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Welcome to the world of Magicopoly!By Gregory on August 15th, 2005 · Filed in Variant Formats · 8 CommentsA LONG TIME AGO, ON A COMPUTER FAR, FAR AWAY, THERE WAS: MAGICOPOLY [Star Wars theme tune plays…….] Anyhoo, I’ve created a casual format called – yes, you guessed it – Magicopoly. It is, like the name implies, a blend of Magic and Monopoly creating a game that is, actually, quite fun. In this article, I will give you a swift tour of what Magicopoly is, the cards that are best to play in the format and the cards to avoid playing. But, before I continue, if anyone wants to play a quick and fast game, then this article is not for you. So, to cut the useless puns and get to the chase, here are the not-so-official official rulings of Magicopoly: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - HOW TO PLAY MAGICOPOLY Starting the game – how to and when to: Magicopoly requires two to four players. At the start of the game, each shuffles a copy of the Magicopoly card into their library. At any time during the game of Magic, if a copy of the card Magicopoly is drawn, the player who drew that copy reveals it. If two or more Magicopoly cards are drawn at he same time, reveal them both. In either case all players choose up to seven basic lands that they control and remove their copy of the Magicopoly card from the game, searching their library for it if needed. They also choose up to one creature they control and shuffle all other, non-chosen permanents, their library and their graveyard they control into one library. This library may be known as the ‘Community Chest’. The players then rearrange their lands so that they make a square like this: [Diagram coming soon.] If less than four players are playing, then set down cards face down form the top of the Community Chest to replace the corresponding row of lands. If a player does not have enough lands to make their row of the 7x7 square, they take the first card off the Community Chest and place it face down to fill in the gaps in their row of cards. Players may not look at that card and during the game it counts as an empty space and no effect happens when a creature lands on it. After each player has done this, each player places his or her chosen creature on to one of their lands and rolls a 20-sided die. The player with the highest roll starts the game. Each player takes turns during Magicopoly like in a normal Magic game. As already stated, the player who rolls the highest roll on the 20-sided die starts the game and starts their turn first. He or she may choose the order of play (clockwise or anticlockwise i.e. whether Player 2 or Player 4 goes next if Player 1 starts) and draw a card at the beginning of his or her turn. All other players do not automatically draw a card at the beginning of their turn. Otherwise, players play a turn in the following manner. Phases in the turn: They do this by first having an Untap Phase. Then there is an Upkeep phase and they then continue by rolling a 6-sided die for each creature they control. They then move their creatures around the board equal to their dice roll in the chosen direction of play. If a creature is positioned on an untapped land you do not controlafter a move, the following effects trigger: 1. If the creature is tapped, it is dealt 2 damage. 2. If the land has one or more counters on it, the following penalties are issued:
After this is done, they may pay 4 mana of any colour to put a counter on one of their lands (lands may only have up to three counters on them) or pay 2 mana of any colour to draw a card from the Community Chest. They then choose to play any spells or to attack a player as in Magic (i.e. tapping the correct number of lands to play spells or abilities and tapping their creature to attack). After they have chosen whether or not to attack or play any spells, they then end their go with the ending phases and the next player starts his or her go. Rules and conditions and other areas of the game: THE JAIL: · At the end of the starting players row, they take the top card of the Community Chest and place it face down on either end of their row of lands. This card may be known as the ‘Jail’ and counts as a possible landing spot. The starting player owns the Jail. The Jail cannot be targeted or destroyed. · If a creature lands on the Jail, that creature stays there until one of the following events happen 1) That creature’s controller rolls a six. The creature then returns to play on its owner's side. 2) The owner of the Jail taps all his lands and does not untap them on their next Untap Step. The creature then returns to play on the Jail's owner's side. THE GRAVEYARD – OR RATHER, THE LACK THEREOF: During Magicopoly, when a spell would be put into a graveyard (after being cast, or discarded, or countered, etc.), it is instead shuffled it into the Community Chest. THE NUMBER OF PERMANENTS ON THE BOARD: · A player may control up to five non-basic land, non-creature permanents. Place these in front of their five middle lands. These do not count as possible landing spaces for creatures moving around the board. · A player may control no more than five creatures. If a spell would cause them to control more than five then they may shuffle creatures that they control into the Community Chest so that they only control five, otherwise they do not gain control of those creatures and they are shuffled into the Community Chest. Token creatures are removed from the game. · A player may control no more than seven basic lands. · If at any time a player draws a basic land, and they do not control seven, they may replace the empty space with their land and shuffle the card put there at the start of the game into the Community Chest. They may only do this once a turn. ·If a player controls less than two lands, they may play with their hand revealed. If they choose to, they may, at the beginning of their upkeep, search the Community Chest for a basic land and put it into their hand. · Enchant Creatures or Equipment move spaces with the creature they are attached or enchanted to. They add to the total of non-creature, non-basic land permanents a player controls. · If a player were to gain control of a non-creature, non-basic land permanent and they already have five, they may shuffle one of those permanents into the Community Chest to allow themselves to control it. Otherwise, the non-creature, non-basic land permanent is shuffled into the Community Chest. This rule works for creatures when a player controls the maximum number of five, and for basic lands when a player controls a maximum of seven. THE LIBRARY: · At any time a player may shuffle two cards from his or her hand into the Community Chest. If they do this, they may draw a card. · All effects that affect ‘your library’ instead affect the whole Community Chest. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Yes, I know that’s a lot to swallow, but now I have any potential players' full attention. Before I continue though, I can hear some of you whining about something. What’s that you say? ‘How do I get a ‘Magicopoly’ card?’ Well… MAKE YOUR OWN. It’s easy, stick a blank piece of paper on a Chimney Imp, write ‘Magicopoly’, and there you have it – simple isn’t it? So, I suspect we’re ready now and can move onto strategy. After the Magicopoly card is drawn, you’ll be surprised how much the game changes. Read the rules again. There are different rules for drawing, lands and the number of permanents in play. I personally think that the game gets slightly more challenging and tactical, but enough about me, this article is for you. So, I present to you: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE DOWNRIGHT UGLY: THE GOOD: When the real game of Magicopoly starts, the game of Magic gets turned upside down. New areas of play can be abused in different ways. Basically, there are three areas that really matter:
Arc Slogger becomes extra useful too once you have the right conditions. It has the potential to shut down opponents when you no longer need a library. At R needed for each activation, you could get rid of half the library if you wanted in one go. Lastly, cards that let you to look at the library’s top X cards, or draw X-Y cards are more useful. One benefit from the fact that the Community Chest is all players' decks combined is that you can manipulate the library to put the cards you want on top. For example: say you turn up with a monoblue counter/control deck, and your opponent appears with a monored Goblin deck. Paying 2 to draw a card you don’t even want adds injury to the insult that you have to pay to draw anyway. But now, I’ll move onto the lack of the graveyard. Of course the obvious benefit is that spells and permanents both get a 2nd, 3rd, 500th chance. But there are other benefits too. Cards like Travelling Plague become extra good as they become a one way spell. Gravestorm and the like basically become ‘Draw a card at the beginning of your turn,’ and cards that cause you to sacrifice permanents become that much better, with Sneak Attack probably improving the most. Finally, I’ll talk about the in-play zone. Many of you by now should have noticed the limitations on the number of permanents you can have in play. These rules are there to make sure a game of Magicopoly doesn’t get too crowded. Strategically speaking, you can turn the game around by taking advantage of these limitations. But the limitation also works in another way. Because of it, when each player has maxed out their creature spaces, attacking and blocking can simply become a show of who’s got the most power and toughness. When your opponent suddenly decides to play that 9/9 you’ve always feared to fill the last space available for creatures, having an Elvish Piper to bring out a Darksteel Colossus is a good situation. And you don’t even need to have a spare space available; a 1/1 and a tap for an 11/11 isn’t exactly what you’d call a bad deal. Also, Grab the Reins becomes part of a combo with Elvish Piper. By playing it to gain control of a random creature to fill your last spot, you can tap the Piper to put a creature into play from your hand and get rid of the creature you targeted with Grab the Reins. Two birds with one stone. In general, because of the limitation, even though players can always return a creature on the field to their hand when playing another one, playing creatures becomes more tactical. Most evasion may not gain more of an effect, although flying probably becomes a bit better. THE BAD: There are downsides to the changes in game play. With a shared deck, decks that count on you drawing the correct cards become ruined. So say goodbye to any kind of Enchantress decks in this format. Unfortunately, having no graveyard will have more than two lines of bad comments. Firstly, graveyard abilities, like Threshold and Flashback, become useless. And of course we then meet one of the most well known green creatures – Eternal Witness. Her graveyard ability is absolutely amazing rubbish in Magicopoly. In fact, reanimation in general doesn't work. But one whole area in Magicopoly is so horrible, it can’t be mentioned. Its name makes small children cry, and adults shudder with fear. It is so terrible; you’ll have to wait until the next section to find out what it is. Now, straying away from bad themes like that, I move on to what not to play in terms of creatures, lands and other permanents. Of course creatures that need other creatures to work aren’t very good. When you have a limit on what creatures are in play, having three puny clerics out to hopefully get that Scion of Darkness isn’t a good idea. Each creature needs to be worth any other creature in your deck -- or your opponents', if it’s possible to play them. Also on the subject of what creatures should have is high power and toughness, especially in the late game situation where players might have decided to monopolize their lands, and just moving around the table can cause damage. So those puny clerics only need to land once to be killed off. Lastly, as I just remembered the combo: Squirrel decks = bad idea when those 20 + squirrel tokens you’ve created immediately die off. I know this section is more than half as short as the first, but I suppose that that’s good when it implies that there are twice as many good sides as there are bad with the ruling twists. THE UGLY!: We now get onto, in my opinion, one of the hardest things to play in Magicopoly. And that thing is [gulp] DISCARD! Well, I suppose it isn’t that bad, but it isn’t that great either. Although it slows the opponent down by returning their hand into their library, they can always draw the cards again. And although they’ll have to pay two, you won’t be drawing cards any faster either. So, I may have made it sound worse than it is, but discard is one tactic you should stay away from. After all, when they have access to your cards, it may just be turned on you. EXTRA! – Deck Ideas! I knew that if I left you with tactics, I had to give you some idea of where to use them. So basically, here are a few ways to channel any wisdom you may have picked up on this journey into the world of Magicopoly. Firstly, I must point out that even though I'm giving you deck ideas, most normal decks work fine in Magicopoly and the game probably becomes more interesting when the centre card of your deck becomes worthless. Half the fun is figuring out how to manipulate your opponents’ cards to work towards your strategy. But on with decks designed for Magicopoly. A good deck to play would be slivers because even if your opponent gets their hands on them, they benefit you. I would say that when playing a sliver deck, especially a multicoloured one, lean towards a certain colour, with probably blue, black and green being the best options. If you do this, even when your opponent plays your own Muscle Sliver, you can respond to it by bouncing it back to their hand, destroying it or pumping up one of your own creatures. But there is something very tricky about playing slivers in Magicopoly. To me, one of the best things to be able to do in Magicopoly is to be able to strike a balance between how many colours to play. If you turn up with a five colour monstrosity, and your opponent only packs one colour, he’ll be helping you more than you’ll be helping him. But when you start lowering the colour count, and with the more colour combinations you can have, the harder it will be to use your opponent’s deck. So being able to play multi-colour without supporting the land for it is important. Green immediately springs to mind with Birds of Paradise and Utopia Tree, but artifacts seem more resilient in a world where moving around the table can cause damage. Although they are more vulnerable to your opponents using them, it’s up to you to decide the best strategy. You must also be prepared for the Magicopoly change to happen at any time. Remember, the card can be drawn in the starting hand, in the first few turns of the game, or in a late game situation where half the board is destroyed to suit the limitations. Players will be left with one creature and a mana supply, so when you decide to choose your BoP, it probably won’t stand up to the Enormous Baloth the opposite side of the playing field. So basically, be prepared for anything. Lastly though, I’ll give you ideas on manipulating counters. If you read the rules carefully, you’ll see that no specific counter type is mentioned. Suddenly, those depletion lands aren’t so bad. I won’t touch on this much though, as half the fun of Magic is finding out new ways to use cards. And in Magicopoly, there are LOTS of new ways. GOODBYE: I’m afraid I have to end there though. I hope you enjoy this format, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it too. I am really keen on hearing comments on it though and how well it plays, as unfortunately I haven’t had time to play it much. Anyway, there lot’s more to discover about the twist and turns of Magicopoly. There are lots to learn and manipulate, so basically, have fun! - GERG .
By Gregory on August 15th, 2005 · Filed in Variant Formats · 8 Comments
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