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BMoor's Magic The
Gathering
Deck Garage
So, is everyone excited for the upcoming Eventide
prerelease? I know I am. The last prerelease I
went to was Lorwyn, and in two separate flights I was one
match win away from walking away with free product.
I'm eager to do better this time, and that means brushing up
on Sealed Deck strategy.
In the meantime, it's a delicate quandary for deck mechanics
like myself. All those deck lists in my inbox-- do I
fix them now and take a chance that Eventide is about to
give us a card that works much better than the one I
suggested? Do I wait for Eventide to go public, and
keep you all waiting? I'm reluctant to do the former
for sake of deck fix quality, but the latter leaves my
readers high and dry for longer than I'm comfortable with.
As a compromise, here's a little extra article I've been
meaning to write for a while.
The issue is a common problem among groups of friends who
play Magic-- eventually things start to stagnate. Some
people don't want to build new decks that frequently,
so games start playing out the same way. The solution?
A new multiplayer format. Not one that requires decks
be built to its rules, like Prismatic or Elder Dragon
Highlander, but one that lets you play those same decks and
still make whole new game states arise. Two-Headed Giant is
good for this, but in this case the only change is often how
many players you have to beat. The format I'm talking
about, as the article title may have suggested, is Chaos
Magic.
Now, some people may know Chaos Magic as simply where you
attack and target whomever you want, as opposed to variants
where you must "attack left" and the like. I always
thought of that as Free-For-All... when I thought of it by
any name at all, since those are the default rules I've
always lived and played by. Chaos Magic, as I know it,
is a format first introduced to me through The Ferrett's
articles on Magicthegathering.com. Some of you may now
know to what I refer, but if not, here are the basic
rules.
Chaos Magic Rules:
1.At the beginning of the game, a separate deck-- The
Chaos Deck-- is placed in the center of the table.
This deck cannot contain creatures.
2.At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player
rolls a six-sided die. On a 6, that player reveals the
top card of The Chaos Deck and plays it without paying its
mana cost. This action does not use the stack and can
thus not be responded to.
3.If the card is an instant or sorcery, it does not use the
stack either. If it is an artifact, enchantment, or
land, its abilities take effect as though it were in play
under control of the player who revealed it. It is
not, however, considered to be "in play", and is therefore
not a legal target for cards like Creeping Mold or
Vindicate, and will not be affected by cards like Warp
World.
It's that simple, and that complicated. Originally in
my group, only instants, sorceries, and non-Aura
enchantments were fair game for a chaos deck, but we've
since warmed up to the idea of artifacts. If the
artifact has a tap ability, it's implied that you "tap" it,
even though it's not in play. We haven't found any
lands that look good enough to use yet, but from a rules
standpoint they should work. All you really have to
avoid is creatures-- they couldn't attack or block, and if
they could, they couldn't be killed. Auras create a
lot of problems too-- a Chaos card doesn't stop affecting
the board (if it's a permanent) until another Chaos card is
played. Chaos cards don't go to any player's
graveyard, and can't be sacrificed or moved to any other
zone. If you use Auras in a Chaos deck, you need to
figure out what happens when the thing it's enchanting
leaves play.
If you're still not really grasping how Chaos Magic works,
here's a less technical explanation. Get a bunch of
cards together. Shuffle them up and put them in a
pile. Then, on every player's turn, there's a chance
that that player will get a random one of those cards for
free. It works sort of like the items in the Super
Smash Bros. games-- they just drop every once in a while,
and subtly alter the state of the board, usually in favor of
the player who gets them.
So how do you build a Chaos Deck? It's easy.
Everybody has some extra cards lying around that they don't
want, and usually some of them are cards you'd sort of like
to see get played, but you don't have a deck that would
benefit from them, or they cost too much mana, or you only
have one, or whatever. Gather up all those cards.
For sake of illustration, here's my deck.
Overwhelming Instinct, Yamabushi's Storm, Syphon Mind,
Ornate Kanzashi, Rain of Gore, Soul Feast, Balancing Act,
Aphetto Dredging, Infest, Ivory Mask, Seek the Horizon,
Diabolic Tutor, Roar of the Wurm, Convalescent Care, Urza's
Guilt, Mnemonic Nexus, Kyren Negotiations, Counterbalance,
Heed the Mists, Ideas Unbound, Suppression Field, Living
End, Congregation at Dawn, Soratami Cloud Chariot,
Psychogenic Probe, Simplify, Bottomless Pit, Blood Clock,
Hair-Strung Koto, Cryptic Gateway, Feral Lightning,
Armageddon Clock, Blatant Thievery, Syphon Soul, Truth or
Tale, Commune with Nature, Demoralize, Telepathy, Folk
Medicine, Journeyer's Kite, Smallpox, Tower of Fortunes,
Flame Rift, Feudkiller's Verdict, Promise of Power, Culling
Sun, Fervent Charge, Muse Vessel, Sins of the Past, Night of
Souls' Betrayal
I don't expect folks to be familiar with all of those, but
if you are, you'll see what kinds of cards make for a good
Chaos Deck.
Some kinds of cards to avoid? Well, Treasure Trove was
rejected on the grounds that it requires blue mana to
activate. Avoid anything that requires the player who
flips it to be playing a certain color, or creature type for
that matter. Aphetto Dredging in our deck is already
on the warning list. Lightning Helix kind of scared
some folks in our group when I suggested it, but those same
people saw no issue with Soul Feast. Apparently
targeted creature destruction is a dangerous area, as it
gives decks with no answers to creatures a way to sneak out
wins they shouldn't be able to. But global effects,
i.e. effects that say "all" of something, are all right
because no matter who flips them, they have an equal chance
to pants everybody. Before we really warmed up to
Chaos Magic, we had a rule, "no instats or sorceries with
targets", but that was just too restrictive. You
should also avoid anything that assumes too much of the
player who flips it. All you can really assume about
the player's deck is A) they have creatures, and B) they
have lands. Also avoid anything that doesn't make
sense at the beginning of your upkeep on an empty stack,
like counterspells or combat tricks. Cards like
Demoralize are all right, since they let you sneak in extra
damage that turn, but be careful-- we used to have Path of
Anger's Flame in the deck as well, and it was just too
useless if flipped up in the early game or after a ruinous
set of combat phases.
Some kinds of cards to add? Well, card draw is nice
because it doesn't ask anything of you except that your
library have cards in it, and it doesn't make the game feel
too random because it doesn't give you anything your own
deck couldn't have given you. Our Chaos Deck used to
contain Counsel of the Soratami, Night's Whisper, and even
Mental Note (I mostly was glad to finally have a use for
it), but they started coming up too often. Also
anything that says "each player", or anything with a static
ability.
You can also think about what sort of strategies you don't
want to encourage. If people aren't being aggressive
enough, don't add Hissing Miasma for them to hide behind,
add Orcish Oriflamme, Chameleon Blur, or Thoughtweft Gambit.
Are people losing to artifacts and enchantments because
nobody packs maindeck artifact/enchantment removal?
Try Simplify or Fracturing Gust, whichever solves the
problem more efficiently. Darksteel Colossus running
rampant? Try Threaten. Hordes of tokens?
Evacuation solves that.
Really, use whatever cards you think would be funny to have
randomly go off for someone in the middle of a game.
The main goal of Chaos Magic is to create fun moments.
Big splashy effects like Worldpurge or Everlasting Torment
are nice. Cards you always wanted to play but never
wanted to pay for, like Flame Wave, Game of Chaos, or Time
Stretch. Cards you just wanted to find a use for, like
Telepathy or Reviving Dose. And depending on your
playgroup, you may want a "Squire" in there just to be the
booby prize-- we used to use Errand of Duty for that until
we got sick of having to care about banding. Now that
honor probably goes to either Mnemonic Nexus or Telepathy.
If you want to add even more randomness to this format, you
can always monkey around with the odds. Change the
trigger from rolling a six to rolling a five or six.
Change it to a coin flip. If there's a D+D player in
the group, break out the funky dice and see what shakes
loose. If the format seems too random, then you can
add a way to make the Chaos deck flip on command, or give
other players a way to squelch the deck. Say, give
each player the abilities: "Pay 5 life, discard a land card:
Play the top card of the Chaos Deck" and "Pay 3 life: Target
player can't play Chaos cards this turn" or something.
If everyone in the group agrees to it, why not? After
all, the whole point is to make games more fun, and for some
people, it's more fun to exert control than to be slave to
chance.
If you hadn't heard about Chaos Magic before, I urge you to
try it. Getting a bunch of "fun looking" cards
together and having them go off randomly during a game is an
incredibly fun experience that can shake up stagnant
multiplayer groups and take pressure off of players who
spend most of their time striving to win. Yes, it sort
of sucks when someone beats you with a Chaos card, but you
had just as much chance to get that card as he did, so it's
hard to feel bad about it for long. And when you luck
your way into something big and game-changing, it feels
soo good.
If your group does try it out, or already has been, feel
free to send in your Chaos lists. I'd love to see
them!
Have fun and good luck!
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