Magic: the Deckbuilding

Intro
These are the rules for a Magic: the Gathering variant that takes inspiration from deckbuilding
games like Dominion. The first part of this doc is a notional document aimed at getting readers
to grok the basic idea of what goes on, and the latter half is a detailed rules doc that describes
in fairly precise detail what rules are changed.

Also, hi, I’m DJ Hoffman, @djhoffma on Twitter. I’ve been playing Magic since I was 6 (~Starter
1999). I’m humbled that you’re reading this and excited to see MTG: Deckbuilding cubes get
made.

Why a Cube?
This format has several rules that are deep departures from traditional Magic (the “cards in hand
are -free-to-play” rule and the “buying a card” rules for starters). A Cube mitigates a lot of
complexity by being able to exclude cards that just are hard to make work. For example, I
haven’t worked out Split cards or MDFC rules yet, because they’re not in the Cube. These are
rules for a made-up format, if you want to include a particular card or mechanic, make up how
you think it should work and then make sure your friends are okay with it, and then play with it.

Similarities to traditional Magic

This is a multiplayer game of magic (typically 2-5 players, though nothing is stopping you from
playing with more). Players start at 20 life like normal. All the phases of Magic are there
including untap, main phases, combat. The end phase (specifically the cleanup step) is changed
significantly. Players take turns playing in a clockwise order, etc. In most ways, once a
permanent is on the battlefield, it’ll function like it does in any normal game of Magic.

An overview of the deckbuilding parts

In this variant, players start with approximately the same 10 cards: 7 basic lands of their choice,
a 2/2 vanilla creature of their choice (Grizzly bears is common, but you’re free to color swap this
or swap for creature types as you prefer), a Crystal Ball, and a Hornet Sting.

Every turn, you have 5 cards in hand. Cards in your hand may be played without paying
their mana cost. You’ll use your mana to instead buy cards from the stacks available in the
buying area. At the end of your turn, you discard all your unused cards, sacrifice all lands you
have in play and draw back up to 5 cards.
Example: Your opening hand consists of Grizzly Bears, Hornet Sting, Crystal Ball, and two
lands. You can play Grizzly Bears, Hornet Sting, and Crystal Ball as spells, all without paying
their mana costs. I’ll talk about the lands in the next section.

Mana Abilities
A mana ability is formally defined in the Magic Comp rules, notionally, it’s abilities that add mana
to your mana pool. For any card with a mana ability, you may replace the tap symbol on that
card with “discard this card”. This means that lands are like Coppers from Dominion, in that they
add 1 mana of their color to your mana pool when you discard them. Mana artifacts and Mana
creatures function similarly. Though, unlike lands, you can keep creatures and artifacts in play
turn after turn.

Example 1: Jess has a Mountain and an Island in hand. Jess can discard both of these cards
and add UR to her mana pool.
Example 2: Jess has a Sliver Queen in play, and a Bloom Tender in hand. Jess can discard the
Bloom Tender to add WUBRG to her mana pool.

Running out of cards

If you would draw from an empty deck in this game, instead shuffle your graveyard into your
library and continue drawing cards. This is a replacement effect that’s part of the game rules.
Don’t apply this effect for things like revealing cards, only drawing specifically.

Example: DJ starts with 10 cards in deck. For his first turn, he draws 5 cards and has them all in
hand. At the end of his first turn he discards any remaining cards in hand, and draws the
remaining 5 cards in his deck. After his second turn he’ll attempt to draw from an empty library,
so he shuffles his graveyard into his library, and then draws from that new library up to 5 cards
in hand.

The Buy Area

The Buy Area is what makes this a cube. Except, unlike a normal cube draft, you draft the cards
into your deck as you’re playing.

How to buy a card

Buying a card is a special action that doesn’t use the stack. (i.e., like playing a land or
unmorphing a creature). To buy a card, pay its mana cost, and then place the card on top of
your graveyard. You can buy a card that is on the top of a pile.
Basic cards (cards that should be available at all times)
You’ll have piles of each of the following (or a subset if you want):
All basic lands are in infinite supply
10-20 Prismatic Lens (aka. Copper 1)
10-20 Mind Stone (aka Copper 2)
15 Hedron Archive (aka Silver)
5-10 Gilded Lotus (Aka Gold 1)
5-10 Dreamstone Hedron (aka Gold 2)

The “aka” here is for people familiar with Dominion who are comparing this game to that one.

Variant rule:
It is recommended, though optional, to make the abilities that sacrifice the artifacts above (Mind
Stone, Hedron Archive, Dreamstone Hedron) to exile the artifacts instead of sending them to the
graveyard.

Variant rule 2:
We found in playtest games that getting a large mana-base of artifacts sometimes got really
cumbersome and became the dominant strategy. One option is to limit the number of artifacts
from these piles that stay in play to 0, 1, or 2. This would be an augmentation of the cleanup
step rules.

Variant note:
You can exclude the Gilded Lotuses as they’re by far the most expensive part of this cube.

The Good stuff, the Cube cards

The actual Cube cards, I typically separate these by color, but you can do a number of
approaches.
Variant 1:
You have 5 piles, 1 for each color, 1 multicolor pile, and 1 artifact pile.

Variant 2 (Ascension):
Shuffle all the cube cards together. Lay out 10 of them. When you buy a card from one of those
10,. Replace it with the next card in the cube.

Other variants are possible here, you can be somewhat creative in this section.

Example (using variant 1):

Jess has an opening hand of Grizzly Bears, Hornet Sting, Crystal Ball, Mountain, Island. She
can play Grizzly Bears, Hornet Sting, and Crystal Ball as spells, all without paying their mana
costs. During her main phase, she can discard the Mountain and Island to add UR to her mana
pool. The top of the red pile is a Viashino Pyromancer. The top of the Blue pile is a Merfolk
Looter. Deciding that she wants to get through her deck faster as she buys new cards, she uses
her mana to buy a Merfolk Looter, which goes to her graveyard. On the third turn of the game,
her graveyard will get shuffled into her library, and she’ll be able to draw and cast the Looter
without paying its mana cost.

Getting past dead cards

As an optional rule, but one that I play with, you may pay {2} (2 generic mana) to put a card at
the top of a buy pile on the bottom of that pile. You may do this twice per turn.

Conspiracies!
As an optional rule, you may play with Conspiracies. Some don’t make sense in the format, but
the Hidden Agenda ones typically do. Make a face-down pile of conspiracies. Conspiracies cost
{5} you get the top one regardless of what it is, and you must write down the name of the card
you want to apply the Conspiracy to when you buy it.

Rules in Depth
Hello my fellow Mel’s:

The “you may play cards without paying their mana costs” rule in
depth
Okay, so I kinda lied, this variant needs a slightly different version of this rule. Here’s the
differences from how this works from normal Magic:
● When you buy a card with X in its cost, X is zero. When you play a card with X in its
cost, you set and pay for X at that point.
● When you buy a card with a cost reduction mechanic, you utlize that mechanic at that
point. For example, when buying a card with Delve, you utilize Delve to exile cards from
your graveyard when you buy the card. As you might imagine, this can be extremely
powerful in a deckbuilding game. Also, powerful is fun!
● Kicker cards function like X spells, you pay the kicker when you play the card, not when
you buy it. Other kicker-like mechanics function similarly, i.e. Overload (you pay the
whole alternate cost when cast, not just the difference), Strive, Replicate, Multikicker,
etc. are all affected by this rule.
● Cards cast from zones other than your hand must be paid for normally. This includes
mechanics like Flashback, Madness, red’s “exile you may cast until end of turn”, you
may cast from the top of deck, etc.
The Cleanup Step
● Replace the normal rules for cleanup step with the following:
1. Remove all marked damage from creatures, do things in cleanup that
don’t involve your hand (I think removing regen shields also happens
here?)
2. Sacrifice all lands you control (you sacrifice lands like this to allow
Landfall cards to work, rather than just saying you can’t play lands)
3. Discard all cards in your hand. If this triggers abilities, you break here and
put those abilities on the stack, then re-enter cleanup. Do not repeat this
step again when it is reached in cleanup.
4. Draw up to your maximum hand size. The default maximum hand size is
5, but can be increased or decreased. If this triggers spells or abilities, put
those onto the stack, before ending the turn, but do not repeat steps 3
and 4 of cleanup again. (For example, imagine how Consecrated Sphinx
would work if this step could be repeated).

Cards that change value in this game relative to other variants

Self-Exile
Anything that exiles your own cards is effectively “trashing” them, making your deck smaller.
This is typically a good thing in deckbulding games, and makes those effects much more
powerful than otherwise.

Card Draw
Since cards are free-to-play, draw cards is also generating mana. My friends house-banned
everything that could draw more than 2 cards at once, and Divination is borderline broken.

Permanents vs. Spells

Powerful Instants and Sorceries get played every time through your deck. Stuff like Wrath of
God could be miserable if included, because it’ll get played every time you draw your whole
deck. For reference, this was mostly built around draft chaff and bulk rares originally.
Unconditional sweepers should be used sparingly if at all. You could house rule some cards to
exile themselves to make up for it.

On the other hand, powerful permanents get themselves out of your deck. Mana artifacts,
enchantments, etc. are likely to stick around and not get re-drawn. (this is an analogous trade-
off to Bases from Star Realms/Hero Realms).
Graveyard Recursion
Raise Dead/Reclaim are incredibly powerful because cards you buy go into your graveyard. If
you buy a card, then pull it into your hand, you can play it immediately.

Discard Spells
Because everyone draws up to 5 cards at the end of round, they always have cards to discard.
This makes discard spells more powerful than general, because they always have a target.

Instants
Because you draw cards at end of turn, you generally can’t plan around which instants you’ll
have on your opponents’ turns. On the other hand, when you do have instant speed disruption,
you don’t have to leave mana up and telegraph what you have, so it’s also powerful in that
sense.

Activated Abilities
I haven’t talked about Activated abilities at all in this document, because they basically don’t
change. One note is that mana costing abilities need to be paid for. Since cards are mana, this
is more of a cost than normal.