Here's the best new way to play multiplayer commander! Do you want to speed up your large free-for-all edh games? Do you dislike the advantage teams can have in two-headed giant EDH? Are you ready for most bonkers politics you've ever experienced? Then you should play ALLIANCE.
In alliance, you roll to randomly choose your ally. With an odd number of players, the lowest roll will be the "Rogue." Once allies/the rogue are decided, choose your deck. Everyone reveals their commander at once. Roll a dice to decide who goes first. Everyone draws on their first turn as they would in a free-for-all/chaos game. Everyone has individual turns, which makes a significant distinction from two headed giant games.
I think the heart of this format lies in 5+ player games. You can play it with 4 people, but free-for-all/two headed giant seem like better choices in that case. The point of this format is to speed up larger games. Alliance is more fun with a rogue or 3 alliances instead of two.
Here's the twist: YOU MAY NOT ATTACK YOUR ALLY UNTIL A PLAYER HAS DIED unless agree upon by both allies beforehand. For example, you may ALLOW your ally to attack you with a creature, because it would benefit you somehow. Allies would agree upon an attack (with the agreed upon creature or creatures) before it occurs in the game. This won't occur that often, but it there may be opportunities for allies to work together here. You may show your ally any number of cards from your hand, or keep your hand completely secret the entire game.
Once another player dies, it is a traditional free-for-all/you may now attack your former ally. Your ally is still your opponent throughout the entire game!!!!! You still have to kill your ally in the end to win it all, but limitations are in place to enhance the speed/political aspect of the game.
The rogue (the odd numbered player) starts on one alliance chosen randomly. At the beginning of the rogue player's turn, that player switches alliances.
The enhanced political aspect and speed makes Alliance so beautiful. You may choose to maneuver with your ally at any point. You may choose to maneuver against your ally, even from the start of the game, but you have to do so without attacking them. This is still perfectly possible. You can refuse to attack the person with the lowest life in order to keep the alliances in place. (This prevents your ally from attacking you.) You can decide to kill off the person with the lowest life asap in order to get at your ally. The potential for political intrigue is infinite.
Another way to play is that you also can't target your ally until the first player dies and alliances are broken. This includes hand, permanents graveyard et. My play group plays this way because it's not very competitive, nor are there infinite combos. However very competitive/fast play groups may need to be able to target their ally to stop degenerate things from happening too early. The default is that you can't attack them, which changes the game enough on it's own.
This is a new playstyle, I need more feedback and playtesting.
Good luck! Let me know how it goes. Our politics were through the roof in testing. It's easy to understand, and all edh decks are still fine to play in the format. It excuses killing off the lowest life total opponent early. I've found that groups can ignore the person who's struggling with lands or cards for too long. In this style of play, it becomes more acceptable, even encouraged to kill off the struggling player. This speeds up the game, so the struggling player doesn't continue to struggle through many turns, prolonging the game.
We played some more Alliance this week with new players and good results! This format deserves a go! It definitely makes the games more interesting than a free for all or team games. It's really interesting how keeping an ally alive affects the game state. Everyone who's played it in my group likes it so far.
Format is still good. I think it really shines with 5, 6 or more players however. With 4 people, you might as well go free-for-all a lot of the time. Also I think play groups should decide if you can target your ally. Powerful edh groups may require you to target your ally before someone else has died. There are some degenerate cards and combos that need to be answered. I don't feel benefiting uber powerful and combo cards by allowing their permanents to have essentially hexproof from a player helps with the fun factor of the game. However, a more casual groups may find it fun to play that you can't target your ally. My meta has less awesome power, people are playing less expensive cards. It's fine that you can't target your ally for us. The variant can be adapted to suit your needs.
I'll edit the initial post to represent the baseline as you simply may not attack your ally and recommend it as better for 5+ players.
We got in a good 6 player game yesterday. 3 alliances really makes things fun. We had a 2 new alliance players and they both thought it was a blast. This variant is definitely sticking around in our playgroup. I'd love to hear about other people's experiences, especially with 5+ players!
To know at the start of the game that one person can't attack you really gives you more freedom to start attacking others. It also encourages people to be political when one person starts to take over a game. It also discourages letting the one person with very low life stick around for many extra turns. It's very interesting to see an alliance become most worried about their ally. There are so many strategies to use at this point. You can pillow fort while keeping alliances in place, forcing you ally to spend their resources to break the alliances. If you feel like you have the upper hand and want to use it before you lose it, killing off the weakest player is probably your best bet. Even people who aren't in "most powerful" alliance can decide to pick someone off to force the two best players to worry about each other now.
It seems like power swings happen more often in alliance and are more influenced by politics than normal.
It's great fun! Hope to hear back from y'all about it!
We're still playing alliance and the variant seems very solid. There's just enough spice and reason to play the format in larger multi-player games. Speeding up large multi-player games is really nice as it means getting in extra games in the same time slot.
Is anyone else ready to try this out? Or provide an explanation as to why they don't want to try it? It's worth at least a few tries! I'm curious to know if people decide to allow allies to target each other/their permanents/spells or not.
Unless I understand wrongly, my ally will still eventually be my opponent right? So I still have to keep track of his boardstate and keep in mind that he might come after me when someone dies so the need to keep defense up and keep trach of everything he plays and does is still there. Then how does this speed anything up?
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In our testing so far it speeds things up because you don't have to worry about your ally attacking you in the early stages. With one less person attacking you and with one less person to consider attacking. It can also encourage you to work with your ally to take at least one person down to open the game up into a free-for-all. It can allow you to save your board wipes for when you enter the ffa state. Say your ally has an Emrakul the promised end on board but most people are still at a high life total. That emrakul is now on "Your team" until someone else is dead. Where as in a normal game, you may have felt pressure to remove this guy asap because it might swing into you. For now, it's killing your opponents off, so you have some turns to figure out what to do about it before it can turn on you.
It opens up this new strategy of "I can afford to let my ally resolve/use giant creatures because I know they will only help me, for now."
Another example: Alliances are still in place. You have a counterspell with mana open. You ally plays Craterhoof Behemoth into a field of creatures. In a normal ffa, you would feel heavy pressure to counter that Craterhoof. In this scenario, you might actually use your counterspell to protect the craterhoof behemoth from someone else's counterspell because you want your ally to kill off a bunch of people that you might not be able to deal with. In a normal ffa, everyone except the person casting it has good reason to stop Craterhoof if possible. In Alliance, there might actually be two people on the table who want this spell to work.
Once you've played a couple of times, you'll probably find scenarios in which you were able to do bigger, badder plays faster. You will have more openings to attack than you normally would. People may feel more pressured to attack into the weakest player in order to break up the alliances. All of these things tend to lead to a faster game. Life is lost more quickly because of the enhanced attacking "freedom". With life being lost faster, and having a higher incentive to kill off the weakest player, people die faster. When people die faster, it means fewer turns to go around the table. Fewer turns around the table means a faster end to the game.
It may not always be faster, but it seems to be for us on average. I'm not as sure about the speed enhancement with 5 players, but with 6 players, the 3 alliances definitely starts to draw lines early on. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on if it truly speeds up the game after they've tried it a few times. Just the combo of 2 powerful commander's allied with each other at the beginning of the game can make that alliance in a target. This encourages the rest of the table to focus on the most powerful alliance together. Where as one powerful general may not draw as much attention, two feared commanders can draw more hate than one. It encourages a "team" aspect to the game which helps kill off people faster.
Even if it's not faster, the politics are usually more fun along the way! It's funny to see allies start to work against each other. Figuring out how you can support the death of your ally if they become too strong without attacking them can lead to strange or at least different plays and agreements with other people. Basically, it's hard to understand the subtle but real differences in an alliance game without playing it. It's what makes alliance so fun, there are new scenarios in politics to be discovered.
It may be worth adding to the official rules that you secretly choose your commander once alliances are decided. We've been playing it so far that allies can't collaborate on choosing their commanders together. The secret choice keeps people in one alliance from choosing an over-powering combo of commanders on purpose. It also gives the rogue a slight advantage knowing they are the rogue before picking their deck. Some decks may be better to play as the rogue. This is an aspect that has yet to be explored much in our group.
Punishes aggro and decks that turn sideways even harder, rewards control/stax decks that lock down the game well before they start killing, and combo decks that kill everyone at once in an arbitrary order.
This needs either a *very* casual or *very* competitive group to be fair. If you're somewhere in the middle like most people are, with archetypes like voltron, pillow fort, superfriends, etc., then this unbalances the game dramatically.
In alliance, you roll to randomly choose your ally. With an odd number of players, the lowest roll will be the "Rogue." Once allies/the rogue are decided, choose your deck. Everyone reveals their commander at once. Roll a dice to decide who goes first. Everyone draws on their first turn as they would in a free-for-all/chaos game. Everyone has individual turns, which makes a significant distinction from two headed giant games.
I think the heart of this format lies in 5+ player games. You can play it with 4 people, but free-for-all/two headed giant seem like better choices in that case. The point of this format is to speed up larger games. Alliance is more fun with a rogue or 3 alliances instead of two.
Here's the twist: YOU MAY NOT ATTACK YOUR ALLY UNTIL A PLAYER HAS DIED unless agree upon by both allies beforehand. For example, you may ALLOW your ally to attack you with a creature, because it would benefit you somehow. Allies would agree upon an attack (with the agreed upon creature or creatures) before it occurs in the game. This won't occur that often, but it there may be opportunities for allies to work together here. You may show your ally any number of cards from your hand, or keep your hand completely secret the entire game.
Once another player dies, it is a traditional free-for-all/you may now attack your former ally. Your ally is still your opponent throughout the entire game!!!!! You still have to kill your ally in the end to win it all, but limitations are in place to enhance the speed/political aspect of the game.
The rogue (the odd numbered player) starts on one alliance chosen randomly. At the beginning of the rogue player's turn, that player switches alliances.
The enhanced political aspect and speed makes Alliance so beautiful. You may choose to maneuver with your ally at any point. You may choose to maneuver against your ally, even from the start of the game, but you have to do so without attacking them. This is still perfectly possible. You can refuse to attack the person with the lowest life in order to keep the alliances in place. (This prevents your ally from attacking you.) You can decide to kill off the person with the lowest life asap in order to get at your ally. The potential for political intrigue is infinite.
Another way to play is that you also can't target your ally until the first player dies and alliances are broken. This includes hand, permanents graveyard et. My play group plays this way because it's not very competitive, nor are there infinite combos. However very competitive/fast play groups may need to be able to target their ally to stop degenerate things from happening too early. The default is that you can't attack them, which changes the game enough on it's own.
This is a new playstyle, I need more feedback and playtesting.
Good luck! Let me know how it goes. Our politics were through the roof in testing. It's easy to understand, and all edh decks are still fine to play in the format. It excuses killing off the lowest life total opponent early. I've found that groups can ignore the person who's struggling with lands or cards for too long. In this style of play, it becomes more acceptable, even encouraged to kill off the struggling player. This speeds up the game, so the struggling player doesn't continue to struggle through many turns, prolonging the game.
I'll edit the initial post to represent the baseline as you simply may not attack your ally and recommend it as better for 5+ players.
To know at the start of the game that one person can't attack you really gives you more freedom to start attacking others. It also encourages people to be political when one person starts to take over a game. It also discourages letting the one person with very low life stick around for many extra turns. It's very interesting to see an alliance become most worried about their ally. There are so many strategies to use at this point. You can pillow fort while keeping alliances in place, forcing you ally to spend their resources to break the alliances. If you feel like you have the upper hand and want to use it before you lose it, killing off the weakest player is probably your best bet. Even people who aren't in "most powerful" alliance can decide to pick someone off to force the two best players to worry about each other now.
It seems like power swings happen more often in alliance and are more influenced by politics than normal.
It's great fun! Hope to hear back from y'all about it!
Is anyone else ready to try this out? Or provide an explanation as to why they don't want to try it? It's worth at least a few tries! I'm curious to know if people decide to allow allies to target each other/their permanents/spells or not.
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
In our testing so far it speeds things up because you don't have to worry about your ally attacking you in the early stages. With one less person attacking you and with one less person to consider attacking. It can also encourage you to work with your ally to take at least one person down to open the game up into a free-for-all. It can allow you to save your board wipes for when you enter the ffa state. Say your ally has an Emrakul the promised end on board but most people are still at a high life total. That emrakul is now on "Your team" until someone else is dead. Where as in a normal game, you may have felt pressure to remove this guy asap because it might swing into you. For now, it's killing your opponents off, so you have some turns to figure out what to do about it before it can turn on you.
It opens up this new strategy of "I can afford to let my ally resolve/use giant creatures because I know they will only help me, for now."
Another example: Alliances are still in place. You have a counterspell with mana open. You ally plays Craterhoof Behemoth into a field of creatures. In a normal ffa, you would feel heavy pressure to counter that Craterhoof. In this scenario, you might actually use your counterspell to protect the craterhoof behemoth from someone else's counterspell because you want your ally to kill off a bunch of people that you might not be able to deal with. In a normal ffa, everyone except the person casting it has good reason to stop Craterhoof if possible. In Alliance, there might actually be two people on the table who want this spell to work.
Once you've played a couple of times, you'll probably find scenarios in which you were able to do bigger, badder plays faster. You will have more openings to attack than you normally would. People may feel more pressured to attack into the weakest player in order to break up the alliances. All of these things tend to lead to a faster game. Life is lost more quickly because of the enhanced attacking "freedom". With life being lost faster, and having a higher incentive to kill off the weakest player, people die faster. When people die faster, it means fewer turns to go around the table. Fewer turns around the table means a faster end to the game.
It may not always be faster, but it seems to be for us on average. I'm not as sure about the speed enhancement with 5 players, but with 6 players, the 3 alliances definitely starts to draw lines early on. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on if it truly speeds up the game after they've tried it a few times. Just the combo of 2 powerful commander's allied with each other at the beginning of the game can make that alliance in a target. This encourages the rest of the table to focus on the most powerful alliance together. Where as one powerful general may not draw as much attention, two feared commanders can draw more hate than one. It encourages a "team" aspect to the game which helps kill off people faster.
Even if it's not faster, the politics are usually more fun along the way! It's funny to see allies start to work against each other. Figuring out how you can support the death of your ally if they become too strong without attacking them can lead to strange or at least different plays and agreements with other people. Basically, it's hard to understand the subtle but real differences in an alliance game without playing it. It's what makes alliance so fun, there are new scenarios in politics to be discovered.
This needs either a *very* casual or *very* competitive group to be fair. If you're somewhere in the middle like most people are, with archetypes like voltron, pillow fort, superfriends, etc., then this unbalances the game dramatically.
- Rabid Wombat