MTG Salvation

I'm not talking Pauper and Tiny Leaders. Nor am I talking Archenemy or PlaneChase

I'm talking Assassin or Five Suns, or Sheriff.

So, what do you play? Give us the rules, and how it works!

Here's a link to some variants:
http://www.angelfire.com/games4/magicvariants/index.html
http://tappedout.net/mtg-forum/commander/edh-variant-five-suns/

Five Suns? That's an interesting variant O_O

Five Suns looks truly awful.

We don't go for variants. We've tried star once or twice, and it never works well.

After every third turn, players put hands on the table and move one chair to the left, to play that deck for a few turns. Life totals either stay with the player or the deck - decide at start of game.

Don't play if you don't trust your coplayers, nor if you hate seeing blatant bad plays. I say the latter because I typically see the last turns burn spells just to prevent them being used against them upon seat rotation.

Cheers!

We mostly play Bang! when we're with 5 or more people. It's based on the card game Bang! and works mostly the same:

The game is played by five to seven players. Each player takes one of the following roles:

Sheriff (x1)
Deputy Sheriff (x1 or x2)
Outlaw (x2 or x3)
Renegade (x1, x2)

The objective of the game is different for every role:

- the Outlaws must kill the Sheriff;
- the Sheriff and his Deputies must kill the Outlaws and the Renegade(s);
- each Renegade's objective is to be the last character in play. The Renegade(s) must kill all the characters with the sheriff being the last one dead.

The roles are defined by land cards dealt at random before the game starts (White = sherrif, Blue = deputy, Black = outlaw, Red = renegade). Only the sheriff shows his card at start, the rest remains secret until you're dead. Sherrif starts with 60 life, rest normally with 40.

For the rest, it's just like normal multiplayer EDH but with much more bluffing and politics.

Grand Melee can be fun. 8+ players, range of influence 1, attack left, multiple turns occurring simultaneously to keep the game moving despite its size (2 turns at 8 players, 3 turns at 12 players, etc.)

This variant takes some planning and good communication between the group but it can be a lot of fun (quoted from a previous time this topic was broached):

"Every once and again we play a variant inspired by Planar Chaos. The usual rules apply but we alter the color identity of commanders. It works like this:

If you are playing a mono-colored commander, you pick one of it's enemy colors (for instance, Chainer can become W or G)
If you are playing an ally color-pair, you use the common enemy color and one of it's allied colors (so Gaddock Teeg would become either UB or BR)
If you are playing an enemy color-pair, you use the common allied color and one of it's enemy colors (so Edric becomes WB or WR)
If you are playing an shard, it becomes a wedge (so Jenara becomes RWB)
If you are playing a wedge, it becomes a shard (so Riku becomes WUB)

All of this is decided beforehand of course, as are what colors are replacing what other colors and any errata needed to make the general function as intended (so Momir Vig would read as a manacost of 3WB for instance, and his search ability would read it triggers for black creatures, his draw ability for white creatures, or vice-versa, depending on what the builder decides. Balthor the Defiled would become white and his ability would affect white and red creatures, etc.).

Five color generals are not played in this version simply as a gentleman's agreement, but there has been some discussion of allowing them to be played if you remove a color (thus making happy people who would like to see four color commanders) though there's not much interest in it.

It's a little more work than some variants but it has also provided some very interesting, fun, and (obviously) unique games. Just remember, it works best with open communication and mockups of the shifted general."

While five suns does sound interesting it seems far too complex to just implement into the game casually.

We use the planeschase cards. It can really mess things up regardless of what deck you bring.

Planechase, Assassins, & (rarely) Archenemy are our go-tos, though we tend to use variants more in 60-card casual than Commander by a wide margin.

I dream of/dread the day where we go all-out and run a Planechase Assassins Commander game (with the King gaining Archenemy Schemes of course) .

Assassin: randomly assign a target to start the game, first target dead yields a win for the holder.

Star is another one I like to play.

Last man standing FFAs took too long, so we tried to speed things up.

We play old school decks occasionally. All cards have to be old card frame and black bordered. Bonus points for silly tribes and/or generals from legends. There's not a lot of overlap with regular decks so it doesn't cannibalize other decks. Plus you have to hunt down specific printings of cards. We don't take it too seriously so nobody's dropped big bucks on beta stuff you can't run otherwise. Aesthetically, it creates the best looking board states in my opinion. It also lets you play magic like when you fist started and sucked due to the relative lack of efficient removal, draw, creatures, and ramp.

Drunken Master EDH (Alcohol + Magic = Good times).

Keep brewing.

My group likes to run Star format when we get 5 people.
http://www.angelfire.com/games4/magicvariants/Star.htm


We have gone as far as building 5 mono colored decks specifically for this format. Each one has the appropriate God from Theros as general and are packed full of hate cards like Boil Karma Anarchy Choke Pyroblast Hibernation also funky stuff like Jihad and color hacking cards. Each deck also has a devotion theme to fuel their generals (as well as working on a grander thematic level). The decks do also function in normal games and can be quite potent given the power of some of those cards. Good times.

I own a full planechase deck with 15 custom planes & phenomena. Whenever anyone gets the itch, this is the only variant we play.

LOOOL@ the title drunken master EDH. Me an 3 of my friends would play that+ Planechase cards!

Quote from daanzel »

We mostly play Bang! when we're with 5 or more people. It's based on the card game Bang! and works mostly the same:

[i]The game is played by five to seven players. Each player takes one of the following roles:

Sheriff (x1)
Deputy Sheriff (x1 or x2)
Outlaw (x2 or x3)
Renegade (x1, x2)

My group picked this variant up about a month ago, and it's become our go-to when there are 5+ players. We do different names, though: king, 2x knights, 2-3x bandits, assassin. We've played with a usurper once, which has to deliver the killing blow to the king. Then the king becomes the usurper, the life total becoming 1, and the usurper the king.

Our king begins with 50 life, not 60. It's fun. Makes for fun politicking and creates interesting situations for things that affect the whole board. I'm a big fan of the variant, as keeping super close track of board states and general threat level in a 6+ player free for all becomes ridiculous.

Quote from Burntgerbil »

I own a full planechase deck with 15 custom planes & phenomena. Whenever anyone gets the itch, this is the only variant we play.

What are the customs?



My group plays Planechase or Vanguard to spice it up sometimes.

Quote from MikePemulis »

Quote from daanzel »

We mostly play Bang! when we're with 5 or more people. It's based on the card game Bang! and works mostly the same:

[i]The game is played by five to seven players. Each player takes one of the following roles:

Sheriff (x1)
Deputy Sheriff (x1 or x2)
Outlaw (x2 or x3)
Renegade (x1, x2)

My group picked this variant up about a month ago, and it's become our go-to when there are 5+ players. We do different names, though: king, 2x knights, 2-3x bandits, assassin. We've played with a usurper once, which has to deliver the killing blow to the king. Then the king becomes the usurper, the life total becoming 1, and the usurper the king.

Our king begins with 50 life, not 60. It's fun. Makes for fun politicking and creates interesting situations for things that affect the whole board. I'm a big fan of the variant, as keeping super close track of board states and general threat level in a 6+ player free for all becomes ridiculous.

Haha usurper sounds awesome, I'm definitely going to suggest trying it next time! Seems like a pretty tough role though, even harder than Renegade/Assassin.

My group plays enchantment chase. Basically its like planeschase but there is a giant pile of enchantments in the middle like Dark Tutelage, Mirari's wake, Hive mind basically each enchantment affect each player and you play as if each player controls it. same rules of planeschase. if you get chaos you get to decide put a second enchantment out or not. Basically the game ends with 5-10 enchantments effecting everyone.

I'm working on a cube/edh/planechase combination format I call Dissent, it works like this:

1) Create the "Commander Deck" - a pile of preselected legendary creatures whose top card applies their static/passive abilities to the battlefield. (Size varies)
2) Create the "Dissent Cube" - a cube of cards to draft in the colors of the Commander Deck
3) Shuffle the Commander Deck and draft the Dissent Cube
4) Flip over a Commander to start the game
5) The goal is to beat the most Commanders (hence the name)
6) Game is over when there is either 1 player left or all Commanders are dead

Still working out the kinks though.