New Fringe Magic Format Secretly Just Euchre

FOND DU LAC, WISCONSIN — For weeks, local game stores have been sold out of Icebreaker Krakens and Lumbering Megasloths. Curse of the Cabal has seen a 500% price increase from demand. Murmurs online of a Eternal Dominion ban have bubbled up. But none of this is driven by the latest competitive season nor any new Commander tech. So what’s the deal?

Patriarch’s Bidding, a new shared-deck round-based Magic format, has been gaining traction on social media over the past few months. “I didn’t think it would get this big, much less this fast,” says format creator Emily McAllister. “It was just a blow-off thing in between long Commander games.” But Commander’s Herald investigators found something more about this rising star format: its rules are taken nearly verbatim from an older card game, known as Euchre, made for a subset of a standard deck of playing cards. This revelation was brought forward after Aunt Eileen offered to teach us the original game following Thanksgiving dinner.

“You got me. It’s literally just Euchre, but with Magic cards,” McAllister tells Commander’s Herald after being presented with a copy of “100 Bicycle Card Games”. “I wanted to do something different with my Commander pod, but the only deck of playing cards I had on me were the Kingdom Hearts ones I got at the anime convention last month, and I didn’t want to split those up. So I just grabbed cards from my bulk with the appropriate mana values.” McAllister says the format name was her friends’ idea.

“Yeah, I came up with the name. The format’s really cool,” says original player Johnnie Monroe, unaware of the game’s true origin. “I knew I had to share it online when I got back home. I guess it took off from there.”

The game has been a boon for local game stores, however. Many otherwise unplayed cards with mana values over 8 have quickly cleared shelves, as well as several uncommon X-spells that serve as the format’s trump cards. “When I saw someone buy out 9th Edition Blazes, I thought it was an elaborate prank” said one local LGS owner, “But seeing Dominates go with them… actually, I’m still not sure this isn’t an elaborate prank.”

“Oh, Euchre? That’s awesome! I love Euchre.” says Monroe upon finding out about the game’s origins himself. “My grandpa and I used to listen to him call Brewers games.”