When four players get together, pair up as partners. After
randomly selecting partners, allow just a few minutes for the partners
to confer on deck choices. Each team has 30 life, and the first team brought
to 0 life loses. The first player is chosen randomly and play begins with
each player sitting between his two opponents. Make these rules changes:
1. Thought there is still only one attack
phase in each player's turn, a player may choose to attack neither opponent,
one of them, or both of them. He must declare which opponent each attacker
is attacking. (He may not attack his partner.) Defenders are declared simultaneously-if
necessary, by having players write their choices separately.(usually this
is not a problem)
2. Spells and effects that deal damage
to each player or all players are applied to both players on each team,
and thus to their common life pool. The same applies to "loss of life"
spells and effects. For example, Pestilence deals one damage to each player
and creature for each B spent. This result in one
damage to each player (a loss of 2 life to each team's life pool) for each
B spent, unless it is somehow-prevented.
3. Enchantments that normally affect the
casting player still afect only the casting player. So in the pestilence
example above, if one player had a Circle of Protection: Black in play,
she could power it up and prevent the damage to herself, but her partner
would still take the damage.
4. Spells and effects that target an opponent
must choose one of the players on the opposing team.
5. Table talk is strongly discouraged
when it deals with any card that is not in view of all players. For example,
it's okay to say, "Now, how about if you use Prodigal Sorcerer to
poke that Basilisk?" when the nasty creature has been dealt three
damage, but it's not okay to say "If you have a lightning Bolt, throw
it at that Basilisk now" so that you can throw your own Lightning
Bolt on top of it.
In these games, players often choose decks with a large number
of creatures, because a player without a creature to block with will be
the "weak line" on his team. The games tend to be much quicker
than free-for-alls, allowing us to try several more decks in a night.
Five Player Collapse-to-Team
We often have five players available for a game, and thought
a free-for-all, every-mage-for-himself game can be fun, it can also be
time-consuming. Also, if one of the mages gets killed early, she might
wait a long time for the next game to begin. To solve this problem, we
use the "collapse-to-team" variant. In this variant, each player
begins with 20 life, as normal, and plays for himself. But when the first
player is reduced to 0 life, the game becomes a team game, as described
above. The only difference is that the starting life total for each team
is the sum of the life totals of the team members at the time the first
player was removed. (if two or more players are brought to zero life at
the same time, the game continues as free-for-all, and the mages who were
knocked out decide whether to play a separate game, watch the end of the
game, or order pizza). This variant has some interesting political and
strategical effects.
Each player knows that if he isn't the first player removed,
neither player sitting next to him can be his partner. However, one of
the two players sitting across from him will be his partner, and the other
will either be removed or weill be an opponent. It is interesting to watch
as each player tries to set himself up with the more desirable partner,
while trying to remain an attractive partner to two people, one of whom
he wants to destroy!