We’re big fans of the design philosophy behind the new mobile card game Pokémon TCG Pocket. With decks restricted to just 20 cards and a very limited card pool, finding little synergies and building your own decks is more achievable and accessible than in any other card game on the market right now.
Now, a tabletop fan has taken the streamlined approach of Pokémon Pocket and applied it to one of the most complex trading card games out there, Magic: The Gathering, to create Magic: The Gathering Pocket.
Examining the rules document posted by Reddit user GaiusRed, we see that this game uses Magic: The Gathering cards on top of Pokémon Pocket’s systems. So you have 20 card decks, are limited to two copies of each card, and only have a starting hand size of five.
MTG Pocket also uses an approximation of Pokémon Pocket’s energy system. Basic lands (which generate the mana resource you need to cast your other cards) go into a separate deck, and you automatically play one at random at the start of each of your turns.
It’s a fun idea, but there’s a fatal flaw here. The designer has specified that this is an eternal format. That means – without an MTG banlist specified – you can presumably use any cards from Magic: The Gathering’s 31-year history. If you’re coming from Pokémon, it’s essentially the equivalent of Expanded.
And that’s a problem. Part of the reason Pokémon Pocket works so well is that its cards are so low power. Compared to the most powerful Pokémon cards in the TCG, even top performers like Starmie Ex and Charizard Ex look like weaklings.
MTG Pocket, as imagined by its creator, would be like Legacy or Vintage – the most high-powered, over-the-top formats – on steroids. Ordinarily, MTG decks have to be 60 cards in size, which dilutes your deck, ensuring you can’t consistently gain access to your best spells. It’s part of the reason why Commander, where you have 100 cards and all of them have to be different, has a reputation for being quite casual, despite it being an eternal format.
Lower the deck size to 20, while letting players access cards from across all of Magic, and you have a recipe for disastrous games that are always decided in a turn or maybe two. Going first might mean instant victory: just crack a couple Black Lotuses or Dark Rituals, draw some cards with Brainstorm, and dig for one of any number of two card MTG combos that end the game.
While it wouldn’t work as written, MTG Pocket could be fun if given some more restrictions – like only being able to use cards of common rarity, or from the most recent MTG sets.
Source: Wargamer
