#MultiplayerMagic

[tolarian-cafeteria]

These are the current versions of the role cards our group uses for Usurper. I wanted to update them from the traditional Magic card border to something fancier. The map border is also really easy to read.

[passion-of-arts]

FRAGEN ZU BRETTSPIELEN UND VIDEO GAMES

🎮 Entdeckt mit uns die Gaming-Welt! 🕹️ Welches ist dein Lieblingsbrettspiel für entspannte Abende mit Freunden? 🎲 Oder tauchst du lieber in die fesselnde Atmosphäre eines Videospiels ein? 🕵️‍♂️ Von actiongeladenen Mehrspielerpartien bis zu nostalgischen Retro-Games – teilt mit uns eure Gaming-Leidenschaft in unserem Fragebogen mit Fragen zu Brettspielen und Video Games! Öffnet die Kiste, loggt euch in #Steam ein, wir wollen eure Games sehen! 💬👾

[tolarian-cafeteria]

Theta VIII

Theta VIII is the world where the Enterprise-D comes across an illusory hotel and casino. The hotel/casino was created by aliens who felt bad for killing the crew of a human exploratory vessel. They created the hotel to help the lone survivor have a more pleasant experience as he grew older. The only drawback was that the “people” who inhabited the hotel were 1 dimensional characters from an awful work of fiction. It’s not one of the best episodes, but it gave me the idea to create the opposite effect from Talos IV. It doesn’t quite fit the storyline, but it is close enough. In these larger games there are always powerful artifacts and enchantments on the battlefield.

Trill

For Trill I took a little bit of an Unglued take on the planets power. Instead of creating another card draw engine to show off the scientific prowess of the Trill people, I went another way. The Trill are a symbiotic people, most of the population is humanoid, and the rest are sentient, virtually immortal slugs or worms. I think you can see where I’m going. I hadn’t made many planets that create creatures for the king/queen, so this was a perfect punny fit.  I made the wurm green because most of the players in our group have some of the existing wurm tokens lying around. This planet usually brings a small smile to the face of Star Trek fans who get it. Sometimes that’s enough for me.

[tolarian-cafeteria]

Arch Enemy, for 4 to 10 players!

It’s probably not a big surprise that I chose this variant this week. We finally had a release of the 20 new Arch Enemy cards. I can’t wait to dig through those cards and see what we can add to our group’s deck. Group deck you say? Well, in our play group we have a single deck of 20 scheme cards. Over the first 6-12 months that it was out we decided to create the best possible set of scheme cards that would be usable by any deck and any player. If we are playing with only 3 allies, we use the basic rule set layed out in the original rules, except for one. We make the amount of poison counters it takes to kill the arch enemy to half of the Arch Enemy’s starting life total. 

We realized that because of the strength of the schemes the Arch Enemy could probably take on more than 3 allies. We have played regularly for years with up to 9 allies. Only one person has ever beaten 9 allies, and it was in epic fashion with a giant tribal deck. That game is still talked about. When we started playing all the time with 4-6 allies we decided we had to give the Arch Enemy a little help. We always increased the life total by the 12.5 per player, but that proved to be not quite enough. The addition of the scheme free turn has since pulled the percentages back to around 50/50 and that is ideally where we want it. 

The very best thing about this variant is the speed at which we are able to play a lot of games. We can usually get thru 5 or 6 in the time it would take us to play 2 normal commander games. If you want to play the way we do, we all choose a deck for the game. We then roll the dice and see who is going to be the Arch Enemy. When that game is over, we then roll again, but the person who was the Arch Enemy cannot be it again, until everyone has had a chance. 

The one caveat we make before introducing this variant to a new player is we tell them not to play with certain styles of decks. We tell them, no heavy counterspell decks, dedicated land destruction, no heavy hand disruption, and no dedicated milling decks. These decks completely unbalance the power level to the point of breaking the format. We have played hundreds of matches at this point. and if a single player counters the Arch Enemy’s first 3 spells, there is virtually no way to come back from that regardless of which schemes are played. If you are going to play these style of decks, then your team will win, it will be very easy, and it will be very fast and there will be little to no interaction. Why would you waste everyone’s time? Why bother going thru all of the motions if they aren’t going to produce fun for everyone? 

[tolarian-cafeteria]

The alternate win condition for the Throne of Cobra-La. If your opponents let you assemble 16 Cobra troopers then they should be rewarded with dying. It would only take the initial 5 troopers plus maybe 3 full turns with both of your teammates revealed for you to get Serpentor and a reasonably sized army. Assuming your deck plays spells and maybe creatures too, I would think someone is being eliminated. You may notice that Serpentor’s own ability gives himself the bonus too. If someone wasn’t paying attention and has no creatures to block with then you can sneak in for the kill!

I couldn’t find a good screen grab from the cartoon or even a semi reasonable toy picture. I was lucky when I found the recent comic book scans. This art isfrom the IDW comic book series. I liked the full frame art here because it is so different from the regular artifact frames of the other Cobra creatures. It shows that something special is happening. 

I chose to go with Serpentor over Cobra Commander only because Serpentor had a little more luck against the Joe team. He is also nuts, which makes him a bit more interesting in a game where there are usually a lot of people playing. Give you an excuse to attack wildly if you wanted. Serpentor said to attack you, and you, and you. 

[tolarian-cafeteria]

Variant Friday is back with one of my favorite ways to play with 6 or more people. Respawn may at first glance seem to take a very long time. I mean, sometimes it takes hours to kill one person in a normal multiplayer game.  But, when your group comes to the realization that the person with the fastest deck will jump on the one player with the bad draw and kills them for that first point, you realize something. That afast kill is 33% of the way towards winning the whole game. It then it becomes a scramble for someone to kill that first point getter, and even up the playing field a bit. Two player decks tend to be played a lot in Respawn instead of the “go big”, convoluted combos, or “giant cheaty spells” decks. A good fast modern deck can easily get a couple points before some people have 4 or 5 lands in play. The real turn comes when someone gets that all important 2nd point. Oooh, they have almost won, they only need to kill the weakest deer left in the game and it’s over. A lot of very fast and loose partnerships will be created and just as quickly die. I love this part of the game. 

When we play this, I usually set up 4 decks instead of the 3 minimum. I expect to get killed a few times. I prefer to use a very fast deck initially, and then go to a slower more defensive deck 2nd, and then back to 2 fast decks again. I have seen some of our regulars go the complete opposite route, the slower deck that helps weaken everyone then pounce in with a burn deck second and take out 3 players quickly. There are so many ways to go. 

[tolarian-cafeteria]

I wanted The Mage Skill Tree to be able to protect itself in the same way that a mage in Skyrim can. One of the ways I came up with is the false-image, Illusionary clone, decoy idea. This way you can gain the throne, create an Illusion and hopefully fog one full attack that you aren’t prepared for yet. I generally don’t like creating too many defensive (or game slowing) abilities, but i figured if this exiles itself after use then it is easy to keep track of, and doesn’t slow the game too much. If by some chance you have a way to create copes of enchantments, then you will probably hold onto the throne for a very long time. I like the idea of these one shot then exiled abilities. They open up a lot of possibilities in the future, and they can simulate a lot of weapons, abilities that a static/regular card enchantment or artifact can’t reproduce. A throwing or projectile weapon, or even a magic scroll type of effect. Wizrds has shown with Amonkhet that they don’t mind making a lot of different tokens. Hopefully, this is something we can see in the future for non-creatures too.

[tolarian-cafeteria]

The F.A.N.G. may seem really strong for just the sacrifice of 2 lowly Cobra Troopers. That is 100% on purpose. I wanted the King/Queen to be able to deal lots of damage right away if they managed to stay on the throne for a turn. In conjunction with several of the realms 3-4 immediately created F.A.N.G.s can almost kill someone who has been a little lax with their life total. 

On all of the Cobra artifacts that you can create they all have an odd leaves play ability. We noticed in early test games that the second or third board wipe completely negated the throne’s powers. We can’t have that. If you are on the throne, you should feel and be powerful. When I decided that the artifacts should give back half of the troopers after they leave play fixed this. Much like a few copies of Lingering Souls in the graveyard, they allow you jump right back into the game and start applying pressure on the person who cast the board wipe. 

As far as the picture goes, it took me a couple days to find a decent picture of a F.A.N.G. that didn’t have a ton of words, or was in focus or didn’t look immediately like a toy. I wanted the classic version, not the more futuristic looking F.A.N.G. II. If i was decent with photoshop this wouldn’t be a big of an issue. 

[tolarian-cafeteria]

This is Secret Alliances. It is a multiplayer variant for 5-15 players, (the extra 5 cards will be in the next post). This is a cross between Star and a regular team game. You determine how many players, then choose how many teams you will need.

5 players=3 teams: 2 matching color pairs and 1 single face down Ally.             6 Players=3 teams: 3 matching color pairs                                                         7 players=4 teams: 3 matching color pairs and 1 single face down Ally.             8 Players=4 teams: 4 matching color pairs and so on up to 10 players. 

Let’s use a 7 player game as an example.  The Bert, Ernie, Darth Vader, Sidous, Godzilla, Mothra and Spock will be used.     The cards are then passed out face down. If your card says reveal, then you reveal. The hidden team members are never allowed to flip their role card over during the game. What this does is create 2 “mini” games within the larger overall game. You will have 3 players with revealed role cards and 4 players with hidden roles. The revealed players know who is not on their team (the hidden role players), and the hidden players know who is not on their team (the appropriate revealed players and all of the other hidden players). The player who is Spock/Blue will know they are by themselves, but no one else will. Play proceeds as normal in both “mini” games until a point is reached where one ally is able to help the other, or an attack of opportunity comes up --example-Mothra sends her creatures at Sidious, who Godzilla has been trying to eliminate or Ernie casts a spell killing one of Godzilla’s creatures which is attacking Bert.--. You can see how these interactions will usually will inform some of the table who their allies might be. The game continues until only one team is left. 

This is one of my favorite variants because once everyone realizes what kind of interaction there can be between the “mini” games the level of deception and political action skyrockets. The depth of what can happen in this game is incredible. 

[tolarian-cafeteria]

This was the power of Saruman that I had the hardest time nailing down. I created 4 different versions of this power. I originally had it as an emblem that you gained and lost. I realized that that was wrong because there are currently no ways to interact with an emblem. In the lore Gandalf is able to stop Grima/Saruman from affecting King Theoden in the beginning of that portion of The Two Towers. Making this an enchantment is definitely the correct way to go. It can be destroyed by normal removal and removed thru its own ability. I feel that this unusual use of poison counters is very flavorful and it even fits the theme properly. Look at that picture, doesn’t that look like a man with a lot of poison counters? I do realize the a deck with a proliferate theme will abuse this, but I felt that that is a great motivation to either eliminate that player, or weaponize them. The political situations that can arise from this makes my head spin with the possibilities! (I like politics in Magic btw)

[tolarian-cafeteria]

Mushroom Kingdom has become one of the favorite realms to fight over. Initially the +6/+6 can bring down an opponent very quickly, while the haste, or flying can sneak in an attack on the current King/Queen. This realm is the only one with this odd design. I will probably not make any like this in the future, but I feel that the oddness is made up for with the flavor of giving the creature a “Mario Bros. power-up”. I tried on the initial concept of this realm to fit all of the power-ups from Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. Magic has more than enough abilities/keywords to allow this. I decided against adding more than 6 because of the font size, and the thought of someone having to re-read the realm constantly in the game. 6 abilities is more than enough. The untap clause takes Mushroom Kingdom from good to incredible. 

[tolarian-cafeteria]

I wanted Dr. Doom’s home to be aggressive and involve Doombots somehow. Kaladesh couldn’t have come out at a better time. The Servo tokens are perfect for this realm. Most playgroups will have someone who keeps tokens on them, and they even fit thematically. When we increased the power level of the set, Latveria went from just creating Servos to creating a lot of them if your teammates are aggressive too. I want to encourage action and movement in these games and attacking is still the easiest way to do this. I added the tap mechanic to help out those teammates who may be playing control decks or may simply be mana screwed/flooded. 

[tolarian-cafeteria]

Ullia

A Ullian in the episode “Violations” is responsible for one of the many instances of “mind rape” in Star Trek lore. I find it a bit icky that it comes up as often as it does. Telepathic history reading would have been a bit of a stretch for a planet power, but going into someone else’s mind and playing their spells for free seems like a strong ability. I didn’t make this ability infallible in the same way I did some of the other similar abilities. I thought that with this one very strong power that there should be some bit of chance, even if it’s small. When I saw how quickly someone took the throne (turn 2) and then put Ullia onto their battlefield, I was happy I gave this planet a tiny downside.

 Vulcan

Vulcan is of course where Spock is from. The logical, highly scientific race of people. I made this one of the few cards in the whole game that is 100% weighted towards the current king/queen’s team. I think the Vulcan people would say “it is not logical to help your enemies, only your friends.” Vulcan is very powerful.  Again, I didn’t mind making some of the planets powerful because there are 23 of them in total. The odds are not high that you will draw any particular one.

[tolarian-cafeteria]

Sigma Iota II

Sigma Iota is the planetary power I may have stretched the most to come up with. The inhabitants of this planet live according to a book that describes Gangs of the 1920s. It’s one of the funnier episodes of The Original Series. “A Piece of the Action” describes the people of the planet as very industrious and in only a few short years were able to bring themselves up to 1920 era technology. I turned that industriousness into spell cost reduction because they are helping you out. I added the clue ability on because in the episode it takes a bit of detective work on Kirk’s part to figure out why everyone talks like a movie mobster. It’s a stretch, but so was that episode.

Talos

The Talosians were the antagonist in the very first Star Trek Episode, The Cage. They are telepathic, highly advanced and a bit mean. They are capable of creating very sophisticated illusions. So sophisticated that it is almost impossible to tell reality vs illusion for the characters. I think a 1 turn copy of a creature is reasonably close to what the Talosians do in the movie. I chose not to give the copy the illusion targeted problem, because in a lot of cases it would make the copy useless. There are so many players in these game that will just happen to have odd targeting abilities. I want the copy to actually do something in the game, even if it’s just an attack.

[tolarian-cafeteria]

Romulus

Romulus is home to one of the main villains of the Star Trek universe. They come off as sneaky and underhanded in most episodes, so I decided to have the planet follow this theme. I used the Alpha card Illusionary Mask as my template. I have always loved this card. In olden days one of the players in my group would hide his Royal Assassin whenever he played it. It used to die immediately, but because he hid a majority of the creatures in that deck he usually got a few good uses out of it before it died. That’s what I envisioned for Romulus. The few times this has come up, the morphed creature has been a big one (Blightsteel Colossus is still my favorite).

Rubicon III

Rubicon was one of the final planets I designed. At this point with almost 20 other planets, I wanted something very, very different. There are a few distinguishing things about this planet. The world is watched over by a super powerful celestial being, the people do little more than play games all day, and the rule of law is absolute. It was the 2nd item that I latched onto for the ability. In the games we have played the tension created by the dice roll is great.