Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats General

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Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats General

Postby Jeph » 23 Mar 2013, 20:54

This week's TTC mentioned Commander + Planechase, which is a ridiculously amazing format in its own right. We put together a more ridiculous, if slightly less amazing, format over the past few weeks of JephNM (my narcissistic in-house-FNM for my broke friends). Commandchase Vanguarchenemyis exactly what it says on the tin: a combo platter of Commander, Planechase, Vanguard, and Archenemy. It's best with 4 players, but we've played it with 8 players and a Two-Headed Giant style dual Archenemy setup (that game, incidentally, lasted for about 9 hours if I remember correctly).

Everyone makes a Commander deck, picks a Vanguard, and brings 20 Planechase cards. The Archenemy brings their own schemes as well, of course. The non-Archenemy players start with 40 life (adjusted by their Vanguard, if applicable), while the Archenemy player starts with 80 (or 160 in the case of the THG Archenemy variant). The standard rule about taking 21 damage from a single Commander is thrown out because that's lame and makes the game over too quickly.

So, what ridiculous formats has your local playgroup come up with over the years?
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Dubious_wolf » 23 Mar 2013, 21:39

Oh my god that's just insane....
^( " )^
winner!
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Jeph » 24 Mar 2013, 06:00

I sometimes worry that CV has driven me insane and that everything since that day has been a fever dream while I waste away in an Asylum...
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Docbrown » 13 Apr 2013, 23:48

We do weird tournament formats.
Ex. Sealed tourney.
After a match players swap decks and card pools.
Winners get the "worse" pools.
Losers end up with the "best" pools.
Makes it challenging.

Comandraft
Bring a commander.
Draft cards.
Play commander.

Guildmage decks.
Limited sized decks with only guildmages.

Foresight games
Upside down decks.
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Drecon » 14 Apr 2013, 12:02

Aren't the ideas of Vanguard and Commander generally the same?
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby DSmaster21 » 14 Apr 2013, 12:14

Vanguard is different often they change your starting life and hand size while any effect that your commander has applies mainly while it is on the field. I haven't ever played vanguard so sorry for the vague reply but I think that those are the main things.
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Drecon » 14 Apr 2013, 13:03

I know, I've played Vanguard. I meant more philosophically than technically.
I mean, both are about having a single 'avatar' that basically leads the army right? I just couldn't bring myself to mix both. It seems... wrong somehow.
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby phlip » 14 Apr 2013, 18:27

They're sort of similar... Commander you have one important creature that motivates your deck and strategy. Vanguard you have one important enchantment (essentially) that motivates your deck and strategy.
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Drecon » 15 Apr 2013, 04:33

Another nice format me and a bunch of friends thought up a few years ago:

you play a 100-card deck (although it would work equally well with 60 I guess), and each card has to meet certain arbitrary criteria. Criteria such as:

1: The art must feature a hat
2: The rules text must have at least three different numbers in it.
3: The art must be a different color than the card itself.
4: An un-card.

We compiled a large list of these kinds of criteria and then everyone made their decks.
Neither of the decks looked anything alike and we had a blast playing it. Well worth our effort.
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Rootbreaker » 16 Apr 2013, 08:26

The most ridiculous format my group has played was commander planechase octant.

We had each occupied octant zone have its own plane. It was truly horrible. It went way too slowly.

Our most common format though, is something that you don't really hear about anywhere either. Emperor draft. Our group doesn't really like politics in Magic, so we tend to prefer team games.

We play emperor where everyone has a spell/ability range of two, and an attack range of one, so each flank can target their allies and opposing emperor, and the enemy flank next to them, but not the enemy flank three seats from them. We also don't limit non-targeted spells. Wrath of god still hits the whole table.

We've also developed 8 and 9 player emperor formats, with three flanks per team and three teams respectively. When we have 10 or 11 players, we do 2 six-player emperor drafts and one or two players play in both emperor drafts simultaneously. In narrow rooms, this can often lead to one player running from one end of the table to the other while drafting.

The emperors are chosen ahead of time, so they tend to draft a deck with very few creatures (utility creatures or those powerful enough to win a game after their flank goes down) and lots of mana fixing, card drawing, removal, counterspells, and combat tricks.
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Drecon » 16 Apr 2013, 12:31

Another fun thing we did mack in school was that we had five players and did a colored star format (no worries I'll explain).

First everone was assigned a color. There were five players and everyone got a different color (I got green). Then everyone built a deck with just commons from Odyssey and Torment (the most recent sets back then).

Next was playing. We played a STAR format. This means that the players sit in a pentagram (or if you want to be boring, a circle) and each player has to eliminate both the players opposite him. As we were sitting in WUBRG order this meant that the green player has to eliminate blue and black, white the black player has to eliminate green and white (and so on).

Both the restrictions of all commons and the political aspects of protecting your allies, although their allies are your enemies made it a really fun experience (although white proved to be impossible to kill in that format).

I guess this format wouldn't really work with Ravnica, but I'm sure it will be possible in most formats. The field is even because everyone is restricted to commons and doing something so different makes for really fun games.
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby Rootbreaker » 17 Apr 2013, 07:29

We play star all the time too when we have 5 or 7, but without color restrictions on decks.

Your goal is to defeat the two players opposite you. We minimize politics by allowing multiple winners. Once you defeat your two opponents, you win and leave the game, but if there are still players in the game after that who have opponents, they continue to play until all players either win or are eliminated.
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Re: Commandchase Vanguarchenemy OR Ridiculous Formats Genera

Postby AzureAngel17 » 17 Apr 2013, 13:01

Another great Star alternative is to use Ravnican guilds. You can use the Intro Packs from RtR, Gatecrash, or Dragon's Maze, since each one shares each color with one other deck in the same set and the decks tend to be pretty evenly matched. A fun twist is to make it respawn with 3 "lives" where each time you come back you can add one of the two packs that are included with the decks (or you can just let people start with the included packs).

My playgroup had a truly epic Star game with the RtR intro packs where Rakdos and Izzet were having full on war with the Selesnya player (who had a second Grove from one of his boosters) as Golgari and Azorious just kind of skirmished on the side.
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