New Format

Creatureless Magic

No creatures may enter the battlefield at any point. Each player has a 0/* 'Avatar' creature which is indestructible, cannot be sacrificed and automatically loses all effects applied to it including exile at the beginning of its owner's turn (auras stay attached as do counters). When damage is dealt to this creature, its owner loses that much life. Its toughness is equal to your life total. If it loses or gains toughness you lose or gain that much life, but you do not lose life if its toughness is set to a certain number.

It has the colours of all the mana types your lands can produce, and you may choose a Creature type (race) and subtype (class) before the start of the game. Level counters on this creature count as +1/+1 counters.

What does everyone think? Anything I've missed?

The format seems a bit OTT... the Avatar seems a little superfluous. Why have a free creature that can beat up another creature and the player at the same time. Why not just have the spells as we normally have. Maybe, to make it a little more interesting, the players could instead pick one planeswalker to represent them and one creature with a predefined mana cost, to represent a henchmen/pet both of which start the game in play. This replaces the normal life score. When the planewalker dies, the player loses. You can pay mana to resurrect your henchmen.

A bit of variety without too much complexity.

It makes spells that target creatures a little bit more useful, especially for green because it doesn't really have an alternate win condition.

Might as well just say that "player" and "creature" are interchangeable terms for the purpose of this format.

Then you've got problems with things like destroy, exile and sacrifice target creature.

Oh sure, so, since if you used an avatar that couldn't be affected by those spells, people would build decks without them, just say that such cards aren't allowed in deck. Set rules for deck construction rather than play if possible, seems to be a general rule for MTG variants.

Okay, but I want players to be able to beef themselves up with things like blanchwood armour and armoured ascension and then directly attack other players.

And what about 'tap target creature'?

Attach aura's directly to the player, as if it were a creature, as per "player"="creature".

Tap target = creature means the player can't act in their next combat phase.

Or maybe lose tapping as well. Not sure if that effect is too powerful.

I think you'd have to chuck it, it'd be too powerful.

Well, they'd still be able to act in their other phases, and cast spells as normal. Just not attack.

But again, green players would be screwed...

Yeah true.

Of course I just realised I missed the obvious: players don't have a power and toughness score. So your Avatar wasn't such a silly idea after all. But I think you'd want to maybe set it so that any excess damage each turn goes through to the player's life, rather than just link directly. Like, the toughness is the ability to withstand and avoid damage, the life score is how much damage they can take before dying. That way we have rules as normal, ban destroy, sacrifice, exile and tap creature cards.

Sorry, my instincts said simplify and I missed the step that stopped simplification :p