The Forgotten Ways To Play Magic: The Gathering

#mtg #magicthegathering #casualmagic

#MagicTheGathering #MTG #commander

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[SethVeit]

Okay, I didn't see anyone mention Horde. Just like it sounds, you and your fellow players are on a team against the Horde deck. The Horde deck is typically large, like 100 cards per player, and is themed around tokens. The deck would be mostly tokens, such as Zombies, and a few other cards to fit the theme. Players take their turn together, while the Horde deck has it's own turn. During the Horde deck's turn, it flips cards until it hits a nontoken card. That card is cast for free and all the tokens are put into play. The tokens have haste and attacked each turn if able. Any spells that target or choices on who to attack are done at random. Your goal is to survive. Dealing damage to a horde deck mills that many cards. And you just try and get the deck to zero, kind of to simulate a horde based video game. Designing the Horde deck can be pretty fun too, and I think Wizards even did a variant of this as a promotion for Theros/Born of the Gods/Journey into Nyx with Minotaurs.

[xenades]

I still love Emperor, though I'm used to spells resolving via 'spell range'. where Lieutenants have a spell range of 1 (themselves, their Emperor, and their closes opponent) and Emperors have a spell range of 2 (themselves, each of their lieutenants, the opposing lieutenants, and the opposing Emperor should any Lieutenant exit the game.). Similarly, creatures can only attack the closest enemy, but Emperors have the ability to 'march' their units to a lieutenant during the attack step, shifting control.

[ChasRising]

My longest ever game of MTG I've played was a 10 person game of Emperor... it started around 1am, and ended around 9am. We were all taking naps between rounds at one point. It cemented friendships for me, but I will *never* do that again!

[aceundead]

I almost choked on a piece of pizza when you said standard. Laughing while eating is dangerous it turns out

[poketech]

I as a subscriber would love to see an episode of shuffle up & play using the Army format. It just sounds so fun, definitely going to try it with my friends this evening!

[KuroKitten]

Pentagram is a fantastic way to play the game! The fact that eliminating your enemies is what wins you the game, means that it's possible for two players to win (not tie) at the same time. Depending on the personalities at your table, this can lead to hilarious shenanigans. Some players are happy to share the win, and others want to go for the solo win. We often play that you *are* allowed to attack your allies, even though doing so can't win you the game. It introduces an additional layer of politics, if your playgroup likes that side of multiplayer.

[mspirits]

Pentagram actually has a variant called Star Magic. It basically did not have the color restriction and focus only on the sitting chart. It played the same as pentagram, where people beside you are allies and the one across are enemies. Played that a lot with my play group as we tend to have 5 people to play with.

[NightOfCrystals]

I haven’t seen anyone mention Judge Tower, perhaps the most headache-inducing format (players play off one massive library, infinite mana and you must make all legal plays, a player who misses a play or a rules event loses/gets a “point”) or chaos commander sheriff draft, an extremely fun format I had the pleasure of playing a few times when I lived in Connecticut. It is what it sounds like, with the sheriff aspect being a few different roles (sheriff, outlaw, townsfolk, etc.) and the color pie not applying. That was some of the most fun I have ever had playing Magic.

[Aguila]

I taught Kingdom to my high school magic club. It is essentially like Bang! if you've played that. You can play with 5 or 6 players, and we usually played with Commander decks. There's 6 roles: King, Knight, 2x Bandits, Rogue, and Usurper. If playing with 5, you randomly select one of the last two without anyone knowing which. Every blindly selects a role and does NOT reveal it during the game (but they can verbally claim to be any role). The Kind is the only one who reveals their rule. They start at 50 life and go first, and they become the monarch at the end of their first turn. The king and knight win if they or at least the king is the last surviving. The bandits win if one of them is alive and the king is defeated. The rogue is trying to be the last one standing, so they usually help get the bandits first. The usurper is interesting; if they deal the killing blow to the king, 2 things happen: the king is instead set at 1 life, and then trades roles with the king. The only exception is if they are the only two players, then the original king just dies. A lot of the fun is trying to figure out who's on whose side, trying not to give away your loyalties too soon, and making moves to make sure your team wins.

[azriel]

I remember playing Emperor a lot. We had the special rule that the emperor could "transfer" one of the own creatures on the battlefield to a lieutenant or one from a lieutenant to the own battlefield during main phase one. Off course, summoning sickness applied. So you could shift forces slowly. Pretty funny to "retreat" and save important creatures when a lieutenant was almost beaten.

[zebmaxwell]

I have a playgroup of 6 that play Prismatic every Friday and have been for several years.

Forgot about Planechase, a legitimate Wizards supported format.

[Thickolas]

So happy to see the mention of Wizard's Tower! Truly the lazy man's cube. It's a really fun option when you have a few Magic playing friends over and somebody is about to suggest a board game.

[antoniomromo]

Archenemy was a cool magic attempt at the wow raid format. I remember in college some friends and I played a game of EDH plainchase, emperor. Anyone could just drop in mid game. It ended when one person was left. The game lasted several hours with rotating players.

[UnsounderGnome]

Idk why, but in my area we played Pentagram all the time, but we called it A Gathering, because it was like a gathering of each type or color of mage. And people would get really into the character and traits associated with their color. Probably the closest I've seen to players trying to roleplay in their Magic game haha.

[xtieburn]

Id love to see all of these played in shuffle up and play. Its one of my favourite things about those videos, no other games channel Im subscribed to really mix up the type of magic they are playing outside of maybe picking their commanders from the latest sets.

[Artaimus]

I learned of a rather silly format of game that I've always wanted to play called "Kangaroo Court".
The premise is it is a 3 person format, with two playing and the third as the "judge". As you play and have interactions you argue for how things should go in your favor. Your opponent gets to respond then you get a rebuttal. At that point the judge makes a call in favor of one side or the other. These come in the form of "rulings" and "laws". Rulings only affect that one instance, while laws affect future events as well.
As an example:
Player A plays a [[Bad Moon]]. Player B later plays a [[Blood Moon]] and argues that the other card should be destroyed since there can only be one moon in the sky. Player A returns that there is no reason to assume the fight is taking place on earth and there may be many moons in the sky. Player B then gets an chance to respond, arguing that this is a perfect time to establish what plane they're on and how many moons should be there, aiming for only one to allow for his request to be fulfilled.
At this point the judge makes their decision. They could rule that there is only one moon/there are many moons, leaving which plane they're on open for later, or they can make a law setting a defined limit on any part of the situation. Judges are encouraged to take into account things like the artwork and type of a card; a human can't wield more then two weapons due to only having two hands as an example.
After each match the judge position rotates to the next player, disinclining favouritism between players due to retaliation against them later.

[thedude]

Two headed giant needs to come back. It's the best format for teaching new players and by having a teammate encourages you to play cards that you wouldn't normally play

[max]

It kinda makes me sad to hear emperor isn’t really played any more. Back in middle school it was one of the most fun formats we regularly played. Highly recommend trying it if you get the chance.

[peterjumper]

I used to play Emperor, but in my playgroup back in the day, we didn't have the "only attack adjacent" rule. The guards/lieutenants in the version my playgroup played were able to attack any opponent except an emperor until one of the guards fell. Shows how rules can drift as they disseminate across to a variety of local playgroups.

[Artaimus]

Vanguard is one that I loved back in the day that was dropped in favor of EDH. For those unaware of it, you chose a character card, based off the various storyline characters, who all had an ability of some kind and changed your starting life total and max number of cards in your hand. Some were incredibly unbalanced even at the time and only got worse as the power level of the game went up.