Gatewatch format
The Kitchen Table forum
Posted on July 14, 2016, 3 a.m. by ErebusX
1.) In this casual, multiplayer format, you start with a life total of 30 (rather than the usual 20) and choose a Planeswalker (or legendary creature that transforms into a planeswalker) to serve as your General. You then choose cards to match your Generals color identity to build your deck. A card's color identity is any mana symbol appearing on that card.
2.) The Gatewatch deck contains 65 cards: 1 General and 64 others. Your deck may contain only one of any individual card, with the exception of basic lands.
3.) The General enters play in the general zone. You may cast your General from the general zone for its normal costs, plus an additional one mana for each previous time it's been cast from the general zone this game. If your General is ever headed to the graveyard or exiled, you may return it to its general zone instead.
4.) All cards, including your General, must have a Converted Mana Cost (CMC) of 6 or less. In the case of cards with X in their mana cost, X = 0 for the purpose of calculating CMC for construction purposes.
5.) In addition to the normal Magic win conditions, you can win in this format by raising your General's Loyalty to 30 or higher. If recast from the general zone, your General's loyalty always resets to its base value.
Banned List:
Advantageous Proclamation, Amulet of Quoz, Ancestral Recall, Backup Plan, Balance, Black Lotus, Brago's Favor, Bronze Tablet, Channel, Chaos Orb, Contract from Below, Darkpact, Demonic Attorney, Double Stroke, Doubling Season, Erayo, Soratami Ascendant, Falling Star, Fastbond, Gideon, Champion of Justice, Gifts Ungiven, Immediate Action, Imprisoned in the Moon. Iterative Analysis, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Jeweled Bird, Library of Alexandria, Limited Resources, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Muzzio's Preparations, Painter's Servant, Panoptic Mirror, Pithing Needle, Power Play, Primeval Titan, Prophet of Kruphix, Rebirth, Recurring Nightmare, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Secret Summoning, Secrets of Paradise, Sentinel Dispatch, Serra Ascendant, Shahrazad, Song of the Dryads, Tempest Efreet, Thief of Blood, Time Vault, Time Walk, Timmerian Fiends, Tinker, Tolarian Academy, Trade Secrets, Unexpected Potential, Upheaval, Vampire Hexmage, Worldknit, and Yawgmoth's Bargain
I could do that, but if it catches on, I dont exactly have control of what Wizards ends up banning for the format.
The format allows for about 65 planeswalkers for play. Other than that, it was pretty arbitrary; just seemed like a good number.
By restricting it to just the members of the gatewatch, you end up greatly reduces options for potential Generals.
To begin with, I based it off of Tiny leaders, but wanted to be more inclusive. By increasing the cmc or less rule to 6 from 3, I added about 6000 cards to the format and allowed for some of the better cards to be played. Currently, all but three planeswalkers can be played in the format: Karn, Ugin, and Nicol Bolas.
July 14, 2016 3:22 a.m.
Correction: I think its closer to 71 planeswalkers. my 65 count was when it was still cmc 5 or less.
July 14, 2016 3:25 a.m.
I have a few thoughts that came up while reading.
Rule #4 is ridiculous. It allows you to cast Thought-Knot Seers when you shouldn't be able to, etc. This rule was recently removed from Commander because it was irrelevant.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor should be banned.
Shouldn't there be a taxing effect each time you cast your commander? For example, each time you cast it, it costs
more.
Also, not really advice, but in Commander it's called the command zone, while it's the general zone here. It doesn't really matter, but it just kinda annoys me.
I have high hopes for this format. I've always wanted to build a Commander deck with Ajani, Mentor of Heroes at the helm. Best of luck!
July 14, 2016 8:36 a.m.
Additional notes:
Why rule 6? Would it be easier to ultimate your planeswalker and win that way much faster?
Why are Deploy the Gatewatch and Gideon, Champion of Justice banned? Neither of those are actually any good, with gideon being a close contender for worst planeswalker imaginable.
"I could do that, but if it catches on, I dont exactly have control of what Wizards ends up banning for the format." Wizards are not in control of the banlist or rules for Commander.
I could imagine Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver being a top dog in this format.
July 14, 2016 8:49 a.m.
Rule 6? to give another win con outside of the standard methods, sort of like how you can win with 21 commander damage in commander/EDH.
Gideon, Champion of Justice got banned because it gains loyalty counters far quicker than any other planeswalker. Deploy the Gatewatch probably shouldn't be banned, I apparently misread the ability, I'm gonna blame a lack of sleep on that one. Let me remove Deploy the Gatewatch from the banned list.
I wasn't aware of that. I thought they were in charge of the banned list.
Possibly.
July 14, 2016 9:06 a.m.
I wasn't aware of that change, considering its still up there on the magic website as of a day or two ago. can you provide a source to back up the claim that it was removed?
It would need to be playtested more before I'm willing to outright ban it. I know its powerful, but does it really deserve the ban?
Rule 3 is that very thing you describe. It increases at a rate of 1 mana per additional casting, rather than 2.
July 14, 2016 9:14 a.m.
Oops! Sorry, ErebusX, I didn't catch that part of rule 3 somehow. I'm terrible at reading -.-
Here is a source for the rules change on commander's color restrictions (at the top).
As for Jace, well, that specific walker was banned in Modern. It quite literally has the power to control opponents' draws, control your own draws, bounce creatures, and has a kill condition, in one card, for four mana? Oh, and you can use all of those multiple times. Backed up by Blue's countermagic and control, I promise this guy will not be the favorite at the table.
July 14, 2016 9:26 a.m.
Okay, Gonna remove rule 4.
Jace should probably be banned, then.
That leaves us about 70 planeswalkers as options.
July 14, 2016 9:35 a.m.
However, this is a multiplayer format. JTMS is probably the worst multiplayer format planeswalkers.
July 14, 2016 9:36 a.m.
Actually, having playtested with it against a few friends last night, I can admit was considerably powerful for its cost, but I felt it needed more time to be playtested before banning it outright. it won three out of five games, nearly winning a fourth if it were not for Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and a bunch of proliferate effects.
My playtesting friends are over right now and they are in agreement with the ban 123katty suggested.
July 14, 2016 9:47 a.m.
I agree. Serra attendant is busted in any fair deck that it's starting life total is above 30.
July 14, 2016 11:21 a.m.
T1: Plains, Sol Ring, Lightning Greaves.
T2: Serra Ascendant, equip greaves.
swing for 6/6 flying, lifelink, haste, and shroud.
utterly broken.
July 14, 2016 11:26 a.m.
iBleedPunk says... #16
This is essentially a worse Spark Wars but a better Tiny Leaders
July 14, 2016 11:50 a.m. Edited.
I dont know what Spark Wars is and cant seem to find anything about it with google. My guess is its a planeswalker format similar to this.
Its certainly better than the restrictive Tiny Leaders.
July 14, 2016 12:09 p.m.
iBleedPunk says... #18
ErebusX if you Google "Spark Wars Mtg" you will find multiple pages on the fan made format because it's been going around for a bit and I even helped push it during its inception in my area to great success. It's all that you described but a lot more vicious. I have been playing it and pushing it for almost 2 years now lol
July 14, 2016 12:14 p.m.
Yeah, im not really getting any google hits.
July 14, 2016 12:17 p.m.
Basically, it's Gatewatch, but there are a few differences. For example, there's no CMC restriction rule, and your deck has 60 cards instead of 65.
July 14, 2016 8:58 p.m.
different enough.
no 30 loyalty counter win con, 4 fewer cards, no restrictions on cmc, and a few option rules.
July 14, 2016 9:06 p.m.
In my opinion, Aether snap may need the ban, but hex parasite and thrull parasite are much slower and dont really need it be banned.
July 17, 2016 3:07 p.m.
Imprisoned in the Moon is banned. way too powerful in playtest.
July 20, 2016 12:36 a.m.
Now I understand you copied the commander ban list, but one card you might be able to take off (or at least one that I noticed) is Karakas. The only reason it's banned in commander is because the commanders are required to be legendary and therefore 90% of decks revolve around a single legendary creature that could constantly be bounced every turn. But here your general is not legendary (with 5 exceptions as the flip). I'm always one for a smaller ban list so I just thought I'd point out that some cards that are banned in commander don't need to be banned here because there's enough of a difference. However this is a very interesting idea and I may bring it up with my play group and try it out.
August 2, 2016 2:32 a.m.
For the most part, yeah. I tried to go through the commander ban list to see which ones are appropriate and not. Karakas might still be a problem, given the five Generals that are available.
Pithing needle is a problem, considering the smaller card list. I could definitely see it being powerful. Usually its a sideboard card, but considering neither this format and Commander has sideboards, i understand thats not a consideration. So does anyone else agree with it getting banned?
August 2, 2016 2:38 a.m.
For the Karakas case, it would come down to, would people run it simply to get at those 5 planeswalkers? Are those 5 planeswalkers powerful enough to be run as the generals in the first place? Personally I'd answer no to both, but I also only play casually so I'm not sure what spiky people would do.
August 2, 2016 2:46 a.m.
I can agree to that. Pithing Needle will take Karakas' place on the banned list. there are still cards like Phyrexian Revoker that do a similar effect, but I can see Pithing needle being included in the majority of decks.
August 2, 2016 4:15 a.m.
Pithing Needle is much harder to remove than Phyrexian Revoker, mainly.
August 2, 2016 8:32 a.m.
So this is just planeswalker commander with a couple extra arbitrary rules?
Why 65 cards? To increase the consistency of a singleton format. Isn't that the exact opposite of why people like singleton formats?
Why the CMC cap? Why 6? When you lower the available card pool you just make it easier to figure out the format. See: Why everyone stopped playing tiny leader within three weeks.
Also, you BANNED Jace, the Mind Sculptor, who is mediocre in multiplayer, and yet you didn't ban Liliana Vess, who can LITERALLY win the game on turn 3 to 5 EVERY SINGLE GAME.
See: Brokenness Example
Again, WHY?
August 5, 2016 3:17 a.m.
sonnet666 all formats have glass cannons that can win turn 3-5. The deck you presented though would die after a single counter spell. Liliana Vess really isn't that bad. Her +1 is negligible. Her -2 is good, especially in a singleton format, but it only puts it on the top of the library which means you either need another card to draw it or you need to wait a rotation of the table. And if you're deck has been that glad canon in the past people might do something to exile the top card of your library, or steal it, or do something that forces you to shuffle, which magic has plenty of. Now should Jace, the Mind Sculptor be banned? Idk, I don't think it has the power in multiplayer it had in modern or standard, but whatever. However going back to Liliana, you've presented a single glass cannon deck which I'm sure we could present on for many of the generals here or the commanders in commander. But glass cannons are easy to stop and get you targeted, which is why you don't see every possible glass cannon commander banned in commander.
August 5, 2016 12:12 p.m.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor was banned in Modern and EDH for a reason. It was heavily abused in the modern format, ending up as a full playset in more than half the tournament decks until it was finally banned. He's really powerful, completely shutting down opponent's boards as soon as it hits the field. It pretty much guarantees a victory with his ultimate with almost no way of coming back from it.
This format would be a prime format for it as a General, and keeping with that thought, my friends and I playtested it against about a dozen other decks with several games for each 4v4 match-ups. It won the vast majority of matches with little problem. Its just too good. You may not agree, but it really deserves the ban.
Liliana Vess is good, dont get me wrong, but its hardly in the same league as Jace or even Gideon, Champion of Justice in this format.
August 15, 2016 12:56 a.m.
Imprisoned in the Moon is banned, but not Song of the Dryads? Too powerful? It seems like you're trying too hard to force people to play a certain way. You're not going to run shatter, but you will run every tutor, extra turn,and proliferate?
August 20, 2016 10:39 a.m.
i'm not aware of every card in existence, so im bound to miss things and make mistakes in the process of tweaking this format. Song of the Dryads might need the ban, too.
In my opinion, Certain things should be banned if they completely shut down a general and lock it on the battlefield as a near useless card. first and foremost, I want the format to be fun. I personally don't agree with keeping certain cards that shut down a player in such a way that locks them out of the game.
for instance, No one really wants to play EDH with cards like Iona, Shield of Emeria and the like, because they basically state that you don't get to play anymore. I feel like Imprisoned in the moon/Song of the dryads are those types of cards for this format.
you may not agree with certain cards or rules, but I think there is room for compromise and discussion on these matters. nothing is set in stone, afterall. If you don't agree and don't want to use this format because of a few banned cards, that is okay too. I've mentioned before that this format is probably not for everyone.
August 21, 2016 1:57 a.m.
I wasn't criticising about missing song. I was more focused on tailoring a game more towards one playstyle v. another. If someone locks down your PW with these enchantments you either have to run disenchants, or you just focus them, and kill them. If Iona gets played; the table, in best case scenarios, recognizes the power level and someone else either kills it, or the player. Also a good reason to run colorless removal if you're mono.
Boza says... #2
To shorten the banlist, just say "The format follows the Commander banlist. Additionally, these cards are banned - Vampire Hexmage, Thief of Blood, etc."
Why is it 65 cards?
I would make so that only cards that members of the Gatewatch can be generals.
Why thee restriction to 6 mana?
July 14, 2016 3:10 a.m.