The Arcane Labyrinth

The Arcane Labyrinth is a single-player "Dungeon Crawl" format. The format is designed to allow complex and interesting Magic: The Gathering gameplay and deck building without the need for other players. You control a Hero and their Vanguard to survive 100 rooms of a escalating nightmare.

Thematically, this format can be thought of as a party of adventurers, led by a hero (hero deck), traveling to a dungeon (labyrinth deck). Once there, they setup camp on the outside and prepare to descend (preparation phase). Once inside, they move through the dungeon one room at a time, encountering creatures, traps, mini-bosses, and finally, the dungeon guardian.

This format is constantly evolving and being worked on as I play it. Please reach out at arcane-labyrinth@pm.me, I’d really love to hear about your experience playing the game.

Background

Earlier on in 2025, after not playing Magic for about 10 years or so, I started playing Pokemon cards with my son, which began to reignite my interest in Magic. After getting a few cards, I realized that I just didn’t have time to play Magic at the LGS the way I used to. I tried to play Magic Arena, but it just didn’t quite feel the same. I still wanted to engage in deck building, collecting, and new set mechanics, and I wanted a way to do this in a ‘solitaire’ like manner.

After looking at single player MTG formats, of which I found quite a few (see single player formats), Horde seemed to be the dominant format. While it technically supported a single player experience, it felt calibrated around multiplayer.

I tried a lot of stuff, but it all felt not quite right. I was trying to hit a few key points with this single player format:

• Have it be actually mechanically challenging, but well balanced. Restated, not have the game feel too punishing or to rewarding

• Make thematic deck building interesting. I wanted to engage with the deck building mechanics of Magic, which is to say, the quality of the experience can be driven by the deck. Restated, shuffling 100 random cards together should not produce engaging gameplay; deck building matters, but with this said, a player should still be able to produce an interesting and engaging deck without having ‘interesting’ cards.

• The mechanics of the game should be strong enough to support engaging gameplay without a huge collection, but not limit interesting complexity that might emerge from ‘interesting’ Labyrinth decks

After playing the game quite a bit, I would love to hear what other folks think of it, and have hence created this website. As stated above, please reach out at arcane-labyrinth@pm.me, for any reason. I’d really love to hear about your experience playing the game, or if you have questions, or if this format is redundant again some other format I don’t know about, or even if you just think the design is terrible! I’d love to hear whatever you’ve got, thanks!