15-card Highlander

A lot of the play variants that seem to have the most success are predicated on thinking big. 5-color Magic, with its 250-card decks, had its day in the sun for many years. Nowadays EDH is the casual format of choice, and it involves a cool 100 cards. Doesn't a teetering pile of cardboard sometimes get a little tiresome, though? The hassle shuffling it, the delay of game every time you search for something, the struggle finding room to carry and transport the behemoth... not to mention that the bigger your deck is, the less consistent it is, inevitably leading to long, drawn-out games that can take all afternoon to finish. Wouldn't you rather be able to get a few games in if you can help it? Sometimes the pared-down fun of playing with a 40 card deck in Limited formats can lead to tight gameplay... so why not push that concept to the limit and get some real pared-down decks?

If you want to put your deckbuilding on a diet, look no further than 15-card Highlander - a format where your deck can easily fit in your back pocket. As the name suggests, everyone's piloting a deck of fifteen cards, or the size of the average sideboard... talk about consistency! The rules are the same as any other game of Magic except for the deck size, the fact that it's a Highlander format (that is to say, you can run no more than one copy of any card that isn't a basic land) and you don't lose the game if your library runs out. If you happen to be playing in a competitive setting, tournament versions also allowed for 3-card sideboards.

15-card Highlander is simple in concept and easy to summarize, but the ramifications are huge. Decks take ten minutes to make, from concept to sleeving. Games are fast and furious, leading to lots of rapid-fire gameplay, and changes to your deck take only seconds after all these iterations give you some information. The small deck size reduces the impact of luck on the environment: if you only see a single land in your opener, then you know what percentage of your next eight cards are lands. And hey, like any Highlander format, you need not waste any time tracking down more than one copy of any card - building decks is quick, easy AND cheap. We're talking about Fun-Sized Magic here, thirty bite-sized portions in a single bag, perfect for parties.

The gameplay itself has a pretty major overhaul, too. In most games, both players can expect to draw their entire deck, so the basic concept of card advantage is suddenly turned on its head. Card draw effects are hardly as impressive when they don't actually get you more cards in the long run - imagine a format where Ancestral Recall isn't worth it! Instead, the real value lies in getting as much use as possible from those 15 cards you're packing, and recursion effects rule the game. In the format's earliest days, Nether Spirit and Hammer of Bogardan were the cards to beat, though no shortage of value pieces have been printed since the turn of the century.

As is the case in any format that changes the fundamentals of the game, of course, some cards are completely busted by nature of the fact that they weren't printed with 15-card Highlander in mind. Your initial reaction to milling effects might be that they're worthless in a world without decking, but a quick Mind Sculpt can deny your opponent access to seven whole cards - in other words, his entire library after drawing an opening hand! Land destruction, meanwhile, can be unstoppable when decks are only running enough lands to cast their spells and no more.

Whether the quirks are good or bad is immaterial, of course, as ultimately they are the charm of any variant format. Who could have foreseen a format where Tome Scour was busted and Ancestral Recall not worth the slot? Give the weird little format a try - after all, it takes so little time to make a deck and play a few games. Everybody can build a good deck and compete on a level playing field with everybody else, and it takes almost no time or space to do so. Spread the word, Highlander rules - there can be only fifteen!