Thursday, December 4, 2014

Planewalker Assassins

About a month ago we played a nice variant: Assassins.  We had seven, which worked out to be a good number for this format.

The rules we used are very close to those laid out in this article, with a few major changes:
  • Players may target whomever they wish with spells and abilities.
  • When one player kills another, they take their victim's card, getting a new target.
  • Players may only attack their target.  If they have their own name, they instead may attack anyone.
The only downside is the time.  We played one game which took us nearly 3 hours.  Definitely fun and definitely worth it, though!  This is my current favorite format for 7 people.  (I still prefer Cutthroat, 2HG, Cutthroat-Star, and Emperor for 3, 4, 5, and 6, respectively.)

Cutthroat Magic

Cutthroat is a 3-player magic variant a friend taught to me that automatically extends to more-than-three variants, though it gets less fun if you have more than two opponents.

Basics

The basic rule is mostly simple: when you attack, you are attacking both opponents.  They may "combo-block" however they want (technically declaring assignments in turn order if it comes down to it) and any damage that goes through is dealt to both of them.  So, if I attack with three 1/1s, and my opponents each block one of them, then both players would take one damage.

That's it.  Targetted effects can still go in any direction (Disintegrate doesn't hit them both).  All players are considered each others' opponents for any other reason.

Details

Double-Damage?

Okay, so that's not all there is to it.  Ophidian-effects (Ninja of the Deep Hours, etc) and lifelink should only trigger once.

Unresolved question: Do prevention-effects stop the damage for one player?

Who can attack?

If a creature cannot attack one of the two players (e.g. Teferi's Moat) then that creature cannot attack anyone.

Who can block?

If one defending player cannot block a creature (e.g. landwalk) the other defender's creatures are still allowed to block that creature.


I'm sure there are other issues that would need to be ironed out.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Conspiracy Emperor Draft

Last week we did a Conspiracy Emperor Draft.  It was awesome.  I highly recommend this format.

One thing might have made it better: splashing some Khans of Tarkir packs in there along with the Conspiracy.

... or maybe including Planechase cards.

... or maybe drafting anaconda style.

... or maybe something totally different!

Either way, it was a blast!