after a long break from MtG i finally found my way back (thanks MtG Arena). I got my old playground back together and convinced them of playing commander. The next step is already planned: as we like to draft, I'm currently building a Commander Cube.
Through all this, and MtG Arenas Special Events, an old idea of mine came up again: Modifying the game with static effects / modifiers / emblems
It's actually a quite old idea, concieved somewhere around Kamigawa Block, when we were mostly playing Fat Stack with our useless piles of rares (before we got into EDH) (For those who don't know, Fat Stack is a casual MtG format that uses any pile of cards you have lying around. Just shuffele them up, provide an aditional stack of lands and start playing. All players draw from the same deck and have the choice between drawing from the spell or land deck for each draw. It's quite fun, and always has a quite balanced power level without any deck/cube building effort)
At this time, I tried to spice up those (slowly beginning to get boring) games by utilizing a few choice cards, picked at random for each game, to modify the game. We'd have a stack of about 20 of those at hand, drawing 1-4 for a match. They would have had an effect on the game for its entire duration - quite simliar to how the emblems work in MtG Arenas current special formats.
To give you a better Idea of what I'm talking about, here's a few old ideas:
As you can see, they would have an lasting effect on the game, changing the rules by quite a bit, bringing freshness to any format thats starting to get stale. Like emblems, the would not be allowed to interact with, and for the cards with activated abilities, we mostly limited them to once per turn. If a card would say "your" or something like this, it was understood that it applied to all players just the same.
Anyway, I'd like to unpack this Idea once again in my playgroup, and was hoping to find some suggestions for nice modifiers.
The Effects should be printed on an existing card or emblem, be either symmetrical or be applicable to all players for the same effect without thinking too much outside the box.
First off look into the Vanguard Cards. These babies were the size of the oversized commander cards and modified your steadying/max hand size and starting life as well as granting that player a special static effect. Search them on gatherer because MTGO has their own exclusive ones and some of those were decent as well.
Next up, since you are talking about said effects being for all players instead of each getting their own, look up the planechase planar deck cards. Last I checked there was a planechase app someone made for desktop that had all original 36.
The just of a planar deck is that one card would be face up at a time and be doing its thing. On your turn you could roll the planar di (a special d6). The first roll was free and each additional roll that turn cost 2 more. Rolling the planar chaos symbol did the special ability on the plane (equivalent of rolling a 6) while rolling the planeswalker symbol would turn the next card face up, replacing the current plane (essentially rolling a 5). Rolling anything else (1-4) meant nothing.
If neither of those are your thing, look into group-hug decklists, as they have a lot of positive symmetrical static effects. You can also look at chaos decklists for more chaotic ideas.
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after a long break from MtG i finally found my way back (thanks MtG Arena). I got my old playground back together and convinced them of playing commander. The next step is already planned: as we like to draft, I'm currently building a Commander Cube.
Through all this, and MtG Arenas Special Events, an old idea of mine came up again:
Modifying the game with static effects / modifiers / emblems
It's actually a quite old idea, concieved somewhere around Kamigawa Block, when we were mostly playing Fat Stack with our useless piles of rares (before we got into EDH) (For those who don't know, Fat Stack is a casual MtG format that uses any pile of cards you have lying around. Just shuffele them up, provide an aditional stack of lands and start playing. All players draw from the same deck and have the choice between drawing from the spell or land deck for each draw. It's quite fun, and always has a quite balanced power level without any deck/cube building effort)
At this time, I tried to spice up those (slowly beginning to get boring) games by utilizing a few choice cards, picked at random for each game, to modify the game. We'd have a stack of about 20 of those at hand, drawing 1-4 for a match. They would have had an effect on the game for its entire duration - quite simliar to how the emblems work in MtG Arenas current special formats.
To give you a better Idea of what I'm talking about, here's a few old ideas:
As you can see, they would have an lasting effect on the game, changing the rules by quite a bit, bringing freshness to any format thats starting to get stale. Like emblems, the would not be allowed to interact with, and for the cards with activated abilities, we mostly limited them to once per turn. If a card would say "your" or something like this, it was understood that it applied to all players just the same.
Anyway, I'd like to unpack this Idea once again in my playgroup, and was hoping to find some suggestions for nice modifiers.
The Effects should be printed on an existing card or emblem, be either symmetrical or be applicable to all players for the same effect without thinking too much outside the box.
Thanks for any and all suggestions
Raketenudo
Next up, since you are talking about said effects being for all players instead of each getting their own, look up the planechase planar deck cards. Last I checked there was a planechase app someone made for desktop that had all original 36.
The just of a planar deck is that one card would be face up at a time and be doing its thing. On your turn you could roll the planar di (a special d6). The first roll was free and each additional roll that turn cost 2 more. Rolling the planar chaos symbol did the special ability on the plane (equivalent of rolling a 6) while rolling the planeswalker symbol would turn the next card face up, replacing the current plane (essentially rolling a 5). Rolling anything else (1-4) meant nothing.
If neither of those are your thing, look into group-hug decklists, as they have a lot of positive symmetrical static effects. You can also look at chaos decklists for more chaotic ideas.