3-Player Old School Sudden Death

• Games should not take too much time. Thus, “Sudden Death”-format was chosen (players start at 1 life).
• Cube encourages replayability and deck building skills. Thus “Grid draft” for 3 players with diversified decision space was chosen.
• To promote multiplayer aspects without overcomplicating decision-making or introducing board stalls, I chose “Attack-on-the-left” -variant which offers a good balance between planning an attack/defense, sequencing your spells and minding your library.
• I’ve already explored and enjoyed Old School card pool in 5-color-mirror, so want expand on that with Scryings-sets. Here’s card pool used.

• Lifegain and damage prevention becomes a lot stronger with starting life of 1.
• Too much life gain makes all decks mill decks.
• Milling becomes as a valid lategame strategy as the 7 card opener already eats away half of the 15 card deck.
• Damage that goes to the face has to be balanced to avoid “non-games”. Balancing means making damage spells symmetrical, higher cmc, or requiring an additional cost a player needs to work for.
• Removal has to be kept in check, either in terms of the creature size or the cost. If possible, “defensive” removal should be prioritized over “offensive” removal.
• Evasion e.g. flying, landwalk, trample, protection from… is very strong and should come at a cost e.g. life, high cmc etc.
• Haste and flash creatures are pretty strong because they can win out of nowhere.
• Counter magic and discard perform poorly, as they normally do in multiplayer setting.
• Monocolored decks are possible, but the nature of grid draft make them quite rare. Two-colored decks seem like the way to go, which means in 3-player game that one remaining color is contested on.
• With 5 or 6 lands, mana is much more restricted than in a usual game of limited. Designwise, this indicates that double casting cost cards should be avoided, especially on curve 2, as one is not able not able to play them reliably.

• Deals/negotiation/intimidation are often a poor strategy though you can certainly try. Instead, it may be better to try to bluf or “signal” e.g. by bypassing a play and leave mana open for a potential answer.
• Practical example on bluffing and signaling: It is the first turn. Player A plays a 1/1 threat and passes. Player B just plays a land and surprisingly, passes (bluff?). What should player C do? Play a land, and at most cast a non-creature, non-threatening spell (signal to Player A), then pass. This signal enables player A more confidently to call the bluff and attack player B.

• Both combat damage and milling are valid ways to win the game.
• The most obvious way to get around the opponents defense is evasion. A single evasive threat can easily win the game.
• Going “wider” than the opponent also can do the job. As having one more attackers that can connect is often enough.
• Going “under” the opponent e.g. an unanswered 1/1 on turn 1 is probably the easiest win on turn 2.
• Going “bigger” is also pretty valid as the opponent may not be able to double block, because that would leave one attacker unblocked, which forces opponent to “chump block”.
• With 15 card decks, drawing your starting hand already cuts it in half. As soon as the early attacks have been fended, milling 2-4 of opponents cards or shuffling / putting back on top a couple of own cards equals game.

When a deck comes with a total of 5 or 6 lands, mana is much more restricted than in a usual game of limited, as the total amount of mana available is in the typical range of mana costs. E.g. there is not much sense in including a 6 cmc creature if you cannot cast in until the last turn of the game realiably, as it cannot attack before decking.

Not only is it tough to play 5 or 6 drops as it may take until the last turn of the game, it is also difficult to get multiples of a single color:

Designwise, above table indicates that CC cards don’t belong to this cube. Furthermore, 1CC cards will only be cast on curve either with very heavy color commitment or mana fixers available.

• Why does the first player skip the draw step?

A: In conventional multiplayer games a player has a life buffer and several turns. In sudden death format the dynamics are different: no life, no time. The first player has a window for kill with an aggressive first turn play backed by second turn removal. This is then further encouraged by signaling inactivity by the third player. So first player always has a commanding position, but only for the first turn and per my evaluation, first player skipping the first draw is the most elegant way to balance this.

• How long does a round take?

A: Grid drafting ~15 minutes, deck building 5 minutes. Then game (match) from 5 to 20 minutes.