I don't know how relevant this is but I keep a Cube made untirely of leftover uncommons.
My rule is that I have to already have a playset of something before it can go in the cube and they're all uncommons.
Makes for strange play. Common cards are where MtG gets it's utility from. More than one might think. Rares are whewre the power comes from. With only uncommons to build from you get stuck in a weird power level null zone where cards look like they'll be lethal, but then aren't for a lack of backup.
My playgroup tried it, I missed that particular event, and they insisted it was a blast.
There's a form of draft where the pack gets laid out on the table like that face-up which I cannot remember the name of. Wizad's Tower reminds me of that combined with a mini-Cube.
I would suggest using the Peasant (or is it Pauper, I can never remember which is which) rule that most of your deck has to be the stated rarity but a select few cards may be of one rarity away, in this case Rare.
Would open up your format a lot and lead to much more interesting deck designs than just allowing the super extremely limited pool of Mythics.
(Even with box set mythics included this format much resembles a super very limited Cube.)
My group plays with Planeswalker generals and it has been our experience that any 'walker with a stackable emblem breaks the crap out of the game.
Seriously, the first Venser emblem puts everyone else at a disadvantage, the second just puts the nails in the coffins. (Sorin was problematic too believe it or not.)
As a result we've banned generals with emblems that stack from being generals.
I sat down recently to work on the SUPERcasual MSE custom card set.
( The purpose of the set is to have a series of oversize cards each of which have a use specific to a game of SUPERcasual. )
Found myself mulling over 5 basic card types for the set. Planes, Vanguards, Schemes, Phenomenon, and Generals (both legendary creatures and planeswalkers). I was having some difficulty deciding what card types would interact with what other card types in the series.
Then the obvious struck me, 5 types... 5 colors... could each type be put on an allied/enemy wheel like the colors of MtG?
So I went about deciding a "color" for each oversize card type.
- Planes = White (because obvious pun is obvious; plane = plain.)
- Vanguards = Blue (because starting/max hand size modification is the most consistent thing about them)
- Schemes = Black (because Archenemy is about the team vs the villain and B is the villain color in MtG)
- Phenomenon = Red (because R is all about flash-in-the-pan, gone-as-soon-as-they-happen effects)
- and finally EDH/Commander Generals = Green (because G has always been about creatures)
The only thing that bugs me about this arrangement is that Phenomenon and Planes aren't allied when they're the only two on the list originally meant to be played together.
Using this framework I went ahead and brainstormed ideas for card abilities. This revealed a few things to me.
a) I want each mechanic to be a positive rather thana negative. planechase has more negatives than it needs as is IMHO.
b) There isn't much you can do with Phenomenon and Scheme cards besides, cause the next one triggered to be delayed, search for and trigger one immediately, or copy the next one triggered.
c) The designs for static effect based cards (Planes, Vanguards) on sorcery style cards (Phenomenon, Schemes) tends towards more bookkeeping rather than less, and you always want to strive for less bookkeeping.
For each allied pair interaction I tried to write down at least two unique mechanic ideas. I even listed some for most of the enemy pair interactions as well. The list follows.
ALLIED "COLOR" Plane to General
- Cheaper general recruitment until end of turn.
- Copy planeswalker abilities and legendary creature activated abilities until end of turn.
Plane to Vanguard
- Each player searches for and adopts a Vanguard.
- Each player passes their Vanguards to the player to their right until the end of your next turn.
General to Plane
- Copy Chaos abilities until end of turn.
- Trigger the Plane's Chaos ability when a planeswalker ultimate is activated.
General to Phenomenon
- Until end of turn when a Phenomenon is encountered you get an extra combat phase.
- The next Phenomenon encountered is delayed until your General leaves the battlefield.
Phenomenon to General
- Exiles all legendary creatures and planeswalkers then wipes the field.
- Each player searches for and puts onto the battlefield a Commander from the SUPERcasual deck.
Phenomenon to Scheme and Scheme to Phenomenon
- Until your next turn if a player would activate a Scheme reveal cards from top of SUPERcasual deck and activate the next Scheme as well; and vice versa.
- Until your next turn if a player would activate a scheme they flip a coin instead, if it comes up heads activate and copy the Scheme, if it comes up tails delay the Scheme until that player's next upkeep; and vice versa.
- Until your next turn each player reveals to and activates a Phenomenon when they would activate a Scheme; and vice versa.
Scheme to Vanguard
- Adopt target player's Vanguard
- Each opponent abandons their Vanguard
Vanguard to Scheme
- Copy, delay, or fetch an extra Scheme when a Scheme is activated.
Vanguard to Plane
- Copy Chaos abilities.
- Each time you planeswalk it costs 1 less to roll the planar die until end of turn.
- Either double or delay planeswalks.
- Change die rolls into other die rolls until end of turn.
ENEMY "COLOR" Phenomenon to Vanguard
- Each player serches up and adopts a Vanguard.
Phenomenon to Plane
- Until the end of your next turn each player planeswalks at the beginning of their upkeep.
Scheme to Plane
- As above only replace "a player" with "you".
Vanguard to Phenomenon
- When a Phenomenon is encountered you take an extra turn after this one.
- When a Phenomenon is encountered permanents you control phase out and you exile your hand until end of turn.
Vanguard to Plane
- At the beginning of your upkeep reveal the top 5 cards of the SUPERcasual deck, you may planeswalk to one of them.
Vanguard to General
- Recruiting Generals costs reduced by half.
Plane to Phenomenon
- Planeswalk an additional time after each Phenomenon is encountered.
You get the idea, lots of brainstorming and lots of spinning my wheels, or so it feels anyway.
I'd appreciate advice and/or suggestions to help get me out of the rut. Both on the wheel idea and on the mechanics themselves.
I'm not sure yet if I'm going to flesh out the set with regular size cards in preconstructed decks like a true Planechase expansion or not.
jerseydevil1125, I like the double general idea. It solves the limited 'walker color identity problem nicely. I'll definitely be bouncing this off my own playgroup to see what they think about it.
I kinda like the idea. I wonder about bannings though. Do you get to play that Mirrodin block decklist with artifact lands even though they're banned in block play nowadays?
TLDR: Too many oversize cards for one Fatpack box leads to an optional rewrite of SUPERcasual deck construction rules.
So far my mental argument has gone like this,
- If it won't fit in one box anymore it's too big and will need to be pared down. (duh.)
- Simple solution: ban some more of the less fun cards. (Tember City, Lethe Lake, etc.)
- If there are going to be more oversize cards released in future Planechase/Archenemy/Vanguard (yeah right)/Commander products then what about them? Am I just going to keep an ever growing banned list?
- Simple answer: No, of course not. Then what?
- If it needs reduced then could it be broken up instead? Should I fall back on the original rules for Planechase and work up rules for each player to be able to bring their own SUPERcasual deck to the pile?
- Not-so-simple answer: Well yeah, probably. Not everyone is comfortable playing out of someone else's pool of communal cards anyway, let alone shuffling their oversize cards in with someone else's for a while.
- Okay then, how many SUPERcasual elements should be allowed in a normal given Planechase deck of what 10? Planes? What should the ratio of Planes to detours (SUPERcasual elements) be? For Planechase 2012 it was 8 Planes to 2 Phenomenon cards.
- Our group seems to enjoy a much greater volume of play during our SUPERcasual games. Whether that's because of how it's been presented or that it's our actual preference is up for debate.
- I wonder if there'd be a way to write it so that a player can choose to planeswalk into their own SUPERcasual deck on their turn OR the big communal pile? That way a player can build the ideal variant Plane/deck combination and the other players can Planeswalk away into the SUPERcasual deck if they want to. Hmmm...
So yeah, that's where I'm at. I don't know how to break up the SUPERcasual deck in a way that maintains the stuff we like about playing it while leaving out what we don't want.
I also would like to work up some rules for individualized SUPERcasual decks just like original Planechase has so that any bunch of players can gather up nearly any 10? oversize cards and have some SUPERcasual fun.
My gut instinct is to say 20 card SUPERcasual decks with no less than 2 planes for each non-plane card. And to allow for the use of a larger SUPERcasual deck as well... maybe it should cost more to planeswalk into/through your own personal pool of planes and less to planeswalk into/through the communal pile...
Ah well, I'll keep wondering on it. Here's hoping someone out there has some ideas for me. My apologies if you read this whole thing as walloftext is wall-like.
We play with Planeswalker Generals. Some things we've learned.
a) The planeswalker uniqueness rule is fine as is.
b) Several more 'walkers need to be on the banned list namely Sorin of the 'puts someone at 10 life', and Tezzeret of the 'search for whatever degenerate artifact you want'.
c) Planeswalkers that make Emblems that STACK are rediculously overpowered as generals.
I wish it weren't so but we tried and tried to get Venser to not be overpowered but he just was, the BW Sorin was as well.
And d) Gideons can get around the general damage rule and as ther ultimates tend to be very powerful the other 'walkers usually win games relatively quickly without needing it.
Have fun and remember to ask if playing your Planeswalker generals is okay before sitting down to play and they should work just fine.
Using them tends to be (in my opinion and from my experience) more an issue of changing gears in your mindset of how to win with them rather than too greatly modifying the format's rules.
Not long a go there were quite a few cards printed which could put cards 'on the bottom of your library in any order' and at the time I wanted to build a deck around the idea. Alas, this poor misguided idea fell through the cracks and was lost; UNTIL NOW!
But seriously, I would like some creative input on where you folks think I could/should start building a deck from "put those cards on the bottom of your library in any order" cards.
And yes the obligatory "search Gatherer, dude" thought had crossed my mind but the ability to stack the bottom of ones deck can be worded several ways I suspect and I'm not familiar with them all so I hadn't went there just yet.
First off thanks for the shout out. I still havn't had a chance to playtest this or any of the other variants that've caught my eye lately because I live in the middle of nowhere and getting to other players can be a chore.
My first thought upon rereading the thread was that your challenges are kinda all over the place, by which I mean there are some things on your list that aren't equal to one another. Eliminating another player is already a huge boon to the active player whereas control magic isn't guaranteed to be.
For example, eliminating a player and drawing any number of cards are both strategies that WIN a game of magic. When compared to playing your general, gaining any amount of life, or taking control of someone elses stuff they just don't stack up.
My suggestion would be to set an effective mana cost for your challenges, say maybe 5 or 10 or 15 even, and use that to curb the power level of the challenges.
For example, take a challenge that eliminates a player; it would equate to Door to Nothingness (5 mana to play 10 to activate).
Now we consider a gain life spell that equates to 15 mana... Alabaster Potion costs 2 to cast plus X sooo, a 15 point Alabaster Potion nets us 13 life.
So now we have a baseline to compare challenges you see? You can do the same for any number of effects since practically all the effects in magic have effective mana costs.
You might think about a 2-3 teir system for challenges too, not sure if it's more complex than you want but it would allow for ALL of the effects you want to be on the chart without having some (gain 13+ life) be nearly inaccessible while others (eliminate a player) are inevitable.
One set of low tier challenges effective mana cost say 5. These let you access one scheme. Gain 5-10 life, destroy a creature, steal a permanent, attack some people, etc.
A second tier at say 10 that gives you access to two schemes; control a turn, destroy a field full of permanents, deal 9+ damage to a player, etc.
The third would be purely optional and it would be set at that 15 mana point we went over earlier, Emerakul level stuff goes here. Take more than one extra turn (the 'can't be repeated' clause for this one wouldn't expire till after any extra turns), eliminate a player, deal 14+ damage to a single player with a single source, double an already doubled game effect (for when someone Radiates that Fireball while a Furnace of Rath is on the field then they go and Twincast the Radiate, that sort of stuff).
The other idea I had was for each player to be allowed to create their own challenge.
Since there's practically no way to make a list of all the game effects in magic that could constitute a challenge without leaving somebody's favorite mechanic out in the cold you cold allow players to pay a cost, very much like a general loyalty counter cost, to put into the command zone a card from their hand, grave, exile, or battlefield.
The effect(s) on the general zoned card would become one of their challenges. each additional card they would add to the general zone in this way would cost them more mana. I'd also set a limit (3? 5? 10?) to the number of challenges a player can generate for themselves each game. This way if they want to try a different array of challenges they'll just have to play another game.
Challenges are accomplished by playing another card with an identical mechanic and wording to the first card. This would still only work once per turn and for this purpose Keyword abilities do not count.
Because of the singleton nature of Commander this is a more difficult proposition than it seems and would reward players for playing the theme of their deck but at the cost of one or more of the cards which defines that theme.
I hope some of this helps. I know a lot of it is on the more abstract side but I wanted to avoid letting myself just type a list of challenge ideas without giving you some kind of useful feedback. Good luck hammering out those last few nagging details, when this idea is done I'm betting it'll be loads of fun. Now if I could just get out this weekend and test it a bit myself. )
- Shuffle up a stack of oversize (or even normal size) legendary creatures/Commanders.
- Before the game each player gets dealt one Commander to their Command Zone.
- Players may pay for their general's Loyalty Counters to discard their current Commander and get a new random one off the pile. Their Commander Loyalty Counters then increase by one as though their Commander went to the command zone.
- Loyalty costs for Commanders are halved to one mana per counter due to the random nature of this variant.
----------------------------------------
-Roulette Commander Archenemy -
- When a player has the only Commander on the field they are the Archenemy and can access the Scheme deck.
- When more than one or no Commanders are on the field then no one is the archenemy and Ongoing Schemes are put in their controllers exile zones.
- Ongoing Schemes in exile return to a player's Command Zone when that player becomes Archenemy.
Thanks to jerseydevil1125 for inspiring the idea for the Archenemy variant described here.
If it were me I would simply say that anytime during a multiplayer game if only one player has their general on the field then that player is the archenemy.
Has the benefit of rewarding the actions you have listed even. That and it's nice and easy to remember.
As far as ongoing schemes just have them revert to their controller's exile zone when no one is archenemy.
Just my 2 cents. Next chance I get I am so testing this.
As a side note some friends and I pack battle a lot (every chance we get) and we shuffled up a stack of oversize Commanders and played kind of a roulette Commander Pack Battle game with them that I think would synch nicely with this idea.
If you're interested all we did was shuffle up a pile of oversize commanders, deal one each to each player's command zone before the game. We reduced the loyalty counter cost to 1 due to the random nature of the variant and we allowed a player to pay his general's loyalty counters in mana to discard their general and get a random one off the top of the pile. Was fun but swingy.
I don't know if this helps but the version of MtG the RPG that I use lets players build their own Planeswalker card out of 3 of their favorite Magic cards and then use that as the base for their character.
Each Planeswalker card basically has a common, uncommon, and a rare ability.
Each player either chooses a common, uncommon, and a rare card and then casting those cards become the Planeswalker characters abilities. (Some powerful uncommons count as rares and worthless rares count as commons but this is usually on a group to group basis.)
Some cards are good not because of the card but because of an activated ability on the card, Preist of Titania for example. In these cases it might be better to use the activated ability as the planeswalker ability rather than the entire card but again it depends on the group, and also the other planeswalker abilities you've wound up with. (a custom 'walker who Pyroclasms as one ability probably wouldn't want to make 1/1 elves with another.)
For costing the loyalty abilities simply average the total mana cost.
- Generic mana counts as is 1 for 1.
- Colored mana counts as 1.5 each.
- Each color the card is beyond the first counts as 1.
- Additional costs (eg. Sacrifice a land as you play this spell.) count as 1 per resource lost.
Simply add up the following and average rounding up. Then make the loyalty ability a + or - ability; whichever is more appropriate. (For most planeswalkers this will be a + ability for the common card ability, and a - for the uncommon and the rare.)
For fun I often go to the Gatherer search engine, and hit the random button until I have a common, uncommon, and a rare card then apply the process.
Again, hope this helps.
PS. again,
The mana cost for the planeswalker itself is the average of each component of its constituent card's mana costs.
A Giant Growth, Overrun, and Rumbling Slum 'walker would add and average (round up) all the generic mana (0+2+1=3/3=1), then the R (0+0+1=1/3=1), then the G (1+3+2=/3=3) for a total cost for the 'walker of 1RGG. (for more accurate, and higher, Converted Mana Costs you could use the same calc as we use for the abilities 1.5 per additional colored mana, +1 for eacha dditional color etc.)
For mana intensive activated abilities included int eh 'walker you could also incorporate the cost of the ability into the 'walker too esp. if the 'walker makes permanents with that activated ability.
Several months ago I sat down to build my own Magic Set Editor set of made up Vanguard cards. (I made about 60, about 5-10 good ones.) When I asked a game design enthusiast friend of mine an analogue of your question he replied that, to paraphrase, 'Vanguard cards aren't balanced, they never really had a creation rubric. That's why they aren't made any more.'
Now his answer didn't stop me from trying and it shouldn't stop you. As a matter of fact, now that you've got me thinking about it, I'm going to go back and apply the below Emblem-logic to my Vanguard set because until I sat to reply to your post I hadn't thought of it in those terms.
You will need to decide on an effective mana cost for the effects that all Vanguard cards share.
For example how much should the following game effects cost?
+/-1 card in starting hand (this includes the immediate card advantage/disadvantage of drawing that many extra/fewer cards at the start of the game)
+/-1 starting life (this one is tricky because gaining life is practically free as it doesn't usually result in your opponent losing the game but LOSING life in nearly any amount can be disastrous.)
And finally should a Vanguard effect be beneficial or deleterious? Should a good effect cost you more in cards or life and should a negative effect provide you more cards or life?
(My suggestion is +1 start life = 1 mana, -1 start life = 3 mana, +1 start/max card = 3 mana, and -1 start/max card = 3 mana but I tend to over cost things to avoid abusability.)
From here you're basically designing a Planeswalker Emblem, or more specifically, a permanent game effect that isn't actually on the battlefield.
Unlike an Emblem, a Vanguard affects the game immediately without that several turn delay that Planeswalker ultimates are designed with. So be careful of that.
After you've decided on a mana value for your Vanguard base stats you can choose actual cards with the game effects you want then "buy" them with your virtual mana. Deciding weather a beneficial Vanguard effect (eg. All creatures you control get +1/+1.) should cost life or cards or a little of both could depend on the flavor of the card or character or environment that Vanguard is based on.
On the note of your character sheet idea, you could make a list of available race (loxodon, elf, human, etc), region (Otaria, the Great Furnace, Shiv, etc.), color combinations and list beside each weather that race usually sacrifices life or cards and weather they would usually suffer a deleterious Vanguard effect for more cards or life.
For example:
Loxodon - Vanguard Benefit: would give up cards over life; Vanguard Detriment: would suffer through for life over cards.
Razorfields - Vanguard Benefit: would exhaust life rather than cards; Vanguard Detriment: would provide cards over life.
White - Vanguard Benefit: would exhaust cards rather than life; Vanguard Detriment: would provide life over cards.
Using the above example you can see that a Vanguard based on a white aligned Loxodon from the Razorfields of old Mirrodin would value lifeforce over card advantage. This process would be mostly for vanilla Vanguards though. A Vanguard based on a specific non-character card (also known as an Avatar Vanguard instead of a Character Vanguard) would just use it's own mana cost converted into loss or gain of life or cards.
I hope my response is somehow helpful. It certainly helped me to wrap my head around my own attempts at custom Vanguards to express the ideas to you here. So thanks for your question and I look forward to reading about your efforts to better nail down a creation rubric for this far-too-neglected card type.
P.S.
I forgot to mention that Vanguards come in 2 flavors, Character and Avatars. Character cards are (surprise surprise) cards based on characters. They each get the Character type and a bit of story related flavor text.
Avatar cards are Vanguard based on cards. (makes you wonder what a Vanguard of a Vanguard would look like huh?) They each get the Avatar type and usually do not have flavor text. Also, if you'd like to review all the Vanguard cards ever made (most were made only for Magic Online) check out the bottom of this page: http://magiccards.info/extras.html
My rule is that I have to already have a playset of something before it can go in the cube and they're all uncommons.
Makes for strange play. Common cards are where MtG gets it's utility from. More than one might think. Rares are whewre the power comes from. With only uncommons to build from you get stuck in a weird power level null zone where cards look like they'll be lethal, but then aren't for a lack of backup.
Hope that's informative somehow.
There's a form of draft where the pack gets laid out on the table like that face-up which I cannot remember the name of. Wizad's Tower reminds me of that combined with a mini-Cube.
Would open up your format a lot and lead to much more interesting deck designs than just allowing the super extremely limited pool of Mythics.
(Even with box set mythics included this format much resembles a super very limited Cube.)
Seriously, the first Venser emblem puts everyone else at a disadvantage, the second just puts the nails in the coffins. (Sorin was problematic too believe it or not.)
As a result we've banned generals with emblems that stack from being generals.
Hope this helps.
( The purpose of the set is to have a series of oversize cards each of which have a use specific to a game of SUPERcasual. )
Found myself mulling over 5 basic card types for the set. Planes, Vanguards, Schemes, Phenomenon, and Generals (both legendary creatures and planeswalkers). I was having some difficulty deciding what card types would interact with what other card types in the series.
Then the obvious struck me, 5 types... 5 colors... could each type be put on an allied/enemy wheel like the colors of MtG?
So I went about deciding a "color" for each oversize card type.
- Planes = White (because obvious pun is obvious; plane = plain.)
- Vanguards = Blue (because starting/max hand size modification is the most consistent thing about them)
- Schemes = Black (because Archenemy is about the team vs the villain and B is the villain color in MtG)
- Phenomenon = Red (because R is all about flash-in-the-pan, gone-as-soon-as-they-happen effects)
- and finally EDH/Commander Generals = Green (because G has always been about creatures)
The only thing that bugs me about this arrangement is that Phenomenon and Planes aren't allied when they're the only two on the list originally meant to be played together.
Using this framework I went ahead and brainstormed ideas for card abilities. This revealed a few things to me.
a) I want each mechanic to be a positive rather thana negative. planechase has more negatives than it needs as is IMHO.
b) There isn't much you can do with Phenomenon and Scheme cards besides, cause the next one triggered to be delayed, search for and trigger one immediately, or copy the next one triggered.
c) The designs for static effect based cards (Planes, Vanguards) on sorcery style cards (Phenomenon, Schemes) tends towards more bookkeeping rather than less, and you always want to strive for less bookkeeping.
For each allied pair interaction I tried to write down at least two unique mechanic ideas. I even listed some for most of the enemy pair interactions as well. The list follows.
ALLIED "COLOR"
Plane to General
- Cheaper general recruitment until end of turn.
- Copy planeswalker abilities and legendary creature activated abilities until end of turn.
Plane to Vanguard
- Each player searches for and adopts a Vanguard.
- Each player passes their Vanguards to the player to their right until the end of your next turn.
General to Plane
- Copy Chaos abilities until end of turn.
- Trigger the Plane's Chaos ability when a planeswalker ultimate is activated.
General to Phenomenon
- Until end of turn when a Phenomenon is encountered you get an extra combat phase.
- The next Phenomenon encountered is delayed until your General leaves the battlefield.
Phenomenon to General
- Exiles all legendary creatures and planeswalkers then wipes the field.
- Each player searches for and puts onto the battlefield a Commander from the SUPERcasual deck.
Phenomenon to Scheme and Scheme to Phenomenon
- Until your next turn if a player would activate a Scheme reveal cards from top of SUPERcasual deck and activate the next Scheme as well; and vice versa.
- Until your next turn if a player would activate a scheme they flip a coin instead, if it comes up heads activate and copy the Scheme, if it comes up tails delay the Scheme until that player's next upkeep; and vice versa.
- Until your next turn each player reveals to and activates a Phenomenon when they would activate a Scheme; and vice versa.
Scheme to Vanguard
- Adopt target player's Vanguard
- Each opponent abandons their Vanguard
Vanguard to Scheme
- Copy, delay, or fetch an extra Scheme when a Scheme is activated.
Vanguard to Plane
- Copy Chaos abilities.
- Each time you planeswalk it costs 1 less to roll the planar die until end of turn.
- Either double or delay planeswalks.
- Change die rolls into other die rolls until end of turn.
ENEMY "COLOR"
Phenomenon to Vanguard
- Each player serches up and adopts a Vanguard.
Phenomenon to Plane
- Until the end of your next turn each player planeswalks at the beginning of their upkeep.
Scheme to Plane
- As above only replace "a player" with "you".
Vanguard to Phenomenon
- When a Phenomenon is encountered you take an extra turn after this one.
- When a Phenomenon is encountered permanents you control phase out and you exile your hand until end of turn.
Vanguard to Plane
- At the beginning of your upkeep reveal the top 5 cards of the SUPERcasual deck, you may planeswalk to one of them.
Vanguard to General
- Recruiting Generals costs reduced by half.
Plane to Phenomenon
- Planeswalk an additional time after each Phenomenon is encountered.
You get the idea, lots of brainstorming and lots of spinning my wheels, or so it feels anyway.
I'd appreciate advice and/or suggestions to help get me out of the rut. Both on the wheel idea and on the mechanics themselves.
I'm not sure yet if I'm going to flesh out the set with regular size cards in preconstructed decks like a true Planechase expansion or not.
Thanks regardless folks.
So far my mental argument has gone like this,
- If it won't fit in one box anymore it's too big and will need to be pared down. (duh.)
- Simple solution: ban some more of the less fun cards. (Tember City, Lethe Lake, etc.)
- If there are going to be more oversize cards released in future Planechase/Archenemy/Vanguard (yeah right)/Commander products then what about them? Am I just going to keep an ever growing banned list?
- Simple answer: No, of course not. Then what?
- If it needs reduced then could it be broken up instead? Should I fall back on the original rules for Planechase and work up rules for each player to be able to bring their own SUPERcasual deck to the pile?
- Not-so-simple answer: Well yeah, probably. Not everyone is comfortable playing out of someone else's pool of communal cards anyway, let alone shuffling their oversize cards in with someone else's for a while.
- Okay then, how many SUPERcasual elements should be allowed in a normal given Planechase deck of what 10? Planes? What should the ratio of Planes to detours (SUPERcasual elements) be? For Planechase 2012 it was 8 Planes to 2 Phenomenon cards.
- Our group seems to enjoy a much greater volume of play during our SUPERcasual games. Whether that's because of how it's been presented or that it's our actual preference is up for debate.
- I wonder if there'd be a way to write it so that a player can choose to planeswalk into their own SUPERcasual deck on their turn OR the big communal pile? That way a player can build the ideal variant Plane/deck combination and the other players can Planeswalk away into the SUPERcasual deck if they want to. Hmmm...
So yeah, that's where I'm at. I don't know how to break up the SUPERcasual deck in a way that maintains the stuff we like about playing it while leaving out what we don't want.
I also would like to work up some rules for individualized SUPERcasual decks just like original Planechase has so that any bunch of players can gather up nearly any 10? oversize cards and have some SUPERcasual fun.
My gut instinct is to say 20 card SUPERcasual decks with no less than 2 planes for each non-plane card. And to allow for the use of a larger SUPERcasual deck as well... maybe it should cost more to planeswalk into/through your own personal pool of planes and less to planeswalk into/through the communal pile...
Ah well, I'll keep wondering on it. Here's hoping someone out there has some ideas for me. My apologies if you read this whole thing as walloftext is wall-like.
Thanks regardless guys and gals.
a) The planeswalker uniqueness rule is fine as is.
b) Several more 'walkers need to be on the banned list namely Sorin of the 'puts someone at 10 life', and Tezzeret of the 'search for whatever degenerate artifact you want'.
c) Planeswalkers that make Emblems that STACK are rediculously overpowered as generals.
I wish it weren't so but we tried and tried to get Venser to not be overpowered but he just was, the BW Sorin was as well.
And d) Gideons can get around the general damage rule and as ther ultimates tend to be very powerful the other 'walkers usually win games relatively quickly without needing it.
Have fun and remember to ask if playing your Planeswalker generals is okay before sitting down to play and they should work just fine.
Using them tends to be (in my opinion and from my experience) more an issue of changing gears in your mindset of how to win with them rather than too greatly modifying the format's rules.
But seriously, I would like some creative input on where you folks think I could/should start building a deck from "put those cards on the bottom of your library in any order" cards.
And yes the obligatory "search Gatherer, dude" thought had crossed my mind but the ability to stack the bottom of ones deck can be worded several ways I suspect and I'm not familiar with them all so I hadn't went there just yet.
Thanks regardless,
Unseenmage
My first thought upon rereading the thread was that your challenges are kinda all over the place, by which I mean there are some things on your list that aren't equal to one another. Eliminating another player is already a huge boon to the active player whereas control magic isn't guaranteed to be.
For example, eliminating a player and drawing any number of cards are both strategies that WIN a game of magic. When compared to playing your general, gaining any amount of life, or taking control of someone elses stuff they just don't stack up.
My suggestion would be to set an effective mana cost for your challenges, say maybe 5 or 10 or 15 even, and use that to curb the power level of the challenges.
For example, take a challenge that eliminates a player; it would equate to Door to Nothingness (5 mana to play 10 to activate).
Now we consider a gain life spell that equates to 15 mana... Alabaster Potion costs 2 to cast plus X sooo, a 15 point Alabaster Potion nets us 13 life.
So now we have a baseline to compare challenges you see? You can do the same for any number of effects since practically all the effects in magic have effective mana costs.
You might think about a 2-3 teir system for challenges too, not sure if it's more complex than you want but it would allow for ALL of the effects you want to be on the chart without having some (gain 13+ life) be nearly inaccessible while others (eliminate a player) are inevitable.
One set of low tier challenges effective mana cost say 5. These let you access one scheme. Gain 5-10 life, destroy a creature, steal a permanent, attack some people, etc.
A second tier at say 10 that gives you access to two schemes; control a turn, destroy a field full of permanents, deal 9+ damage to a player, etc.
The third would be purely optional and it would be set at that 15 mana point we went over earlier, Emerakul level stuff goes here. Take more than one extra turn (the 'can't be repeated' clause for this one wouldn't expire till after any extra turns), eliminate a player, deal 14+ damage to a single player with a single source, double an already doubled game effect (for when someone Radiates that Fireball while a Furnace of Rath is on the field then they go and Twincast the Radiate, that sort of stuff).
The other idea I had was for each player to be allowed to create their own challenge.
Since there's practically no way to make a list of all the game effects in magic that could constitute a challenge without leaving somebody's favorite mechanic out in the cold you cold allow players to pay a cost, very much like a general loyalty counter cost, to put into the command zone a card from their hand, grave, exile, or battlefield.
The effect(s) on the general zoned card would become one of their challenges. each additional card they would add to the general zone in this way would cost them more mana. I'd also set a limit (3? 5? 10?) to the number of challenges a player can generate for themselves each game. This way if they want to try a different array of challenges they'll just have to play another game.
Challenges are accomplished by playing another card with an identical mechanic and wording to the first card. This would still only work once per turn and for this purpose Keyword abilities do not count.
Because of the singleton nature of Commander this is a more difficult proposition than it seems and would reward players for playing the theme of their deck but at the cost of one or more of the cards which defines that theme.
I hope some of this helps. I know a lot of it is on the more abstract side but I wanted to avoid letting myself just type a list of challenge ideas without giving you some kind of useful feedback. Good luck hammering out those last few nagging details, when this idea is done I'm betting it'll be loads of fun. Now if I could just get out this weekend and test it a bit myself.
- Roulette Commander Pack Battle -
- Shuffle up a stack of oversize (or even normal size) legendary creatures/Commanders.
- Before the game each player gets dealt one Commander to their Command Zone.
- Players may pay for their general's Loyalty Counters to discard their current Commander and get a new random one off the pile. Their Commander Loyalty Counters then increase by one as though their Commander went to the command zone.
- Loyalty costs for Commanders are halved to one mana per counter due to the random nature of this variant.
----------------------------------------
-Roulette Commander Archenemy -
- When a player has the only Commander on the field they are the Archenemy and can access the Scheme deck.
- When more than one or no Commanders are on the field then no one is the archenemy and Ongoing Schemes are put in their controllers exile zones.
- Ongoing Schemes in exile return to a player's Command Zone when that player becomes Archenemy.
Thanks to jerseydevil1125 for inspiring the idea for the Archenemy variant described here.
Has the benefit of rewarding the actions you have listed even. That and it's nice and easy to remember.
As far as ongoing schemes just have them revert to their controller's exile zone when no one is archenemy.
Just my 2 cents. Next chance I get I am so testing this.
As a side note some friends and I pack battle a lot (every chance we get) and we shuffled up a stack of oversize Commanders and played kind of a roulette Commander Pack Battle game with them that I think would synch nicely with this idea.
If you're interested all we did was shuffle up a pile of oversize commanders, deal one each to each player's command zone before the game. We reduced the loyalty counter cost to 1 due to the random nature of the variant and we allowed a player to pay his general's loyalty counters in mana to discard their general and get a random one off the top of the pile. Was fun but swingy.
Each Planeswalker card basically has a common, uncommon, and a rare ability.
Each player either chooses a common, uncommon, and a rare card and then casting those cards become the Planeswalker characters abilities. (Some powerful uncommons count as rares and worthless rares count as commons but this is usually on a group to group basis.)
Some cards are good not because of the card but because of an activated ability on the card, Preist of Titania for example. In these cases it might be better to use the activated ability as the planeswalker ability rather than the entire card but again it depends on the group, and also the other planeswalker abilities you've wound up with. (a custom 'walker who Pyroclasms as one ability probably wouldn't want to make 1/1 elves with another.)
For costing the loyalty abilities simply average the total mana cost.
- Generic mana counts as is 1 for 1.
- Colored mana counts as 1.5 each.
- Each color the card is beyond the first counts as 1.
- Additional costs (eg. Sacrifice a land as you play this spell.) count as 1 per resource lost.
Simply add up the following and average rounding up. Then make the loyalty ability a + or - ability; whichever is more appropriate. (For most planeswalkers this will be a + ability for the common card ability, and a - for the uncommon and the rare.)
For fun I often go to the Gatherer search engine, and hit the random button until I have a common, uncommon, and a rare card then apply the process.
Again, hope this helps.
PS. again,
The mana cost for the planeswalker itself is the average of each component of its constituent card's mana costs.
A Giant Growth, Overrun, and Rumbling Slum 'walker would add and average (round up) all the generic mana (0+2+1=3/3=1), then the R (0+0+1=1/3=1), then the G (1+3+2=/3=3) for a total cost for the 'walker of 1RGG. (for more accurate, and higher, Converted Mana Costs you could use the same calc as we use for the abilities 1.5 per additional colored mana, +1 for eacha dditional color etc.)
For mana intensive activated abilities included int eh 'walker you could also incorporate the cost of the ability into the 'walker too esp. if the 'walker makes permanents with that activated ability.
Sorry for the omission.
Now his answer didn't stop me from trying and it shouldn't stop you. As a matter of fact, now that you've got me thinking about it, I'm going to go back and apply the below Emblem-logic to my Vanguard set because until I sat to reply to your post I hadn't thought of it in those terms.
You will need to decide on an effective mana cost for the effects that all Vanguard cards share.
For example how much should the following game effects cost?
+/-1 card in starting hand (this includes the immediate card advantage/disadvantage of drawing that many extra/fewer cards at the start of the game)
+/-1 starting life (this one is tricky because gaining life is practically free as it doesn't usually result in your opponent losing the game but LOSING life in nearly any amount can be disastrous.)
And finally should a Vanguard effect be beneficial or deleterious? Should a good effect cost you more in cards or life and should a negative effect provide you more cards or life?
(My suggestion is +1 start life = 1 mana, -1 start life = 3 mana, +1 start/max card = 3 mana, and -1 start/max card = 3 mana but I tend to over cost things to avoid abusability.)
From here you're basically designing a Planeswalker Emblem, or more specifically, a permanent game effect that isn't actually on the battlefield.
Unlike an Emblem, a Vanguard affects the game immediately without that several turn delay that Planeswalker ultimates are designed with. So be careful of that.
After you've decided on a mana value for your Vanguard base stats you can choose actual cards with the game effects you want then "buy" them with your virtual mana. Deciding weather a beneficial Vanguard effect (eg. All creatures you control get +1/+1.) should cost life or cards or a little of both could depend on the flavor of the card or character or environment that Vanguard is based on.
On the note of your character sheet idea, you could make a list of available race (loxodon, elf, human, etc), region (Otaria, the Great Furnace, Shiv, etc.), color combinations and list beside each weather that race usually sacrifices life or cards and weather they would usually suffer a deleterious Vanguard effect for more cards or life.
For example:
Loxodon - Vanguard Benefit: would give up cards over life; Vanguard Detriment: would suffer through for life over cards.
Razorfields - Vanguard Benefit: would exhaust life rather than cards; Vanguard Detriment: would provide cards over life.
White - Vanguard Benefit: would exhaust cards rather than life; Vanguard Detriment: would provide life over cards.
Using the above example you can see that a Vanguard based on a white aligned Loxodon from the Razorfields of old Mirrodin would value lifeforce over card advantage. This process would be mostly for vanilla Vanguards though. A Vanguard based on a specific non-character card (also known as an Avatar Vanguard instead of a Character Vanguard) would just use it's own mana cost converted into loss or gain of life or cards.
I hope my response is somehow helpful. It certainly helped me to wrap my head around my own attempts at custom Vanguards to express the ideas to you here. So thanks for your question and I look forward to reading about your efforts to better nail down a creation rubric for this far-too-neglected card type.
P.S.
I forgot to mention that Vanguards come in 2 flavors, Character and Avatars. Character cards are (surprise surprise) cards based on characters. They each get the Character type and a bit of story related flavor text.
Avatar cards are Vanguard based on cards. (makes you wonder what a Vanguard of a Vanguard would look like huh?) They each get the Avatar type and usually do not have flavor text. Also, if you'd like to review all the Vanguard cards ever made (most were made only for Magic Online) check out the bottom of this page: http://magiccards.info/extras.html