So I've had the interesting idea of building a set of decks which, as opposed to a normal multiplayer free-for-all, have some built-in political constraints. Aka the cards will sort of force you to ally with some players and make enemies with others. So I'd like to create 5 mono-colored decks (and maybe one artifact deck) which have a number of cards that hose their enemy colors and support their ally colors. Finding color hosing cards is fairly straightforward, however I've had a harder time finding cards which will encourage alliances between the ally colors. Basically I would need cards that either get or give bonuses to/from other decks on the basis of color. So far the best thing I can find is to use artifacts such as Angel's Feather.
Does anyone know of any cards that would fit the bill for this? My alternative is to use tribes rather than straight colors. I know there'd be a lot more options going that route, but I'm sort of trying to avoid it because it will make the deck building more complicated (each color on the wheel would need to play overlapping tribes and it actually seems complicated to select tribes that will go full circle).
Green has all of the goodies. Carpet of Flowers, Compost, Reap, Roots of Life, etc. Things like Warmth kinda count, but not really since lifegain is fairly marginal in multiplayer. Humble Defector is a great one for Red though. Hunted Horror and other Hunter cards are also very sweet when you're playing politics.
It's tough to find things like a mono green card that says "all white creatures get +1+1" in order to force those types of alliances between colors. Normally cards that buff a color or a mechanic based on a color are that color.
One solution could be to make dual color decks where each color is represented twice (GW/WU/UB/BR/RG). Then you can put a card that says "all green creatures get this buff" into one (or both) of the green decks and it'll kinda form an alliance. On the flip side, the hate cards vs one color will also cause the decks with that color to ally together in order to get rid of that player.
If you want to stick with the mono colored decks, another idea could be to purposely set the green, black and red against one another then have the white and blue decks be used as variables that could join any of the other three colors.
Blue has so many cards that just straight up change the color of permanents and spells and land types (Mind Bend). So the blue player could choose which team he wanted to ally with (or against) and change the hate cards acordingly.
Then at the same time, white has a ton of cards that have you choose any color as you play them so the cards can protect (Bathe in Light) or destroy (Pentarch Paladin) based on what team they want to play on as well.
I think the best way to do it might be to focus on creatures.
Creatures typically have protection & landwalk based on these alliances you're talking about, or triggers for certain things happening.
E.g. Mirran Crusader, Kor Firewalker, Great Sable Stag, King Crab, Etched Champion etc.
That all said, I think you're going to have a tough time balancing out these decks, as protection/walk effects usually lends itself to pump spells or perms (like Rancor, Armored Ascension, Cranial Plating etc.), which aren't evenly balanced across the colour pie.
Of course there are plenty of enchantments that help too, like Desolation for example.
Maybe you could ditch the color portion of your idea and just stick with the political side of things? No matter what color a player is, they will like things like drawing, ramping, gaining creatures, etc. Then you can just kind of decide on a match basis who you feel like teaming up with or going against. It's still an intriguing idea though.
Prid3- Definitely some usable cards there. And I actually like the lifegain cards because these will be pretty moderately powered decks (built mostly from cards I have lying around and anything else that's cheap I can pick up) and we will generally have some less experienced players (who can be particularly sensitive to politics). So I think in this sort of environment of modest decks and noobs the lifegain will actually be fairly relevant. Also, in terms of allegiances, it will actually be decent incentive not to let another player die- even though they're an enemy color.
Decay57- I was considering the idea of dual color decks myself and I definitely like some aspects of the idea.. however I remain torn. My motivation to do mono color decks is twofold- 1)Simplicity and consistency. As mentioned above, I am to an extent trying to cater to noobs and color screw or figuring out which lands to search for is just one less headache. 2) I really want the players to feel the color wheel when playing these decks and I think mono colored decks are the purest way to do that. Mono color also means I don't have to dedicate slots for color fixing cards or use non-basic lands that I might want to use in other decks (and have drawbacks that the noobs have to deal with/think about). What I'm leaning towards is hybrid cards from Lorwyn/Shadowmoor that can go into mono colored decks but give them some exposure to other colors. Plus, several of the Shadowmoor cards have color-based effects.
Also, I agree blue and white have more flexibility and I will definitely incorporate some of that (especially with blue) but I don't want to do too much because that sort of defeats the purpose. The exception would be if I make an artifact deck, which would sort of be ambivalent towards everyone with cards like Thran Lens and maybe some eldrazi with protection from colored spells or something. Also it would have an equal number of each basic land to feel the heat from some of the hate and maybe play some sunburst cards.
Xyx- After digging more into the available cards, allying with enemy colors maybe necessary. And as you mentioned it could be desirable as well. It would be a free for all format.. I'm not familiar with pentagram.
bleedin_eyeball- I completely agree... creatures with protection and whatever will be a major component. Some good suggestions as well.
rtdeeley- I think this basically leads into pitting decks against each other based on the strategies they're playing. I was thinking about this last night and I like the idea because it would allow me to exemplify one of the main themes of each color and add emphasis to the color wheel. I worry it could become complicated, but I have to think more about it.
Speaking of which, my friend and I tried to apply the tribal idea last night... and it turned out to be a royal pain in the ass. So I said screw it, I'm going back to colors lol. The most workable solution we had was to choose some of the larger tribes that have a fair bit of representation in multiple colors and align decks with bonuses based on that. Then each deck which is allied by tribe would have a different enemy. For example, if you made green and white decks with humans, then green would have blue hate and white would have black hate. But I think this is a less clean solution than just sticking to the colors.
Speaking of which, my friend and I tried to apply the tribal idea last night... and it turned out to be a royal pain in the ass.
Not sure what was such a pain but a tribal approach could actually work pretty well considering each color has a very distinct tribe associated with it (Merfolk, Goblin, Elf, Zombie, Soldier and Construct) so you could still keep the decks mono-colored like you wanted.
I think you're finding things difficult with all this because you'e trying to force alliances between certain decks/colors when that's not really needed. The game does that for you already by putting targets on the biggest threats. If someone plays a 15/15 trample creature, you can bet someone is going to throw a removal spell at it.
Setting up premade alliances between decks also reduces the fun of replay-ability since it always forces you to play with the same allies. If you randomly end up playing the white deck then it's like, 'well I guess I'm allied with the green guy again'. At that point you might as well be playing the premade Duel Decks that were meant to be played against one another. Or maybe just get 3 of those Duel Deck sets and call it a day.
100% agree w/ Decay57 on this, although not specifically built for "casual multiplayer" as they are EDH decks. my grp & i built 4 theme decks, the 1st one was based on dog-nar the bounty hunter, (Ragnar), my friends idea, so i built a rakdos "villians" deck for "dognar" to try & bring to justice. then i came up w/ the idea for an esper deck led by ertai the corrupted, to represent both the good & bad sides of the legal system & then another friend & i collaborated on a red & green "gangs" deck, that way all the colors were represented twice. since each player wants to win the game, the way the games play out is that different "decks" will ally to try & take down whoever is the biggest threat @ the time; you dont want to predetermine who's working w/ who, just let the game decide that over its natural course. i will also say that shroud, hexproof, & cards w/ "protection" of any type are not good for interactive games of magic & would argue against their inclusion
I think you're finding things difficult with all this because you'e trying to force alliances between certain decks/colors when that's not really needed.
It's absolutely not needed. But in this case, it's the whole point.
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So I've had the interesting idea of building a set of decks which, as opposed to a normal multiplayer free-for-all, have some built-in political constraints. Aka the cards will sort of force you to ally with some players and make enemies with others. So I'd like to create 5 mono-colored decks (and maybe one artifact deck) which have a number of cards that hose their enemy colors and support their ally colors. Finding color hosing cards is fairly straightforward, however I've had a harder time finding cards which will encourage alliances between the ally colors. Basically I would need cards that either get or give bonuses to/from other decks on the basis of color. So far the best thing I can find is to use artifacts such as Angel's Feather.
Does anyone know of any cards that would fit the bill for this? My alternative is to use tribes rather than straight colors. I know there'd be a lot more options going that route, but I'm sort of trying to avoid it because it will make the deck building more complicated (each color on the wheel would need to play overlapping tribes and it actually seems complicated to select tribes that will go full circle).
Thanks for any input!
Do cycles like Tempt with Discovery and Infernal Offering count? The EDH decks have a ton of them.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
One solution could be to make dual color decks where each color is represented twice (GW/WU/UB/BR/RG). Then you can put a card that says "all green creatures get this buff" into one (or both) of the green decks and it'll kinda form an alliance. On the flip side, the hate cards vs one color will also cause the decks with that color to ally together in order to get rid of that player.
If you want to stick with the mono colored decks, another idea could be to purposely set the green, black and red against one another then have the white and blue decks be used as variables that could join any of the other three colors.
Blue has so many cards that just straight up change the color of permanents and spells and land types (Mind Bend). So the blue player could choose which team he wanted to ally with (or against) and change the hate cards acordingly.
Then at the same time, white has a ton of cards that have you choose any color as you play them so the cards can protect (Bathe in Light) or destroy (Pentarch Paladin) based on what team they want to play on as well.
Creatures typically have protection & landwalk based on these alliances you're talking about, or triggers for certain things happening.
E.g. Mirran Crusader, Kor Firewalker, Great Sable Stag, King Crab, Etched Champion etc.
That all said, I think you're going to have a tough time balancing out these decks, as protection/walk effects usually lends itself to pump spells or perms (like Rancor, Armored Ascension, Cranial Plating etc.), which aren't evenly balanced across the colour pie.
Of course there are plenty of enchantments that help too, like Desolation for example.
Decay57- I was considering the idea of dual color decks myself and I definitely like some aspects of the idea.. however I remain torn. My motivation to do mono color decks is twofold- 1)Simplicity and consistency. As mentioned above, I am to an extent trying to cater to noobs and color screw or figuring out which lands to search for is just one less headache. 2) I really want the players to feel the color wheel when playing these decks and I think mono colored decks are the purest way to do that. Mono color also means I don't have to dedicate slots for color fixing cards or use non-basic lands that I might want to use in other decks (and have drawbacks that the noobs have to deal with/think about). What I'm leaning towards is hybrid cards from Lorwyn/Shadowmoor that can go into mono colored decks but give them some exposure to other colors. Plus, several of the Shadowmoor cards have color-based effects.
Also, I agree blue and white have more flexibility and I will definitely incorporate some of that (especially with blue) but I don't want to do too much because that sort of defeats the purpose. The exception would be if I make an artifact deck, which would sort of be ambivalent towards everyone with cards like Thran Lens and maybe some eldrazi with protection from colored spells or something. Also it would have an equal number of each basic land to feel the heat from some of the hate and maybe play some sunburst cards.
Xyx- After digging more into the available cards, allying with enemy colors maybe necessary. And as you mentioned it could be desirable as well. It would be a free for all format.. I'm not familiar with pentagram.
bleedin_eyeball- I completely agree... creatures with protection and whatever will be a major component. Some good suggestions as well.
rtdeeley- I think this basically leads into pitting decks against each other based on the strategies they're playing. I was thinking about this last night and I like the idea because it would allow me to exemplify one of the main themes of each color and add emphasis to the color wheel. I worry it could become complicated, but I have to think more about it.
Speaking of which, my friend and I tried to apply the tribal idea last night... and it turned out to be a royal pain in the ass. So I said screw it, I'm going back to colors lol. The most workable solution we had was to choose some of the larger tribes that have a fair bit of representation in multiple colors and align decks with bonuses based on that. Then each deck which is allied by tribe would have a different enemy. For example, if you made green and white decks with humans, then green would have blue hate and white would have black hate. But I think this is a less clean solution than just sticking to the colors.
Not sure what was such a pain but a tribal approach could actually work pretty well considering each color has a very distinct tribe associated with it (Merfolk, Goblin, Elf, Zombie, Soldier and Construct) so you could still keep the decks mono-colored like you wanted.
I think you're finding things difficult with all this because you'e trying to force alliances between certain decks/colors when that's not really needed. The game does that for you already by putting targets on the biggest threats. If someone plays a 15/15 trample creature, you can bet someone is going to throw a removal spell at it.
Setting up premade alliances between decks also reduces the fun of replay-ability since it always forces you to play with the same allies. If you randomly end up playing the white deck then it's like, 'well I guess I'm allied with the green guy again'. At that point you might as well be playing the premade Duel Decks that were meant to be played against one another. Or maybe just get 3 of those Duel Deck sets and call it a day.
It's absolutely not needed. But in this case, it's the whole point.