General Three-Player Formats

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
No, this is not a multiplayer Magic format thread.

Recently James visited, and we played Magic along with my girlfriend. I've been pretty into pick-up and play formats lately (see Cube pack wars), so we brewed up a new format.

For me, the biggest issue with three player formats is, how do you keep the third player occupied?

We came up with the idea that, maybe the third player can do some light deckbuilding while the other two play.

The Format - King of the Hill

Separate your cardpool into fixing lands, basics, and non-land spells.

Each player receives a starting deck consisting of:
15 non-land cards
10 basics (2 of each)
5 random fixing lands

Then shuffle your fixing lands with your nonland spells and set these cards aside. (Supplemental cards)

The first two players play a single-game match with their randomly made decks.

The loser receives 6 random cards from the Supplemental Cards pile, and builds and updated 30-card deck using their pool. They are free to now adjust their deck (land counts) as they see fit (and take / remove basic lands freely).

The third player then plays the winner. This continues for as long as you like. After each game, the loser gets 6 new cards for deckbuilding, and the winner stays on with their deck unchanged. At the end of the night the winner is the one with the fewest cards in their card pool (fewest losses).


Pros
Quick set up. It's more or less modified pack wars.
Self-balancing. Weaker players will be given the benefit of a larger card pool over time.
The player not playing can keep themselves occupied with deckbuilding while games are happening.
You get to have your deck evolve over time, which to me evokes the memory of being a new player and having janky decks that I edited as I got new cards.

Cons
Can be luck-based, as it starts as a pack wars format. One of our players had a very creature-light pool, and had trouble taking any matches. Theoretically you could remedy this by sorting cards and letting losing players select from certain pools (creatures, lands, other).
 
Sometimes when we have 3 players and we know someone is new to cube/isn't that great at magic, we'll have someone draft + play with headphones on and the other two play as a team, with the less-experienced player being the team lead and them talking through their plays. Not everyone wants/needs to do this, but we found it was a good way to keep all 3 players involved and not have 3 matches of magic and get a best of 5 vs taking a million years to finish all the games. Also it's a great way to introduce less-experienced players to cube, as the experienced player is able to hear their mindset on the matter and able to present them other options/play devil's advocate/etc.

Otherwise we fire up GTA V/Rocket League/something and the third player forgets they're here for magic after a while lol
 
i only have 2 friends who play that live close enough, where we can chill and cube it up. So we exclusively play 3 player.

2 formats we have found to use which we all enjoy so that noone gets bored are below...

1) FFA (Infinite) Respawn: And if we have the time, we play to 3 points. if you kill an opponent you get 1 point... so it still gets political as someone can try to stop another player from getting a kill... then if you die, you get to sideboard and when its your turn next would goldfish out 5 turns in an uninteractive bubble to build up your new board and we keep going

2) Goldmine: essentially there is a goldmine in the middle that has 20 coins and any player can attack the goldmine to get coins (damage = coins stolen) but anyone can also block to stop you. also each player gets a shield (which take the place of "life" which we start at 5) a player can attack another player like normal and if the opponent has no shield left then any excess damage would return gold back to the mine... game is over when th mine is at 0 whoever has most gold wins...

these have proven to be the most fun for us as we don't want people to be effed and have nothing to do
 
There are some really great ideas here!

King of the Hill with Supplement Deck Building, Gold Mine, Rocket League, eating food..

Suggestion for Gold Mine: Maybe let the Coins become Treasure tokens for cool visual effect and the players actually gain access to an in-game reward in the form of mana (from the Treasure tokens). The winner is the one with the most Treasure tokens in his ownership both on the battlefield amd the ones sacrificed for mana. Meaning you do not lose victory points by spending the Treasures for mana. Maybe?
 
Does anyone have experience with Archenemy? I was thinking that might be a nice game to play with 3 players (though I think it was originally balanced for a 3v1, perhaps it would be re-balanced for a 2v1?)
 
There are some really great ideas here!

King of the Hill with Supplement Deck Building, Gold Mine, Rocket League, eating food..

Suggestion for Gold Mine: Maybe let the Coins become Treasure tokens for cool visual effect and the players actually gain access to an in-game reward in the form of mana (from the Treasure tokens). The winner is the one with the most Treasure tokens in his ownership both on the battlefield amd the ones sacrificed for mana. Meaning you do not lose victory points by spending the Treasures for mana. Maybe?

Then the person making the most successful attacks, and thus already in a strong position, gets access to free mana? This sounds like you'd be setting up a snowballing situation where one player pulls fast ahead of the others.
 
Being aggressive is not = strong position. Not always.

Also in multiplayer formats like Commander and these 3-player games there will always be politics and the player who seem ahead will suddenly face two enemies who work together.
 
Being aggressive is not = strong position. Not always.

Also in multiplayer formats like Commander and these 3-player games there will always be politics and the player who seem ahead will suddenly face two enemies who work together.

I didn't say being aggressive, I said "making the most successful attacks".
Multiplayer formats by their very nature tend towards midrange since aggro can't reliably beat multiple players who might cooperate and control can't reliably shut down multiple players who might cooperate, leading to the better decks being those capable of shifting gears between applying pressure and relieving it. A midrange deck making successful attacks that translate damage done=free mana/artifacts is going to pull ahead quickly pretty handily, which is part of the problem why the Monarch keyword can be so problematic in 1v1; sure, it won't always snowball for the player in a stronger position, but it will tend to want to; I think you'll find a similar problem here.

But by all means, test it and get back to us.
 
Or you could test it and get back to us :) No need to impose your work load onto my shoulders unless you are not capable of completing your own assignment :)

Edit: Please notice the smileys :) This means I am not irritated but I just do not have the time to test out if my suggestion would be fun/function fair. It was merely a suggestion and not a finished product. Everyone is welcome to test the suggested idea but do not enforce anyone to do so either.
 
It was a suggestion. Not a finished product with my ‘quality stamp’ on it. Just an idea. If no one wants to test the idea, fine by me :)

I have limited time for Magic and when I play Magic it is merely as a host of either a 8-man draft or 16-man draft. We are never fewer players.

Do you want me to test my suggestions in the future before suggesting them on this page or is it okay to share untested ideas?
 
Why would I test an idea that I expect to be bad when the person who had it wasn't even willing to test it themselves first? :D

To clarify :cool: I think suggesting an idea :) and arguing that it works better than someone expects it to :eek: and then whining about being told to test it to prove such an argument :confused: by claiming that your limited time is too precious to be spent testing those suggestions :rolleyes: comes off needlessly hostile :) and I'm not sure that emojis :( really serve to distract from the hostile phrasing :oops: and actually, they might even reinforce the perception of hostility :(
 
I dislike arguying with a person who is demeaning and uses aggressive sarcasm to ‘win’ at any cost but instead of fighting it I decided to do something about it.

I invited two friends over and we played the Treasure format.

It was as exhilarating as expected and the political part of multiplayer Magic has never been more intriguing and fun. When there’s an actual in-game reward for dealing damage to the Treasure pile in the middle of the board then both opponents will try to stop the attacking player even more than when it is just Score Points. Unless if the attacking player is the one who is far behind the other two.

Before we started we had a little chat about what to expect. We agreed the artifact matters cards would probably be a little better than we were use to. We also agreed that we might need a single land less in each deck in order to function properly because the players would get ‘free’ extra mana from the treasures. However we decided to take the lazy route and NOT look through the cube for those cards.

That decision we came to regret.

What we learned:

1. We should have spend some time on the logistics and simply found the artifact matters cards because they were out of control. Cards like Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and Captain Lannery Storm should not be in this format.
2. Reducing the land count in each deck by 1 is fine.
3. Next time we will let all sacrificed Treasures stay in the graveyard instead of letting them cease to exist. In this way it is easier to count the victory points after the game.
4. This is a lot of fun! Especially because you are actually fighting for Treasures and in-game rewards.

Perhaps we’ll increase the Treasure count next time because when players get access to a little extra mana they also finish the game a little faster.
 
How nice that in less than 3 hours you have been able invite two friends over, draft your cube, educate them about the method of play you were going to pursue, and dash off a very thoughtful reply about how your test round went! I think you've greatly underestimated the time you have available to you to test your ideas, and the means you have to test them. :) And better still: for all your effort to "win" the argument and pry victory from me and my demeaning, sarcastic wit, you've discovered a new format to enjoy! :) Sounds like a win/win way to spend a morning, if you ask me. :)
 
Thank you RavenbornMuse. This conversation was not a pleasent experience for me so I hope people are satisfied with the feedback from our two-hour evening Treasure gaming (Danish time zone).
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Uh, I'm not really going to legislate on right and wrong here, everybody just chill out a bit. Let's be internet friends.
 
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