The basic idea of Piñata (as either a regular 60-card magic multiplayer variant or a Commander variant) is that a game is played in which players attack a Piñata instead of each other. A player wins if they slay the Piñata, but all players can block one another in an effort to prevent this.
But this leaves some unanswered questions such as:
Is the Piñata a creature, planeswalker, or player?
Can other players still be targeted with damage?
What happens when _____ is used?
etc.
In an effort to answer these questions I attempted to flesh out some more rules and have tested them with my friends. It's been quite fun! We decided that
The Piñata is a player, but one that doesn't have a library, hand, or graveyard, and one that doesn't take turns. Effects that damage "all opponents" or "target player" do affect the Piñata. Since the Piñata doesn't have a library, hand, or graveyard, effects that move cards to or from any of these zones have no effect when referring to the Piñata, i.e. a Piñata cannot be milled to death. However, that leaves nothing to stop someone using Door To Nothingness on the Piñata. Also, donate effects such as Zedruu the Greathearted's can give the Piñata permanents. Thus, donating creatures to the Piñata is possible. So far we're thinking that if the Piñata has creatures to block with it ought to if possible, perhaps decided by vote or neutral third party. Rolling dice would be tiresome. Note that, since the Piñata doesn't take turns, donating it a demonic pact will never cause it to lose.
The only win condition for any player other than the Piñata is that they cause the Piñata to lose.
If a player causes the Piñata to lose but another effect (from someone elses Platinum Angel, for example) says that player can't win, then a new Piñata is created with four health. The four is pretty arbitrary but it is generally agreed that it should be a low number.
The Piñata starts the game with 1.5 times the normal starting player health for the format. In standard 60 card this is 30, in Commander it is 60. Since everyone attacks it can go down pretty fast.
Players may only attack the Piñata, but all players may block. Players declare blocking in turn order, not all at once, though combat damage is dealt simultaneously as normal. This means a creature with menace cannot be blocked by creatures controlled by different players.
And finally the candy rule, which I added to incentivize some early aggression over stalling while players build up for the one-turn-kill. The first time the Piñata takes damage each turn the active player, as a special action, must roll the candy die. We've been using a d8. 1 through 5 each correspond to getting one color of candy, which is an artifact token that can be sacrificed at any time for an effect. An image of the initial candy I designed and a Piñata token is attached.
So, what do you think? Play and tell me what problems/excitement you run into! Someone in my playgroup wants to actually build a Zedruu deck to donate pillowfort effects like Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs,Ghostly Prison, and the like to the Piñata. Will it work I wonder?
Also tell me what you think of the candy. Hitting it a little over half the time seems fair, but each group can obviously tweak this. I've already designed a second set that is generally more overpowered but requires mana to activate. Thanks for any feedback!
If other players can block, it seems rather complicated for the Piñata to be able to block. Hypothetically, non-attacking players could arrange blocking if the Piñata has creatures it can block with — I don't think they'd even have to vote but just briefly discuss it and only those things they agree on happen. However, I think the ability for any player(s) to choose actions of the Piñata just seems like opening a can of worms due to the possible presence of activated/triggered abilities from permanents the Piñata ends up controlling.
That sort of discussion is sort of what I was going for. As in it just makes sense that Piñata blocks a 2/2 dog with a 3/3 ogre. But yeah, the Piñata won't activate abilities, I agree with that. Making it the decision of the non-active players also makes sense, since then the attacking player can't influence the blocking. Whether or not people could agree on what the Piñata's creatures should do remains to be seen in playtesting but I think it could be done? I think you're right though that just what's agreed on is good as opposed to voting for everything because voting could get tedious.
Unless someone has dedicated donate effects though I can't imagine it being too complicated because the Piñata won't have a complicated boardstate.
Can players pay life and/or kill each other in any way, mill or otherwise? Is this designed to be a mostly creature-attacking variant?
One blocking model is to have it have each creature block the attacking creature with the largest power that it can. This will often lead to multiple creatures blocking the same one. Something like:
Block prioritizing the creature with the highest power.
Among creatures with the same power, prioritize cards over tokens.
Among cards with the same power, prioritize highest CMC. (And use clone's printed CMC.)
At this point, roll a die among remaining options for the remaining options and assign all blockers to the same die roll.
This should kill as many of the Piñata's creatures as possible each combat with minimal effort in thinking for it. Die rolls don't seem like they'd come up that often and with large groups of blockers on both sides, most of the blockers would require a single die roll to assign. It's just the various types of evasion that might require more than one die roll, though those creatures tend to be smaller and there tend to be even fewer of them with matching power & CMC in play at a single time.
As far as candy, that's an interesting idea. The system seems to greatly favor strong evasion, since a single Fog Bank or similar would block the majority of added play in this realm. Maybe allow players to roll for candy when they attack rather than upon dealing damage? It feels like there's not much payoff for the present effects if your goal is to incentivize attacking through board stalls. I'd like to see effects where you're more likely to sit on your candy a few turns before using them.
"The active player can't cast more than one spell or attack with more than one creature this turn. Each player draws a card."
"Target tapped creature or artifact doesn't untap during it's controller's next untap step. Scry 3."
"Target attacking creature gains trample and gets +1/+1 for each candy you've sacrificed this game."
"Target creature gains haste until end of turn and attacks the Piñata this turn if able."
After some testing I am definitely considering
1. Making the candy stronger
2. Making players get it more often
I like your candy ideas because they increase interaction, and like you said they're more likely to not be used immediately. I made a white one which I've attached. You're also right that a player whose board goes wide quickly or has very evasive creatures has a good shot at getting candy. Thematically though I feel like getting to roll on attack is weird. Also I was thinking that direct damage applies too, since it's the first time the piñata is damaged in a turn, not the first time it's dealt combat damage.
As for how other players life works and whether or not players can lose if milled out etc., I'm not sure.
I feel like a combo deck would be no fun to play against, same as usual, unless everyone is playing combo which would almost make the piñata irrelevant. This is one reason to incentivize attacking. If candy generates some advantage that helps to interact with players who are more focused on a combo or mill than creatures then people might be less tempted to employ combo and mill. I feel like we shouldn't rule out mill directly though, nor say players don't have life totals or something like that just to nerf pay-life spells. It seems unlikely that a deck would employ direct damage against all other players when they could just kill the piñata instead, unless they have an infinite amount which we've already dealt with as combo. What kind of strategies or counter-strategies get used should depend on the playgroup, I think. Also, mill is funny to mention because even after milling out all of the other players, the piñata would still be alive and have to be killed normally!
So yea my group switched to using a d6 to reduce whiffing chance, and we're trying other candy designs.
This sounds like a nice twist to the Horde concept. I like it, but I want to make sure my playgroup wouldn't hit a snag with it if we do try it out.
What are you gonna do if someone casts Goblin Game? How much life will the Piñata pay in Pain's Reward? You might roll a dice... but how many, and how many sides would each dice have?
One alternative is to actually build a Piñata deck that could be affected by milling and graveyard effects. Instead of getting candy, a player who damaged the Piñata the first time in a turn could draw from the Piñata deck and put it in their command zone face down. They can cast the card without paying the mana cost anytime the card is legal to cast. If they don't like the card, they can keep it face down. Each card put in the command zone this way increases the damage of a source controlled by that player assigned to the Piñata by 1. This will further encourage future aggression.
For laughs, use overly-costed junk like The Great Aurora. Or fill up the deck with "I might win" cards like Reverse the Sands which will entice people further to draw first blood.
I like this. I decided to quickly make teh card with the rules for The Piñata
The Piñata counts as a player. If a spell or ability would target a player The Piñata can be the target. The Piñata has no library, hand or graveyard and does not lose due to having no library. The Piñata always skips its turn. The Piñata starts with X health where X is twice the starting life total. If you are responsible for killing The Piñata you win the game. Any player may block for The Piñata.
I really love this idea. It's more like capture the flag than Horde Magic, but The Piñata and the candy are just so flavorful.
I would make a few suggestions regarding the candy.
- Given that it's random anyway (based on a die roll), I would just shuffle up the candy pile and have people draw from it rather than having each number on the die correspond to a specific pile of candy.
- Why does the candy need to be colored? Does this add anything to the game?
- I would add more variety to the candy. If you keep colors of candy, make 2-3 kinds for each color.
- I would like a candy that gives target player a 1/1 Saproling and a candy that lets target player gain 2 life. A player could use them on themselves, or a teammate (format depending), or even give them to The Piñata as a way to steal a win from someone who was about to kill it.
- I would recommend that at the end of each turn, each player that damaged The Piñata rolls the candy die. That way, a red player can't steal your only chance for candy with a Lightning Bolt on your turn. Instead, you both get to roll the candy die, which actually rewards decks that can spread damage into other players' turns.
This format looks interesting. Great job on the candy tokens. They look good both functionally and flavorful, hehe. I like that the candies have colors just for flavor to describe their interactions with the game. If you are making candy tokens that require a mana cost activation, I'd want it to be generic mana personally so anyone can use it. Perhaps that's implied.
Looks like a cool format. I'll let you know how games go when our play group gets around to it.
My wife and I tested this to have a more laid-back way to test some recent tweaks to our decks. A few changes/rulings we made that seemed for the better;
- Not getting candy each hit was a feel-bad thing. We switched to rolling a d6 with 6 being "reroll", so that players ALWAYS got candy, which favored early aggression. I'd be half tempted to crank up the fun factor with a 6 being "roll twice and get two candies".
- In 1v1 the black candy feels too obnoxious and against the spirit of the format, but in multiplayer it'd be pretty bad. I'd be tempted to make the white candy "put a +1/+1 counter on target creature" or "create a 1/1 soldier", and make black's "return target creature from your graveyard to the top of your library/hand".
- 60 life wasn't nearly enough even for just two opponents. We did 100 for round two and that felt closer to right; the game stalled out for the first several turns due to Hungry Lynx, Hunted Troll, and Death by Dragons giving the Pinata an army of defenders, but once we hit Turn 8 or 9 both decks found ways to unleash massive attacks and the Pinata dropped from 98 to 0 in the course of a few swings.
- Related to the above, I assumed Group Hug would be awful but it was actually hilarious due to the ability to load up the Pinata with tokens and theoretically heal them with Congregate or Benevolent Offering.
- We decided it was more challenging but fair for non-active players to decide who blocks where IF the Pinata ends up with defenders; if we had more than one non-active player we probably would have been vote/democratic discussion based.
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Being able to donate things to the piñata will create rules nightmares. It also seems like more than a little favoritism to allow donated permanents to block, but not allow, say, milling to work.
Things like Fact or Fiction will also cause problems, as others have pointed out.
I feel like players should still be able to attack eachother, and that the piñata should be an alternate win condition. Otherwise this format punishes combat-oriented decks compared to those that try to win with effects like Blood Artist and which are still able to kill other players. It's especially problematic for 'saboteur' cards like Trygon Predator or non-Zedruu players who might run thins like Ghostly Prison.
Also, there are no official rules for who or what 'caused a player to lose'. Technically the piñata will always lose to state-based effects rather than to any given player, unless a card like Door to Nothingness is involved. This becomes problematic with cards like Squallmonger and a few others.
But this leaves some unanswered questions such as:
So, what do you think? Play and tell me what problems/excitement you run into! Someone in my playgroup wants to actually build a Zedruu deck to donate pillowfort effects like Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs,Ghostly Prison, and the like to the Piñata. Will it work I wonder?
Also tell me what you think of the candy. Hitting it a little over half the time seems fair, but each group can obviously tweak this. I've already designed a second set that is generally more overpowered but requires mana to activate. Thanks for any feedback!
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RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Unless someone has dedicated donate effects though I can't imagine it being too complicated because the Piñata won't have a complicated boardstate.
One blocking model is to have it have each creature block the attacking creature with the largest power that it can. This will often lead to multiple creatures blocking the same one. Something like:
This should kill as many of the Piñata's creatures as possible each combat with minimal effort in thinking for it. Die rolls don't seem like they'd come up that often and with large groups of blockers on both sides, most of the blockers would require a single die roll to assign. It's just the various types of evasion that might require more than one die roll, though those creatures tend to be smaller and there tend to be even fewer of them with matching power & CMC in play at a single time.
As far as candy, that's an interesting idea. The system seems to greatly favor strong evasion, since a single Fog Bank or similar would block the majority of added play in this realm. Maybe allow players to roll for candy when they attack rather than upon dealing damage? It feels like there's not much payoff for the present effects if your goal is to incentivize attacking through board stalls. I'd like to see effects where you're more likely to sit on your candy a few turns before using them.
"The active player can't cast more than one spell or attack with more than one creature this turn. Each player draws a card."
"Target tapped creature or artifact doesn't untap during it's controller's next untap step. Scry 3."
"Target attacking creature gains trample and gets +1/+1 for each candy you've sacrificed this game."
"Target creature gains haste until end of turn and attacks the Piñata this turn if able."
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
1. Making the candy stronger
2. Making players get it more often
I like your candy ideas because they increase interaction, and like you said they're more likely to not be used immediately. I made a white one which I've attached. You're also right that a player whose board goes wide quickly or has very evasive creatures has a good shot at getting candy. Thematically though I feel like getting to roll on attack is weird. Also I was thinking that direct damage applies too, since it's the first time the piñata is damaged in a turn, not the first time it's dealt combat damage.
As for how other players life works and whether or not players can lose if milled out etc., I'm not sure.
I feel like a combo deck would be no fun to play against, same as usual, unless everyone is playing combo which would almost make the piñata irrelevant. This is one reason to incentivize attacking. If candy generates some advantage that helps to interact with players who are more focused on a combo or mill than creatures then people might be less tempted to employ combo and mill. I feel like we shouldn't rule out mill directly though, nor say players don't have life totals or something like that just to nerf pay-life spells. It seems unlikely that a deck would employ direct damage against all other players when they could just kill the piñata instead, unless they have an infinite amount which we've already dealt with as combo. What kind of strategies or counter-strategies get used should depend on the playgroup, I think. Also, mill is funny to mention because even after milling out all of the other players, the piñata would still be alive and have to be killed normally!
So yea my group switched to using a d6 to reduce whiffing chance, and we're trying other candy designs.
What are you gonna do if someone casts Goblin Game? How much life will the Piñata pay in Pain's Reward? You might roll a dice... but how many, and how many sides would each dice have?
One alternative is to actually build a Piñata deck that could be affected by milling and graveyard effects. Instead of getting candy, a player who damaged the Piñata the first time in a turn could draw from the Piñata deck and put it in their command zone face down. They can cast the card without paying the mana cost anytime the card is legal to cast. If they don't like the card, they can keep it face down. Each card put in the command zone this way increases the damage of a source controlled by that player assigned to the Piñata by 1. This will further encourage future aggression.
For laughs, use overly-costed junk like The Great Aurora. Or fill up the deck with "I might win" cards like Reverse the Sands which will entice people further to draw first blood.
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist
I would make a few suggestions regarding the candy.
- Given that it's random anyway (based on a die roll), I would just shuffle up the candy pile and have people draw from it rather than having each number on the die correspond to a specific pile of candy.
- Why does the candy need to be colored? Does this add anything to the game?
- I would add more variety to the candy. If you keep colors of candy, make 2-3 kinds for each color.
- I would like a candy that gives target player a 1/1 Saproling and a candy that lets target player gain 2 life. A player could use them on themselves, or a teammate (format depending), or even give them to The Piñata as a way to steal a win from someone who was about to kill it.
- I would recommend that at the end of each turn, each player that damaged The Piñata rolls the candy die. That way, a red player can't steal your only chance for candy with a Lightning Bolt on your turn. Instead, you both get to roll the candy die, which actually rewards decks that can spread damage into other players' turns.
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Looks like a cool format. I'll let you know how games go when our play group gets around to it.
- Not getting candy each hit was a feel-bad thing. We switched to rolling a d6 with 6 being "reroll", so that players ALWAYS got candy, which favored early aggression. I'd be half tempted to crank up the fun factor with a 6 being "roll twice and get two candies".
- In 1v1 the black candy feels too obnoxious and against the spirit of the format, but in multiplayer it'd be pretty bad. I'd be tempted to make the white candy "put a +1/+1 counter on target creature" or "create a 1/1 soldier", and make black's "return target creature from your graveyard to the top of your library/hand".
- 60 life wasn't nearly enough even for just two opponents. We did 100 for round two and that felt closer to right; the game stalled out for the first several turns due to Hungry Lynx, Hunted Troll, and Death by Dragons giving the Pinata an army of defenders, but once we hit Turn 8 or 9 both decks found ways to unleash massive attacks and the Pinata dropped from 98 to 0 in the course of a few swings.
- Related to the above, I assumed Group Hug would be awful but it was actually hilarious due to the ability to load up the Pinata with tokens and theoretically heal them with Congregate or Benevolent Offering.
- We decided it was more challenging but fair for non-active players to decide who blocks where IF the Pinata ends up with defenders; if we had more than one non-active player we probably would have been vote/democratic discussion based.
RCRDaretti: Superfriends Forever RCR
WGBDoran: Ent-mootWBG
GGGMultani: Group Bear HugGGG
GB(B/G)The Gitrog Monster: Dredgefall DurdleGB(B/G)
RGWGahiji, the Honored Group Hug MonsterRGW
UB(U/B)Yuriko, Ninja Trinket AggroUB(U/B)
WUBRGAtogatog: Assembling a OHKOWUBRG
Things like Fact or Fiction will also cause problems, as others have pointed out.
I feel like players should still be able to attack eachother, and that the piñata should be an alternate win condition. Otherwise this format punishes combat-oriented decks compared to those that try to win with effects like Blood Artist and which are still able to kill other players. It's especially problematic for 'saboteur' cards like Trygon Predator or non-Zedruu players who might run thins like Ghostly Prison.
Also, there are no official rules for who or what 'caused a player to lose'. Technically the piñata will always lose to state-based effects rather than to any given player, unless a card like Door to Nothingness is involved. This becomes problematic with cards like Squallmonger and a few others.
- Rabid Wombat