I exclusively talk about Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Limited in this blog, but today is going to be different. One of the Legacy guys, Matt, has a pair of decks in a format that I had never heard of before: Prismatic. The premise of the format is that you have 500 card decks that require a minimum of 25 cards of each color.
Matt has 2 decks: a control deck and a Storm deck. Naturally I took the storm deck. Because of the unique deck building restrictions, there are some busted cards that are legal as 4-ofs like Channel and Mind's Desire! Also, cool 1-ofs like Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall make a cameo, so you may just be lucky enough to break the 1/300 odds and draw that bomby card! A really cool card that Matt tossed in both decks is Future Sight. This card is INSANE when trying to combo off and you cast cards that shuffle library! Every shuffle becomes another card just drawn!
We have been playing for 2 weeks now, and in our first week I simply couldn't lose! But maybe that's because I was consistently hitting Mind's Desire off other Mind's Desires (We lost the storm count at 50, and we stopped caring enough to actually shuffle and take the top card for each Mind's Desire trigger. Instead I just grabbed a chunk of library and flipped it over and played everything there). However, week 2 was a whole lot of me not drawing lands and getting everything relevant countered while getting beat down by 1/x and 2/x creatures.
As I was talking to Matt, he told me there was actually a small following for Prismatic, and there was even a few "known meta decks". The most annoying of these of course is known as Cheaty Red. Cheaty Red abuses Hybrid mana featured in Ravnica block and Shadowmoore block. Some awesome standout cycles are the Guildmage cycle, Liege cycle, and the Spirit Avatar cycle (Deus of Calamity, Demigod of Revenge). Abusing those cards lets the deck meet the "25 cards in each color" requirement while still just playing 115 mountains (which is just the equivalent of 23 lands in a 60 card deck).
While I don't think I will actually get into this format, nor will I think it will gain a major following, it is a cool format to borrow a friend's deck for and casually think about. The problem with the format is that is requires a TON of cards, and the deck building requirements can be enough to scare people away. Also, I fear people will try to make more consistent decks mana-wise and start dropping colors in the same way that Cheaty Red does, which then takes the essence of the format and pulls it out beneath its own feet.
If you're looking for a really nutty format that is even MORE random than commander, look no further than Prismatic! From mana-skrew every game (but for a different color each time all round the wheel), to piling on all the epic spells every turn (sidenote: imagine if the Epic Spells from Saviors of Kamigawa were actually epic?), Prismatic is a format with incredibly high replay value!
That's all I have for today! Until next time, Stay Classy!
Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack
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