2021 Format Update: Rules Clarification, Ban List Update.

Tiny Leaders has been on hiatus for several years.

This update is not a guarantee that we're back, but more a clarification and ratification of some other groups' testing and notes.

CLARIFICATION- Modal Double Faced Cards and Their Legality in the Format.

Modal Double Faced Cards are a relatively new addition to Magic. They are akin to split cards but do not share Mana Value across both halves of the card, rather they have the Mana Value of the front face; while the back face is considered an alternate casting cost.

For the purposes of Tiny Leaders: Modal Double Faced Cards are only legal IF: the front face and the back face would both independently be legal to play in your deck.  This means that cards like: Rowan, Scholar of Sparks, Valki, God of Lies, and Blex, Vexing Pest are not legal in the format; while Plargg, Dean of Chaos is legal.

BAN LIST UPDATE- Five Colour and Thassa's Oracle.

Since we banned our last card, Najeela, the Blade Blossom, Wizards has printed two more Tiny Leaders playable five-colour legendary creatures: Codie, Vociferous Codex and Sisay, Weatherlight Captain. Following the direction set by the Najeela ban: Codie and Sisay are also banned.

Multiple sources and our own experience has shown that Thassa's Oracle is a very powerful, simple win condition.  Given the deck size and consistency of the card, we are banning Thassa's Oracle at this time.

I hope this update finds you well, stay tuned here for potential updates in the future.  Thank you for your patience.

-Steven

Ban list update 07/06/18

Due to the format philosophy and the established rules, we will be banning Najeela, the Blade Blossom

This is a tough choice, but we feel it's correct for the format.

As always, we hope you continue to have fun playing Tiny Leaders, keep testing out those planeswalker commander decks!

-Steven

Tiny Leaders Format Changes for Dominaria

Hello Wonderful People!

Hope you're all enjoying your matches of Tiny Leaders- and these fun new Dominaria legends we're seeing!  I'm coming to you with a couple of interesting changes- one we're testing and one that's long term.

Wizards introduced a format called "Brawl" and it's very interesting- so interesting we've decided to take a page from their book.  We'll be implementing a rule that changes what type of card you can have as your commander- adding Wizards' idea of having Legendary Planeswalker cards as commanders.  This allows you to play all your favourite Planeswalkers as Tiny Leaders: from Liliana to Tibalt.

The second change is to partner commanders- we've been looking at ways to mitigate the card advantage of starting with two commanders in your command zone.  The solution is elegant and simple "Each player's starting hand size (before mulligans) is 8 minus the number of cards in their command zone".  This means Partner commanders' starting hand size will be 6 as opposed to the normal 7.

Both of these changes start at the full release of Dominaria, when the set becomes legal for Tiny Leaders play.

Have fun, and good luck against my sweet Ashiok deck.

Steven Hamonic

Ban List

Ban list for Tiny Leaders

• All Ante and Manual Dexterity cards

• Ancestral Recall
• Balance
• Black Lotus
• Black Vise
• Channel
• Codie, Vociferous Codex
• Counterbalance
• Demonic Tutor
• Earthcraft
• Edric, Spymaster of Trest
• Fastbond
• Goblin Recruiter
• Grindstone
• Hermit Druid
• High Tide
• Imperial Seal
• Library of Alexandria
• Karakas
• Mana Crypt
• Mana Drain
• Mana Vault
• Metalworker
• Mind Twist
• Mishra's Workshop
• Mox Emerald, Jet, Pearl, Ruby, Sapphire
• Najeela, the Blade-Blossom
• Necropotence
• Shahrazad
• Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
• Skullclamp
• Sol Ring
• Strip Mine
• Survival of the Fittest
• Sword of Body and Mind
• Thassa's Oracle
• The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
• Time Vault
• Time Walk
• Timetwister
• Tolarian Academy
• Umezawa's Jitte
• Vampiric Tutor
• Wheel of Fortune
• Yawgmoth's Will

Additionally, these Legendary creatures cannot be used as Commanders:

• Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
• Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary

• Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

The ban list is subject to scrutiny and testing- if you think a card should be banned or unbanned, contact the review board with your argument, comment on this post, or post to the TinyLeaders subreddit/ official Tiny Leaders facebook page and discuss it there.

(Updated August 02, 2021- Adventures in the Forgotten Realms)

Tiny Leaders Format Changes for Ixalan

Hello Tiny Leaders Community!

Some quick notes before I get to the format changes- We've been in contact with a large group of players in France who have been gathering testing data, so we will be resuming banlist updates as they become apparent.  We also have some rules changes in regards to split cards, making things simpler for analyzing whether a split card is legal in deck construction or not.

Format Changes: Split cards now check the CMC of the card to see if it's legal for deck construction, instead of checking both halves.  This means that Fire//Ice has moved from "Two 2 mana spells, legal to play" to "A 4 mana card, not legal to play"

Ban List Changes: From our testing partners in France we've found that some newer cards have been seeing a lot of play, namely Baral as the leader of a High Tide storm deck, and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale in a Lands shell.  Reviewing the data, we have decided to act on High Tide and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, but leave Baral for now.

Banned: High Tide, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.

We hope to have more testing and results for you in future months, and we hope you have fun playing Tiny Leaders!

Community Update: November 12, 2016.

With the release of Commander's 2016 edition, we got a few very interesting things- including the Partner mechanic.  We had a lot to discuss with this update, some rules to figure out and a bunch of things to decide.

One of the major decisions we came to early on in the format's creation was that we wouldn't support a four or five colour proxy general.  With Partner's official release, we had to decide if and how it would be implemented.

Officially, we will support Partner, but there will be a special rule implemented for Tiny Leaders:  "Partner commanders are only legal if their combined colour identities are less than four total colours".  This ensures the original ideology of the format stays intact, while allowing you to play with this new and interesting set of commanders.

We will have an official rules update for you within the week.  Have fun with Commander 2016!

-Tiny Leaders Rules Committee.

Community Update 9/30/2016

Hello, everyone-

It's been a while since you've really heard from us, and that makes a lot of sense- since it's been a while since we've really had any time to do much aside from school/ work.  A lot has happened in the last year or so- Bram quit Magic, Matt defended his thesis, and I (Steven) wrapped up my second last (but first most hectic) year of University.  All that stuff didn't leave a ton of time for Tiny Leaders- ban list testing fell to the wayside, set updates were sparse -or in the case of Eldritch Moon, missing- and we basically let things stagnate.

Now, I'm sure some of you are convinced we've entirely given up- I'm here to tell you that's entirely not the case, we're busy folks and the testing we've done in the past takes a lot of time: True-Name Nemesis alone took more than 200 games to gather enough data on to make a decision.  This is where we're looking to find some ways to bring in outside help; I'm fine with the amount of time it takes to sift through the data and make a firm decision on things, but there's no way I'm going to be able to enjoy playing Magic if all the time I'm spending on the game is testing repetitive matches for raw data numbers.

I'm not entirely sure yet as to what form this community testing initiative is going to take, but what I can ask you all to do is to submit tournament results and deck lists- along with your feedback.  If there's a card we see popping up in every 1st or 2nd place deck in every event, we'd have something to go on when it comes to what to test sooner rather than later.

If you do want to help us do large quantity testing, I will be working on a spreadsheet guideline for recording matches; for now, follow these guidelines when testing problematic cards:

• Note who won.
• Note who was playing what deck.
• Note whether the problem card was drawn in the opening hand, or at any other point in the game.
• Note the number of mulligans.
• Note if the problem card was cast.
• Note if the game is pre-sideboard or post-sideboard.
• Play an even amount of pre-sideboard and post-sideboard games, since both are relevant data sets.
• Have both players play both decks an even amount of times, this will help level any skill differences present.
• Record your pre-sideboard and post-sideboard deck lists.
• Try to not test more than one problematic card at a time.

On the topic of problematic cards- our current list (in no particular order) includes:

• Gaea's Cradle
• Crucible of Worlds
• Ezuri, Renegade Leader
• Isochron Scepter
• Channel (Possible Unban)
• Survival of the Fittest (Possible Unban)
• Imperial Seal (Possible Unban)

If you do find a problem and want to test out a ban or unban in your play group, talk with them- test out unbanning or banning things.  I would rather see you try to make your own fun than leave the format, so do it!