zzo38 (no specific set): Game variants

Rules | Game variants

Many of these variants are strange and may require to use different decks or different cards to work well. Some of them might be able to be worked into some kind of unusual puzzles, though.

None of the below rules are default even if the unofficial rules in the "Rules" page are in use, except that the "Standard Solitaire" rules apply if a duel with a single player begins at the beginning of a match which does not involve any other players.

Standard Solitaire

This is a solitaire variant. All normal rules of a two player game apply, except that the following rules are not used:

104.2a (a player wins if that player has no more opponents in the game)
104.4a (the game is a draw if all remaining players lose simultaneously)
104.4i (players may agree to a draw)

Playing this variant in a good way may require very different decks than a usual game, and is probably not very meaningful except for puzzles which are constructed with situations where this can work.

Marseillais variant

Add one additional turn-based action, which applies during the draw step, before the action of drawing a card. This action is: The active player takes an extra turn after this one, and skips their draw step during that extra turn.

Unrestricted Commander

A variant of Commander which may use one of both of the following rules:

Unrestricted Commander: Your commander can be any single spell card, whether or not it is a creature and whether or not it is legendary. It cannot be a land.
Loose Color Identity: Your deck need not fully match the color identity of your commander. The minimum number of cards in your starting deck (not including the commander itself) that must satisfy the color identity is twenty, plus five times the number of colors in your commander's color identity. If you have two commanders, then increase this minimum by five more, unless they have the exact same color identity in which case it is increased by only three instead of five.

Cross team draft

Has four players, in teams, one team being AB and other team being YZ.

Each draft round consists of: put twelve random cards face-up, and then players take turns picking a single card per turn. (Exposure is mandatory.)

You will need eight rounds in total. Turn order is A,B,Y,Z,Z,Y,B,A and then repeat; after each round, continue the turn order of the next round from where you left off.

Between the third and fourth round of drafting, make up a random pack of twenty-four cards, but make four copies of it. Each player, in order A,Y,B,Z, picks all of the cards in their copy (in a single turn per player; exposure is mandatory); this does not interrupt the turn order for the normal rounds.

Then you will play game. The sequence of games is:

A vs Y, twice; simultaneously with B vs Z, twice.
A vs Z, twice; simultaneously with B vs Y, twice.
AB vs YZ, twice. This game uses rules of Team vs Team.

Between games (and before the first game), players can exchange cards with their sideboard (including changing the deck size, but the minimum is forty cards), and can add any conventional basic lands that they wish to add.

A player that wins a two player game earns one point for that player's team. A team that wins a four player game earns four points.

Updated on 07 Apr 2023 by zzo38