’ (Power > 5)

Now, three of those seem like a reasonable thing to set a deck around. Exalted is a great mechanic, and pushes a player towards a very specific style of play that fits thematically with the Shard itself. We’re definitely keeping it as Bant’s Flagship mechanic. Grixis’ Unearth functions similarly. With a bunch of sacrificial and board wiping effects to keep things down, Grixis keeps coming back. Jund’s Devour mechanic seems harder to work around, but with a token generation subtheme (and some help from the new commander decks) we can probably make it work.

We get it. You're overpowered. Relax.

The two that I have an issue with are Naya and Esper. Just having colored artifacts is very flavorful and does a lot to explain the Shard of Esper from a story standpoint, but without a ton of insane artifacts, I’m balking a little bit on making their key mechanic into something that is so passive in so many cases. Instead, I’m tilting a little more towards a Grand-Architect style deck or a deck  where the goal is an ‘assemble the machine!’ style of play. Perhaps using the stations from Fifth Dawn, or something along those lines. I think that it would require a decent amount of work, but we could probably make it into a ‘mad science with artifacts’ deck that would appeal to some of my players.

Look at me! I'm pretty and have no mechanical identity!

As for Naya, I think that the key here is going to be tricky. The Power greater than five mechanic is interesting, but I feel like we need something that’s going to make it a little deeper than just “Play big things”. Part of me wants to have Progenitus in their deck plus some of the 5-color activation creatures from Conflux, and make it a ramp deck (using ramp effects like Abundant Growth to allow it access to all 5 colors). This admittedly breaks the color symmetry of the game, but also allows Naya its own identity that fits with the jungle nature of the plane. What do you guys think of that?

The core concepts that belong to each deck are critical, but cycles will also play a major role in establishing the flavor of the decks. Luckily, Alara has no want for cycles. (MTGSalvation Wiki) With 19 direct cycles in the first set alone, we shouldn’t have any problem finding flavorful options there.

The whole set need a lot of work, but once we get the overarching themes down, Marshall and I will be discussing what the actual format we’ll be playing is, and how we can make it a special and unique experience for all.

Do you have any suggestions for the Shard War decks? Ideas that could be incorporated? Have you seen something that I haven’t seen? There’s a good chance that you have, and I’d love to hear about it via Twitter (@ajrula), email (andrewrula AT gmail.com) or just through reddit comments!

This weekend, I’ll be in DC, visiting with some friends, so no magic. But on Tuesday, Deckbuilding 101 returns with a look at building a deck you’ll love - and why that's the best option at your next tournament.