Pai Gow Magic is a game variant, which is fun and effective at improving your Magic skills.

It reframes the game in such a way that each player draws a hand of interesting cards and then must figure out how to make those cards work together toward a singular strategic goal of somehow winning the game.

Here’s how it works.

Overview Contents
1. Setup
2. The rules
3. The strategy
4. Other ways to play

Setup

The stack is shuffled and each player makes a 15 card ‘pack’ from the stack. Each player makes five three card decks from their pack. Play five games, one with each deck. Decks are selected at random by your opponent.

The Rules

• 5 face-down piles of 3 cards each: Each player opens a pack, looks at the contents, and distributes the contents into 5 face-down piles of 3 cards each. Afterward, the order of the face-down piles is randomized, for instance by having the opponent rearrange them.
• 5 games with 3-card opening hands: You play 5 consecutive, separate games of Magic. In game 1, each player’s first pile becomes their opening hand. In game 2, each player’s second pile becomes their opening hand. And so on.
• No decking: You don’t lose to decking but you can draw cards from your library if it exists. You'll find some cards that shuffle your graveyard into your library to replay them.
• Start at 5 life: In every game, each player starts at 5 life.
• Infinite mana: In every game, all players have access to an unlimited amount of mana in any combination of colors.
• Distribute quickly to play first: The player who was done first (with their distribution of cards into piles) gets to play first in the first game. In subsequent games, the loser of the previous game gets to play first. If the previous game was a draw, then the player who played first in the previous game gets to play first again.
• The "draw-go" situation: Sometimes you may find on a situation when both players have built some all reactive decks and nobody wants to cast nothing, so they just pass their turns. If this happens, the players who don't do anything in their second and next turns lose 1 life each time they pass the turn.
• Best 3 out of 5: A player who wins 3 or more games automatically wins the match. In case of multiple draws, a player who ends up with more game wins than their opponent wins the match.

I should mention that there are no “official rules” for this casual format—these are just my rules, and your play group can modify them however you like.

The Strategy

The best way to distribute your booster across 5 piles depends on the cards you open and on your opponent’s strategy, but I’ve found the following process to be useful as a guideline.

• Diversify: I usually start by identifying best cards that can single-handedly win games. I then place each in a separate pile as a starting point. There’s no point in putting two particularly good cards in the same pile, that’s just overkill.
• Look for synergies: Next, I identify combinations of cards that are greater than the sum of their parts. Eternal Witness and Settle Beyond Reality, for example. Or Ukkima, Stalking Shadow plus Collision // Colossus , Fell Specter plus Silent Departure, Oakhame Ranger plus Heroic Reinforcements. And so on. I then mix and match cards to maximize synergies wherever possible.
• Give up a pile: If you can make five reasonable decks, then that’s perfect. But usually you’re stuck with a bunch of not-so-great cards, and presenting 3 piles with an unplayable each can quickly lead to three game losses. You’re probably better off giving up a deck (making a pile with your worst cards) to maximize the chance of winning for your other decks. Do you want five decks that are all a 6/10, or three decks that are a 9/10 and two decks that are a 2/10?
• Remember that draws are possible: Especially if you have two broken, nearly unbeatable piles or have a limited number of creatures, then you could consider an attempt to secure draws with your other piles in the hope of winning 2-0-3 or 2-1-2.

Other Ways To play

This is my own personal spin on a Pai Gow Cube. In the course of designing it I came up with other ideas related
to it that feel like they are worth exploring. Here is my list of ideas in the hopes that someone else goes out and builds them. I want to see someone take these ideas and run with it!

• Play around with the numbers. Right now the rules set has you build five three card decks from fifteen cards. What if you get 20 cards to choose from and build two five card decks? What if the starting life total is ten? What cards could you include if you got two or three mana of each color total over the course of the game?
• Play with a shared graveyard. Include lots of cards with flashback, escape, and other weird graveyard interactions like Nether Traitor.
• Try to make the worst decks possible and play games with your opponents decks.
• 3 Player Variant. To play with 3 players, deal each player 12 cards and build 4 decks, 2 decks for each opponent (one deck you'll be on the play and the other you'll be on the draw).
• Actually DRAFT the packs with six or more people. This stack is 180 cards, so each player, up to twelve, can get fifteen cards to make five three card decks. Play Round Robin after.

This introduction to the Pai Gow Magic format was written by Frank Karsten and Eric Vergo. And more recently, Gaby Spartz wrote an article about this format.