Last fall I had to give up writing for this blog regularly thanks to a new school year as a graduate student and even more responsibilities than in the past. Through these Friday Flashback posts every week I have highlighted the “Best of Disciple of the Cards” where I’ve reused old posts, usually with some edits, for newer followers who don’t check out back catalogs and older followers that may have missed them. I always planned to continue these reposts until the summer, and the summer is certainly here. This week I would like to present to you the last of my Friday Flashback posts for now. Starting next week will be all-new content, once again at least every other week.

Clearly today is about Planechase. Planechase 2012 is officially out today, after all. When it was announced I knew I was going to want to write about it once more. This time around, though, there are enough new things to add that this really will be more of a brand-new post restating some of the ideas from the old one than just a repost with minor changes. So for today, read on if you would like to know my thoughts on Planechase in general, and the addition of Planechase 2012 to the format in particular.

Planechase: The Point

If you’re reading this, you probably already know, but it’s not bad to cover the basics again. Planechase is a format added on to whatever other format you’d like (be it Commander, Standard Constructed, what have you). That’s one thing that’s great about it, is that you don’t need a deck for it. Just add it to what you’re already playing. Planechase involves a deck or decks of oversized planar cards, and players have an opportunity to roll a Planar Die to try and planeswalk to a new plane. The first roll a player makes on their turn is free, and they can roll more for {2} more for each extra roll. The cards themselves have two abilities; the first which are either static (happen all the time as long as that plane is active) or trigger when planeswalking to or away from the plane, and the second Chaos abilities trigger when a player rolls the Chaos symbol on the Planar Die. Planes cannot be targeted; the only way to deal with them is to planeswalk to a new plane.

Planechase can be played in two ways: The first has everyone have their own 10-card planar deck and when a person rolls the Planeswalk symbol the top card of their planar deck becomes active, the second version where there’s just one big planar deck and anyone rolling the Planeswalk symbol makes the next card in the deck active.

A Precursor to Planechase

The thing is, when I discovered what Chaos Magic was, I realized that latter version of Planechase is Chaos Magic. At first I thought Chaos Magic was a term for Free for All multiplayer in Magic, but when I learned that wasn’t the case I went in search for what it really was. Don’t check wooberg, that doesn’t have the one that Planechase is based off of. I found out about Chaos Magic from The Ferret at The Mothership here. The basics of Chaos Magic are that someone builds a stack of cards (I say stack instead of deck to differentiate it from a deck that likes chaotic effects) that do crazy things, such as Warp World, Hypergenesis, Maelstrom Nexus, and Timesifter. Then at the beginning of each player’s upkeep, they roll a d6 (the Ferret said a 6 does it, I say a 1 or a 6 to up the chances of it happening because otherwise you can forget you’re not playing normal Magic) to randomly decide if the top card of the Chaos Stack becomes active. Enchantments and artifacts stay active until the next card is made active, and instants and sorceries resolve their effect and then do nothing afterward. There are only a few lands (e.g., Rainbow Vale) and creatures (e.g., Karona) that work with Chaos Magic, but for those the rules are a little different. Other than creatures and lands that can change control, though, Planechase is just like Chaos Magic. This is even more so now that there are Phenomena in Planechase 2012, which Mark Gottliev admits are just like the instants and sorceries of Chaos Stacks.

This isn’t to say that Planechase is bad, though. Both Chaos Magic and Planechase have their positives and negatives. Chaos Magic, for instance, gives you a lot more choices on what to put in your Stack, which can be great for variability in player’s Stacks but bad because it gives players plenty of choices that are just terrible for the format (sorry, Lightning Bolt really isn’t that interesting compared to Warp World, plus does only one player get the effect or everyone?) So while there are less Planechase planes (and with Planechase 2012, those numbers are going up anyway), you’re more guaranteed that any of these planes work with Planechase than Magic cards with Chaos Magic, so there’s less wonder if your game is going to suck because of the stack/deck you’re using. Planechase planes also have the Chaos effect, which is why I decided a 1 or 6 makes the top Chaos card active, since there’s a 2/6 chance of something happening in Planechase. However, even upping the chance of something happening in Chaos Magic doesn’t change the fact that the planes generally have 2 abilities (unless the Chaos ability is pretty much the same as the other one), whereas most Magic cards that fit Chaos Stacks only have 1. The final reason why Planechase can be considered better than Chaos Magic is that it is actually flavorful - the abilities happen because you are planeswalking from one plane to another, and the new plane has something different to it (this is actually what World Enchantments were supposed to do too). So for Vorthoses, this flavor connection makes it better than Chaos Magic. Plus for Planechase they create planes that haven’t been settings in sets, so some of these could be visited in future sets, making Planechase sort-of like Future Sight in that way as well. Chaos Magic doesn’t give that to you.

That said, there are still reasons to play Chaos Magic as well or instead. I am just concluding that while Planechase is clearly Wizards adoption of a casual format it does not make Planechase less cool or fun.

The Progression of Planechase

I’ve already covered the Phenomena cardtype’s connection to Chaos Magic, but what do they bring to the table?

Since there isn’t an upper limit on Planar Magic plane decks, there’s no reason not to add every Phenomena to it (or all of the ones you like, if you don’t like some of them). Morphic Tide is a Warp World that includes planeswalkers, Reality Shaping is a 1-permanent Hypergenesis that includes planeswalkers, and Spatial Merging spices up Planechase by combining two planes togetherm and Chaotic Aether makes every roll of the Planar Dice a 100% chance of something happening; all off these are great and really should be added to Planar Magic decks. The only way you could dislike Phenomena is if you wished 8 more planes had been created instead.

I am a little disappointed that Esper doesn’t have a plane, as now with the addition of Jund, it’s the only Alara shard missing a card. But the positives here I think outweight the negatives: You get another shard; more Ravnica places; cards for places like Zendikar, New Phyrexia, and Innistrad that we’ve visited since the first Planecase; and of course more planes we’ve never visited, like another Future Sight set.

The disappointment really is with the decks themselves. They all appear to be fun, but other than for a few plays, I don’t think they will be worth keeping together. To make them really enjoyable, a lot of changes would be required to get them up to par. Unless you really could use the cards, buying singles would probably be better for you. But this post isn’t supposed to be about how the product itself is, but about how the format is. I just felt I should point out that not everything here is perfect. Once singles of the new cards, planes, and phenomena are for sale, I would consider doing a price check and seeing if it would be cost effective to purchase one of the decks even if you won’t keep the deck together; to be honest, while my Kaalia of the Vast deck has had many changes from the preconstructed version, for quite some time (maybe no longer as it’s been changed since Avacyn Restored’s release) I saved money buying the deck than buying singles. This could be true for these Planechase precons as well, although I can’t be sure. Regardless, they’re not the best constructed decks, which I’ve come to expect from Wizards, to be honest.

If you’re not sure about Planechase, it’s going to be in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013. Picking up that game is a good idea, especially if you’re a newer player or have friends who are newer players or aren’t players but you’d like to teach them how to play. It’s probably the best way to learn Magic as the tutorials are decent and the decks are usually simple enough while still being fun to run. You’ll have to check for yourself, but there’s always the possibility of a demo for the game including Planechase play, which would give you an idea if you want to get D13 and if you’d want to introduce Planechase to your group, and getting those two birds with one stone is always a good idea. I’m not sure if a demo for D13 would include Planechase, but it’s certainly worth a look. I did this with Archenemy and D12; playing Archenemy on D12 cemented the fact that I would like it before I picked up the schemes I liked.

Planechase’s Planar Invaders

One last thing: I mentioned before that one of the things that’s great about variants like Planechase is that you can just add it to whatever you’re already doing. If Commander is getting boring, throw in Planechase (probably the one big planar deck for everyone version, as that’s at least what I’ve seen more often)! And if Planechase is getting boring, you can throw in Archenemy.

For instance, Adam Styborski created a really flavorful format called Planar Invaders, which he unveiled at the Mothership here. The idea is to combine the formats to create the flavor of an extraplanar army invading a plane, and the plane’s natives fighting them off. The game is played with two teams, the Invaders and the Natives, and the Invaders create a 10-card scheme deck and the Natives choose a single plane to be the location. The Invaders can pay {4} on their turns to set a new scheme in motion, and the Natives can pay {4} on their turns to activate the Chaos ability of the plane (no more rolling dice since you never leave the plane, and schemes aren’t set in motion each turn as normal). The Invader team goes first, and players on each team take their turn at the same time as their teammates, just like in Two-Headed Giant and how the Opposition team plays in Archenemy. However, life totals and blocking is like Archenemy, not Two-Headed Giant; each player has their own life total and can only block for themselves.

Surely this format requires even more set-up than Planechase or Archenemy themselves do separately, but I think it would be really cool to try out. Certainly if you like both formats trying to combine them is worth an attempt, and I think Planar Invaders would be more interesting for the flavor than just adding Planechase to Archenemy or giving everyone in a Planar Magic game a deck of Archenemy schemes a la the Supervillain Rumble variant.

If Planar Invaders doesn’t show the flavor of the invasion of a plane enough for you, and you don’t mind even more complicated variants, add in Emperor. Emperor is best with 6 players (although 10 works too and I’ve seen it played with 8, but 6 is easier to understand) on two teams.

The players on each team are arranged as shown, with the Generals from each team sitting across from each other. The Generals have a “range of influence 1,” which means that they may only attack the General sitting across from them (e.g., A can attack F, but not D),and can only target the players, spells, and permanents of the opponent across from them and their teammate next to them (so A can target F and B, but no one else). The Emperors have a range of influence 2, so they can target anyone. If a player is removed from the game, this affects the range; for instance, if A defeats F, now A can target the Emperor E and Emperor B and Emperor E can target each other. If that sounds complicated, it’s really not, it’s just not easy to explain.

I think adding Emperor to Planar Invaders would help with the flavor of an invading force clashing with a defending native one, as the Generals represent different armies fighting on different battlefields across the plane, with the Emperors acting as the base commanders (in my mind, the generals mentioned in Pink Floyd’s When the Tigers Broke Free, at least if and when one or both of their Generals lose the game).

Putting this Post to Bed

Planechase is certainly a good way of shaking things up, since no one has to build special decks for it, and with one of the variants, only one person needs the planes. Plus, with Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, you can even check out the format before you try and introduce your group to it. I don’t know much about D13, but maybe its demo will allow you to try out Planechase without even having to buy that. You can give it a test run and then decide if you want either or both D13 and to pick up those oversized planes. If you’re Magic playing is getting a little stale, you owe it to yourself to try out Planechase and to your group to try and get them into it if you find out you like it. The worst it can be is another boring game, but you might just find yourself loving Magic again.