I personally use cockatrice, there's almost always a game available

MTGO and MTGA are the official clients (MTGA only has brawl. MTGO has commander but is also not particularly budget friendly). There are also unofficial ones like cockatrice, untap.in, xmage, forge (with some of these, you might be able to play commander, with others not). Many also play commander via webcam using https://spelltable.wizards.com/

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I've been playing some Magic recently on Forge and considering rejoining my local game store (LGS). However, it seems like the company is pushing Commander a lot, and the most recommended way to play it is through Cockatrice. Nevermind, I'll keep playing on Forge, and maybe I'll try Cockatrice. I'm just not excited about playing a format where "Bobsponge" is a thing. It makes me wonder, what are they even doing with this game?

Our mission is to provide a welcoming community for Limited Magic players of all skill levels to experience each set released throughout the history of the game! We play using the XMage game software.

We have 7 weekly pod drafts here - four chronological ones called Chrono Leagues where we draft an official historical WotC format every week, and three Bonus Leagues where our players themselves choose the formats.

Custom "remastered" sets are designed by members of our community which we draft on Draftmancer. Matches are played on XMage with a full rules engine, all for free!

I discovered this on Draftmancer's Featured Communities

xmage discord

Do you play tabletop Magic at your local game store (LGS)? Perhaps you prefer the convenience of Magic: The Gathering Online (MTGO) or Magic: The Gathering Arena on your computer. Or maybe you like playing on your phone or tablet with the Android version. Let me know how you play and what your preferred platform is!

I used to play MTGO on Linux through Wine, but it stopped working. Trying it in a VM was too laggy. So I finally bought a cheap Windows machine primarily to run MTGA and MTGO smoothly. Personally, the convenience of digital clients has won me over, but I have fond memories of Friday Night Magic at my LGS, specially a $1 entry format we played with crappy decks and store credit prizes because I liked the nostalgia of it being similar to when I started playing instead of the competitiveness of the typical standard format, where it seems like all the decks are similar netdeck copies.

Heirloom Format

• Inspired by the MTGO budget format Heirloom but with paper price limits

• Minimum deck size: 60 cards

• No more than 4 copies of any card, except basic lands

• Cards can be of any rarity

• The legal card pool rotates a month after each Standard set release based on card price thresholds checked on Scryfall with the following search:

f:vintage ((rarity:c and eur<=0.1) or (rarity:u and eur<=0.2) or ((rarity:r or rarity:m) and eur<=1)) and tix<=0.05

• Common cards under 0.1 EUR/0.05 tix

• Uncommon cards under 0.2 EUR/0.1 tix

• Rare cards under 0.3 EUR/0.2 tix

• Mythic cards under 0.6 EUR/0.5 tix

• Very low barrier to entry with decks costing less than $10, unlike Pauper where some "budget" decks still cost $60+

• If the format was popular enough to influence card prices, rotations would ban the most used cards, preventing the metagame from becoming stagnant

• Lets you play with cards that are bad in other formats but become viable here

• Encourages creativity in deckbuilding with quirky card choices

• Games decided by wits and luck rather than coin

I'm excited to hear your ideas for cheap MTG formats!