Your opponent taps three Mountains and plays a Ball Lightning. You glance at your life total. 7. With the Mogg Fanatic in play, it’s enough for lethal if they have the Fling. You look at your Mother of Runes in play and the last card in your hand and say “Resolves.” Ball Lightning and Mogg Fanatic turn sideways. You put your Mom in front of the Fanatic. Damage goes on the stack, and your opponent does not tap 1R. You activate Mom, declaring protection from red. Your opponent activates the Fanatic to kill you. You tap an Island and deploy the last card in your hand: Stifle. You go to 1. Your opponent passes. You draw and slam the Circle of Protection: Red triumphantly.
This is easily a scene out of a kitchen or dining room somewhere in 2003, but it’s the year 2021 and you’re playing in a webcam event via Discord for glory and for signed cards from the other participants. The format? Middle School MTG, created by Team Serious and adopted by Eternal Central, the same group that also runs Old School.
This is a primer for the Middle School format, discussing its rules, giving a quick look at the decks of the format, and discussing how the format feels to play.
The Format
Middle School started off in 2018, and has been chugging along well through the pandemic thanks to local Discord events. It’s been growing steadily in that time as well, rather than stagnating. This is no Tiny Leaders or Frontier, doomed to be played twice and forgotten (sorry to Frontier and Tiny Leaders players!).
The format is built on a few key ideas: using cards and rules from before the Modern era, using different, forgotten cards from Legacy to carve out more of a unique identity, keeping a balanced metagame, and keeping the cost from being astronomical for the players.
To those ends, the format runs from 4th Edition through Scourge, and allows all supplemental sets from that time. The banlist can be found here:
This card pool means you can use the Beatdown Box and Portal cards, and can also use World Championship deck cards in your tournament-legal deck. This gives a massive card pool to play with, while the inclusion of the WC decks allows for costs to be kept down. For example, Force of Will, a card that sees lots of play, costs around $120 in black border, but can be found for around $30 in the gold border.
Now if you just shuddered at hearing Force of Will’s name being invoked, fear not. This is not Legacy, where Turbo Xerox shells running fetchlands, Force of Will, and Brainstorm reign supreme. For one, Brainstorm is banned, in part for power, in part to help with distinguish the format identity from Legacy. For another, the fair decks here reign supreme overall, in part thanks to some of the notable cards that aren’t banned. Survival of the Fittest and Oath of Druids both make for excellent cores to green-based decks. To note, Oath of Druids is actually generally a control shell staple, or simply a value engine. Survival of the Fittest forms midrange loops more often than pure combo shells. White utilizes some of its best-ever spells, including Swords to Plowshares, Wrath of God, the Rebels, and Land Tax, though still without Balance. Black can utilize the power of Necropotence again, but must cast it more fairly with the banning of Dark Ritual. Finally, Red doesn’t need much help, with Lightning Bolt and Price of Progress punishing the pain lands, as well as Mogg Fanatic and Ball Lightning come back to form powerful endgame pushes with damage returning to the stack.
Speaking of which, damage still utilizes the stack in Middle School. This means that, after blocks have been declared as usual, you assign the damage, then take another round of priority before the damage is actually dealt. This restores the functionality of cards like Morphling and Mogg Fanatic to their full power. Morphling can assign damage with five power, then swap to receive damage at six or more toughness. Mogg Fanatic can assign damage to a blocker, then sacrifice to ping a creature for a two for one. Wishes have also been restored to their functionality from when they could grab cards from exile. This mainly affects Living Wish, as it allows you to recur an Erhnam Djinn or Terravore that may have been exiled by a Swords to Plowshares. Finally, mana burn is also back, meaning floating mana pointlessly in response to a Wasteland, Upheaval, or Armageddon is actively detrimental. A few decks also try to leverage the mana burn by building around Citadel of Pain!
“But sure,” you say, “you can list off all the little rules and changes, but what does the format actually look like?” After all, if the format is a 2 deck format or otherwise plays poorly, why would anyone play it?
The Decks
Luckily for everyone, Middle School is currently the most open and diverse format I’ve played in years. Here are a few successful deck’s I’ve both played and personally encountered while playing the format. There are plenty of others out there that have done well and there’s always a breakout deck at a given event.
Some decks that I won’t post but have seen include Food Chain Goblins, Wild Research + Planar Birth control, Recycle Storm, MiracleGro (Quirion Dryad and blue), Aluren combo, Elfball (top-ended by Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, Green Stax, and both UB and UW Trix (Illusions of Grandeur + Donate).
Standstill
The quintessential control deck of the format, with no actual creatures and a nearly unbeatable lategame. Keep an eye out for my deck primer on this in the future, as it’s my personal deck of choice.
Counter Rebels
This is the most widely played Tempo deck of the format in my experience. Rebels features a mix of hard to deal with creatures in Mother of Runes and the Rebels package with Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero. You can either counter your opponent’s plays with the Counterspell package or can go up the Rebel chain depending on what your opponents do.
Parfait
There are several ways to build Parfait, but the basic idea of finding ways to always have less lands than an opponent to be able to use them as virtual card advantage thanks to the interaction between Scroll Rack and Land Tax.
‘Tog
The quintessential combo/control deck of the format. Play a UB Control game until you can deploy and one-shot with a Psychatog. Several builds exist, some using the classic Upheaval supported by Sapphire Medallion and Jet Medallion.
Tribal Flames
Like playing every color possible and having a toolbox with a huge top-end? Tribal Flames itself is often 1R: Deal 5 to anything. Survival of the Fittest helps with the toolbox. Sideboard Living Wish lets you bring in other cards for creatures while still having access to a toolbox! A great and spicy deck.
Sligh
Plenty of ways to mix and match this one, but the basic idea is the same: a classic red-go-face strategy. This particular build trades some of the maximum speed options like Ball Lightning for a slower, but more assured endgame in Grim Lavamancer and Cursed Scroll.
RecSur
The classic grindy midrange/combo deck. Recurring Nightmare lets you loop a ton of creatures for value while Survival of the Fittest lets you toolbox to your heart’s content.
Terra/ErhnamGeddon
You can swap in Erhnam Djinn alongside all-star Terravore. It plays a bit like Legacy Maverick, in that it’s a go-big tax-y GW shell that can swap pieces based on meta.
Lightning Oath
This is for those who like to abuse Oath of Druids but also like to beat face. This was a breakout deck of a tournament in May. It has a ton of sweet interactions when it comes to filling and reusing the graveyard repeatedly. If Oath gets online, it can be game over in just 1 or 2 turns after, but the deck also grinds amazingly well thanks to cards like Cabal Therapy and especially Gaea’s Blessing.
Madness
A Blue-Green classic from Odyssey block, Wild Mongrel, Basking Rootwalla, and Circular Logic once again team up to form a very hard deal with tempo shell. Timing when you go for a wrath or removal can be tricky, and the deck can accrue tons of value off of discarding to flashback later.
Eggs
I hope you like long turns, drawing lots of cards, and Storming off, because that’s what Eggs does. The engine to the deck is Helm of Awakening plus the various eggs (e.g. Darkwater Egg) to draw through the deck, float a bunch of mana, and eventually build to a lethal Tendrils of Agony. This is the quintessential Storm deck of the format. I added the recently unbanned Tinker to this list as a way to get Grim Monoliths or Helm of Awakening.
Enchantress
This is another deck that can draw through itself entirely quickly. The unbanned Earthcraft takes center stage here as both a combo piece and game winner with Squirrel Nest and a mana engine with Wild Growth and Fertile Ground and the Shrouded Argothian Enchantress. You can also build this in several ways, with GW being more prison oriented utilizing Worship, and with UG being more oriented towards combo.
Stiflenought
The rising Legacy star shines here as well, as a UB deck with a discard and counter package that will eventually land a Phyexian Dreadnought from either the hand or the graveyard. Two mana and two cards to put in 12 power with trample remains a fantastic way to end the game.
Druid v3.0
Hermit Druid is a card that is just not fair compared to how it reads at first. The real text of the card may as well be “G, T: Mill your entire deck and win.” This particular build will set up, shred blue hands with Mystical Tutor grabbing Cabal Therapy or Duress, then combo off and instantly land a hasty, lethal Suture Ghoul. It can also set up, then combo thanks to Krosan Reclamation. This is my combo deck of choice.
Reanimator
Classic style Entomb, Reanimate, kill. Hermit Druid is the Legacy BR Reanimator style, turn 2 kill deck of the format, while Reanimator in Middle School is slightly slower than Druid for a much more consistent kill.
The Rock
The Rock (and His Millions) returns in its original incarnation. The Rock is Phyrexian Plaguelord. His Millions? Deranged Hermit’s squirrel friends. This is a classic GB shell, with discard and ramp supporting a few kill spells, and lots of value creatures. The top end features one of the format’s very best beaters: Spiritmonger. Turns out a regenerating, color shifting beater that grows per hit is able to shut down a lot of games. Who knew?
RB Goblins
Take one of the most powerful 1 drops ever printed in Goblin Lackey. Take one of the best card advantage machines in Goblin Ringleader. Take a playable tutor on a body in Goblin Matron. Add a tribal mass-reanimate in Patriarch’s Bidding. Put them together. The deck? RB Goblins. Goblins is able to play aggro with Lackeys and Goblin Piledriver, midrange with Gempalm Incinerator and Ringleader, or control with Goblin Sharpshooter and Rishadan Port. If you get hit with a Wrath of God, just fire off a Bidding to get everybody back and jamming.
Suicide Black
For when you want to go so fast you obliterate both yourself and the opponent in the process. This deck fares horribly against Sligh, but can absolutely get under most other decks in the format. The combination of all the discard spells, aggressive creatures, and removal will clear the way to close out games fast. If the game does go long, you can rely on the backup of Cursed Scroll to close the last few points.
The Gameplay
Probably the best thing about the format is that the gameplay is nuanced, interactive, and balanced.
The average game goes to at least turn 6 or more, and every deck is playing mainboard and sideboard cards to interact with the opponent. Even the most streamlined and straightforward decks in Druid and Reanimator bring Duress to the table to be able to get through Force of Will, Counterspell, or graveyard hate.
This slower game pace allows for a lot more decision points in the games. While turns 1 and 2 are pretty spelled out (jam Birds of Paradise, hold up Swords to Plowshares, open on Duress), there quickly come points where you must choose to either develop your own gameplan or stop the opponent. Do you leave a Raven Familiar alive against an opponent playing Aluren, where it might be used to combo off next turn, or do you Lightning Bolt a different bird than usual? Do you hold up Counterspell in case of a Duress against Eggs deck, or do you think that just Force of Will can get you there?
These decision points give a lot of agency to the player and build and reward skill, both with the deck and because of format knowledge. The depth to this format is actually pretty huge, especially with the vast card pool. That pool also leads to the ability to brew a multitude of new and hybrid decks, allowing for new avenues of attack and shifting format knowledge.
The brew potential, shifting metagame dynamics, and slower pace of the format breathe new life into the game. Compared to how many competitive environments in 2020 and 2021 have played out, where early development and reaction are key, Middle School’s pace allows for much less stratified matchups and play. When you lose in this format, it’s more likely due to how you played, not what you played.
The card pool is also perfectly suited to this. While there are accelerant pieces in Mox Diamond and Grim Monolith, the absence of Dark Ritual allows for better payoffs. Similarly, the cantrip package of the format consists of Portent, a fine card, but not as good as Brainstorm. This allows slower, but more powerful spells such as Accumulated Knowledge and Fact or Fiction to thrive.
That’s really the kind of gameplay that I think draws people into Magic in the first place: the endlessly customizable, deep, interactive, and rewarding gameplay. If for no other reason, that’s the best reason to try out this format.
If you think Untap Open League should run a Middle School League in the future (maybe as a potential Brewoff format?), drop in on our Discord and let us know! Our tournaments are completely free and take place on Untap.in, a website similar to Cockatrice where you can play any deck for free. You can read more about the League format here.
