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This thread is for discussion of this week's Serious Fun, which goes live Tuesday morning on magicthegathering.com.

Noble magic is interesting, I hadn't seen that one before. I also play a format on the Pauper, Peasant continuum, though mine is above Noble still, it would seem (though I've called it Merchant, which would imply it's lower than Noble). I build all of my casual decks, both online and in paper, like this:


- No more than 1 card at Mythic Rare.
- No more than 5 cards at Rare + Mythic Rare.
- No more than 20 cards at Uncommon + Rare + Mythic Rare.

This means that if you're maximising all slots, you'll have 1 Mythic Rare, 4 Rare and 15 Uncommon.  

I find this format provides a powerful yet fair way to play. You get lots of goodies without going overboard. 

It's my de facto way of building decks!        

I tried something once kind of like Noble that I tentively called "Younger Drakeling Lowlander".
Pretty much it was a 60 card singleton format where the only rare you could have was your 'Commander', the rest of the deck was Uncommon or below. Your 'Commander' could be any rare or mythic rare creature(legendary not being a requirement) that played just like a general in Commander. It didn't really catch on amongst my playgroup but it gave me some good memories, I still take any chance I can to play a [c]Djinn of Wishes!

Noble sounds like an amazing idea. I'm surprised it hasn't caught on before with anyone. I'll definitely have to give that format a spin.

Dark Confidant as your Noble anyone? Stoneforge Mystic? Tarmogoyf?

I like that the color requirements are nonexistent.

Realms Magic looks fun, sort of like a strategy board game meets MTG, but I'm not sure I understand the "Realms Library" part of it. Questions:

1. How big can it be? 60 cards? 40 card minimum? 250 cards?
2. Does it have to be all colors, or can it be one color?
3. What's to stop someone from building an awesome deck and tromping on their opponents while they're pilfering through the community libraries?
4. How many lands are there in the shared libraries? Any?

This definitely looks kind of fun. I have a lot of friends that are new to magic, so this would be a great way to introduce older cards they're not familiar with. I just hope none of them figure out how awesome it'd be to play vampire nocturnus and target the black library...

Noble Magic looks like a lot of fun.  I think a lot of the fun formats remind me of the old Invitational formats. 

Aug 28, 2012 -- 7:12AM, rstnme wrote:

Realms Magic looks fun, sort of like a strategy board game meets MTG, but I'm not sure I understand the "Realms Library" part of it. Questions:

1. How big can it be? 60 cards? 40 card minimum? 250 cards?
2. Does it have to be all colors, or can it be one color?
3. What's to stop someone from building an awesome deck and tromping on their opponents while they're pilfering through the community libraries?
4. How many lands are there in the shared libraries? Any?

This definitely looks kind of fun. I have a lot of friends that are new to magic, so this would be a great way to introduce older cards they're not familiar with. I just hope none of them figure out how awesome it'd be to play vampire nocturnus and target the black library...

The definition of the Realms Library does seem imprecise...  I'm just guessing, but I think the idea is that each player's Realms Library consists of exactly 12 basic lands, and nothing else.

Aug 28, 2012 -- 6:51PM, orcishartillery wrote:

The definition of the Realms Library does seem imprecise...  I'm just guessing, but I think the idea is that each player's Realms Library consists of exactly 12 basic lands, and nothing else.

Correct. The realm is 12 basic lands . So a Dimir realm might be 6 Islands and 6 swamps. Naya 4 mountains, 4 forest, 4 plains. I keep a realm on hand for each guild, shard and wedge.

Aug 28, 2012 -- 7:12AM, rstnme wrote:

Realms Magic looks fun, sort of like a strategy board game meets MTG, but I'm not sure I understand the "Realms Library" part of it. Questions:
1. How big can it be? 60 cards? 40 card minimum? 250 cards? 2. Does it have to be all colors, or can it be one color? 3. What's to stop someone from building an awesome deck and tromping on their opponents while they're pilfering through the community libraries? 4. How many lands are there in the shared libraries? Any?
This definitely looks kind of fun. I have a lot of friends that are new to magic, so this would be a great way to introduce older cards they're not familiar with. I just hope none of them figure out how awesome it'd be to play vampire nocturnus and target the black library...

 

@ rstnme: The color decks are just 5 mono-color decks without lands. A good way to start is build a normal mono-color deck for each color, sans the lands. 

Here's a sample set-up.  The color decks are marked with a color bead, the realms are in fancy sleeves.

I use about 95% of the modern cards printed, so my color decks are each about 2500 cards each. I use spreadsheets to track the percentages of creatures, removal, draw, etc. But, I'm a bit obsessive.        

Aug 28, 2012 -- 7:12AM, rstnme wrote:

I just hope none of them figure out how awesome it'd be to play vampire nocturnus and target the black library...

BTW, lots of fun stuff happens with clash, Harbingers, and the like.

I also forgot to mention, I do sprinkle artifacts in the color decks. A few nonbasics like Ravnica karoos are good, but I recommend keeping them in very small quantities.  (The karoos are especially good because they create virtual card advantage: They work like 2 land draws!) 

Hmm, realms seems very interesting. The only negative thing I can see about it is that it negate mill for players.