RANKING THE FORMATS OF MAGIC THE GATHERING THAT AREN'T COMMANDER

There's more to MTG than just Commander! Join Dylan and Cam for a discussion about other formats Magic the Gathering has to offer
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[@g.o.bgaming7454]

Love the “I’m an old man” I need to touch paper.

[@TheJamesAJoyce]

Definitely excited to see you try Canadian Highlander this week. I've been watching the Loading Ready Run team play it a lot lately and it seems like a nice blend of cEDH and 60-card formats.

[@SundayBbq4786]

Standard got me into the game. I started during Eldrazi/Scars. After rotation and into the end of Innistrad is where I transitioned into Ascension/Commander. Play to Win got me into cEdh and I pretty much haven't looked back.

[@RINNECODA]

44:30 glossing right over “my friend squidward” 😭😭

[@fl33ce_]

Came here to say this!?

[@MTG_Ronin]

First, love you guys talking about other competitive formats. I hardly play/watch EDH or cEDH these days. Highly recommend Timeless for Dylan. I hated Arena but now I’m all in on Timeless. Really into Modern in paper these days!

[@aklepatzky]

Bad time to play modern. Cedh and edh are the absolute truths

[@WarmasterSidious]

For future viewers and newer players you might want to time stamp each section for this. Fun podcast episode, thanks all!

[@masonwright4199]

Legacy is a lot more proxy friendly than you would think your local legacy night is not going to care if you have proxies even though if they want it to show up on wizards store finder they aren’t supposed to allow them

[@crawdaddy2004]

My favorite draft was when I was invited to do a triple Scars of Mirrodin draft with other really experienced drafters. At FNMs, it was pretty common knowledge among experienced drafters to avoid Infect, because three newer players would end up fighting for Infect. I made the calculated risk of diving into Infect, believing that the others would avoid Infect. Those were some of the easiest and fastest six games of MtG I have ever played. 😂

[@shanemcdougall209]

I play 2 formats right now (I have played more than that) pioneer and cEDH. The most appealing part to me about pioneer is that it is a fair format with a wide pool of cards, if there is an archetype you like to play in magic, odds are it's playable even into the tier 1 decks in the format (you will have a rough time though).

[@Sidnv]

Vintage cube is by far my favorite thing in magic. I find something lacking in both pure constructed and limited magic for my tastes, and cube is the perfect halfway point. I like that you get to build synergy and archetypes and not just draft mostly on rate, but I like the limitations that the format forces on you. Also, red is definitely not the weakest color in the mtgo cube. Green is weakest, all the other four colors are noticeably better. But green can still support other colors really nicely and red-green beats is a very strong archetype. Red got a bunch of really powerful 3 and 4 drops that can all end the game very quickly. Broadside bombardiers is the pick of the bunch, but Gut, Headliner Scarlett, Carnage Interpreter, Laelia are all very strong (and Ragavan and Inti but those are the good 1 and 2 drops). These cards are really great aggressive cards so getting them out a turn early with mana dorks and then supporting them with green's own aggressive package like Questing Beast works really nicely.

[@Heruzus]

About Ragavan in Legacy I feel like it also hits cheap things or free spells that are pretty powerful that an opponent is running, and usually, a lot of decks run a lot more 1 mana cantrips instead of higher land counts which makes quite a difference, for example, a free brainstorm from hitting your opp for 2 is crazy

[@definitelynotmany4972]

12:20 Tbf Pioneer is a non-rotating format so you only need to invest into a deck once.

[@RedPandaStan]

i honestly don't think price should be a heavy factor in deciding how much you like a format. just proxy it and play it w ur friends lol Also i love playing all formats. They're all interesting and fun!

[@Crustgg]

W take

[@michaeldyrud7077]

I think they did a good job of highlighting why price mattered, if the format is great but you don’t have a way to play it locally due to cost that is a valid knock against it

[@SquirtleScott666]

This was a fun one!! Stoked for ur guys’ takes on MH3 btw!

[@josefranciscodasilvaeolive674]

Pioneer is absolutely the best 60 card format. It definitely has a wild West vibe: Lots of unexplored territory with a few well-established pillars. Modern has become nonsense due to price and Horizons. Legacy is not accessible for most players due to the Reserved List. Vintage is absolutely impossible outside of MTGO. There are other formats but I'd vote that Pioneer is the best format!

[@mattsnow4116]

I second this pioneer is great

[@paullloyd9331]

Yes. Big agree. It feels like what modern felt like before horizons sets

[@Slippils]

No horizons OR universes beyond. It's the original concept of modern, but protected from wotc nonsense.

[@linitweapon]

Vintage is super proxy friendly so it’s def playable offline unless your competing at eternal weekend

[@isnanesavant]

The Wasteland cackle at 30:59 was fucking amazing

[@ronb7618]

Cube is amazingly fun I have been the reason for some cards being removed from their power cube with conspiracies

[@Alowishius]

I hope you guys talk about pEDH in the commander variants podcast, having any uncommon creature be able to be your commander lets you do some really fun strats. And it makes downshifts all the more hype.

[@koolaiddude7685894]

Standard is so damn fun rn. I kinda hated the non rotation at first, but it reallllly has made buying a standard deck not feel instantly bad because your deck doesnt rotate so quickly. There are a ton of fun viable decks that can knock over tier 1 decks and the matches can be super grindy to reward tight play.

[@andrewp6738]

facts

[@jodylester9118]

Standard is so sick right now. I run a "fringe" deck that can run circles around Domain and Control, specifically.

[@austinturgoose]

I can’t be surprised that you as CEDH players prefer high power, free card formats like modern or legacy, but I think you definitely dismissed how good Pioneer is too easily. It is my personal favorite format, and it has a really unique identity as the only eternal format without fetch lands

[@rafael3646]

Legacy in Brazil is very proxy friendly, we have some local tournaments like LPL that allow reserved list proxies and is growing a lot because of it

[@sammycooper4038]

The thing about pauper is that the generally lower power level of the individual cards forces you to actually build decks with synergy. Also the downgrading part of pauper is actually really interesting since it’s fun to be able to look at all the uncommons and find the ones that would be cool in the format then go petition Gavin to let it in the format. The main draw tho is that you can buy the entire meta for the price of a single standard deck

[@AulaGeschrabbel]

Standard rotates with the fall set. Bloomburrow is the next standard set, and it will push out MID to SNC out of standard

[@wiloj]

best formats... 1. Pauper (I encourage you both to try again. caw gates, grixis affinity are two decks I think yall would like that are pretty decision heavy. Or gardens. OR MY BABY FLICKER TRON. I wrote a primer on it if anyone is interested,) 2. cEDH 2.5 Tiny Leaders 3. Modern/Legacy 4. Draft/sealed 5. everything else 6. more formats 7. any others I forgot 8-9,999. Insert your pet format and future formats to come 10,000. Casual EDH

[@dancingmathusalem5451]

What about Kamigawa Block Pauper Tiny Leaders? Also, Familiars best deck don't @ me

[@wiloj]

@dancingmathusalem5451 fans is easily one of my least favorite decks in pauper lol. It's so boring for me to watch and play against.

[@marcelodecarvalho6030]

where is the primer

[@abbiemcdaniels3122]

Abzan Greasefang slaps so hard in pioneer, definitely a favorite deck of all time.

[@Higley1234]

My favorite part about modern is that it relies more on deck proficiency than finding the best deck. Also 4c omnath is the new jund.

[@BabelTriumphant]

What I love about Pauper is that it’s an affordable accessible eternal format. It’s so easy to get a whole friend group decks for an event, and to keep a few decks on hand without feeling tempted to poach cards.

[@harrypatiry1287]

I think you might’ve liked pauper if you played the combo/more interactive decks. There are some pretty neat things you can do in that format

[@aidenhoaglund7329]

Legacy>Pioneer>Pauper>Draft>Standard>Vintage>Sealed (Haven't Played Modern)

[@jackbuggeln4870]

If you don't/can't use proxies then pauper is a great format since even the best decks aren't more than $100

[@Clemsonalumnus]

Type 2 became Standard Type 1 became Vintage

[@TheCodingle]

Invent formats amongst friends, i love trying new shit in magic all the time its the part of the game that always keeps it fresh you know what i mean. My friend Joey and I got really baked one time and were riffing with each other and invented our own format called sidekick. Sidekick was a weird mix between commander and oathbreaker. The rules were you have a planeswalker as your commander, and a legendary creature as your sidekick, you still start at 40 life, theres no commander damage. Commander tax is per usual for both cards. However you can only cast your sidekick when your commander is in play. The color identity rules are a tad different. The rules were, You can add one additional color with your sidekick. However that creature must share at least one of the colors of your commander. Abilities count towards color identity just like commander.

[@hollowoat]

is the rest the same as commander?

[@TheCodingle]

​@@hollowoat correct minus commander damage. The only ban we had thus far was vorinclex as a sidekick. (No planeswalker counter doublers as a second commander)

[@Sharp2792]

Babe, wake up. New PTW video dropped!

[@sayntfuu]

I started during Revised, The Dark, Arabian Nights. My first LGS store tourney was Ice Ages. Were we even playing standard back then?

[@arkknight92]

Type 2! Man we young hahah

[@sayntfuu]

@@arkknight92 lol my aches and pains! :)

[@AnonYmous-et4mz]

Really looking forward to the Canlander video :) There's at least one infinite loop in current standard, it's just rather fragile: Abuelos Awakening reanimates Rakdos Joins Up as a creature, which on ETB reanimates Hulking Metamorph as a copy of itself. You legend rule the Metamorph away and use its reanimation trigger to again return itself as a copy of Rakdos Joins Up. Each time you do this, you get another trigger to hit you opponent for 9.

[@darkmagicpi]

If you need a non-Magic board game recommendation "7 Wonders" was clearly designed by someone whose favorite part of Magic was drafting a deck

[@definitelynotmany4972]

11:21 They remaster the set to give a new limited environment and usually only leave out banned cards for the most part. (Which is why it took so long to get Smuggler's copter into Arena since at the time of release, it was still banned on Pioneer)

[@aydjent]

Dylan with the Scowl merch 👀 That Drain tour they're on was so fun

[@theodorwittwenmacher3793]

scowl cool yeah

[@ShadowWasntHere8433]

the premier modern content creators did a no-ban modern day to see how twin and hypergenesis would play vs the current meta. Twin went 3-8, Hypergenesis went 0-11

[@mutantdrumsticks]

If you're talking about EDH variants, there's also Emperor!

[@treycuret]

"Uro can't be that bad." You had dedicated Goblins players contorting their mono red deck to double splash Uro 😂 I think this podcast was amazing. You really see how much you guys just let it all play out. You're just unbothered by Grief ripping my best two creatures on T1 or Hogaak generating 24 power on T2, true cEDH players LOL

[@stasjovb]

Hearing red being called one of the worst vintage cube colors when green is also out there is infuriating lol

[@Clemsonalumnus]

Ok, biggest grievance is the common misconception that Staks always played Smokestacks and that’s where the name comes from. Staks (originally spelled $T4KS) stands for The Four Thousand Dollar ($4K) Solution. There was a pretty popular version that ran Goblin Welder to switch the Skokestack in and out, but it was relatively short lived (the deck originated in T1.5, what became Legacy, and, at the time, it was the same as T1, but the restricted list was banned).

[@camdenallen4844]

My first dual was Taiga for Loot! 😂

[@deadpool-yb1pw]

Love you Guys see you next friday

[@jamesmooney6472]

Been testing Affinity in Modern recently and it makes some powerful moves, plus the turtle is in MH3

[@chottstuff]

I have a friend who just got into "Old School" and he travels all over the world (europe and the states) playing it.

[@marcellopozzessere1656]

And Sealed is by far the best way to learn Magic!

[@johna8670]

Pauper is fun, it's player vs player, not wallet vs wallet

[@makeout_hill]

So is CEDH with proxies

[@mattsnow4116]

Blah blah blah

[@johna8670]

@@makeout_hill proxies are cool until you want to play a sanctioned tournament

[@johna8670]

Oops all mythics is fun up to a point. Pauper will make you better at the fundamentals.

[@commanderpower99]

​@@johna8670 limited will make you better at the fundamentals.

[@superyahoo1822]

i play casual commander and recently got into pauper and the rotation from the next modern horizons set looks to be very big. from the cards already spoiled there are already like 4 cards that will probably see play and we have only just started

[@2009concept]

talking about pioneer on arena and i gotta say the greasefang abzan deck is sweet and make me wish greasefang had green for edh lol

[@jordancaldwell2208]

Besides Fable, the cards banned in Standard arent because its "too much" for Standard but because those cards helped keep the metagame completely locked by one deck.

[@craftySTK]

Pauper is what got me into Magic

[@HarborMastr]

Pauper rocks!!! Y’all should get a few games in!

[@thebrunoo2730]

arena formats like explorer got completely shifted by straight-to-modern sets getting added to every non rotating format, explorer was heavily warped by mh3 and im still not sure if its I still enjoy it or not

[@tetros5265]

Im pretty sure that's not true actually, I believe explorer is actually the only eternal format to dodge MH3, which is a big part of why I like it and Pioneer, everything must go through standard.

[@dragonfire72]

I think the reason they banned Fury and not Grief is that Fury operated like Karn in Pioneer- you either dont care about Fury or you'd be running a deck that had a bunch of X/1s Obvious Fury getting Not Deaded still sucked but iirc it being a small Fire Covenant was what made it too good

[@MCTimemaster]

Part of the reason for Punishing fire to stay banned is what it does to game lengths.

[@SmoothieGeek]

Hey, great podcast do you know about french 1v1 commander aka duel commander aka DC ? i know americans overlook it but there is a really active community in France and i'd love to see more of it in the U.S

[@Dikarika]

I used to play a ton of DC until years back when the leviathan/MTGO 1v1/whatever it's been way too long schism occurred. The format is so fun but the infighting from the community soured me on it. These days if I want to play 1v1 singleton I just play Canlander.

[@twhite9615]

"Should we never have kids?" "Yeah" 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@gillgaladii8673]

Why'd they say pioneer is too expensive but not complain about modern?

[@treycuret]

Pioneer kind of advertises itself as being a cheaper format. It is funny that they said Pioneer decks are $800, then said Modern (a format that is Pioneer + Fetchlands) is actually pretty affordable once you have the Fetchlands.

[@angelovillasanta2606]

Limited, and Pauper. Explorer in Arena

[@dudetheregoesmy]

Can confirm that Legacy with Wrenn and Six + wasteland + astrolabe was some of the worst Magic I have ever played.

[@jasonsavory9748]

RE infinites in standard, I’m playing a loop wincon currently in conspiracy Unraveler, breach the multiverse and repository skaab

[@CHoustonify]

Can we get decklists for y'all's decks in other formats, at least Dylan's "Jund" modern deck?

[@filipefranca5866]

Reckoner bankbuster is banned mostly because its colorless, it goes in control, agroo and mid range of any color. Its not power level, its just too easy to use it. Every deck would play it

[@ianroark9928]

I'm a definite legacy and pioneer player, outside of that modern I keep up with but it just hasn't been fun since MH2 and is about to get even worse

[@liquidxan6698]

We all know proxies are fine for cedh but why not Proxies for regular edh. It’s still cheaper than buying the precons

[@matianlong7907]

I know it's not a "real format" but would have been great listen to you guys talking about Premodern

[@jennaeasley2277]

30:14 wasteland is why wren is banned

[@shep-b8u]

I missed premodern and duel commander. Nice podcast tho 👌

[@vidgapbaker7588]

tickets are pert of stickers. you used tickets to buy stickers. also i found unfinty set easy to under stand

[@ShadowWasntHere8433]

Theres a big different between 2 mana for 2 damage and 0 mana for 4

[@zackfro]

What CAN'T they rank?

[@sergioDGO]

I was hoping Premodern was mentioned.

[@logansanchez7998]

Canlander is a great format can't wait for the vid

[@Dikarika]

Canlander! I can't wait!

[@haamgamer07]

See as someone who is re-getting into magic for the second time, I don’t have a large collection, so I love pauper as my 1v1 format. I also love grindy decks and golgari/dimir, and gardens is very strong. And all of my cedh friends are weirdly into pauper so that makes it easier to find games in my play group.

[@Adam86Gower]

Here to show some pauper love too. I know they didn't crap on the format, but one thing they didn't touch on is that the priority of synergy when deck building, this is what sets it apart from other formats where decks can be propped up by busted high rarity cards (if that matters to you). Love the work y'all do. Keep it up!

[@TheGirthiestSausage]

I was so mad at mh2 I used to play my favorite deck death shadow jund the printing of solitude make it literally unplayable I either have to run mainboard surgical extraction to thoughtseize them out of hand and exile all of them

[@DrMisifux]

What about Premodern? :(

[@DH-gv6cj]

listening to edh players talk about other formats is why limited players compare edh players to hard drug users.

[@jacobfrench1078]

Modern is the format I enjoy playing the most. Would love to see you guys play it more on the channel.

[@hugi_tout]

W&6 + Wasteland

[@filipefranca5866]

Legacy is a wasteland format, wren and six! So sometimes going to fast is super costly

[@TheDogg7891]

YESSS CANLANDER YESSSS

[@hellproof2379]

I like timeless on arena. But it’s so hard to get into anything not cEDH. It takes all my brains focus lol.

[@crawdaddy2004]

“Type 1” is/was Vintage. Type 2 was Standard. 😂

[@oldbordergeek]

aw no pre-modern?

[@jautele49]

So excited they called it Modern Masters 3 😂

[@cameton_youtube]

Pauper best format

[@benjaminrichard7741]

15:15 unban Fury please 🙏

[@grimgorlefort]

The best format is duel commander :p

[@Deathkeeper43]

Ah yes type 1 aka standard

[@millzy8885]

Standard was type 2

[@OBZEDAT]

CANLANDER HYYYYYYYYYPE

[@robertomacetti7069]

I hate standard rotation, is a massive deal breaker for me, can't stand my deck having an expiration date

[@dukevulture4562]

JUND JUND JUND JUND

[@autopsipath]

Yes Australian highlander is the best format very correct.

[@AIMLESS-NAMELESS]

why is w6 banned? 1 word. WASTELAND

[@thomasduke891]

Oathbreaker?😅