Brainstorm: War Variant Format pt 1

Kids these days and their efficient mana-to-power ratios...

Brainstorm is an article for just that: Brainstorming.  Random ideas, card ideas, variant format ideas, etc…  Usually follows a certain train of thought, so be warned.

So I was thinking about Magic the other day and thinking about creature combat.  Specifically, how the nature of creature based combat has changed over the years.  In the past, it seems as though many sets encouraged a kind of “war” feeling.  This seems natural: after all, our hobby was dominated by a genre founded upon rules for miniature war gaming.  But early mechanics like “Banding” and early cards like “General Jarkeld” all seem to point to the idea that certain members of R&D back in the pre-Mercadian Masques days of magic really wanted to encourage a sense of war.

Of course even getting a small battalion’s worth of creatures would be the result of some insane combo and would likely put you in a position to win.  Such is the nature of the game.  After all, we only start with 4-5 non-land cards in our hand.  Plus we only have 20 life–the minimum damage any creature can deal is 5% of our total life.  Of course, we can block–but ultimately creatures can’t sustain damage.  If an army attacks you and you block, the outcome of the game should be determined by that block.  If you “win” the skirmish, your opponent’s troops will be decimated enough that you can swing over their tapped creatures and win.  If you lose the skirmish, the odds of coming back without a Wrath of God seem very unlikely.  This is all common sense when one considers the nature of the game.  And, like most common sense in Magic, it’s thrown out the moment you actually sit down and play.  Cards change how you play the game and what tactics, even ones as obvious as “he with the most and strongest troops wins”, will succeed (see: early uses of the cards Moat and Stasis).

Current Magic has, for better or worse, focused on the “mage’s duel”.  Occasionally a wizard will summon a Tarmogoyf or a Serra Avenger to aid his quest for victory…but trying to manage a platoon of troops while slinging Counterspells *and* leaving mana open for your Morphling is all just a little too much.  And in the end the stronger and more interesting creatures are cards (as lots of text and major variations on tokens can be confusing).  So the more interesting (and oftentimes stronger) creatures are individual cards.  One card is one unit.

So how could one make a variant in Magic to use these interesting cards like Master of the Hunt and Invasion Plans?  A version of the game that encourages the idea of a player being a general instead of a mage?  One in which the tactical organization of creatures is more important than the individual strength of single spells?

First and foremost, we have to lose the 20 life.  In fact, I think we can do this with no life what-so-ever. (I’ll wait while you get the ‘no life’ jokes out of your system.  Good?  Ok, I’ll continue.)  After all, if an individual general fell the army would still exist.  Assuming the general was part of a greater force (like a nation or tribe), one would wonder why the rest of the country wouldn’t just pick up where he left off.  But if reducing your life total to zero isn’t the goal, what are all those poor creatures going to do?  Well, Wizards gave us an answer to that back in Lorwyn in the form of Planeswalkers.

So perhaps instead of having a starting life total, we can just have starting planeswalkers with no effects. And, to reduce potential for abuse with a pre-existing card type that has its own rules that would cause problems down the line, lets retype these “cards” to “Ministers”.  To go one step further, lets place these cards in the command zone (you wouldn’t want to lose to a Violent Ultimatum).

But we’d need a lot more little rules involving ministers and the format itself.  A thought that lead me to thinking of what else the ministers could do.  At first I imagined the format as a kind of DC-10 game in which we had no land–but what if we instead give each Minister an activated planes walker-like ability that gives it 2 mana of any combination of colors.  This would give an encouragement for players to strike down one minister at a time rather than try to wear them all down at once with a volley of attacks–not that a relentless assault is an unusable tactic.  Of course, if you really want army building, perhaps the ministers should just reset their loyalty every turn…or one minister should have an activated ability that resets the others.

This is the thought process that really got the cycle of 5 ministers developed.  They each have two abilities: one representing a fix to the major design flaws of the format (such as being able to produce mana for instant effects on your opponent’s turn, resetting your minister’s loyalty or drawing more cards to build up your forces).  But one doesn’t just get these effects for free–each time you have to rely on offsetting the weaknesses of the format, you lower your complete potential for mana that turn (as you can’t use both the “Add 2 Mana to your Mana Pool” ability and the “Ultimate” ability in the same turn).

Note: This is “part 1″ for a good reason.  I understand this idea requires a lot more than what is simply written here.  Cards like AEther Flux, Propaganda and Primal Rage would break this format in half.  But I assure you my solution isn’t just a banned list…

Instead of "Ignore the summoning sickness rule", which would nerf all creatures with haste and make Blastoderm too tough.

Instead of "you may play 2 land per turn, but the second comes into play tapped" so non-basics become viable without being overwhelming.

Instead of changing the rules to how cards are drawn each turn, which would make things like Howling Mine awkward.

To allow for instants without having to use land.

So Ministers can reset their Loyalty counters but not immediately after using their ultimate abilities.

Advertisement