An Uncommon Format, RevisitedIntroductionWith the current rise in popularity of the casual play format, I decided it was time to take another look at a format I devised several years ago for my local Arena season and wrote a Starcity article on and at the time. This time, I’ll revamp it a little in order ro adapt it to fit the needs of this community.
Players all over the world have been looking for ways to put to use their ever-growing collection of cards in a way that’s fun, competitive and challenging to the mind. This has resulted in various non-sactioned casual formats such as the well-known Peasant Magic, Multiplayer, Highlander and Tribes. More recent additions include Big Box draft (or Cube), Three Card Blind (though this focusses on the actual ‘deck’ design more than anything else) and Smmenen’s Type Four which recently featured on the official Wizards of the Coast site.
Take a look at your collection at this point (a mental image will suffice
). What do you see? An enormous bunch of cards, eighty percent of which are doomed never to see play. Sure, you can use the commons for the format frequently referred to, mostly by people outside the agricultural sector, as peasant magic, and you could use the big-ass Timmy rares for Type Four, but that still leaves an incredible amount of uncommons wasting away in your collective shoe-boxes. My initial idea was simple enough: a format consisting solely of uncommons. I noticed after some mild research that noone appeared to have tried setting up a play format like this. Always one to experiment with innovative ideas, however crazy they may be, I got a judge friend to try out my format during an Arena season at our local store. Obviously, we had to decide on which cards would be legal; after some debate we settled for basic lands and all the uncommons in pre-rotation Extended. Just before the start of the season I wrote a Starcity article as a means of relieving the guilt I was beginning to feel about not letting the rest of the world in on all the fun we were having.
I’m happy to say many people responded to my article and most reactions were encouraging. Several people said they liked the idea, others wrote that they had already experimented with all-uncommon decks in their own casual play environment before, proving that any new idea is never really new at all. One person even wrote in to say that he had organized multiple uncommon-only draft tournaments by re-packaging boosters; an interesting thought that hadn’t occurred to me and deserves further exploration.
The RulesThe choice for an Extended uncommon format was a logical one at the time; the rotation that removed so many cool uncs from the cardpool hadn’t taken place yet, and we felt that, since the power level of ‘older’ uncommons was too high, the format would be dominated by older players. We wanted to give newer players a chance to play with all of the chaff uncommons they owned from buying boosters while stimulating original thought and deckdesign (there are really no uncommon-only decklists to netdeck). But most of all, we didn’t want to think about (*shiver*) bannings.
The old Extended is gone for good now. The new one, much like Type Two, offers too small a cardpool for the format to become interesting. The solution? You got it. Using Type One as a framework. Here’s the deal:
- You build a deck with a 60-card minimum.
- All the cards have to be either uncommon or basic land.
- The usual rules apply; this means, among other things, the ‘four-of’ limit.
- You can use any Type One-legal uncommon.
I’d like to elaborate on that last rule a bit, since it may give rise to some questions.
A card is considered uncommon for the porposes of this format only if it was an uncommon in the last tournament-legal set it appeared in. This means for example: no Shatterstorm, no Brass Herald, no Serra Angel, no Fallen Angel, no Sengir Vampire and no City of Brass since all of these were ‘promoted’ to the rare slot in their most recent printings (I suggest using Apprentice to check the current rarity when in doubt). It also means, much more importantly, no Counterspell.
‘Aw
man!’, I can hear some of you exclaim already. But here’s the thing. Uncommons, in general, aren’t all that good. They’re usually not massive, game-altering effects like rares get. They’re usually not efficient tools (like Duress) either. Most of the time, they’re hosers and/or overcosted. There’s a good reason for this. Say Wizards wants to make a cycle of creatures with a certain ability spread over the rarity slots. The rare will be the biggest one, with the most impact on the game (i.e. Su-Chi). The common will be the cheap, low mana cost one, which will see to it that it is considered as cheap utility (i.e. Myr Moonvessel). So what does that leave for the uncommon one? It has to be bigger than the common, surely. So it needs to be more expensive (i.e. Cathodion). But hey, if you’re deck can support the uncommon, you can usually spring for the rare version, too. The uncommon is left hanging. Well, no more.
So what does this have to do with Counterspell? Well, we want the format to thrive, so we’ll need a healthy metagame. Aggro decks will need to resort to less efficient alternatives (bad burn, slightly overcosted creatures). Sure, there’s really (really) good uncommons, too, but not enough to fill a deck with. This means that counterspell level should be upped. If control decks can establish the same degree of control over the game as in ‘real’ formats while other builds need to make do with less efficient cards, there’s really no reason not to play control. Without Counterspell, the playing field is level once more. Fear not however, ye blue mages; control will still be a very viable archetype since there’s still a vast arsenal of slightly more expensive or suboptimal countermagic in the form of Arcane Denial, Dismiss, Dissipate, Circular Logic, Complicate, Forbid, Foil, Thwart and many, many others. Like Force of Will. Oops.
Some uncommons are just too good. Like in real Type One we need to steer clear of some cards that would break the format. Cards in Type One are never banned unless they use ante, since a banning would effectively remove that card from sanctioned play. Restrictions suffice. Well, that’s not a rule I intend to follow. It needlessly complicates matters, so I’m just gonna go ahead and make a banned list. It will be very short for two reasons:
a. there aren’t that many uncommons that will break the format, and
b. even if there are, I don’t know about ‘em all yet.
The list, much like the real one, needs to evolve. Let’s take a look at some possibly problematic cards:
BanningsForce of Will. Very likely too good for the reasons mentioned above. The best counterspell in the game will be banned in our new format until further notice.
Mana Drain. By the same token, obviously.
Strip Mine. Four of these would ruin most formats, especially one where most land is basic.
Libraby of Alexandria. What is traditionally thought of as the best land in the game will probably break our format. It’s card drawing is simply too cheap, especially compared to its (uncommon) alternatives. While offset by the fact that Wasteland is in our format too, we have to consider the fact that we have no restricions. Four of these would ruin Uncommon-Only, so it’s banned.
Sol Ring. There's really no reason not to play four of these in every deck, so it goes.
Demonic Tutor. Again, in a four-of, this will make finding your cards a little TOO easy.
Black Vise. Derf.
Watch ListJuzam Djinn. Finally, a format where this ueber-black-dude is decent again. The problem is, it might be more than decent. It’s cheap, it’s efficient, and in a format where the creature removal is more expensive, it might be too good. But even so, it’s still a creature and it can be dealt with. Banning creatures is silly anyway, so we’ll just see how it goes.
Psychatog. Same problem, really, only this little bugger is way better than Djinn. Much like in Type One, a Psychatog (aggro-)control build may well become the best deck available, and without Combo to keep it in check, it could very well become dominant. Still, let’s wait and see how it turns out before we take drastic steps.
Berserk. This will help to make aggro better. That’s not a problem, since it compensates the fact that its creatures are suboptimal. The problem again lies with possible abuse in combination with Psychatog, a deck that really suffers very little by the restrictions imposed by our little format. It’s on the watch list.
Windfall. I really have no idea what the effetc of four Windfalls would be in this format. I suspect it will mostly benefit combo, which is not a bad thing since our format hits that archetype pretty hard. Even so, I need to keep my eye on this.
Fact or Fiction. This insane card drawer may or may not be broken. There’s not a lot of good accelleration in the format, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Building your deckThe possibilities are endless, really. Good uncommons like Sylvan Libraby, Flametongue Kavu, Fact or Fiction, Isochron Scepter, Fire/Ice, Ancient Tomb, Gemstone Mine and many others can provide a core for a decent build. On the other hand, it’s fun to try your hand at adaptations of popular current archetypes. How does an Uncommon Sligh deck look? Or Uncommon Stompy or Sui? Can we still play Hulk? And for the rogue builders among you: can you come up with a decent combo list? Helm of Awakening plus the Eggs and Tendrils of Agony perhaps? It sounds sucky, but keep in mind that the other decks aren’t all that broken, either!
Sample DecklistOf the top of my head, here’s a list for an uncommon Psychatog deck. It is most likely not optimal, but it gives an indication of the sort of things you need to start thinking about.
//CREATURES
4 Psychatog
4 Merfolk Looter
2 Wonder
//COUNTERMAGIC
2 Foil
4 Dissipate
3 Circular Logic
//REMOVAL
4 Smother
2 Chainer’s Edict
//DRAW
3 Concentrate
2 Skeletal Scrying
4 Fact or Fiction
//UTILITY
1 Chain of Vapor
//MANA
4 Talisman of Dominance
3 Swamp
14 Island
4 Salt Marsh
Dismiss is a decent replacement for Mana Drain in this format. It’s cheap, easy to play, and it cantrips. The maindeck removal is necessary since many decks you face will be aggro. Foil replaces Force of Will and since you run a decent number of islands, it will do the job just fine. Circular Logic is obviously there to protect your Tog. You drawing engine focuses on Fact or Fiction, probably the most efficient ‘hard’ card draw in the format, and Concentrate. Skeletal Scrying is more powerful than the latter, but has a somewhat negative synergy with Tog. Wonder functiones as a replacement for Deed and Upheaval. Berserk would be a logical choice for this deck, but it would also be the only green spell and it’s fiendishly difficult to make a smoothly running 3 color build, especially if you want to run Foil. The mana is ‘fixed’ by Marsh and Talisman
A ChallengeI’d like to challenge all of you to submit your own Uncommon-Only decklist here, with an explanation of card choices. I’m pretty sure you can do better than me. It’s a good mental excersise and it increases your card knowledge to boot. You’ll be surprised at the cards that are suddenly quite decent. Oh, and above all: it’s fun. Try it, yo!
- Bram[/b]
