Beejlander

BEEJlander (preferably with reverb) is a Singleton MtG piled format [as opposed to constructed] named after it's progenitor: Beej.

The format, somewhat accurately, re-creates the feel of "school yard magic" and is similar to Canadian Highlander.

The format also seems to hit more closely on what the Pauper format was going for w/o the (as of this writing) extremely high buy-in cost.

Basic Rules & Deck Building

Basic Rules

BEEJlander (with reverb) is similar to Canadian Highlander in that it is a 100-card singleton format with a few differences:

• There is no points list and there are no banned cards (this includes but is not limited to: conspiricy, un-sets, commander decks).
• Your deck must be constructed from the cards you get in a SINGLE 100-"Trading Card" repack from a dollar store (apx. $4 Canadian in 2017).
• Your deck must be made the day of the tournament.
• Beej is the only "Magic DM" aka "Grandmaster" aka "Level 5 Super-Judge" in existence, his rule is LAW.
  • He prefers occasional reverb on his voice, BEEJlander MUST be said with reverb (assuming it's working)

Deck Building & Play tips

• The main goal is to get yourself down to as few colors as possible, usually resulting in a 3-color deck.
  • However, sometimes a 4 or even 5 color deck is required as the packs MAY contain several duplicates.
• Side-boarding your unused cards is allowed.
  • The extremely large gamut of cards that can appear is so wide that a card you thought was unusable may be very useful.
• Generally somewhere between 32-45 lands is recommended (depending on fixing)
  • Basic lands are provided by the event coordinator
  • Non-basic lands in the 100 card pack may be used if desired
• Due to the unusual format the meta seems to be to take the draw.
  • Also, anything with 4 power or greater seems to be referred to as "a bomb" regardless of casting cost.
• Mulligans:
  • On camera: The mulligan rule is: The 1st mul is to 7, then you get 2 6's, 2 5's, 2 4's, etc.
    • If you mulligan'd below 7 you can scry 1.
    • There is also the "Beej Mulligan" (see Judge Rulings below).
      
  • Off camera: You can mulligan to 7 as much as you want.

Pack Contents

If packs are unavaliable either due to the popularity of the format or lack of local dollar stores that carry them, a set of packs may be constructed as follows:

• "at least" 1 rare (0-4 observed)
  • If a 0 is rolled, a double-fault should be ensured
    • Roll 0-13: if you get 0 a 2nd time the pack should contain 0 rares (the current 1-in-14 observed rate of 0 rares), else include 1 rare.
• "at least" 1 foil (0-2 observed)
  • The foil MAY also be the rare
    • Same double-fault here, Observed rate of 1-in-14 again. Roll 0-13: if a 0 is rolled then the rare is foil, else force 1 foil of another card.
• "May include" Basic Lands (1-5 observed)
• "May include" Dual/combo Lands (0-4 observed)
  • Dual/combo lands (usually gates) REPLACE rolled normal non-land cards.
• May include duplicates (0-4 observed)
  • A "duplicate" here is the exact same card (same name, same attributes, MAY have different art)
• The rest of the cards are commons & uncommons (normal colors, artifacts, gold-cards)
  • The color format seems to be relatively spread out, there will be 1 or 2 colors that are "short" and the artifacts will have about the same count as the "shortest" color
    • The "not short" colors will have somewhere between 17-29 cards.
    • The gold cards will be anywhere from 50-100% the count of the artifacts (observed 4-9)
  • There seems to be some thought put in to the spread of creatures/sorceries/instants/enchantments/etc, as no color seems to have an over-abundance.
  • Cards may be from ANY edition of MtG (including but not limited to: Conspiricy, Un-sets, Commander decks, ANYTHING)
    • Cards may ALSO be in a non-english language!
      • However, this seems to be a rare occurrence (about 1-in-1400).
• The "total value" of the pack should be slightly below or slightly above $4(Canadian, 2017, adjust for inflation accordingly)
  • Most expensive pack to-date was worth $7
  • The "rare" (or rares) can be worth anywhere from: $0.20 -> $0.99 at time of packaging.
    • The "rare" MAY be a Mythic Rare
  • The "commons / uncommons" seem to be worth $0.01 -> $0.03 HEAVILY favoring the lower end at time of packaging.

Example Pack Contents

Observed Creature / Spells / Enchantment breakdown examples:

• Serge (from Session 1)
  • 48 Creatures, 23 Instants, 13 Socrceries, 6 Enchantments, 6 Non-Creature Artifacts, 2 Basic Lands, 2 Non-Basic Lands, 2 Dupes, 1 Foil
    • 17 Green, 19 Black, 19 Blue, 10 White, 13 Red, 9 Gold, 9 Artifacts, 2 Basics, 2 non-basics
      • See Discussion tab for more in-depth breakdown.
• Adam (from Session 2)
  • 61 Creatures, 23 Instants/Sorceries, 5 Enchantments, 5 Non-Creature Artifacts, 3 Basic Lands, 3 Non-Basic Lands, 4 Dupes, 1 Foil (common), 1 Rare
    • 18 Green, 15 Black, 8 Blue, 9 White, 27 Red, 7 Gold, 10 Artifacts, 3 Basic Lands, 3 Non-Basic Lands
      • See Discussion tab for more in-depth breakdown.
• Serge (from Session 3)
  • Creature/Etc Breakdown not done
    • 16 Green, 21 Black, 11 Blue, 17 White, 20 Red, 2 Gold, 9 Artifacts, 4 Non-basic land, 0 Basic Lands, 3 Dupes, 1 Foil (common), 1 Rare
      • See Discussion tab for more in-depth breakdown.

Level 5 Super Judge Rulings & Edge Cases

In general a game of BEEJlander (with reverb) follows the normal MtG Rules however:

Beej is the world's ONLY Level 5 Super-Judge and occasionally makes rulings when his game is played, here are the rulings he has made so far.

When starting a new game of BEEJlander (with reverb) all previous rules (below) are considered enforced unless otherwise stated by Beej, these rulings supersede the normal MtG rules!

v0.0 Rulings

These rulings were established on: 2017-11-10.

• Upon Winning a 4-player tournament the winner must face off against Grand Master (Level 5 Super-Judge) Beej!
  • This is a single match, first to 0 loses.
  • Beej may choose to play with the first 35 spell cards of a 100-card pack.
    • Sub-text: Beej does not know how to play MtG.

v0.1 Rulings

These rulings were established on: 2019-08-16

• Beej may arbitrarily give warnings at his discretion
  • It is unknown what the upper limit for warnings is (or even what they do)

• You can mulligan as much as you want, as long as you are not on camera.
• At the beginning of the game: If you draw more than 7 by accident:
  • Put all cards drawn on the bottom of your deck and draw 7 correctly.
    • You may shuffle your deck AFTER if you want.

• Vaseline or Barcode!
  • A Pocket sized tin of Vaseline MUST be used instead of a coin for coin flip cards.

• Ben Ulmer can become the Cosmic Referee, the only person who knows the rules besides Beej.

• Upon Winning a 4-player tournament the winner must face off against Level 5 Super-Judge Beej!
  • This is a single match, first to 0 loses.
  • Beej's turn 1 play does not respect the CMC of 1 card.
    • Beej is playing Aluren (an actual Canadian Highlander deck)
    • Sub-text Beej does not know how to play MtG, or Aluren.

v0.2 Rulings

These rulings were established on: 2022-04-08

• During Deck Building:
  • If you draw a duplicate and Beej sees it, you must CHOOSE, the other card will be torn in half by Beej.

• Pre-game A player may deal all his cards face-down and ask Beej "should I keep?"
  • Beej may throw any number of them back w/o looking at them.
    • The player puts those cards on the bottom of the deck in the order Beej threw them back
    • The player then re-fills up to 7 cards, face down

• Extra Mulligan rules:
  • The first mul is to 7, then 6, then you can Beej Mulligan (see below)
    • Crew Discussion: The Beej Mulligan starts to be VERY good at 4

• The "Beej Mulligan" if you have mulliganed down to an undesirable number of cards you may ask Beej for a Mulligan!
  • He will deal you out 7 cards, you MUST use them, no further mulligans are allowed.
  • If you are a Team Chaos member, you may ask Beej for a mulligan before drawing at all.
    • You may join or leave Team Chaos at any time.

• You don't have to reveal your Morph's post game.
  • Beej can look if he wants.

• You may ask Beej to re-shuffle your deck, if you feel you shuffled badly
  • This can be done at any time.
  • Beej can say no.

• Double-Flying
  • Jumping a creature with flying causes it to have double flying
  • It can only be blocked by another creature with double-reach, or flying.

• Vampire Sovereign
  • Nickname: Beej Rino

• Turn 1: if you play a land that gives you a life Beej may give you an extra
  • This is usually to make you feel better about the format
  • The other player is allowed to complain about this, it does not change Beej's decision.

• Fetch cards (when enters, search your library for any of the same name)
  • If you have a card (or cards) with (nearly) the EXACT same text (and color and cost), you may get ONE of them.
    • IE: Legion Conquistador & Battalion Foot Soldier

• Late Game (if low on life and land-locked):
  • This is if Beej determines you are land-locked by not having one of your mana sources (at or after turn 10, AND you are at or below 12 Life)
    • Beej MAY choose to get your missing land out of your deck, and take 1 of your current lands of his choosing.
    • Your deck is NOT shuffled after this
    • The other player is allowed to complain about this post-game if they lose.

• Cheating:
  • If Beej notices you play a duplicate card mid-game he will rip it up.
    • There is no roll-back, no drawing another card, it is just gone.

Known Broadcasts

2017

#	Date	Title	Players	Presiding Judge	Format	Video Link
0	2017-11-10	LRRMtG — Dollar Store Highlander	Ben Ulmer, Cameron Lauder, Nelson Salahub, Serge Yager	Beej	4-player tournament	Link

2019

#	Date	Title	Players	Presiding Judge	Format	Video Link
1	2019-08-16	Friday Night Paper Fight — Beejlander	Adam Savidan, Ben Ulmer, Coriander Dickinson, Serge Yager	Beej	4-player tournament	Link

2022

#	Date	Title	Players	Presiding Judge	Format	Video Link
2	2022-04-08	Beejlander (Highlander with Dollar Store repack cards) || Friday Night Paper Fight	Ben Ulmer, Benjamin Wheeler, Serge Yager, Graham Stark, Adam Savidan, Nelson Salahub	Beej	6-player tournament	Link

2023

#	Date	Title	Players	Presiding Judge	Format	Video Link
3	2023-10-11	Beejlander - 6 Player Bonspiel || LRR20 Sub-a-thon	Ben Ulmer, Benjamin Wheeler, Alex Steacy, Graham Stark, Adam Savidan, Nelson Salahub	Beej	6-player bonspiel	Link

2024

#	Date	Title	Players	Presiding Judge	Format	Video Link
4	2024-08-23	Beejlander || Friday Night Paper Fight 2024-08-23	Serge Yager, James Turner, Nelson Salahub, Cori Dickinson	Beej	4 player Beejlander Tournament	Link