I wanted to make an interesting cube league that didn't just involve normal drafting, as my play-group seems unable to get together for drafts, but can play a few games every now and again. My idea was to make it like Shandalar, an old PC game where you started off with a precon-like deck and played for ante to improve your pool. So we'd start with a cube and either draft or sealed to make the starting pools, then anyone could play anyone else, with ante, at each players' convenience, until a predetermined time (winner is the one with most cards at this time/ or we have a playoff-like single elimination tourney with our pools to determine the winner), or until it got boring, or someone just kept winning and taking all the cards (this person would be the winner). That's my idea in its simplest form, i'd like some suggestions as to what I could do to improve it.
while simplicity is important further rules could make it more interesting; so i'll put some ideas/ concerns down to mull over. I think this could be a really fun experience, anyone who's ever played Shandalar knows how addicting it can be. My cube is a 360 card pauper cube, not all suggestions have to be geared towards my cube (but bear this in mind if I give an example, though I'll try to use regular cube examples too, though I have less experience), i'd like for all cubers to try this out, maybe someday specialty cubes will be made with this league format in mind (I can dream). My suggestions will be wordy and some may overlap/contradict each other, but I'd like to get them all out to help fine tune this idea (probably tl;dr). I want the league to be hard fought, with lots of back-and-forth card exchanging, decks evolving and changing based on new cards; what I don't want is the best deck to just win the first few rounds and leave all the bad decks even worse than before, till there's no contest anymore.
The biggest concern: If the cube is split into pools that need to be kept by each individual, you cant actually draft the cube proper without breaking up everyones pools. Relying on memory to reconstruct each person's pool would be difficult with cards trading hands often. Keeping records of the pools would be very tedious, perhaps there is a program that could keep track of the pools. This is almost a non-issue for me, cause my play group doesn't draft often, but might be a concern for cubes that actually get drafted.
Also everyone playing at their convenience means everyone keeps their own pools, so they can play pick up games without needing to see me to get their decks. I have no problems loaning my pauper cube to my close friends, but if I were using an expensive cube with people I only see at my local card shop I'd be unwilling to let them hang-on to the cards. You could organize a league-night where you all show up at some place at a scheduled time and the cube owner would bring the cube and be able to have all the cards back to him when the night is over.
Modified Ante: if the card you ante is a basic land, put it back into the deck and ante again, everyone has as many basics as they want so losing/wining a basic does nothing.
You could make the ante's more random: after you ante someone rolls a D6 and then cool stuff could happen with the ante
1 then the current ante goes back into the cube and ante again.
2 do nothing
3 do nothing
4 do nothing
5 each player ante an additional card from deck and or sideboard
6 put a random card from the cube into the current ante.
the do nothings could be replaced with other ideas, but I could only think of 3 so far, i'll take suggestions if you guys can think of anything.
Sealed or draft? I'd prefer sealed for this because awkward sealed pools can give you multiple bad decks, and the cards you win/lose in ante will determine what good deck you build out of your pool, whereas draft allows someone to force their favorite archetype. Also some draft strategies would be awkward for this league: for cubes that support high risk/high reward archetypes like reanimator, there is a disincentive to draft those archetypes. In a regular draft if you try and draft it, but it doesn't quite come together, then you have a bad couple of rounds, and that's it, but with this if you try and fail at a tough archetype, then your stuck with that failed deck for the entirety of the league, which would suck. Also If you draft a really streamlined deck, like mono-red beatdown, the cards you win from ante probably won't change your deck, unless they were cards you should have drafted anyway. Drafts were certain archetypes, normally supported by the cube, are much less attractive don't seem fun.
Should there be re-drafting within the league: if the player with the best pool just keeps winning how do we shake things up and give the others a chance? Larger cubes could just have a second draft with the cards not dealt out from the initial pool-making, or each player could choose a number of cards in their pool (e.g. 15) and shuffle the rest into the cube and then do a mini draft to try and build a new deck, just to keep things interesting, change archetypes, give good drafters with bad pools a chance to redeem themselves. I think it would be a fun little mini-game to keep the right cards and risk the others being drafted. This would reset the number of cards that everybody has, which might be bad as it punishes the winners and helps the losers, but I
Since the games would usually be games, not matches, there could be pre-sidebording allowed. It's be like the edh rules where you get a minute or two to sideboard before the game starts. Or you could just do matches, where the best 2/3 gets all the ante cards from the match, but one shot games fits the Shandalar better
Hoarding: If I have a UB control deck and I know someone else has a RG aggro deck, then very few, if any cards from our main decks would ever help the other's deck, so there would be no reason for us to play each other, since we could hurt our decks by loosing, but we can't gain anything. If we ante from sideboard, in addition to, or with the dice method, then we could have more interesting matches between otherwise incompatible decks that don't want to play each other. Also if I have some heavy black bomb, like Pestilence, but my pool does not allow for a heavy black deck, unless I win enough ante to make that deck, an otherwise powerful card will rot in my sideboard, since no one could win it from my ante and I can't use it. If we anted from sideboard this could help here.
This could also help in this very niche example: Say I have a good deck and happen to have sol ring, soon there after i win enough cards that my deck is still the best, even without sol ring. If I put sol ring in my sideboard then no one could take it via ante. The only way I foresee myself loosing my foothold is anteing sol ring and loosing to mana screw, suddenly making an opponent's deck a contender/ giving his deck an unbeatable draw, whereas loosing any other card would not cause such a dramatic shift in power, and your deck would still be favored absent of luck and variance. The question is, do I want to enable hoarding as a strategic move (it would be very tough to know when this is actually beneficial and not suicidal), or prevent this as a non-interactive abuse of power. If the league gets to this point, then it may be time to declare a winner and start over anyway, but it is a concern to look out for.
Anyone have any ideas as how to make this better? Does this sound cool, or stupid? I'm gonna talk it over with my playgroup when I get back to school, and see how/if they want to do this. I hope others will test this out with their groups and let me know how it goes.
I love shandalar and have often thought about how to do something similar with my cube. Alas I haven't found any good idea for how to do it. I found one idea that worked pretty well for a league setting, but it involves playing a weird kind of magic and is not something I would generally recommend.
Should totally have some dungeons. My favorite part of Shandalar was playing on easy, doing all the dungeons, and walking around with all the moxes, a couple lotuses, a recall, three timetwisters... all to cast the best card in my deck: Mahamoti Djinn. The 90s were weird.
If you really want to go Shandalar, then you want progression avaliable for everyone. Your players should not just be rotating around their cards via ante so the good get better and the worse suffer more. So there needs to be a method to introduce new cards to everyone over time. Two ideas;
1) random boosters (or half-boosters) given to everyone after X time
2) have players fight over recieving new cards sometimes, rather than always just for ante. I.E. duel to claim a mox from the pool.
3) some kind of dungeoning/questing mechanic against a special "DM" player. Again the DM puts up some particularly valuble card or cards rather than a normal ante. Maybe do an archenemy vs. several players. Like in PnP the "DM" should generally lose but still put up an entertaining game against the competition. Maybe focus on building fun and flavorful fortress-style decks without any card restrictions, instead of the best thing possible from a limited set like the players are.
3) some kind of dungeoning/questing mechanic against a special "DM" player. Again the DM puts up some particularly valuble card or cards rather than a normal ante. Maybe do an archenemy vs. several players. Like in PnP the "DM" should generally lose but still put up an entertaining game against the competition. Maybe focus on building fun and flavorful fortress-style decks without any card restrictions, instead of the best thing possible from a limited set like the players are.
Oh my god yes. A big cooperative dungeon with a boss fight (Archenemy) at the end, and if you win you get a piece of power.
Damn, that should be the whole thing. And at the end, everyone fights each other.
Edit: OK, let's get game designy. The problem with these dungeon ideas is that they require a player to "run" it, and everyone else gets to play. While this may be fun for some, I think it would be ideal to create a system where everyone gets to be on the same team--until the end when they must fight to the death in single-elimination.
Here's my idea. Instead of having a series of random encounters with monsters, and then a big bauss, the entire dungeon is represented by a single deck that all the PCs are playing against. Similar to Type 4, the Dungeon Deck consists of all spells (maybe a few lands, though they'll be useless for the DM--see later). The DM is an imaginary player that the PCs control while they play against it. Here are the DM rules:
DM starts with an appropriate amount of Life and no cards in hand. The DM's hand is always revealed to all players.
After each player's turn, the DM takes a turn (Player1 -> DM -> Player2 -> DM -> Player3 -> DM -> Player1). During the DM's turn, the player who just finished his or her turn ("controlling player") controls the DM (the DM is still the active player for any effects that care).
During the DM's draw step, he draws one card as normal.
During the DM's first main phase, he immediately plays one card in his hand without paying its mana cost (the controlling player gets to choose if the DM has more than one card, like if he played a draw spell).
During the DM's combat phase, he attacks the controlling player with all creatures he controls, if able.
During the DM's second main phase, he immediately plays one card in his hand without paying its mana cost, if he has one somehow.
During other players' turns, the active player chooses how the DM blocks, but the DM may only block if it's a bounce (both creatures deal damage, nothing dies) trade (both creatures die) or better (his creature eats your creature). The DM anticipates on-board combat tricks, but not surprise combat tricks (attack with a Frozen Shade, he won't block with a Grizzly Bears... unless you're tapped out of black, in which case he'll block it and get his bear eaten by your Giant Growth). If the DM will not chump unless it's a lethal attack, in which case he must block if able.
If the DM needs to make a decision that isn't covered by the above rules, the controlling player makes that decision. You can force him to make a bad decision (like choosing bad targets for a removal spell), but please errata cards so that the DM isn't suicidal (Vindicate can only target something an opponent controls, Lava Axe says target opponent, etc.).
Then you can construct appropriate Dungeon Decks for each dungeon -- maybe one is a fortress, and has lots of Steel Walls and Reinforced Bulwarks. Maybe they can represent different planes, or different factions, or mechanical themes.
The one thing all Dungeon Decks should have in common, though, is that they have cards the players want. They can be themed or not, and they can be cards that are useless for the DM, but amazing for the players (Lotus, Fact or Fiction [lol], etc.).
A player may "call" a card from the Dungeon Deck as soon as he or she sees it. If he or she doesn't call it immediately, he or she loses the chance to get it (if more than one people want it, the active player gets first choice, and so on in turn order). Each player may "call" only one card--if you call a Mox on turn one, you can't call a Lotus on turn three. After the game, if the players win, each player gets the card he or she called.
Some dungeons may have special rules in effect (Vampire dungeon may start the game with Bad Moon in play, DM may start with a [mandatory] Channel in effect, overpowered blue dungeon may draw extra cards, etc).
The big boss at the end of the campaign (Bolas?!?) can be done Archenemy style.
Disclaimer: I came up with these rules in less than a minute, so I don't know if they actually work.
Edit: Maybe, instead of "Calling" cards and getting them, maybe they Rochester draft a "treasure" pack.
Edit: For bonus points, have each dungeon represent a place (a Land card), and when the players defeat it, they each get a copy of that card. Because, like, they've conquered it and added it to their domain.
1) random boosters (or half-boosters) given to everyone after X time
A booster from the cube seems like a lot all at once, but we could randomly give a "booster tutor" (one of my favorite cube cards) to the winner of a game, open a (half)pack and pick one card from it to add to your pool.
2) have players fight over recieving new cards sometimes, rather than always just for ante. I.E. duel to claim a mox from the pool.
I like the concept of setting aside "bomby" cards before the pools are distributed and then using them as prizes: decks will get better as bombs are phased in, more random, less likely for someone to have most of the good cards at the start, etc.
so the new dice ante could be:
1 then the current ante goes back into the cube and ante again.
2 do nothing
3 each player ante an additional card from deck and or sideboard
4 put a random card from the cube into the current ante.
5 winner booster tutors
6 Get one of the "prizes," or get any card of choice from the cube not currently owned by anyone else.
Another concept for new card acquisition is a point system, Everyone starts with 100 points winning gives you +15 points, loosing gets you -10 points. Points can be traded among players in exchange for cards, and the bombiest cards can be bought from the bank for lottsa points. You loose if you run out of points, and when all the cards are owned, the league is over and the one with the most points wins. I'd have to go through the whole cube and assign points to every card, which would be tedious, as is the whole number system, and I think I like the random aspect of ante better than buying cards with points, but its more food for thought.
3) some kind of dungeoning/questing mechanic against a special "DM" player. Again the DM puts up some particularly valuble card or cards rather than a normal ante. Maybe do an archenemy vs. several players. Like in PnP the "DM" should generally lose but still put up an entertaining game against the competition. Maybe focus on building fun and flavorful fortress-style decks without any card restrictions, instead of the best thing possible from a limited set like the players are.
While this seems like a fun activity to do every now and again, it doesn't seem very league friendly, and requires everyone to be together at once and if we can all do that often enough we'd probably just draft instead. lets say the group wins the archenemy game, how do we divide the loot (e.g. who gets the sol ring and who is stuck with something far less spectacular)? The archenemy deck could ante separately with everyone, but this doesn't guarantee that everyone gets boss quality loot, which is the point of bosses.
The Archenemy could be someone who isn't in the league, lets say someone visiting me at school for the weekend. He wasn't around at the start of the league, so he doesn't have a pool. We could give him all the cards left in the cube and have him make a deck from that, including all the bombs, then he could be the archenemy and he could be that boss. I'd like to stay away from the boss idea, as it seems more like a linear video game than what I was thinking. Seems like writing a scenario and hoping the game goes as planned.
I really just wanted to make a cube league that wasn't draft intensive, but still allowed for players' decks to change over time, I've seen this work in Shandalar, so I used that as the basis, but it doesn't have to be a slave to the Shandalar theme.
So this got me thinking quite a bit, especially since we are doing a sealed deck league w/ M12 and Scars block at my LGS. You had a lot of great ideas, so I'm just going to elaborate on some of them:
League Foundation:
- Gather 8 or more players (preferably in multiples of 2) to draft your cube, depending on group size and cube size.
- Create 3 packs of 11. This creates a smaller card pool and overall lower power level, which is essential if you want to give players a goal to work towards by the end of the league. Expect to see many 3+ color decks with shaky mana pools as the league begins, and many well structured 2 color or 2+splash color decks as the league ends. It's up to the coordinator to decide whether this is something that they want to do. I'm partial to it based on how we are going to upgrade our decks each week.
- Draft the 3 packs like normal (left, right, left), then have each player create a list of all the cards they drafted.
- Create your decks.
- At the beginning of each league event (other than the first) the host will coordinate an upgrade draft, rotisserie style.
- To set this up, quadruple the amount of people that you have in your league, then pick that many cards randomly from your cube. (The method that you choose to do this in is up to you. Feel free to make it purely random (cube totally shuffled), semi random (2 from each cube section, then totally random) or evenly distributed (4 from each section, then remaining random), for example.) Place them face up on a table.
- Now, the person with the worst record from your last session gets to choose one of the face up cards you picked out first. Continue from the worst record all the way up to the best record, who chooses two cards at once because they are on the wheel, then back down the list to the worst record. This should give each person 2 new cards to use in their pool. Shuffle the remaining cards back into the cube.
- Each person must upgrade their card pool lists. Once that's completed, they are free to upgrade their decks.
- Once this is completed, decklists are locked in and can not be changed until the beginning of the next event.
- Depending on the league organizer, your three opponents could be chosen using one of the following methods: random, seeded, or your choosing.
-Random: This method is just that, random. There is no input used from earlier rounds or league nights.
-Seeded: This uses the standings from the previous league night to match people together. 1st place plays last place, 2nd place plays second to last place, etc etc.
-Your Choice: Just walk around and play 3 people of your choosing.
- Record the scores.
- For each win someone has at the end of the night, that person may pick one card at random from the cube to add to their pool. These cards may be used after the next league night's rotisserie draft.
- The person with the most wins at the end of the league (probably close to when you run out of cards) is crowned the winner. If you were playing with pools, divy up accordingly.
So this got me thinking quite a bit, especially since we are doing a sealed deck league w/ M12 and Scars block at my LGS. You had a lot of great ideas, so I'm just going to elaborate on some of them:
League Foundation:
- Gather 8 or more players (preferably in multiples of 2) to draft your cube, depending on group size and cube size.
- Create 3 packs of 11. This creates a smaller card pool and overall lower power level, which is essential if you want to give players a goal to work towards by the end of the league. Expect to see many 3+ color decks with shaky mana pools as the league begins, and many well structured 2 color or 2+splash color decks as the league ends. It's up to the coordinator to decide whether this is something that they want to do. I'm partial to it based on how we are going to upgrade our decks each week.
- Draft the 3 packs like normal (left, right, left), then have each player create a list of all the cards they drafted.
- Create your decks.
- At the beginning of each league event (other than the first) the host will coordinate an upgrade draft, rotisserie style.
- To set this up, quadruple the amount of people that you have in your league, then pick that many cards randomly from your cube. (The method that you choose to do this in is up to you. Feel free to make it purely random (cube totally shuffled), semi random (2 from each cube section, then totally random) or evenly distributed (4 from each section, then remaining random), for example.) Place them face up on a table.
- Now, the person with the worst record from your last session gets to choose one of the face up cards you picked out first. Continue from the worst record all the way up to the best record, who chooses two cards at once because they are on the wheel, then back down the list to the worst record. This should give each person 2 new cards to use in their pool. Shuffle the remaining cards back into the cube.
- Each person must upgrade their card pool lists. Once that's completed, they are free to upgrade their decks.
- Once this is completed, decklists are locked in and can not be changed until the beginning of the next event.
- Depending on the league organizer, your three opponents could be chosen using one of the following methods: random, seeded, or your choosing.
-Random: This method is just that, random. There is no input used from earlier rounds or league nights.
-Seeded: This uses the standings from the previous league night to match people together. 1st place plays last place, 2nd place plays second to last place, etc etc.
-Your Choice: Just walk around and play 3 people of your choosing.
- Record the scores.
- For each win someone has at the end of the night, that person may pick one card at random from the cube to add to their pool. These cards may be used after the next league night's rotisserie draft.
- The person with the most wins at the end of the league (probably close to when you run out of cards) is crowned the winner. If you were playing with pools, divy up accordingly.
EDIT: With my 500 person cube, I'd be able to host a 8 person league for 8 sessions before my cube ran out, using the numbers listed above of course.
If you want to try to even things out and add an extra level of intrigue to it, you could allow people to choose their seats for the rotisserie draft at the start of each week. The person in last place gets first choice of their seat, so if there's one really good card they could choose seat 1, or if they just want any of 3 different cards maybe they choose seat 3, or whatever.
Also, I'd prolly recommend seating and have the r1 pairings be: 1v2, 3v4, 5v6, 7v8. And then have the 1v2 and 3v4 matches paired and the 5v6 and 7v8 matches paired and then the last round as would be determined for regular swiss. Otherwise it might end up being that the top and the bottom really separate from each other.
You might be able to make use of the Planeswalker game posted on the Wizzo forums a while back.
I'll sniff out links in a minute.
Edit: http://community.wizards.com/planeswalker is the group's page in the Wizzo forums. Optimus has probably come out with newer versions of the rules, if you want to try to e-mail him. He has a lot of interesting ideas, I'm certain you can salvage at least some of them.
There is "logic" for NPCs to follow when fighting (multiple) players, and there are even rules for making enemy planeswalkers for bosses.
while simplicity is important further rules could make it more interesting; so i'll put some ideas/ concerns down to mull over. I think this could be a really fun experience, anyone who's ever played Shandalar knows how addicting it can be. My cube is a 360 card pauper cube, not all suggestions have to be geared towards my cube (but bear this in mind if I give an example, though I'll try to use regular cube examples too, though I have less experience), i'd like for all cubers to try this out, maybe someday specialty cubes will be made with this league format in mind (I can dream). My suggestions will be wordy and some may overlap/contradict each other, but I'd like to get them all out to help fine tune this idea (probably tl;dr). I want the league to be hard fought, with lots of back-and-forth card exchanging, decks evolving and changing based on new cards; what I don't want is the best deck to just win the first few rounds and leave all the bad decks even worse than before, till there's no contest anymore.
The biggest concern: If the cube is split into pools that need to be kept by each individual, you cant actually draft the cube proper without breaking up everyones pools. Relying on memory to reconstruct each person's pool would be difficult with cards trading hands often. Keeping records of the pools would be very tedious, perhaps there is a program that could keep track of the pools. This is almost a non-issue for me, cause my play group doesn't draft often, but might be a concern for cubes that actually get drafted.
Also everyone playing at their convenience means everyone keeps their own pools, so they can play pick up games without needing to see me to get their decks. I have no problems loaning my pauper cube to my close friends, but if I were using an expensive cube with people I only see at my local card shop I'd be unwilling to let them hang-on to the cards. You could organize a league-night where you all show up at some place at a scheduled time and the cube owner would bring the cube and be able to have all the cards back to him when the night is over.
Modified Ante: if the card you ante is a basic land, put it back into the deck and ante again, everyone has as many basics as they want so losing/wining a basic does nothing.
You could make the ante's more random: after you ante someone rolls a D6 and then cool stuff could happen with the ante
1 then the current ante goes back into the cube and ante again.
2 do nothing
3 do nothing
4 do nothing
5 each player ante an additional card from deck and or sideboard
6 put a random card from the cube into the current ante.
the do nothings could be replaced with other ideas, but I could only think of 3 so far, i'll take suggestions if you guys can think of anything.
Sealed or draft? I'd prefer sealed for this because awkward sealed pools can give you multiple bad decks, and the cards you win/lose in ante will determine what good deck you build out of your pool, whereas draft allows someone to force their favorite archetype. Also some draft strategies would be awkward for this league: for cubes that support high risk/high reward archetypes like reanimator, there is a disincentive to draft those archetypes. In a regular draft if you try and draft it, but it doesn't quite come together, then you have a bad couple of rounds, and that's it, but with this if you try and fail at a tough archetype, then your stuck with that failed deck for the entirety of the league, which would suck. Also If you draft a really streamlined deck, like mono-red beatdown, the cards you win from ante probably won't change your deck, unless they were cards you should have drafted anyway. Drafts were certain archetypes, normally supported by the cube, are much less attractive don't seem fun.
Should there be re-drafting within the league: if the player with the best pool just keeps winning how do we shake things up and give the others a chance? Larger cubes could just have a second draft with the cards not dealt out from the initial pool-making, or each player could choose a number of cards in their pool (e.g. 15) and shuffle the rest into the cube and then do a mini draft to try and build a new deck, just to keep things interesting, change archetypes, give good drafters with bad pools a chance to redeem themselves. I think it would be a fun little mini-game to keep the right cards and risk the others being drafted. This would reset the number of cards that everybody has, which might be bad as it punishes the winners and helps the losers, but I
Since the games would usually be games, not matches, there could be pre-sidebording allowed. It's be like the edh rules where you get a minute or two to sideboard before the game starts. Or you could just do matches, where the best 2/3 gets all the ante cards from the match, but one shot games fits the Shandalar better
Hoarding: If I have a UB control deck and I know someone else has a RG aggro deck, then very few, if any cards from our main decks would ever help the other's deck, so there would be no reason for us to play each other, since we could hurt our decks by loosing, but we can't gain anything. If we ante from sideboard, in addition to, or with the dice method, then we could have more interesting matches between otherwise incompatible decks that don't want to play each other. Also if I have some heavy black bomb, like Pestilence, but my pool does not allow for a heavy black deck, unless I win enough ante to make that deck, an otherwise powerful card will rot in my sideboard, since no one could win it from my ante and I can't use it. If we anted from sideboard this could help here.
This could also help in this very niche example: Say I have a good deck and happen to have sol ring, soon there after i win enough cards that my deck is still the best, even without sol ring. If I put sol ring in my sideboard then no one could take it via ante. The only way I foresee myself loosing my foothold is anteing sol ring and loosing to mana screw, suddenly making an opponent's deck a contender/ giving his deck an unbeatable draw, whereas loosing any other card would not cause such a dramatic shift in power, and your deck would still be favored absent of luck and variance. The question is, do I want to enable hoarding as a strategic move (it would be very tough to know when this is actually beneficial and not suicidal), or prevent this as a non-interactive abuse of power. If the league gets to this point, then it may be time to declare a winner and start over anyway, but it is a concern to look out for.
Anyone have any ideas as how to make this better? Does this sound cool, or stupid? I'm gonna talk it over with my playgroup when I get back to school, and see how/if they want to do this. I hope others will test this out with their groups and let me know how it goes.
My Cubes:Pauper|Archetype
My Deviant Art
1) random boosters (or half-boosters) given to everyone after X time
2) have players fight over recieving new cards sometimes, rather than always just for ante. I.E. duel to claim a mox from the pool.
3) some kind of dungeoning/questing mechanic against a special "DM" player. Again the DM puts up some particularly valuble card or cards rather than a normal ante. Maybe do an archenemy vs. several players. Like in PnP the "DM" should generally lose but still put up an entertaining game against the competition. Maybe focus on building fun and flavorful fortress-style decks without any card restrictions, instead of the best thing possible from a limited set like the players are.
Oh my god yes. A big cooperative dungeon with a boss fight (Archenemy) at the end, and if you win you get a piece of power.
Damn, that should be the whole thing. And at the end, everyone fights each other.
Edit: OK, let's get game designy. The problem with these dungeon ideas is that they require a player to "run" it, and everyone else gets to play. While this may be fun for some, I think it would be ideal to create a system where everyone gets to be on the same team--until the end when they must fight to the death in single-elimination.
Here's my idea. Instead of having a series of random encounters with monsters, and then a big bauss, the entire dungeon is represented by a single deck that all the PCs are playing against. Similar to Type 4, the Dungeon Deck consists of all spells (maybe a few lands, though they'll be useless for the DM--see later). The DM is an imaginary player that the PCs control while they play against it. Here are the DM rules:
DM starts with an appropriate amount of Life and no cards in hand. The DM's hand is always revealed to all players.
After each player's turn, the DM takes a turn (Player1 -> DM -> Player2 -> DM -> Player3 -> DM -> Player1). During the DM's turn, the player who just finished his or her turn ("controlling player") controls the DM (the DM is still the active player for any effects that care).
If the DM needs to make a decision that isn't covered by the above rules, the controlling player makes that decision. You can force him to make a bad decision (like choosing bad targets for a removal spell), but please errata cards so that the DM isn't suicidal (Vindicate can only target something an opponent controls, Lava Axe says target opponent, etc.).
Then you can construct appropriate Dungeon Decks for each dungeon -- maybe one is a fortress, and has lots of Steel Walls and Reinforced Bulwarks. Maybe they can represent different planes, or different factions, or mechanical themes.
The one thing all Dungeon Decks should have in common, though, is that they have cards the players want. They can be themed or not, and they can be cards that are useless for the DM, but amazing for the players (Lotus, Fact or Fiction [lol], etc.).
A player may "call" a card from the Dungeon Deck as soon as he or she sees it. If he or she doesn't call it immediately, he or she loses the chance to get it (if more than one people want it, the active player gets first choice, and so on in turn order). Each player may "call" only one card--if you call a Mox on turn one, you can't call a Lotus on turn three. After the game, if the players win, each player gets the card he or she called.
Some dungeons may have special rules in effect (Vampire dungeon may start the game with Bad Moon in play, DM may start with a [mandatory] Channel in effect, overpowered blue dungeon may draw extra cards, etc).
The big boss at the end of the campaign (Bolas?!?) can be done Archenemy style.
Disclaimer: I came up with these rules in less than a minute, so I don't know if they actually work.
Edit: Maybe, instead of "Calling" cards and getting them, maybe they Rochester draft a "treasure" pack.
Edit: For bonus points, have each dungeon represent a place (a Land card), and when the players defeat it, they each get a copy of that card. Because, like, they've conquered it and added it to their domain.
A booster from the cube seems like a lot all at once, but we could randomly give a "booster tutor" (one of my favorite cube cards) to the winner of a game, open a (half)pack and pick one card from it to add to your pool.
I like the concept of setting aside "bomby" cards before the pools are distributed and then using them as prizes: decks will get better as bombs are phased in, more random, less likely for someone to have most of the good cards at the start, etc.
so the new dice ante could be:
1 then the current ante goes back into the cube and ante again.
2 do nothing
3 each player ante an additional card from deck and or sideboard
4 put a random card from the cube into the current ante.
5 winner booster tutors
6 Get one of the "prizes," or get any card of choice from the cube not currently owned by anyone else.
Another concept for new card acquisition is a point system, Everyone starts with 100 points winning gives you +15 points, loosing gets you -10 points. Points can be traded among players in exchange for cards, and the bombiest cards can be bought from the bank for lottsa points. You loose if you run out of points, and when all the cards are owned, the league is over and the one with the most points wins. I'd have to go through the whole cube and assign points to every card, which would be tedious, as is the whole number system, and I think I like the random aspect of ante better than buying cards with points, but its more food for thought.
While this seems like a fun activity to do every now and again, it doesn't seem very league friendly, and requires everyone to be together at once and if we can all do that often enough we'd probably just draft instead. lets say the group wins the archenemy game, how do we divide the loot (e.g. who gets the sol ring and who is stuck with something far less spectacular)? The archenemy deck could ante separately with everyone, but this doesn't guarantee that everyone gets boss quality loot, which is the point of bosses.
The Archenemy could be someone who isn't in the league, lets say someone visiting me at school for the weekend. He wasn't around at the start of the league, so he doesn't have a pool. We could give him all the cards left in the cube and have him make a deck from that, including all the bombs, then he could be the archenemy and he could be that boss. I'd like to stay away from the boss idea, as it seems more like a linear video game than what I was thinking. Seems like writing a scenario and hoping the game goes as planned.
I really just wanted to make a cube league that wasn't draft intensive, but still allowed for players' decks to change over time, I've seen this work in Shandalar, so I used that as the basis, but it doesn't have to be a slave to the Shandalar theme.
My Cubes:Pauper|Archetype
My Deviant Art
League Foundation:
- Create 3 packs of 11. This creates a smaller card pool and overall lower power level, which is essential if you want to give players a goal to work towards by the end of the league. Expect to see many 3+ color decks with shaky mana pools as the league begins, and many well structured 2 color or 2+splash color decks as the league ends. It's up to the coordinator to decide whether this is something that they want to do. I'm partial to it based on how we are going to upgrade our decks each week.
- Draft the 3 packs like normal (left, right, left), then have each player create a list of all the cards they drafted.
- Create your decks.
10 players: 330
12 players: 396
14 players: 462
16 players: 528
- To set this up, quadruple the amount of people that you have in your league, then pick that many cards randomly from your cube. (The method that you choose to do this in is up to you. Feel free to make it purely random (cube totally shuffled), semi random (2 from each cube section, then totally random) or evenly distributed (4 from each section, then remaining random), for example.) Place them face up on a table.
- Now, the person with the worst record from your last session gets to choose one of the face up cards you picked out first. Continue from the worst record all the way up to the best record, who chooses two cards at once because they are on the wheel, then back down the list to the worst record. This should give each person 2 new cards to use in their pool. Shuffle the remaining cards back into the cube.
- Each person must upgrade their card pool lists. Once that's completed, they are free to upgrade their decks.
- Once this is completed, decklists are locked in and can not be changed until the beginning of the next event.
- Depending on the league organizer, your three opponents could be chosen using one of the following methods: random, seeded, or your choosing.
-Seeded: This uses the standings from the previous league night to match people together. 1st place plays last place, 2nd place plays second to last place, etc etc.
-Your Choice: Just walk around and play 3 people of your choosing.
- For each win someone has at the end of the night, that person may pick one card at random from the cube to add to their pool. These cards may be used after the next league night's rotisserie draft.
- The person with the most wins at the end of the league (probably close to when you run out of cards) is crowned the winner. If you were playing with pools, divy up accordingly.
10 players: 55 / 35
12 players: 66 / 42
14 players: 77 / 49
16 players: 88 / 56
EDIT: With my 500 person cube, I'd be able to host a 8 person league for 8 sessions before my cube ran out, using the numbers listed above of course.
(CubeTutor & MTGS)
360 Peasant Cube!
Custom Cube
RWU Miracles RWU
If you want to try to even things out and add an extra level of intrigue to it, you could allow people to choose their seats for the rotisserie draft at the start of each week. The person in last place gets first choice of their seat, so if there's one really good card they could choose seat 1, or if they just want any of 3 different cards maybe they choose seat 3, or whatever.
Also, I'd prolly recommend seating and have the r1 pairings be: 1v2, 3v4, 5v6, 7v8. And then have the 1v2 and 3v4 matches paired and the 5v6 and 7v8 matches paired and then the last round as would be determined for regular swiss. Otherwise it might end up being that the top and the bottom really separate from each other.
I'll sniff out links in a minute.
Edit: http://community.wizards.com/planeswalker is the group's page in the Wizzo forums. Optimus has probably come out with newer versions of the rules, if you want to try to e-mail him. He has a lot of interesting ideas, I'm certain you can salvage at least some of them.
There is "logic" for NPCs to follow when fighting (multiple) players, and there are even rules for making enemy planeswalkers for bosses.
My cube list on CubeTutor.
Both are very much under construction. Please stop by and talk about it!