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Whenever a new card game comes out, what comes soon after are alternate ways to play the game.

Sure every game has a “default” way to play the game, but sometimes players want to take their cards and try different ways to play with them.

Sometimes a game decides to add a rotation, or maybe the card pool gets too big, or a company wants to add an additional way to play including more players. That is when a new format is made.

There are formats that are official, and there are many more that are unofficial, but there is usually more than one way to play a game. That’s the topic for today, talk about common alternative formats, why they form, and when companies should support new formats.

An Idea Sparks

First and foremost, why do new formats form?

I think that there are two primary ways that new formats form: player made and company made.

Company made formats are formed via the whims of the company and are often new ways to sell cards, but there are often reasons associated with them.

Sometimes formats are made to make games go quicker, which is often because player feedback has stated that regular games either take too long or as a way for new players to get a taste of the game.

Other times, rotation is introduced into a game and as a way to make sure long time players don’t immediately sell out of the game, an eternal format is made alongside the new rotating format.

There are also times when companies want players to play with the newest cards, so various limited formats are made like drafting packs or making preconstructed boosters to play with.

When a player makes a format also spans a wide variety of reasons. One reason is to make use of cards that they weren’t using in competitive decks, but would find a home in another format.

Another reason is because of budget reasons, using cards that are much cheaper or easily available because you may like a game but can’t afford to get into the much more expensive formats.

And of course there are formats that are made just to see what would happen if you were to change a rule or two from an official format and see how broken the game could get with just that change.

There are a variety of ways formats can be made, but there is usually a number of common formats that are made.

Types of Formats

One of the more common formats to be made are formats that only use the lowest rarity of a card, like Pauper in Magic or Common Charity in Yu-Gi-Oh!. This is usually done as a way to help budget players continue to play the game without having to spend too much money to play the game.

Some games support limited formats, or formats that used sealed booster packs or preconstructed decks as their own format, and not only is this done to sell new product, but can also be a format where everyone is on an even playing field in that the only cards that were drafted or are in a deck with a known quantity of cards.

There are also multiplayer formats that spring up, Elder Dragon Highlander which became Commander being one of the most well known multiplayer formats, and this is done more so to make the game more social. Two player formats tend to be more competitive whereas more players in a game tends to be more for hanging out with people rather than winning, with some exceptions of course.

Bouncing off of Commander, there are also a variety of singleton formats, where only one copy of a card, save for a basic resource, is allowed. These can range from casual like Commander, to competitive like Canadian Highlander, and anywhere in between.

There are also “leader” formats, where you pick a card to represent your deck and also provide some deck building restrictions. Other than the obvious answer of Commander, Yu-Gi-Oh! has Deck Master and U150 for Pokémon, there has been a motion to do something similar for a lot of other games, especially since the rise and popularity of Commander.

There are also formats that are based around a certain time frame, where only cards printed from a certain era as well as a community made ban list or an official ban list that would mark the end of the era of where those cards would be useable. Yu-Gi-Oh! has a number of these sort of formats like Edison, Dragon Ruler, and Goat Format that are huge within the community.

Support

With so many formats, its a wonder how a company can support more than a few formats. Well the truth is that not every single format is as supported as others.

Yu-Gi-Oh! essentially has three primarily supported formats, the OCG, the TCG, and Master Duel, all of which have their own ban lists and consistent support. Despite many formats coming from the community, there is rarely support for those formats beyond third party simulators and occasional game store support.

The Time Wizard format is one of the most supported additional formats for Yu-Gi-Oh! in terms of how popular it is and its presence in official tournaments, other formats have fallen by the wayside and exist because game stores still promote them as ways to play and they still get numbers to play them.

On the other hand, Magic has way too many official formats to support, and in my opinion is one of the biggest issues that the game has. There are so many formats that are played that trying to balance a single card against every format is an impossible task.

This is why when a card made for Commander breaks an older format, or a random Uncommon happens to break Modern, I don’t get up in arms because there is only so much manpower a company can support before it becomes untenable for them to focus on balancing for every format.

Then comes the conundrum, how do you properly handle multiple formats? I think a game should have 1 to 3 primary formats that are completely supported, 2-4 secondary formats that are occasionally supported, and a whole host of other formats that are rarely supported.

By support I mean product actively made for that format, so while I do believe that Standard as a format should be supported to the highest degree, I don’t think that Emperor should be as supported.

Games should have multiple formats in my opinion as a way to have as many people playing the game as possible, but having too many can be a detriment to a game in the long term in terms of designing cards for those formats.

Thank you for reading, see you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual