Planechase in March of the Machines

[WWolfe]

Who is excited for it? I'm looking forward to it. It's been so long since there was something new for Planechase that it'll be refreshing to see something new in it. My group in Va Beach before I moved to Maryland played it all the time at one point, then it just got kind of stale.

[ApothecaryGeist]

I've always liked Planechase.  We used to break them out at Commander Night several years ago.  Haven't in a while.  I suspect the new cards will lead to a resurgence.


My favorite part of the new Planechase is the updated phrase "When Chaos ensues".  That completely encapsulates the concept of Planechase.


Curious @WWolfe ... When you play Planechase, how do you do it?  (not the rules ... the setup).  Do you use a common Planechase deck?  Does each player have their own?  Are you playing Commander?  Or some other build format?


At our LGS, we would play Commander Planechase with one single Planechase deck.

[WWolfe]

One common deck, we included every possible Planechase card. It was Commander 99% of the time. In fact, I can only recall one time that we played anything other than Commander.

[Morganator 2.0]

I've done Planechase a few times. I find that in most games you eventually land on a plane where everyone thinks "good enough" and then no one rolls anymore. Everyone loves Goldmeadow, why leave?

So we'd have to switch it up and require mandatory rolls at the beginning of your turn.

[jlutzxinc]

I never had that problem, because I started out with three rules in no particular order:

• Every turn starts with a mandatory roll, and players can't otherwise roll unless they use Fractured Powerstone (which can be cast and activated for free and at instant speed [activation with permission if it's not your turn], but can't produce mana and can't otherwise be interacted with).

• Every blank face was a mandatory re-roll (whiffing is no fun).  As you can imagine, we went through the Planar Deck FAST.

• This.

Unfortunately, I never got around to improving on that initial premise...in fact (despite the description), this is the first time I've written those other two rules down.

As an interesting side note, PLANECHASE Commander was my group's only format to be hard-locked to exactly four players per session, as a consequence of PLANECHASE rules mandating a minimum Planar Deck size based on the quantity of participants.

Once all of the new cards are revealed, I'll revive that old CPD; if there are new Phenomena, I hope it will be an even number so I can update the player quantity lock accordingly.

[ApothecaryGeist]

I've done Planechase a few times. I find that in most games you eventually land on a plane where everyone thinks "good enough" and then no one rolls anymore. Everyone loves Goldmeadow, why leave?

We would use one of every Planechase card in our communal deck.  (Me and one other guy each owned all of them.  Plus we proxied up a couple additional decks.)  There are so few "good-for-everyone" planes that this seldomly happened.  Mainly it was a mana sink.  And was something everyone could do early in the game.  We also let each player begin the game with a Fractured Powerstone in the command zone.  This led to lots of early die-rolling.


Despite the fast mana that everyone had access too (this was in the days before Arcane Signet), the games went very long.  I think this is way we gradually gravitated away from that format.


I have since found that the best use of Planechase, imho, is for playing 1v1 Commander with decks that are built for multiplayer.  The Planechase deck does a good job of simulating the effects of other players, giving each player an obstacle to overcome before they can eliminate that "final" player.

[jlutzxinc]

We also let each player begin the game with a Fractured Powerstone in the command zone.  This led to lots of early die-rolling.

Ooh, now THAT's a cool idea; I did it my way because I wanted to add some intensity when players opting to main the card DREW it and were therefore able to multiroll when nobody else could.  Now that Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients exists, I'll have to change the rules so Planechase rolls can't trigger him; else he'd become too ubiquitous (aha, finally, a word I never use).

Despite the fast mana that everyone had access too (this was in the days before Arcane Signet), the games went very long.  I think this is way we gradually gravitated away from that format.

That's why I set up my CPD in that specific way; I wanted to force Phenomenal Encounters often enough that it wouldn't extend games by as much.

[Landale]

I'm kind of excited for it.
My group will usually break that out, using an app since none of us actually have any Planechase cards, if we're short people or just wanting things to get weird while playing Commander.

[robort]

I was introduced to planeschase early on in my playing career. Playing with 60 card decks at the time compared to now where it's only commander for me, It is definitely a fun and different aspect of the game. I went out and bought the planeschase anthology because of how much fun it is. My Friday night playgroup lets me bring it out occasionally and they enjoy it, The games normally turn out either we rip through planes like no tommorow or we just stop at a neutral plane that everyone likes and game resumes as normal. I do want to try out these new ones as well. It is just a fun concept when you feel like changing things up just to have something different happen,

[WWolfe]

From what I saw, each is the decks will contain 10 Planechase cards, 5 new and 5 reprint. That should be enough to really spice things up with a good bit of new ones.