So much of Magic’s long-term success can be attributed to it being a social game. While we can’t gather for paper tournaments, especially here in the USA, there isn’t a reason we can’t gather online as teams. Allowing a team to share screens and talk freely during a tournament would bring back the social experience that so many players are missing.
Friendship is the quickest way for new players to become enfranchised in the game.
When I owned a LGS I always tried to introduce new players to regulars whom I thought they’d get along with, because what ultimately mattered for getting these players to return is how enjoyable their night was.
Players that went 0-4, but spent their night talking/making friends, came back much more often than those who went undefeated, but spent their time in-between rounds alone. Friends can also impact one’s interest in the game.
Discussing and sharing decks, in any given format, will raise intrigue for those in the group.
I firmly believe that online team events would help promote interest through players reaching out to each other and getting them excited about playing in an event together.
In 2018, players were competing to qualify for PT 25th Anniversary, a team Pro Tour; a large number of stores here in the Midwest achieved, one of, if not, their biggest PPTQ that season.
While the initial qualifiers were played individually, the concept of being on a team motivated a lot of people to test and travel together for these tournaments.
Unified Constructed Can Breathe Life into Unpopular Formats
In recent years, powerful cards have homogenized formats with top decks sharing key cards, and a single deck taking a high metagame share; something unified constructed has built in safeguards against. For example, at most a deck can only hold a third of the metagame.
The deck building restriction can also mean that the “best deck” is not an auto-include. In theory, if Omnath Adventures was the best deck and a 9 out of 10 it may not be worth it if the cards required restrict the options of the team’s other decks to being 6’s.
Their overall chance to win a match will be greatly reduced when facing opponents that spread their options more evenly between all three decks.
The Omnath Player would be favored to win, however their teammates’ matches would likely be unfavorable.
Another benefit of Team Unified are decks that have been pushed
out of the format by particular cards have a chance of seeing play again, or even for the first time. When War of the Spark came out Arclight Phoenix got a powerful tool in Finale of Promise. The deck had a strong showing the first week but quickly became obsolete as players discovered how powerful Teferi and Narset were.
If a team could reason:
1.Teferi and Narset to be in the same deck and 2.Pheonix to have a good matchup against decks not playing those cards.
Despite being an underpowered deck due to problematic cards, it could still be correct to
register Phoenix given the team's expected metagame.
2020 Grand Finals
Below is the metagame for the standard portion of the 2020 Season Grand Finals:
In standard 97% of decks played red and 84% green, while white was only present in the 4-color Omnath decks. Looking at this event through the lense of a unified format's limitations, we can theoretically cut the dominating showings of certain colors closer to a third; as
underpowered colors in a format aren’t competing against the best cards of other colors but the second tier. While there are six listed archetypes, all, except Rakdos Midrange and Dimir Rogues, were largely built from the same cards. Had there been team tournaments during this period of Standard using Unified constructed then we could have seen a significantly more diverse metagame in it than we did in the Grand Finals.
Importance of Open Information in Online Limited Events
As much as I enjoy playing with some “secret tech” to surprise opponents (which admittedly has always been much worse than I thought at the time), I believe open decklists are incredibly important to maintain tournament integrity in the current age of digital Magic. The largest issue with events featuring draft is the risk of collusion; namely dishonest players in the pod sharing information during the draft portion. My solution for this is another team format in Team Draft.
While not my preference, a special rule would need to be implemented to allow team discussion during the drafting portion, in addition to the normal communication allowed within matches.
The sharing of information will make the draft closer to a Team Rochester Draft, with the advantage of taking the time of a traditional draft. There’s a lot to unpack with the logistics of running an online team draft event, which I’ll be diving into next time.
For most of its players, Magic is a social game. You don’t have to look long on any MtG social media page to see someone commenting about missing in-person events. Online team formats bring that social experience back as well as give the game a fresh feel and I believe they could be the next step in digital Magic.
Author: Steven Stierman
