Magus of the Bazaar – Merchant Magic

For casual players, the whole point of playing Magic: The Gathering is to have fun. Obviously, what each player finds fun is personal. However, one common issue that comes up from time to time is the question of what constitutes a fair and fun casual format. What is the definition of a budget or casual deck? The answer, I think, is that there is no single answer. However, I’ve stumbled upon a format that meets many of my criteria and that I’ve found to be a great deal of fun. Allow me to introduce you to Merchant Magic.

The issue at the heart of the debate is that, given a set of rules (i.e. a format) and a collection of available resources (i.e. cards or money to be converted into cards), players will tend to make the best deck that they can. This is a Good Thing, as it means players are taking up the core challenge presented by the game itself. However, a common issue in circles outside of the competitive tournament environment is a lack of resources. This doesn’t present a problem when all players in a group are working with roughly the same level of resources, but it can be a problem when some players have access to more powerful (and usually more expensive) cards than others. Let’s face it, it’s not much fun when you show up with your quirky deck cobbled together from cards you collected at the pre-release and your opponent is sporting playsets of Thoughtseize, Damnation, and Kokusho, the Evening Star. Those cards are great and you’d want to play with them if you had them too, but it sure is difficult to keep pace with players that just have more money or have been collecting for a long time.

In order to address this issue, there have historically been a number of approaches, including casual banned lists, dollar limits (or ticket limits on MTGO), and Pauper or Peasant decks. There are advantages and disadvantages to every format, but I’d like to introduce a format that I’ve been playing recently and have found to be extremely rewarding in terms of tradeoffs in deck construction, game play and cost. But first, a little background about how I came to this format organically from several directions at once, all converging on the same concept.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been attending Friday Night Magic at my local shop. We play booster draft almost exclusively, and while I get the most enjoyment out of building Constructed decks, I do find that the Limited formats create an excellent environment in which to test deck building skills within the constraints of the, well, limited available resources. It certainly creates a fun playing environment in which players can be expected to rely upon staple common and a few uncommon cards to get the job done, while at the same time hoping to draw into that rare bomb that they ripped from one of their boosters. It also means that I bring home a lot of common cards, a handful of uncommon cards and anywhere from one to four rare cards on a given night.

As Magic players are wont to do, I’m always building decks out of these cards. However, sometimes I'm not really sure what format I'm building for. With all of those common cards, I can build decent decks for the Pauper format (and I have done this quite often) but then that leaves a fair number of uncommon and rare cards just sitting in my collection. What to do with them? It all got me thinking about my early experience with Magic.

These were the days of Unlimited and Revised. Back then, we didn't have any shops around selling singles. We'd just go out and buy "starter decks" which were really just jumbo booster packs containing 60 cards divided into a lot of common (including basic lands), a few uncommon and I think only about three rare cards. Players would trade cards and try to stretch their collection enough to build a deck with “only” two colours that somehow hung together. Rare cards were still, well, rare. I only remember one player in my play group that had a Wrath of God! However, the games were a lot of fun and most of us, as students, had access to roughly the same size of collection.

Fast forward a few years, and our collections were getting a lot bigger, though some of us had spent years at a time away from the game. At that time we would sometimes play a format that would be similar to today’s sealed format, but with trades. We'd have three to five of us and buy four booster packs each. We'd pull out the cards that we wanted in our deck and then we'd trade with the other players for cards that they weren't using. In this way, we’d convert our 60 random cards at least into a playable deck in two to three colors. We didn't do this often, but it was a lot of fun when we did. This is the primary strength of the Limited formats – they create a level playing field in terms of cards available to each player. Formats like box leagues are also really just an attempt to achieve this type of limited resources Constructed feel.

Playing the booster drafts recently, I started to see the parallels with playing casually back then. Wouldn't it make sense for a casual format to create a deck structure that resembles this approach while allowing for the creativity that usually accompanies deck construction?

One approach to creating an inclusive environment for budget-restricted players has been to cut out the most expensive cards – the rare and even the uncommon cards - from deck construction. This approach lead initially to the creation of the Peasant format, in which players may have no rare cards, and only up to five uncommon cards. It is unclear where the numbers come from, but the format was picked up by some budget-conscious players. Eventually another, even more Spartan format developed. Pauper Deck Challenge (PDC or just Pauper for short) allows only common cards to be included in a deck. This format has taken off in “unofficial” environments, with frequent tournaments on Magic Online as well as appealing to some casual players.

I have not played much Peasant Magic, but I have played some Pauper. It is certainly a lot of fun and I find it interesting that you can examine an entire metagame and actually obtain all of the cards to build and test all of the top decks without breaking the bank. But by eliminating both uncommon and rare cards, there are some familiar aspects of game play missing from the format. The first that I noticed and felt the absence of was some of the classic means of card advantage, such as board sweepers like Pyroclasm (uncommon) and Wrath of God (rare). However, perhaps the most notable missing element is that feeling of hope that comes from knowing that you have something awesome in your deck if you could just draw it!

The newer or cash-limited player is thus left with a conundrum - they cannot afford the cards for top-level competitive decks which often cost $200-$500 to build, nor can they play the few rare cards that they have collected from booster drafts and pre-release events in the Peasant or Pauper formats. The natural pull is toward allowing some rare cards into casual constructed decks as well. In practice, I find that casual players aren’t as keen on playing the Pauper format regularly as I might thought. The reason seems to be that they simply want to play the premier cards that they’ve collected.

Let’s step back and consider the numbers for a moment. A normal Constructed deck contains 60 cards. If you have four booster packs, then you have 60 cards available to you. Of these, four will be rare, 12 will be uncommon, and the remainder will be common. The problem, of course, is that these cards are random and it is generally difficult to build a highly cohesive deck from only 4 boosters. If, instead of one person, you have several – say, eight – and players are allowed to trade with one another, then each player can begin to build a deck that is more cohesive, likely reducing the number of colours and beginning to form a coherent strategy.

Imagine for a moment that all rare cards are worth roughly the same amount. The same is true for uncommon and common cards. If we extend our group of eight people to be essentially infinite, and we allow players to only trade rare for rare, uncommon for uncommon and common for common, then eventually every player could get the cards that they want for their deck. What you have created is an environment in which you can build whatever deck you like (i.e. Constructed) but maintaining the ratio of rare to uncommon to common cards. In reality, you could relax the rules slightly to say that a player could replace a card of higher rarity with one of lower rarity (for example I could replace a rare card with an uncommon card) just to allow more options.

Aside: What about Mythic Rares? The mythic rare throws a hitch into the plan because it actually appears one time for every eight booster packs while our numbers are based on four booster packs (60 cards). The natural choice is to make mythic rare “restricted” to a single copy in a deck. In other words, your deck can only have one mythic rare – so we have our first cards for which you won’t be able to include an entire playset if you choose. The question is whether the single mythic rare replaces an existing rare or whether it is in addition to those rares, effectively taking the place of a common. Statistically the argument is in favour of replacing a rare – in other words your deck could contain four rare or three rare and a mythic rare card. However, from the perspective of fun, the consensus seems to be that you should be able to include a mythic rare in addition to your other four rare cards. This would increase the total rare count to five, one of which may be mythic.

Merchant Magic

This Constructed format, which I call Merchant Magic, has the following rules:

1. Normal deck building rules apply, including any format-specific rules for card pool (such as Block, Standard, Extended, Legacy, etc.). This includes a 60 card minimum deck size and no more than four copies of a card with the exception of basic lands.

2. A deck may contain no more than 1 mythic rare card.

3. A deck may contain no more than 5 cards that are rare or higher rarity combined.

4. A deck may contain no more than 17 cards that are uncommon or higher rarity combined.

5. A deck may contain any number of common cards.

6. If sideboards are used, the rarity restrictions do not change.

7. A card’s rarity counts as the lowest rarity for which the card has been printed in a given format. For example, if you are playing with Consume Spirit in M10 Standard, then its rarity is uncommon. However, if you are playing a format in which Mirrodin is legal, such as Extended, then the rarity of Consume Spirit is Common. As with all formats, you may use any printing of a card with the equivalent English-language name. For example, if you are playing Extended and your Consume Spirit counts as a common, you may still use a copy from M10, in which it was printed as an uncommon.

If I step back for a second, there are a couple of things that strike me immediately. The first is that if you look at a lot of 60-card “pre-constructed” decks produced by Wizards of the Coast in the past, they historically contain an average of approximately three rare and ten uncommon cards. What is interesting is that these decks are like partially-completed decks, halfway between starting from scratch with boosters and fully-fledged Constructed decks. They cry out to be modified and upgraded a bit, by switching to playsets of the cards that work and maybe adding a rare or two. Previous authors of the Building on a Budget series on the mothership have even evolved such decks as a casual approach to deck building. The point is that the ratio seems to roughly hold here. Playing with a modified pre-constructed deck has a feeling of casualness to it that I believe comes from maintaining those ratios.

Another point to consider is that if you look at the original intentions of Richard Garfield when he invented the game, he purportedly expected that the rarity ratios would remain roughly intact for game play purposes. While this has fallen by the wayside due to the high availability of cards and the realities of tournament formats, I find that it is actually a very good way to build decks for the casual environment.

Some might say that people don’t like to have restrictions, but if you look at the growing popularity of the Pauper format, I think that we can see that if the budget is reduced then people are willing to deal with restrictions. In fact, restrictions are a key element to breeding creativity.

So where did the name come from? The name initially comes from the fact that this format naturally slots into the continuum above Pauper and Peasant but before unlimited resources competitive Magic (which could be thought of perhaps as the “Royal” version). What’s higher than paupers and peasants but lower than royalty? Usually it’s the merchant classes. The name also reflects the fact that Merchant decks can be built fairly easily and naturally through cracking packs and trading.

There are as many approaches to building decks as there are deck builders. However, as we have started building decks for this format, three approaches have jumped out immediately. Often, a deck is really a combination of approaches and it is really just a question of how the deck was first conceived.

The first approach is to maximize the five available rare slots by picking rare cards of maximum power and/or utility and building around these. For example, you might decide that you want your deck to contain four copies of Kokusho, the Evening Star and then you’ll start filling your uncommon and common slots to maximize the value of your bomb rare. Alternatively you might choose something like Pernicious Deed or Death Cloud and try to find enough other cards to make such a deck powerful. Below is an example:

While this deck is using a deck archetype (UW Control – see below), it was conceived using the Build-Around-Me Rare approach. The deck is built around the maximum number of copies of Wrath of God, and a single copy of Akroma, Angel of Wrath as a finisher. Keep in mind that Akroma can count toward the single Mythic spot that you have available to you. (As an aside, if you look up Akroma, Angel of Wrath in the Divine vs. Demonic boxed set, you'll see that Wizards has most recently printed her at Mythic). From there, the deck was filled out to suit the chosen archetype.

This approach looks for strategies that are supported by the most common cards available to you – common and uncommon – and builds upon that. This may include taking decks that may have been successful in Pauper or Peasant formats and upgrading them with additional uncommon and rare cards using the slots that are available to you. For example, one deck that became a menace quickly in our group was a deck based on the Pauper decks that utilized Momentary Blink with a number of creatures with comes-into-play abilities (Orzhov Blink, Blinkdrifter, etc.). This approach was naturally combined with the Build-Around-Me Rare approach through the obvious inclusion of Reveillark, a card that fits naturally into this deck. The result is a deck that has many options and potential builds though they all tend to contain Momentary Blink and Reveillark (and Mulldrifter and some number of Shriekmaw).

Yet another approach is to first decide what deck archetype you want to play and then find the best cards at each rarity level to suit your needs. When we first started playing Merchant Magic we quickly built a mono-red RDW deck, a mono-blue control deck, a mono-black aggro deck, a mono-black control deck, a red-green aggro deck, a blue-white control deck, a blue-black control deck, etc.

A similar approach is to try to approximate a tournament-level deck template by replacing some of the expensive rare cards with uncommon and common alternatives. Such approaches can yield decks like Death Cloud and Pernicious Deed. UrzaTron decks also offer unique challenges in this format since the Tron itself takes up your entire allotment of uncommon slots.

This deck is based upon the time-honoured tradition of killing your opponent as quickly as possible. In order to avoid running out of steam, the deck looks to the graveyard to provide some reach courtesy of the Unearth and Flashback mechanics. As you can see, the deck contains five rare cards, as Banefire was chosen instead of a mythic rare such as Chandra Nalaar.

Selecting cards for a Magic deck is always an exercise in examining the tradeoffs between various cards and is one of the truly rewarding aspects of the deck building process. Making the rarity of your cards mean something just adds another dimension. For example, if you own Damnation, then you probably wouldn’t ever consider including Barter in Blood in your deck. However, when building for Merchant Magic, you often find that you will have to examine two cards where one is “strictly better” than the other, but where the rarity becomes an additional consideration. If you have another rare that you want to include more than Damnation, then Barter in Blood may well be a valid inclusion in your deck.

One interesting aspect of this format is mana-fixing. As with the Pauper format, common mana fixing is highly prevalent in Merchant Magic, and this has been one of the pleasures of playing the format. Decks wanting to run more than one colour usually have to decide whether to include uncommon mana-fixing as well, such as the Invasion or Shards of Alara taplands. A side effect of this is that very few decks choose to fill up their precious rare slots with rare dual lands such as the Ravnica shocklands. At first this was actually viewed as a drawback by those of us who have invested in such lands over time. However, we have found the game play and tradeoffs to be fun enough that it hasn’t actually bothered us in the end. The availability of Ravnica bouncelands, signets, the aforementioned taplands, and others means that most decks are able to produce the mana that they need. (Hint: Ancient Ziggurat is a gem for multi-colour aggro decks).

No one format can be all things to all people. Even though Merchant Magic has a greater degree of flexibility than Pauper and Peasant Magic, it does still have some restrictions. Not all rare cards are equal, and some low-cost rare cards that might make it into a “budget” deck (see Raiding the Dollar Bins) might not be able to make it into a Merchant Magic deck. For example, I have a casual deck that I like to bring out from time to time that is based on the Tamanoa-Searing Meditation combo. This deck really needs all four copies of Tamanoa and two to three copies of Searing Meditation to be successful. The rest of the deck can be modified to fit within the Merchant Magic rules, but the fact that the two marquis cards are rare means that the deck probably wouldn’t function properly as a Merchant Magic deck, even though it is actually an inexpensive deck.

Overall, this format has proven to be extremely fun and rewarding and has provided endless decks that result in a truly casual feel. I hope you have the opportunity to try this format at some stage and let me know what you think. I guess my hope would be to see the format reach a wider audience and maybe someday it might show up on MTGO and the like as another format option.

Brad Lohnes, masquerading in the MDV forums as Amadeus, is a casual player from the early days of Magic. After a ten-year hiatus from the game he stumbled upon it once again. This has sparked a passion to fathom the depths of this complicated pass-time while continuing to enjoy it at its most basic level. Originally from Canada and having lived in New York City for several years, Brad now lives in New Zealand with his wife, dog and cat. He is a software engineer and enjoys traveling, hiking, and writing.

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