a contest of magic for 2-5 players

rules.rst

Goal

To start with a shuffled pool of magic cards and allow 2-5 players to immediately start playing a limited format that will usually terminate in under an hour.

Requirements

the game is played with a shuffled pool of cards containg spells and land as well as one of each basic land per player. This is basically a cube or booster packs shuffled with basic land but we do not know the optimal makeup.

Zones

We replace the library with two additional zones, draw piles and the shoe. The zones are the same as ordinary magic except as follows.

• red cards.
• instants and sorceries.
• those cards owned by the emperor.
• those that are not included in this classification.

shoe

starts the game containing the randomized pool of cards for that game. The size of the shoe is not defined.

draw piles(pack)

each player and the passed draw pile is dealt a seven card draw pile to start the game. a player may look at his or her draw pile at will.

passed draw pile

This is a draw pile that no player currently controls. It exists merely to keep the passing of cards atomic.

hand

a players hand starts with one of each the 5 basic lands.

Game Play

during each turn a player:

1. untaps

2. draw phase: the draw phase is broken into two actions.

   1. replenishes, adds cards from the shoe to his or pack until the pack contains 7 cards.
   2. picks, chooses one card from his or her pack and adds it to his or her hand. He or she becomes the owner of that card.

3. main phase

4. combat phase

5. second main phase

6. end step

7. pass step the player exchanges his or her pack for the pack in the passed pack zone.

Mechanics:

draw

whenever you would draw a card, replenish your pack, then pick.

scry, fateseal, search, shuffle etc

effects that would use a library use the shoe instead.

mulligan

if your pack contains 5 or more lands you may reveal it, exile it then replenish.

Termination

• the game ends when all but one or fewer players has lost or at least one player has won.
• if the shoe is depleted replenish effects are ignored.
• if a player cannot pick a card all players lose one life.
• If after after all players have taken a turn the gamestate does not change due to any effects those effects are ignored for the rest of the game.(because this game is going to terminate).

search is insanely powerful.

perhaps the library refers to the top n cards of the shoe at any given point where n is chosen before the game... maybe m*7 where m is based on the number of players? still breaks search perhaps even more. maybe search is the top n cards but the shuffle is all of them.

scry could give you slightly more deck manipulation so you can replace cards anywhere in the deck or in multiples of the number of players from the top or something so you can still draw them on your next turn. but I'm less interested in patching that unless it becomes a problem.