I’ve been a fan of Magic The Gathering for a really long time - I played my first games in 1994, I have a 4-digit DCI number, and I’ve played a huge number of formats over the years. So it’s not lightly that I declare that I have an absolute favorite format, eclipsing all others. What might be surprising is that this format is one that I’ve never seen played outside the small group of friends with whom I developed it. We call it Micro-Draft Magic.
The underlying principle of micro-draft Magic is simple; with two or three people, you draft 3 packs of cards (one pack each, or a 3-pack Winston draft for two people) and then build 20 card decks. Then, you play an ordinary game of Magic, with one modification: if, at any time you are compelled to draw a card and your library is empty, you may shuffle your graveyard into your library. If you cannot then draw a card, you lose the game.
It seems like this format should feel a lot like ordinary Magic, but it plays vastly different. For starters, these tiny decks are remarkably consistent: mana problems are rare, and you’re very likely to get all the pieces for a 2- or 3-card combo even if you only have one copy of each card in your tiny deck. If you can end up with an empty deck and just a few cards in your graveyard, those cards end up being what you play every turn, which leads to remarkable combos and interactions; in a game I played yesterday, I was able to obtain a virtual lock against my opponent by playing a bunch of card draw and a single Captivating Gyre. Most importantly, though, is how the interactions with your opponent(s) change.
When you’re playing with 20-card decks, you’re almost certain to go through your entire deck, or close to it, in the course of a game. Where things get really interesting is when you play a series of games against the same opponent with the same decks - usually we’ll play best 2 out of 3, or 3 of 5. After the first game, you know every card that your opponent will play. Moreover, as the game progresses, you know ever more about the plays that are available to them, and are forced to play with careful attention to their possible moves. In practice, this makes for incredibly complex and engaging game play; it makes it more like a game of perfect information.
When playing this in a 3-player configuration, we will sometimes draft 2 packs each and use 24-card decks, and we play in a triangle where each pair of players has a shared pool of 20 life. This works kind of like 2-Headed Giant when you’re on defense, and the fact that both of your opponents are also your partners turn by turn makes for a very balanced 3-player game; while you get to gang up on defense, everyone is alone on offense so there aren’t the usual dynamics where two people can eliminate the third and then fight it out between themselves.
I’ve been playing this micro-draft format with friends for a couple of years now, and it’s become my favorite 2-player format by a long ways. It’s inexpensive relative to a normal draft, and the complexity of the game play and the way that being able to reshuffle your graveyard changes the game dynamics makes enough of a difference that it substantially changes card valuations relative to more standard draft formats. If you give one of these formats a try, please let me know what you think of the format in the comments.
Addendum: Winston Drafting
If you’re not already familiar with it, here’s a quick primer on 2-player Winston drafting as I use it in this format. Open 3 packs of cards without looking at them; remove the token and basic land. Shuffle the cards together to form a pile, then lay out the top 3 cards face-down in a line with the remainder of the pile at the end of the line. You’ll now have 3 1-card stacks, then the remaining ~40 cards in a fourth stack.
The starting player begins the draft by looking at the first stack and choosing to either draft that card, or put it back in its place and move on to the next stack. If they choose not to draft it, another card from the original pile at the end of the line gets moved into place on top of it. They do this for each of the first 3 stacks until they choose to draft one; if they don’t want any of the cards once they’ve gone down the line then they take the top (random) card from the original pile. The second player then starts at the same end of the line as the first player and looks at the card(s) there; they may choose either to pick up the whole stack, or pass and move another card from the initial pile on top. Players continue to take turns until all the cards are exhausted.