We are having a Magic the Gathering Tournament at Card Games this week - the format is Canadian Highlander! Come along and play some of the most powerful spells the game has to offer with the winner getting a Reality Fracture Bundle! For the free, non-tournament event please go to https://www.guildofstudents.com/events/7403/14913/ to get a regular ticket!
What is Canadian Highlander?
Canadian Highlander is a 1v1 constructed highlander (singleton) format with NO banlist. Instead, powerful cards (like Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall) are assigned 'points' costs if they're in your deck. Your deck can have up to 10 of these points. For example, a Blue deck might want a points spread of: Ancestral Recall (8), Mystical Tutor (2). After deckbuilding, it's a regular 20 life 1v1 affair without the sideboard.
What Should I Play?
If you've never played Canlander before and have no idea what to build, don't worry at all- the meta is super diverse and practically every deck has a chance- Simic Stompy, 5C Zoo, even decks like Mono Blue Flying Men all have a pretty good shot due to the sheer number of good cards printed in recent years. If you'd like some more specific inspiration, though, there's a long list of resources I can happily share:
https://canlandex.com/decks : Canlandex is one of the largest collections of decklists alongside having tournament records and varieties of points spreads/lists for each archetype.
https://moxfield.com/users/CanlanderWinnersArchive : The Canlander Winner's Archive is an account dedicated to posting tournament results and winning lists and is a good place to find decks that are putting up results.
https://moxfield.com/users/CanlanderDatabase : Canlander Database is another account that contains a similar collection of lists to Canlandex, detailing the main archetypes of the format and example lists.
What Will the Tournament Be?
We will be running a Best-of-3 Swiss, with random allocation of players in round 1, then basing players based on their win/loss/draws in previous rounds for the next ones. It will be hosted alongside regular card games on the 20th October, and paid tickets will be posted for it at a later date. These will cost £6 and grant you entry into the tournament.
With that said, I hope to see a lot of people trying out this format! It's incredibly powerful, diverse, and allows for an incredible amount of either skill expression or face-mashing, and I truly do not think that 1v1 Magic gets better. For more information and to ask questions, feel free to join the discord (https://discord.gg/32Sh9J8uMm)! It is members only but we think it is well worth it!