Punk Magic
I like Magic the Gathering. I started playing in high school, as a sort of replacement effect for my love of Pokémon cards ('cause those were for kids and when you're a teenager there is nothing worse than being perceived as being younger). I was not great at it. I loved the slow, ponderous flyers in blue mana, specifically drakes, which were pretty much always outclassed. I sucked at deckbuilding but it was still a fun thing to do with friends.
Then several years passed and I never touched those cards. Then the commander format became a thing and all my friends were playing and I've pretty much been at it ever since.
But in the last few years while I enjoy Magic I have become, at best, unimpressed by the company that produces it. There's a lot of reasons for this and I'm not here to go into them in detail, but I find myself reaching for cards and game modes that are, frankly, beyond my ability to afford. I think large parts of this game are beyond most fans' financial means. Magic Arena is an absolute joke, limited printing of format staples mean you can't keep up without significant investment, and different booster packs and limited packs like secret lair make this game feel more like a video game full of randomly seeded lootboxes than something printed on cardboard that the company actually controls.
But I said I wasn't gonna get into all that. Instead I want to talk about how I've been enjoying Magic the Gathering recently:
It's a new format I'm calling Punk Magic.
Punk Magic is all about using up those cards in your collection you are never going to touch. The ones that lay in white cardboard rows and old deck boxes. The ones that you love but never make their way into your commander decks. The cards that are just one more power or toughness away from being playable, from resembling the all-stars that you see across different formats.
Punk Magic is full of single player mini games: betting on mana racing against other punks, competing in junk fights in improvised arenas against booster packs of random cards, and going head-to-head against the Wizards of the Citadel, those vile wealthy mages who rule all the lands around you and charge you bonkers rent for the privilege.
Each mini game awards you coins you can spend on zining spells: taking parts of Magic cards and pasting them onto other cards for powerful spells, as well as unlocking special abilities to augment your chances at success, and even making custom spells that break the Laws of Spellmaking.
Punk magic is also a multiplayer format. Build a cube you can draft with friends, and let them change, destroy, and add cards so the cube is always evolving. All you need is some scissors and glue, and some markers to let you and all your friends become adept spellmakers.
Want to play commander too? No worries. Make a deck then zine a spell to represent your commander and play in free for all or head-to-head.
Worried your zined spells will be too powerful? So too are the Wizards of the Citadel, who stick wanted levels on powerful cards, banishing them to the citadel jail until you decide to free them, or break them down into parts that can live on with other spells.
My own cube has evolved in many ways through testing. There's the tried and true archetypes like cats, elves, and red/green ramp, but also oddities like lizard/wurm tribal and black deck wins. It's messy and unbalanced and represents my time spent in this hobby and will reflect the tastes and art of my friends and I couldn't be happier with it.
And now the rules are free for everyone to enjoy.
So what kind of magic will you make, punk?
A Fan Format for Magic the Gathering
