Magic: The Gathering/Gameplay Tropes: Difference between revisions

* [[Gambling Game]]:

** Originally, the official default way of playing the game was called Ante: At the start of the game players would put a random card from their deck on the table, and the winner of the game would keep the ante cards. There are a handful of cards that interact with the Ante mechanic, and must be removed from the deck prior to playing a non-Ante game. Ante proved wildly unpopular, resulting in non-Ante becoming the official default playstyle; WotC stopped printing Ante Cards, and Ante format Sanctioned Events are not allowed. Even so, official Ante rules do exist as of September 24, 2021: "each player puts one random card from their deck into the ante zone after determining which player goes first but before players draw any cards. Cards in the ante zone may be examined by any player at any time. At the end of the game, the winner becomes the owner of all the cards in the ante zone."

** The tourney-exclusive format Grandmaster plays a starter deck trimmed from 60 cards down to 40 cards. Grandmaster tourneys were run with an 8-player bracket: the winner of a match obtains their opponent's deck - which can be used to improve or rebuild their own during the rest of the tournament - and after the first match, the remaining players would have a 60 card minimum. The winner of the tourney gets to keep all the cards they won.

** Mini Masters was initially a variant of Grandmaster, and carried over the same card-claiming rules in its earliest incarnations.