Okay, so, I was trying to help my friend, Brian, with his deck. Three Isamaru or four? Is Jitte outdated in mono-White? What is everyone else going to be playing anyway? Is mono-Blue control capable of dealing with Red/White? And Gifts Ungiven...
Gah, I so don't care.
Where was I? Ah, right... Limited. It's like sinking into a bubbly hot tub; thinking about Limited gets me all relaxed and content. That and this handy "free-segue" coin bring me to my next topic.
During their heyday, the European empires controlled a frightening chunk of the colonized world. At times, especially during the beginning, it was a race to see who could find more land to claim. Of course, later, when all the land had been snarfed up, the empires turned instead to fighting over who owned the most land and civil uprisings for independence and yadda, yadda, yadda, history lesson, history lesson, pfft. The important thing is that there were five major factions in the colonial era; the English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Dutch split into changing dichotomies, turning friend and foe on each other over the centuries.
Gameplaying often reflects this complex five-faction synergy, a constant foil against any partnership attempting control over the remaining three players. In Magic, this plays out in the five colors, never allowing any one color or color combination dominance over the others (Rock beats Scissors, etc.). Where else, then, could it be more appropriate to display this defeat of symmetry than a game of five-player Magic?
Just last weekend my playgroup was complaining about not having enough draft formats for an odd number of people. We were five strong (okay, I admit, slightly weak and it may or may not have been midnight) and determined to draft and play. Here are some of the successes, the nicely ripened and ready-to-eat fruits of our labor.
All of these formats were designed specifically with the five-player model at heart. However, some of them are clearly viable with more or less players. Sheesh, don't limit yourselves!
Fox and Geese (5 players)
Speed: A short draft with haggling
Resources: (45 random cards) / player
Skill: Sharing in multiplayer, evaluating cards based on win-condition
If you've never had the opportunity to play Fox and Geese, it's a game about inequalities. Played on a typical Solitaire pegboard (a cross of pegholes three wide at each of the four points), the player with the one Fox is trying to capture all the Geese while the many Geese are trying to hedge the Fox into a position from which it can't move.
Randomly assign one player to be the Fox (you know, the player towards whom everyone feels aggressive). The rest of the players are the Geese. The draft is quite simple. Shuffle all the cards together and flip five face up. The Fox chooses one card to draft. Then the Geese get to squabble over how they will share the drafting of the other four cards (each goose getting one card). Rinse. Repeat.
After the draft is complete, everyone will have their 45 cards from which to make a 40-card minimum deck and will begin the game with 20 life. The Fox plays first yet still gets its initial draw. Gee, it's nice being the Fox.
Oh, wait. The Fox has to kill (capture) all the Geese before the Geese deck (disable) the Fox. The Geese do not lose if they are decked and the Fox does not lose it has 0 life. That's it. Quite simple. Okay, well, no, not really.
Geese are cooperating but do not share resources in any way. They can not target any of the Fox's permanents or spells (or cards in graveyard or whatever) unless that permanent or spell has affected that goose in a direct manner on that turn. (If a creature attacks goose C, then goose C can Shock it. If a spell would cause goose B to sacrifice a creature, then goose B can Mana Leak it. If an enchantment causes goose D to gain two life, well I suppose goose D can Naturalize or Boomerang it.) The Geese can, however, target the Fox directly (or attack the Fox, if it helps in some way). The Fox can do what it likes, distributing its attack among Geese if it desires.
To make it more challenging for the Fox, give that player a deck maximum rather than a deck minimum. If the Geese are smart, they should win more often than the Fox.
The most important lesson to be taken from a game of Fox and Geese is that of objectives and how the perceived values for cards differ depending on the environment. A card like Careful Study, with its incredible card disadvantage, shines brightest in a world that thrives on flashback and threshold. Shatter soars in a world of artifacts. Geese cackle about the Dimir and Foxes drool over Reito Lantern.
Five-Headed Giant (5 Players)
Speed: Simultaneous drafting, controlled, slightly lengthy, about an hour
Resources: (60 random cards) / player, preferably from one set
Skill: Resource management and exploitation, planning ahead
To explain this draft, one must begin with the gameplay first. This was a very, as certain designers would call it, "top-down" approach.
During each round of the game, the five players represent the five heads of one giant. However, the giant only has two arms. At the beginning of each round, the player who has the right arm is randomly selected (if you play this format a few times, you can have some other trigger, such as the player with the least life, the most creatures, the largest hand size, etc.). The player to the right of the Right-Armed Head is the Left-Armed Head. The giant then has three more heads between these two players. Voila, a five-headed giant. Note: the two heads with arms are not connected.
Each round begins with the Middle Head and proceeds to the left (Middle Head, Port Head, Left-Armed Head, Right-Armed Head, Starboard Head). The Middle Head, on her turn, untaps all permanents from both heads connected to her in addition to her own. She then has complete control over all of the permanents that these three players control for the duration of the turn (and the Port and Starboard Heads lose control of those permanents until the same time). The Middle Head can not attack though. She has no arms. The Port Head repeats this process.
Then it's the Left-Armed Head's turn. He gets to untap only the Port Head's and his own permanents and gain control of them. He, however, can attack the Right-Armed Head at this juncture with the creatures he controls. The Right-Armed Head controls only her permanents at this point, but she can ask for help in defending from the creatures that the Starboard Head controls. The play is the same for the two heads on the right as it is for the two heads on the left on their respective turns, with the Right-Armed Head getting a chance to abuse her permanents and the Starboard Head's permanents.
The game continues in this way until one of the heads dies. Players can target any head with spells and abilities, but only the two heads with arms can declare any attacks. Whenever a head would die, remove it completely from the giant's body. Suddenly there is only a Four-Headed Giant. If the removed head was one of the arms, there are no more attacks this round; however, the player sitting next to the missing head-with-an-arm is adjacent to only one head for the remainder of the round. The next round begins anew as a Four-Headed Giant again with two arms. The game continues until two players are left, at which point it digresses into a normal two-player game.
Now, for the draft, you are obviously quite concerned with the cards taken by the players on either side of you. The game works with any draft, but one of the most pleasurable is a Solomon variant.
Sitting at the draft table as the players will sit during the game, each player takes 4 cards from the draft pile. They distribute these four cards to the other four players. Everyone flips their cards face up in front of them visible for all to see (everyone will have 4 cards).
Keep repeating this process with one proviso. You can not give a card to a player if someone adjacent to the recipient has already "drafted" that card. This format is especially good with cards all from one set.
This idea originally sprouted from a desire to play magic where all the players had a common enemy. We decided that it was just too much fun beating up on each other, but kept many of the elements of a complex cooperative environment.
Rainbow Vineyard (5 Players)
Speed: Snowballing draft, about 45 minutes
Resources: (3 packs) or (45 random cards) / player
Skill: Limiting your opponents' draft options
Before the draft starts, everyone chooses or is randomly assigned one of the colors exclusively (5 players, 5 different colors). Magic colors. Not fuchsia. No one can pick fuchsia. The players sit at the draft table in a ring adjacent to friendly colors (White, Green, Red, Black, Blue works).
The first player (we'll call her Green) opens a pack (or picks up 15 of the random cards). Green shows the pack to the person on her left (Red) and Green drafts a card. The card's color may not be either of Green's enemies (i.e. not blue or black). Red can offer his advice and begging, but the end decision will be Green's. After drafting a card, Green passes the pack to Red who repeats this process with Black. As the pack is passed around until it is completely drafted, players may find themselves unable to select a card. So sad.
In the next pack, randomly choose one of the remaining four players to open his or her pack first. Repeat the process until everyone has had the opportunity to open one of his or her packs.
Now, in the same manner, randomly choose a player to open his or her second pack. During this round of pack opening, a player chooses two cards to draft following the same rules as in the first pack with the additional rule that the two cards can not share a color. After everyone has a chance to open their second pack, do it again with the third pack and choosing three cards, all of which can not share a color. If a player can not pick two or three cards, s/he picks as many as possible.
To keep things even, the second set of packs should go around the table in the opposite direction from the first and third packs. Because of how limiting the last pack is in options, this works very well in granting players cards in their main color.
Players make normal 40-card decks, though there will be plenty of three-color monstrosities.
The gameplay is quite simple. Use a die to keep track of which round it is. During the first round of turns, everyone adds one mana of their color to their mana pool at the beginning of their respective upkeeps (this mana lasts until the end of the turn, at which point it will cause mana burn if it wasn't used). During the second round, they add two mana. Third: three. Continue until someone wins. The game works in full Chaos mode (everyone for themselves), in a dedicated enemy mode (you can only attack the two people across the table from you and only win when both of your enemies are dead), or in your favorite multiplayer format.
Five-color cards are undraftable in Rainbow Vineyard. Just toss them aside. Oh, and don't bother trying to draft this with Ravnica only. It's completely unfair to the red seat. Although, I'm sure you could slap together some house rules to shore up the sides of the format. However, after the next two sets are debuted, Rainbow Vineyard will again function properly in Ravnica block.
A note on multiplayer: in any of these formats, allow a free mulligan at the start of the game. There's nothing more annoying than getting just a stupid, unlucky hand and being forced to play with two lands until you die. The first player should also probably draw a card on his or her first turn; getting the "play" in multiplayer is nowhere near enough of an advantage.
Playing with an awkward group size should never dissuade one from Magic. We love this game; don't give up just because someone will be left out. Instead, don't leave them out! Afterwards, you can all staple colonial era flags to your sleeves and talk in your best fake foreign accents. Maybe one of you five can strike up the jolly roger and turn pirate against those Dutch scallywags. But the least you can do is play a wee game of Magic first.
Always, have fun.
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