If you’ve ever wanted to try out a 1v1 Magic: the Gathering format with all of the chaos of Commander, you may be in luck. Magic’s head designer, Mark Rosewater, recently discussed how the TCG’s R&D department is currently considering creating a new two-player format with a focus on a casual and varied gameplay.
To understand the idea behind this new format, let’s quickly break down an MTG design buzzword, “variance”. Rosewater has previously defined variance as: “how differently a gameplay element plays out from one play experience to the next”. In other words, if you played two decks against other 100 times, how often would similar play patterns emerge, and how often would the games feel radically different?
Commander has significantly more variance baked into it than Magic’s 60 card competitive formats like Standard and Modern. There are two reasons for this. First of all, Commander decks are larger than their 60 card counterparts, so your best MTG cards are buried deeper within a bigger deck. Additionally, Commander is singleton, meaning that each non basic land card that they contain can only be included once per deck. This means that you have a larger deck, featuring a wider selection of cards, leading to greater variance and a wider range of possible gameplay experiences.
Okay, that’s all the jargon out of the way, what does that have to do with a potential new format? Well, in a recent Q&A article, Rosewater discussed the idea of a new two player format designed to incorporate the high variance of Commander.
He stated: “Could we bring more variance to two-player play? Absolutely. That’s a topic R&D is spending a lot of time on. Instead of asking ourselves whether we should change deck limits for existing competitive two-player formats, we are focused on whether there might be potential in making a new two-player format that’s more casual in nature. We think there’s room for it, but the nuances of what that format should be are complex.”
Just how far along R&D have come in developing this hypothetical new format isn’t entirely clear yet, but it will definitely be exciting to watch this develop.
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Source: Wargamer
