For everyone that remembers my previous writings for the site, you’ll remember that I’m a big fan of Limited Magic. Give me a booster draft over a T2 tournament any day of the week. Give me a cube draft over just about everything any day of the week. So when I saw this format being proposed over at MTG Salvation, I knew I had to write about it. Unfortunately I couldn’t get involved in the actual testing of it, but I hope writing about it brings it some popularity and more people willing to try it out. They call it Market Sealed.

Market Sealed

The game of Magic has such a great following because it is such a multi-faceted game. There are so many different ways to play the it, as this column has explored in the past. But it goes beyond just that. Magic is a Trading Card Game. You can be completely satisfied with Magic without ever playing a single game. Market Sealed is cool because it mixes elements of both trading and playing.

The idea was originally proposed by VestDan on MTGSalvation, and is a mutated form of sealed deck play. For those of you who don’t know, sealed is a form of Limited game where players receive five boosters (or one tournament pack and two boosters) and build their decks using only those cards. It’s used for the Swiss rounds of PTQs and is a pre-release staple.

VestDan’s idea is simple: What if you aren’t limited to only the cards you open in your sealed pool?

This is a “tournament format,” but it isn’t suited for large-scale tournaments. It seems best suited for a local hobby shop with 8-16 or so players. Each player gets one tournament pack (three boosters) to start. Once everyone has opened and sorted their cards (and it is probably best to register them as well), the fun begins. Market Sealed is all about trading. You are allowed to trade with the other people in the tournament for the cards they opened. The trading period lasts for a designated amount of time. In real life, my guess is that an hour is sufficient, and in reality less time than that is probably needed. At the end of one hour, or when everyone is satisfied and no one wants to trade anymore, standard matches begin. Matches are best two of three, whatever cards aren’t in your deck are you sideboard… all the normal Limited stuff.

Strategy of Market Sealed

Disclaimer before I begin: I’ve never actually played the format. This format is pretty new, and thus far the only time I’ve ever seen it done is over on Sally. But, the tips that I will give come from my previous Limited experiences.

Firstly, when you first open and sort your cards, try to build a deck, or at least a skeleton of a deck. This will do two things for you: It will help keep you focused on a certain strategy, and it let you know exactly what tools you’ll need to trade for. Granted your initial skeleton will have some pretty big holes, but at least you’ll have an idea of what colors and types of cards you’re looking for.

Once you have the basic idea of what your deck maybe wants to do, hide your cards. Don’t immediately let everyone know what you have. If they see you’ve got the most busted Black deck in the world, they’ll be less willing to trade you Black cards. If they don’t know you’ve got that bomb finisher, they may be more willing to part with some early Black creatures.

Do your homework. It is important to know a couple things in this format. What cards are the highest rate? What are the best commons in the set? What cards fill holes in decks? What cards can I get the most value from? If you know what people are looking for, you can maximize your potential gains. Open Mulldrifter but not planning on playing Blue? You can probably trade it for the best card(s) in the Blue player’s possession.

Stay focused. Don’t be swayed by the flashy rare that isn’t in your colors, even if you can get the deal of the century on it. Weigh the benefits/costs. Is Oversoul of Dusk really worth trying to splash White or Green for?

Be flexible. Yeah, I know, I’m telling you to be flexible right after saying to stay focused… but there is a fine line that you have to walk. If you open a pack with good Red and Black cards, but someone is wholesaling their Blue, don’t be afraid to consider changing colors. This is a cooperative format more than anything. If a move benefits you, don’t be afraid to make it, even if it benefits a potential opponent as well. Trading away your Red cards for some Blue cards of equal or maybe even higher quality could be the correct move.

Remember that you have a Limited card pool. Normal sealed decks let you open five packs. This version only has you opening three. That’s a 30-card difference. There may be times when the card quality just isn’t there. Learn to make due with what is in play. You can’t rely on someone to open Hex every single time. That’s okay. Play the cards in the pool. Look at what there is a lot of and look at what there is a little of, for you and everyone else. Try to trade what there is a little of for more value than it’s worth. Maybe there isn’t much mana fixing. Great, trade your Kodama’s Reach for a Glacial Ray and Mothrider Samurai. Maybe there’s a ton of fixing opened. Ok, maybe you’ll get a Kitsune Diviner for your Reach. Either way, don’t try to force anything. Play what is opened.

Overall, Market Sealed looks like an excellent format that challenges players on multiple levels.

Pros: Requires strategy in all phases—card evaluation, trade evaluation, and game skill. Satisfaction of seeing a deck come together from nothing.

Cons: Pretty time consuming, not so good with less players.

Elder Dragon Highlander

I’ve known about this format for quite a while, actually, but I never knew how popular it actually was until recently. The format is called Elder Dragon Highlander, or EDH for short. Originally named for Nicol Bolas and his pals, EDH has warped into a format where you select one Legendary creature from Magic’s history to serve as a “general” for your deck. Your deck can only consist of cards that share a color with your general. So if your general is Teferi, you’re looking at a Mono-Blue deck. If Horde of Notions is your general, you can play any card ever printed (well, any Vintage legal card ever printed at least). Also, any land that produces a color of mana that isn’t in your general’s cost will produce colorless mana in its place. So a Karoo from Ravnica with one color of your general and one color not of your general will produce one colored and one colorless mana.

In addition to the color requirements, note the word “Highlander” in the game’s name. Highlander formats are ones in which you may not have duplicate cards in your deck. Except for Basic lands, you can only have one of each card in your deck. Finally, EDH decks must be exactly 100 cards, including the general. As far as banned cards go, this is an unsanctioned and mostly casual format, so it is really up to your playgroup, but the “official” ruling is that you should follow the Vintage banned list, in addition to adding these cards.

There are a few game play rules as well. First, remove your general from your deck before shuffling it. Generals start the game in the RFG zone. You may play your general while it’s removed from the game for its mana cost plus two colorless for each time you’ve played it prior (so if your general is Sliver Queen, the first time you play her you pay WUBRG. If she dies and you want to replay her you pay 2WUBRG, the third time you want to play her you pay 4WUBRG and so on). If your general dies, instead of being put into a graveyard it is removed from the game. The general never hits the bin, so no “goes to graveyard” effects will trigger.

Life totals and losing is a bit different as well. Players start with 40 life. Like normal Magic, first one to zero loses. However, If you get hit by the opponent’s general, keep special track of that. Not only do you lose the life from your 40, but if the opposing general does 21 damage to you, game over. Think of it like a weird form of poison counters. This number never resets, even if the general is RFG’ed.

Finally, two decks playing against each other cannot have the same general. In tournament EDH, there is a roll call before the tournament to ensure that everyone is playing a different general.

Strategy

The biggest part of building your EDH deck is what general you choose. Keep in mind that it can be any Legendary creature (although most groups ban Rofellos for being crazy broken), but when looking at Legends keep the color requirement in mind. If you pick Teferi, you’re going to have to be Mono-Blue.

I recently played against a deck that used Zur the Enchanter to great effect. It used Zur to attack and bring out a bunch of Pacifism-like spells, Necropotence and a bunch of other tool-box effects. I’ve also seen decks that use Arcum Dagsson as a pseudo Tinker and toolbox their deck that way.

There are some dud generals to watch out for, too. Mishra, Artificer Prodigy is useless, because you’re playing a Highlander deck. Memnarch and Bosh, Iron Golem also useless because they are colorless artifacts with ability costs that you can’t pay due to the rules of EDH, although some circles will play them as Blue or Red respectively.  

If you want more information on the format, there are a ton of different places to find it. There’s even an official EDH website you can go to.

Pros: Very fun variant format, lets you build decks around usually bad cards (seriously, who plays Zur in Constructed?) .

Cons: Large decks that require one-ofs, so a fairly large collection is needed.

That’s it for this edition of The Games People Play. Hope you enjoyed it and hope you’ll try one of these formats out in the near future. If you have any variant formats you’d like to tell me about or see me cover, drop me a line.

~Lionden_56

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Articles Spotlights from 2008:
A Fresh Perspective: Stasis - Part One.
The Apprentice Magician - Part Six.
Design on a Dime: The Lunch Meat Edition!
Fit the Flavor 2008 - FINALE!
The Games People Play - Market & EDH.
Sarpadian Empires, Vol VII: Foreword.
More Evil Than Evil.
Pauper Chronicles: Top O' the Morningtide to You!
Words from the Streetz: Uncommon and Common Magical Treasures.
The Writers Guild: The Inside Scoop.