Wow.
I am quite happy with the way people gravitated to the format on the weekend. It was great to see people having so much fun with a format of my design. But enough about how excited I am… What exactly is this crazy format?
Enigma duel is basically prismatic highlander cube. Make sense? There’s one copy of each card, each player plays cards of every colour (generally), and the cards are all pretty powerful. It is inherently a two player format, just because the strength of the blue deck ceases to matter when measured up to the silver deck too soon. In addition, a lot of the gold cards don’t matter (we’ll get to what exactly what this means in a moment). Feel free to experiment by yourself if you want, but I have found heads up games to be far more interesting and enjoyable than those with a partner, though ‘team constructed’ could be fun and find out which three players are superior Enigma misers.
To begin, you need one person with an Enigma set, a bunch of d6s, and a stack of basic land, about 5or 6 of each type. The game starts with a lot of shuffling. Enigma requires the use of four decks – the black deck (Land), blue deck (early game), silver deck (mid-late game) and gold deck (premium level spells) – and someone has to have those ready to play. You can have as many cards in each stack as you want, but I generally like to keep it low rather than high, and the whole set shouldn’t have more than 500-600 cards in it. Gold decks work better with four-five cards in each colour, a couple of artifacts and a few multicoloured spells.
Each player starts the game with one gold card. This is your Enigma card. It’s an Enigma because only you know its identity. Hold it in your hand as usual, but your opponent never gets to see it until you play it. After that, all bets are off, but until then they can’t mind twist, shatter, thoughtseize or wrench mind it from you. It’s essentially invisible. The rest of your hand is comprised by one silver, three blue and three black cards.
Typically, no mulligans are necessary because manascrew is impossible, and you always have early drops. However, it is remotely possible that you draw a hand with so little cohesion that you want to mulligan. In that case, set aside your gold card and see which deck you lose a card from – 1-3 loses a blue card, 4 lose your silver card. You get to keep the lands and never get to redraw your Enigma card. After you have mulliganned, that’s it. No one has ever needed to double mull (it’s pretty rare that it ever needs to happen once).
Players roll for first as usual with the typical play/draw scenario. During your draw step, you may choose which of the three non-gold decks to draw off. You never get a second gold card. So whether you want land, early gas or something huge is up to you. Your Enigma card will play a lot into that choice – If you are holding Overrun, you are just aiming to lower the opponent’s life total with blue cards to the point where you can kill them. Whereas Debtor’s Knell wants you to survive to the late game with powerful silver cards and plenty of lands, where you will then rule. Think about what is going to work best for you and act accordingly.
Every other time you would draw or look at a card, you instead roll a dice for each iteration of that draw. 1-2 black, 3-4 blue, 5-6 silver is the standard setup, and it isn’t a lengthy process to resolve a tidings or similar if you just grab four dice and resolve all at once. Note that this is the process for EVERYTHING OTHER THAN YOUR DRAW STEP. Absolutely every card that cantrips, digs, looks, draws or reveals MUST be rolled for. As a couple of examples, here are some cards in my Enigma set that work a little differently to usual. Goblin Guide is pretty sweet in standard magic, but here he has a lower percentage for collateral damage. Roll a dice when he attacks. If it’s a 1 or 2, reveal the top black card and the defending player draws it. Otherwise, ignore the roll (there’s no point looking at or burying other cards from decks that are not relevant). Court Hussar is another good one – roll for each of the three cards and those are what you may choose from, looking at the three together than burying them as appropriate. If in doubt, consider the following. If you are choosing which deck to draw from or look at, and it isn’t your standard draw from a standard draw phase, you are doing something wrong (Dark Confidant is not that busted).
The next important rule is in regards to mana. You may exile any black deck card from your hand to play a basic land of your choosing. Note that if for some reason a basic land finds its way into your hand – through a Ravnica bounceland, for example – you may not exile this for a different basic to replay. Only nonbasic lands, which all the black sleeved lands are, may be used for this purpose. In this way, players must optimize their mana for the cards they are holding and to give themselves more possibility to cast spells when topdecking. Is it worth exiling seaside citadel for that first turn Birds of Paradise, or waiting a turn to have access to more colours for later in the game?
Other than these few rules, play proceeds basically as per usual with a standard game of magic. There are a few rule changes to comply with this format, but for the most part these are the main points of consideration. Now that you know, you can go and have fun playing Enigma Duel! Remember, your deck is only as good as the choices you make.
Relevant rule changes:
Cascade
Cascade works by revealing the top card of the same tier of spells (silver reveals silver, etc), then proceeding to a lower tier upon failure to hit a card of the right cost (silver then reveals blue). If you would like to include Enigma Sphinx as I have, it works nicely as a gold card, revealing off that whole deck until you hit something you can cast. As it stands, there are only a couple of cards it can pair with to blow the game out and several that do absolutely nothing. Make sure if you include it that this is the same, otherwise it’s probably best to leave it out.
Tutoring
If a card would search a deck (and only gold cards should – see how to make a successful Enigma set further down), you choose one deck and search it until the effect is complete. This prevents people from spending hours searching through multiple decks to create some cross deck combo. You must choose whether you want blue or silver cards, then search as appropriate. If the card is placed ‘on top of your deck’ rather than in your hand, follow rules below.
Cards on top of your deck
In the case of some tutors, Plow Under, Memory Lapse, and other spells you may or may not use, cards will sometimes be instructed to do things that are not possible. If a card is on top of your deck, set it aside face down, and the next draw you would take (including from a spell) draws you this card, as it would were you playing you’re your own deck. This both prevents your opponent from Lapsing your bomb then drawing it themselves (with perfect info) and allows you to include cards that otherwise wouldn’t fit in the format. Enigma Sphinx puts itself third from the top when it dies, so follow a similar method. Set it aside with a dice on it as a reminder, and when that dice reaches 1, the Sphinx is your next draw. If your deck is shuffled, cards that are ‘on top’ are lost forever. Don’t Rampant Growth away your Enigma Sphinx!
Playing with new cards
Sometimes you finish a quick game, or you see a few of the same cards too often and want to experience new strategies. It is perfectly fine (and we took this process often) to set aside all the cards used in a game and proceed with the decks in their current state of depletion. This allows you to see some fresh cards and avoid the annoying shuffling of a 200+ card blue deck.
Searching for basic lands
As I’ve said, only gold cards should tutor, but you can’t leave classics like Kodama’s Reach and Explosive Vegetation out. These cards don’t get to look through the black deck, they only get basic lands. Why should Farseek be any different? Any card that searches for land can only go and get basic land from the basic pile.
Dredge
Do not include this mechanic. Stacking someone’s graveyard with busted spells ‘wastes’ those cards for further games and creates too much advantage if they have a method of recursion. There’s actually no drawback to dredging, as deck size is irrelevant. Sorry Moldervine Cloak. Elephant Guide will have to do.
Arc-Slogger et al
Sometimes there will be a card that is too cool not to use, but there is simply no way to fit it into the confines of the game without making it unfair or retarded in some way. My advice? Build a new EDH deck and shove this card in. Enigma Duel gives no handouts to cards that don’t want to adapt!
Tips for Building a Successful Enigma Set
This is a question I could see myself being asked at some point in the future (and also promised on the latest Talking Crap that I would do this) so I thought I would throw out some pointers for any bandwagoners that want to build their own set to have some games.
The Golden Rule
The most important thing to note is that gold cards do not have to be batsh*t insane. Some can be, but shouldn’t all be. What is important is that they are interesting and can define the way you play a game. It’s also important to consider that having something gold actually increases its power level in most cases. Gold cards are never topdecks, they always sit in your hand from the start. For example, Ancestral Visions is likely a blue card, not powerful enough to be a gold card… unless you make it a gold card, where you can always cast it turn one. Gargadon is much the same. The secrecy aspect also breeds power – cards like Upheaval and Armageddon get a lot from the invisibility aspect. Just remember that a card shouldn’t be gold because of how powerful it is, it should be gold because of how powerful being gold makes it.
Colour Balance
Less important than in something like cube, but to make the mana a little less random and more user friendly, it should be made as close to even as possible.
Make Archetypes Matter
Make sure that people can still play decks of any type when playing. Include the weenies, Land destruction, Discard etc. Include cards that make your gold card archetypes good as well – Executioner’s Capsule isn’t great, but it’s good enough to be blue. If Tezzeret is a gold card, it most certainly belongs in your stack.
Avoid Loopholes
2 card combos are fine, and recommended for some fun mised wins (eg Dark Depths and Vampire Hexmage) but the individual cards should still always have merit on their own – here this is the case purely because of the land exile rule. Including Triskelion and Mephidross Vampire for your Tooth and Nail gold card makes sense from one perspective, but draw the Vampire in any other game and it is a drastically underwhelming creature. You should also avoid playing cards that make gold cards insane (specifically tutors) in that they generally and most often should pick the same target. I made Jitte a gold card, just so Tezzeret would keep his filthy hands off it. Jitte is also insane, and should be gold anyway, but you get the point.
Keep tutors premium
And preferably one shot or attached to a body. I’ve had Liliana at gold for a while now and while it’s decent and manageable, the repeated tutoring can take time for people unfamiliar with the cards in the decks and wanting to look at all the cool cards. I strongly recommend sticking to the ‘tutors at gold’ rule, to save time and keep the power level in check. There are a lot of ‘any card’s to look for when you play with 400 bombs.
Make the Blue Deck Interesting
Too many mana dudes, generic X/1s or whatever else you have too much of leaves people feeling bored with the power level and racing off to the silver deck. Some gold cards need to draw a lot off the blue deck, so it needs to be enjoyable enough to keep them there.
Include Artifact/Enchantment Removal
Very important if you include cards like Sword of Fire and Ice and Opposition. Nothing should be unbeatable, but you should also make sure that the destruction cards are useful in their own rights. Viridian Shaman is average if your opponent doesn’t have an artifact, sure, but at least it can still attack. Ancient Grudge? Not so much.
Don’t Limit a Card’s Abilities
If a card has several abilities, one of which doesn’t make sense in the rules, I would suggest leaving it out. This makes more sense than just making Jwar Isle a 5/5 shroud guy, or Beacon of Destruction a 5 mana burn spell.
Include Redundancy
In cube, you wouldn’t normally see too many cards that do the ‘same’ thing, but here it is pretty much essential. Because you don’t get to see 15 cards at a time and choose the one that does that thing you like, you have to be given more chances for that effect when drawing off the decks. As such, there are about 10 different burn spells in my blue deck. Perhaps more. If you want something to happen, make it more likely for it to happen by including similar cards.
Include as many foils as humanly possible
Pimped Enigma > mundane Enigma.
Listen to the players
The final point is to listen to people playing the games, watch them while playing, and ask questions about various cards they were using. Some cards just aren’t as strong or as cool as you may have initially thought, or you find a straight upgrade to them. Continually updating and adapting your set not only makes it more enjoyable to play, but also increases the fun factor by having new cards drawn from time to time. Gold cards should change around a fair bit as well, because the deck is fairly small. Having a large collection of ‘gold’ cards and constantly switching them in and out is more exciting than having the same 5 broken blue spells week after week.
Those are all the rules, rule changes and build tips I can think of covering at this point. If I’ve missed anything, something needs clarification, or you just have some card selection questions, feel free to comment on this article in the forums and I will give you my advice.
Until then,
Enigma for Life
