Today,
@folding_music posted in custom cards about a for-fun exercise they'd do with their friends:
folding_music wrote: ↑3 years ago
One cool idea we did have was to pool all the cards that say "You win the game" into a chaos stack of its own, deal one to the centre of the table before the first turn, like everyone controlled it, and then see if we could all mutually win at once <3 multiplayer casual magic, at the least the type I remember, was all about demonstrating yr deck and the idea of winning tended to get lost quickly.
I got to thinking about barb's challenge and saw potential in this for a well-developed format that would meet it. First, here's what I inferred from folding_music's post:
- everyone builds decks not being sure which alternate win condition they're going to be dealt with.
- a single pile is built with alternate win conditions: barren glory, helix pinnacle, etc.
- a win condition gets revealed randomly from that pile at the start of the game.
- the game ends when every player has won during the same turn, or every player wins in a row during their own turns. players don't vanish once they win, so they can help others win after they've won themselves.
Here's how I'd develop it further into a format to match this challenge:
- There's about 40 alternate win conditions in the game. Several of them make you win. Build a pile out of most of them. I've put my drafted recommendations at the bottom of this post.
- As the game starts, create your objective deck: it is 5 cards randomly chosen from the list of win conditions and shuffled face down. Put a Doom Blade face down at the bottom. (Or your choice of some other thematic card: All is Dust, Wrath of God, etc.)
- At the start of the game, and every 5 rounds (or N*5 turns, where N is the number of players), deal out the top card of the objective deck into the objective zone, so that over the course of the game you'll have up to 5 win conditions available. These are the objective cards.
- Everyone "owns" each objective card. They may cast a copy of those cards any time (within timing rules) as long as they don't already control a spell or permanent that's a copy of that objective card.
- Players can can spend mana as though it were mana of any type (WUBRGC) to interact with the objective cards and their copies.
- The game ends in defeat for all players when any player loses the game, or when the Doom Blade is dealt into the objective zone at round 25.
- The game ends in victory for all players when, within the space of N consecutive turns, every player has won the game at least once, where N is the number of players. "Winning the game" is not victory, and doesn't mean anything except that you've contributed to potential victory. This means players stick around after they "win" and are available to help other players win.
- Players can play alternate win condition cards in their decks, but their "wins" only count if they share a name with a revealed objective card.
The objective is for all players to work together to achieve victory and avoid defeat. Despite this there are no teams and all players remain opponents for rules purposes. This means they can attack each other with
Hellkite Tyrant for example.
Some further options that others brought up:
- The objective deck could be built like this: take 5 win conditions and shuffle the Doom Blade into them, then put that pile face down. Take another 5 win conditions, shuffle them, and put them on top. Now you have a pile of 11 cards. The first 5 are safe, but after that you might encounter the Doom Blade at any time. You could try to win before turn 25, or you could try to push your luck to make additional win conditions available.
- Instead of losing the moment the Doom Blade is dealt, once it's dealt you have N turns to win, where N is the number of players—giving you a last chance so to speak. Extra turns consume this allowance.
Anyway, implications and reasoning:
- Limiting you to 5 win conditions means you can't just bank on one specific win condition like Helix Pinnacle eventually appearing. It might not be in the pile at all.
- Imposing a time limit means you can't just pass turns forever chipping away at a win condition like Helix Pinnacle: you'll need to find a way to work faster at it than normal.
- Multiple possible win conditions being available means you're not stalled if you can't work with the first win condition that came up. Naturally you're not also locked out of options by color.
- The limit to casting only one copy of an objective card means that everyone can own a Barren Glory, but you can't just cast four copies of Biovisionary—you can get one, but you'll have to sort the others out yourself.
- Everyone doesn't have to win by the same win condition; players can pursue different win conditions.
Recommended win conditions (21):