Friday, 29 August 2008

MTG Territory Campaign, Draft #1 - Please comment!

Preparations

Each player chooses three decks to play with, and three counters to represent them as “armies” on a tiled map. The colour of each tile must be determined; these will have an effect on later game modifiers. Tiles may be multicoloured. Then, the map’s territories are divided in a manner agreed to by the players, and the armies placed in turns on friendly tiles.


Turn Sequence (The game is played with each player playing the whole of their turn before moving on to the next players turn.)

1. Maneuver

Move one army of your choice to an adjacent tile. No two armies may be on the same tile.

2. Attack

Move one army of your choice to an adjacent enemy tile. This may be an army you have already moved. If there is an enemy army in that tile, play a game of magic against the deck represented by that army. If there is no enemy army in that tile, play a game against the tile garrison.

END TURN

Garrisons

When you conquer a new territory with an army, you automatically set up a garrison in that territory. When this territory is attacked and there is no defending army, the defender plays with the territory garrison. The garrison is formed of 25 random cards from the deck that conquered the territory. These cards are chosen by shuffling the full deck, and setting out the 25 cards for the game, without looking at the cards not used.

If a defending army is situated on a friendly tile, it may choose to change the garrison so that from then on it is composed of 25 cards from that deck. This situation may arise for example when you maneuver an army to a territory you previously conquered with another army.


Defending

The defending player of a territory always gains the bonus of one basic land card already deployed in that territory. This card is chosen at random to prevent decks which only “splash” in a certain colour from gaining an unfair advantage. The deck is shuffled, then cards revealed from the top of the deck until a basic land card is revealed. This card is put into play tapped during the upkeep of the defenders first turn.

This represents the defensive preparations done by the defenders.


Attacking

When playing the campaign, a dice is always thrown to determine who gains first turn. In the case of a draw, the attacker may choose who goes first. In addition, the attacker may choose to apply a +1 or -1 modifier to his or her dice roll.

This represents the attacking force being able to choose a strategically advantageous moment of attack.



Colour Modifiers.

Decks that contain cards which match the colour of the tile where they play against another deck may choose to apply the modifiers of that colour. Decks can only be eligible for the modifiers of one colour at a time.

e.g. A white blue deck plays on a tile with plains and a river (ie. white and blue.) The owner of the deck must choose to apply either the white modifiers or the blue modifiers.


Green

The player receives a “spell counter” which they may remove at any time to perform the following instant.

All of your green creatures in play gain +0/+1 until the end of turn.

The player may lay two lands instead of one during his or her first turn.

White

The player receives a “spell counter” which they may remove at any time to perform the following instant.

Prevent all damage that would be dealt to target creature.

The player begins the game with 23 life instead of 20.

Black

The player receives a “spell counter” which they may remove at any time to perform the following instant.

Place a -1/-1 counter on target creature.

At the beginning of your opponent's first turn, he or she discards a card at random.

Blue

The player receives a “spell counter” which they may remove at any time to perform the following instant.

Draw 2 cards.

The player may draw 8 cards instead of 7 at the start of the game.

Red

The player receives a “spell counter” which they may remove at any time to perform the following instant.

Deal 2 damage to target creature.

The player may reduce one red mana from the converted mana cost of the first spell they play.

3 comments:

The Narrator said...

I think the green's weak spell counter one is balanced by the frankly quite good ability of being able to lay 2 lands.

Any suggestions for the blue one?

And to be honest, I dont think they have to be exactly balanced anyway, it's not that serious.

The idea behind the garrison is that as its not a full army, it wont be able to last very long. Despite this, it has a chance to win due to the extra land defender bonus.

Im not sure what you mean by custom deck building though, since the garrison will be formed randomly out of an main deck.

Pyry said...

Sounds nice. I don't think colour mods need to be balanced.

"- search your library for a green creature card and put it into play"

Broken. I hope you meant put it into your hand.


Could all the colours have more than one spell counter? All of them could use just one but it would be nice to be able to have choices.

Garrison thing sure makes some decks worse but I don't think its a bad thing at all. I have nothing against nerfing combo decks.

I came up with an alternative idea for spell counters. Decks could choose any lets say 2 mana common of their colour and start the game with this card removed from the game. They could play this card any time that card would be normally played. If this sounds too cheesy make it 2 mana tenth edition common. Maybe even 3 mana. Mono-coloured decks could choose two spells since they don't have so many "own" colour tiles. Just throwing an idea.

The Narrator said...

Ok... I'll just let you two figure out the colour bonnuses :D