Magic the Gathering

Casual

Chasing Planes

Now that Plane­chase has been out for a while and I’ve had time to run a bunch of mul­ti­player games, it seems like a great time to write an arti­cle sum­ming up what this fun prod­uct has to offer. I’m a com­pet­i­tive Magic Online player, but in real-life paper I play almost exclu­sively casual games with casual Magic play­ers. 99% of the time we play pre­con­structed decks against each other, and ever since Plane­chase has been released — that’s all that we play.

Today I’m going to give a brief overview of the for­mat, a run­down of the cur­rent Plane­chase decks, some com­men­tary on play­ing each one, and then a walk­through of a three-player game that I played in ear­lier this week. If you’re inter­ested in Plane­chase, but haven’t taken the plunge yet — this arti­cle should help you decide if this is the set for you.

Let’s say you’ve never heard of Plane­chase, and don’t know what I’m talk­ing about. Here’s where you want to start:

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/51

As you can see, the real dif­fer­ence between Plane­chase and tra­di­tional Magic is the exis­tence of Plane cards. Each Plane pro­vide either a con­stant effects or some sort of trig­gered effect along with a ran­dom chaos abil­ity. These abil­i­ties span the full range of what’s pos­si­ble in Magic. We’re talk­ing extra turns, extra dam­age, crea­ture pumps, dis­card, spell dis­counts, Pla­nar Cleans­ing, mill effects, goat tokens, life gain, clones, drag­ons, etc.

For the first part of this arti­cle, I’m going to give a brief run­down of the four decks involved.

Before we get into the game, let’s take a quick look at the decks involved. I’ve attached the full deck­lists to an appen­dix at the bot­tom, but here’s a quick run­down of the three that we’re deal­ing with.

Strike Force

Col­ors: White and Red
Blurb: The “Strike Force” deck comes out of the gate quickly to deliver an end­less stream of pain. Hasty crea­tures, fiery burn spells, and vicious double-striking mon­sters will make short work of all who oppose you.
Key Cards: Light­ning Helix, Flame­tongue Kavu, Razia, Boros Archangel, Insur­rec­tion, Bale­fire Liege, Obliv­ion Ring, Rolling Thun­der, Rorix Bladew­ing

In my expe­ri­ence, Strike Force doesn’t exactly come fly­ing out of the gate as the Wiz­ards blurb states. Sure you can get a decent start with Bat­tle­gate Mimic, Hearth­fire Hob­gob­lin, Kel­don Cham­pion, and Glory of War­fare (for exam­ple)… but it’s not like you’re going to be con­sis­tently gold­fish­ing turn four wins or anything.

Per­son­ally I’ve found Strike Force to play more like a mid-range board con­trol deck. Cards like Obliv­ion Ring, Flame­tongue Kavu, Light­ning Helix, Arc Light­ning, and Cone of Flame keep prob­lem­atic per­ma­nents out of play while allow­ing you to sneak dam­age through. Akroma’s Vengeance is the best reset but­ton included in the Plane­chase decks, and Strike Force can come fir­ing out of the gates quickly after­wards with cards like Rorix Bladew­ing, Bull Cerodon, and Razia, Boros Archangel.

In the long games, Sun­home, Fortress of the Legion has been extremely valu­able for me both offen­sively and defen­sively. The offen­sive appli­ca­tions should be pretty obvi­ous, but the defen­sive appli­ca­tions are equally impor­tant — espe­cially in mul­ti­player. When one of your oppo­nents is decid­ing who to attack, it often makes more sense to attack the dude WITHOUT the abil­ity to mess up com­bat math with dou­ble strike.

The most pow­er­ful spell in any of these four decks is def­i­nitely in Strike Force: Insur­rec­tion. If you ever man­age to make it up to eight mana and resolve this spell, then it’s as close to “I win” as you can really pos­si­bly get. When there are three or four play­ers worth of crea­tures in play, then it’s pretty stag­ger­ing how much dam­age can sud­denly be headed through the red zone.

Zom­bie Empire

Color: Black
Blurb: With the “Zom­bie Empire” deck, legions of undead are at your beck and call! It boasts some of the great­est Zom­bie cards ever printed plus a sup­port­ing cast of spells that accen­tu­ate the resilient nature of the undead.
Key Cards: Undead Warchief, Cabal Cof­fers, Soul­less One, Hell­dozer, Phyrex­ian Arena, Grave Pact, Pro­fane Com­mand, Corpse Har­vester

In my expe­ri­ence, Zom­bie Empire comes out a lot quicker than Strike Force — and I con­sider it to be the most aggres­sive of these four decks. Fes­ter­ing Gob­lin, Dregscape Zom­bie, Rot­ting Rats, and Shep­herd of Rot come down early, and two copies of Dark Rit­ual help to power out more expen­sive threats in the open­ing turns.

Zom­bie Empire really turns up the heat in the mid-game. Death Baron, Undead Warchief (some­times DOUBLE Undead Warchief), and Nefashu make block­ing super dif­fi­cult for your oppo­nents. Recently I won a game with Zom­bie Empire by just play­ing out Zom­bies, then play­ing out Lords, and attack­ing a few times. This obvi­ously gets harder the more play­ers involved, but in the three-player game I’m talk­ing about nobody was able to stop my rush before I fin­ished off both opponents.

Zom­bie Empire is also well equipped for the late game. Hell­dozer, Ascen­dant Evin­car, and Nefashu are ridicu­lous crea­tures. Grave Pact is one of the most pow­er­ful cards in all of Plane­chase, and really works hard to keep the board under con­trol. Phyrex­ian Arena and Corpse Har­vester pro­vide card advan­tage. Cabal Cof­fers helps the deck win ‘out of nowhere’ by pow­er­ing out a gigan­tic Pro­fane Com­mand or Con­sume Spirit. Cabal Cof­fers also allows you to roll many pla­nar dice in the late game when you don’t have any­thing else to do.

One of the non-obvious weak­nesses of Zom­bie Empire is that the deck is mono black. Take a look at this Plane:

It sure sucks to roll chaos when Bant is in play and you’re run­ning Zom­bie Empire, doesn’t it? Not only do you miss out on any sort of ben­e­fit, but chances are you’ll be forced to turn one of your oppo­nents’ crea­tures into an inde­struc­tible pow­er­house! Major bum­mer. There are some Plane cards that ben­e­fit a mono-black deck, but there are more that ben­e­fit the other col­ors. Here’s one last example:

Sure rolling chaos is cool for the zom­bie deck in this sit­u­a­tion, but the spell cost reduc­tion abil­i­ties do not help you at all.

Ele­men­tal Thunder

Col­ors: Red and Green
Blurb: The “Ele­men­tal Thun­der” deck packs big crea­tures that become more pow­er­ful with every move your oppo­nents make. Every­one will wince as you put crea­ture after crea­ture onto the bat­tle­field, each with the poten­tial to single-handedly defeat an oppo­nent in a few turns.
Key Cards: Smoke­braider, Tau­rean Mauler, Liv­ing Hive, Fires of Yav­i­maya, Ver­dant Force, For­got­ten Ancient, Explo­sive Veg­e­ta­tion, Rock­slide Elemental

The most pow­er­ful crea­tures in Plane­chase cur­rently reside in the Ele­men­tal Thun­der deck. Each deck has some seri­ous threats, but in my opin­ion Ele­men­tal Thunder’s suite of Ver­dant Force, Liv­ing Hive, Rum­bling Slum, and Tor­nado Ele­men­tal (amongst oth­ers) cur­rently takes the cake. Smoke­braider, Search for Tomor­row, Fer­tilid, Fer­tile Ground, Ram­pant Growth, and Explo­sive Veg­e­ta­tion ramp up your mana in order to make these expen­sive crea­tures a real­ity. Flamekin Har­bin­ger searches through your library to make sure the cor­rect threats are in your hand when you need them. Fires of Yav­i­maya gives them haste.

Ele­men­tal Thun­der isn’t all expen­sive threats though. Some of the scari­est crea­tures in the deck hang out at the lower cast­ing costs. Tau­rean Mauler and For­got­ten Ancient grow up +1/+1 when­ever spells are cast, and in a big mul­ti­player game — lots of spells are cast. Rock­slide Ele­men­tal grows big­ger when­ever a crea­ture dies, and in a big mul­ti­player game — lots of crea­tures die.

A while back I was play­ing one-on-one with my girl­friend, and this was our open­ing Plane:

Before you knew it, I had six goats and she had nine. Then sud­denly she had dou­ble Rock­slide Ele­men­tal, which com­pletely removed my abil­ity to attack. If I attack then Goats die and her Rock­slide crea­tures become giant mon­sters. Pretty cool game state!

One card that has been sur­pris­ingly strong in the games I’ve played so far has been Mage Slayer. This seems like slow equip­ment, but it has the poten­tial to be enor­mously pow­er­ful in this deck. If you think Mage Slayer seems weak, then talk to me after you’ve dealt with it attached to Liv­ing Hive or Ver­dant Force!

Equip­ment in gen­eral has almost always been fan­tas­tic in Plane­chase games that I’ve been involved in. The rea­son is that these games often turn into giant attri­tion bat­tles, with threats being removed and clash­ing in the red zone. Being able to power up what­ever you have left over has been very valu­able in my experience.

Per­son­ally I’m not really a huge fan of Ele­men­tal Thun­der. I absolutely love the Tau­rean Mauler/Forgotten Ancient Plan, but the deck only runs one of each. The big crea­ture plan feels a lit­tle too ‘all in’ for my lik­ing, and Ver­dant Force is a lot less scary when there are two, three, or four play­ers worth of removal at the table to stop it. This deck isn’t ter­ri­ble by any means, but just not really my style.

Metal­lic Dreams

Col­ors: White, Blue, Black (with Sunburst/Artifact Lands)
Blurb: The “Metal­lic Dreams” deck uti­lizes arti­facts to draw on the power of every color of mana. Small mana-producing crea­tures fuel your ever-growing army of more pow­er­ful machines. Under your com­mand, they’ll all work hand-in-shiny-metal-hand to extin­guish your oppo­nents.
Key Cards: Vedalken Engi­neer, Mas­ter of Etherium, Cra­nial Plat­ing, Brood­star, Fab­ri­cate, Dark­steel Forge, Etched Ora­cle, Lox­odon Warhammer

Metal­lic Dreams is essen­tially a mono-blue arti­fact deck with a slight splash into white and black for two Esper cards and five-color action with six or seven sun­burst cards. A full set of color-producing Myr along with Vedalken Engi­neer work to power out seri­ous cards like Myr Enforcer, Pen­tavus, Bosh, Iron Golem, Qumu­lox, Brood­star, and the non-creature arti­fact lord: Dark­steel Forge.

As men­tioned above, I’ve found equip­ment to be extremely pow­er­ful in this for­mat. Ele­men­tal Thunder’s Mage Slayer is pretty good — but Metal­lic Dreams has (by far) the best equip­ment in Plane­chase. Cra­nial Plat­ing and Lox­odon Warham­mer can both cre­ate ridicu­lous threats, and if you get both of them going at the same time then for­get about it. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how pow­er­ful these pieces of equip­ment are. Last week I man­aged to equip both on a Brood­star — the game did not last long.

The man­abase of Metal­lic Dreams con­sists of a bunch of Islands, two Seats of the Synod, one of each other arti­fact land, and then a few of each other basic land. One thing to note is that get­ting the ‘arti­fact land draw’ is really impor­tant for this deck. Metal­lic Dreams con­tains a bunch of cards that care about how many arti­facts you have lying around: affin­ity, Mas­ter of Etherium, Cra­nial Plat­ing, Lode­stone Myr, etc.

There are other cards in Metal­lic Dreams that exploit the num­ber of arti­facts in the deck: Skele­ton Shard pro­vides a pow­er­ful recur­sion engine, Fab­ri­cate tutors for pretty much any­thing, Sludge Strider messed with life totals, Serum Tank and Thirst for Knowl­edge pro­vide card advantage.

Speak­ing of card advan­tage, there are two pow­er­ful non-artifact dri­ven card advan­tage engines in Metal­lic Dreams. The first is Keep Watch. I’ve drawn eight cards off of Keep Watch while one of my oppo­nents was attack­ing another of my oppo­nents with a bunch of Liv­ing Hive insect tokens. Noth­ing wrong with that! The sec­ond is Etched Ora­cle, whose sun­burst abil­ity is absolutely essen­tial for this deck. Not only does it pro­vide an even­tual Ances­tral Recall, but it pro­vides a solid 4/4 body even if you haven’t been able to get a bunch of arti­facts into play.

The last thing I want to men­tion about Metal­lic Dreams is that it runs one copy of Door to Noth­ing­ness. I’ve had this in my hand a few times, but have never been ANYWHERE near able to cast and acti­vate it. There are a few Planes that could help with that type of mana gen­er­a­tion, but I’ve never pulled it off.

So Let’s See a Game

So now that you’ve got a basic idea of the decks and strate­gies we’re work­ing with — let’s run through an exam­ple game. The time is ear­lier this week, the place is my apart­ment, and the event is a three-player Plane­chase bat­tle. I shuf­fled up Strike Force, Kathryn was on Zom­bie Empire, and Ben played Ele­men­tal Thunder.

Things start off pretty poorly for me when I have to mul­li­gan my open­ing seven. My six are decent, but didn’t include any sort of access to white mana. I do have three lands and only one card that requires white (dou­ble white actu­ally for Prison Term), so I decide to keep. Things start look­ing even bet­ter when the open­ing Plane came down:

Pretty awe­some, huh? This is prob­a­bly my per­sonal favorite Plane. Not only does it pro­vide a way for me to get access to some white mana through recy­cling my hand — but it’s also the coolest chaos abil­ity around. Trig­ger­ing off three ran­dom chaos abil­i­ties can run the full range from amaz­ingly pow­er­ful to excru­ci­at­ingly inef­fec­tive. This is what Plane­chase is all about.

Unfor­tu­nately for me, Kathryn planewalks before I get a chance to fil­ter away my hand and I remain stuck on red and col­or­less mana for quite some time. I may not have white mana, but I do have dou­ble Sun­home, Fortress of the Legion in play. As I men­tioned above, these lands are great in the late game… I just need to sur­vive until then!

Here’s our new plane:

… but then we almost imme­di­ately planeswalk here:

Fields of Sum­mer can really extend the game, and expect life totals to dou­ble or triple if it stays on the table for any length of time. Ben plays out Flamekin Har­bin­ger to tutor up For­got­ten Ancient, and then casts Ram­pant Growth. Kathryn lays out Fes­ter­ing Gob­lin and then Dregscape Zom­bie. I can’t really cast any­thing, so I spend most of time tak­ing beats, hop­ing to draw a Plains or Boros Gar­ri­son, and man­ag­ing to hit chaos for ten life.

For­got­ten Ancient hits the table for Ben, but I’m able to imme­di­ately take out that poten­tial prob­lem imme­di­ately with Flame­tongue Kavu — the first spell I’ve cast all game! Still no white mana though. Kathryn plays out Undead Warchief, attack­ing Ben for a bunch. Ben takes his turn and planeswalks:

Ben fol­lows up with a chaos roll and names me, so I’m totally shut out of cast­ing spells until we planeswalk again. He casts Sav­age Twister and clears the board. Know­ing Ele­men­tal Thun­der, he’s likely on plan­ning to reload with a pow­er­ful crea­ture. Kathryn takes her turn and doesn’t have a play, but she does man­age to roll chaos and name Ben. Until we hit up a new Plane, she’s the only one who can cast spells.

I untap and start rolling the pla­nar die, which is all that I can do. I land chaos and name Kathryn, so now all three of us are locked out of cast­ing spells. Orim’s Chant all around! We spend a few turns each rolling blanks and build­ing up our lands. This con­tin­ues until I planeswalk:

… and then imme­di­ately roll chance for a Dragon! Every­one can cast spells now, but I’ve got a head start going with the Shivan Dragon. Time for some old school beat­down techniques!

Kathryn uses her turn to play Cabal Cof­fers and Corpse Har­vester; Ben plays out both Fer­tile Ground and Explo­sive Veg­e­ta­tion to ramp his mana. I use Light­ning Helix to take down the Corpse Har­vester and start to get in there with my Shivan Dragon. Ben untaps and casts Liv­ing Hive, which is obvi­ously a seri­ous prob­lem — and I don’t have any­thing to deal with it. Hope­fully Kathryn has Inno­cent Blood?

Every­one is rolling pla­nar dice, hop­ing to get a Shivan of their own — but my orig­i­nal Dragon is still the only one on the table. I roll myself and don’t get another dragon, but I do trig­ger off a new plane:

I may not be able to take out Liv­ing Hive, but it doesn’t mat­ter. Remem­ber how great I told you Sun­home, Fortress of the Legion was? Well it’s even bet­ter with Strong­hold Fur­nace in the mix. I fly over with a dou­ble strik­ing Dragon for twenty and take Ben out of the game! Now it’s down to me and Kathryn. I have a Dragon token and she doesn’t have much.

Kathryn untaps, and can gen­er­ate a whole ton of mana with Cabal Cof­fers. She plays out Phyrex­ian Ghoul, and then starts rolling. We planeswalk:

This may not be ter­ri­ble, since we’re rea­son­ably close in life totals… but Kathryn imme­di­ately rolls chaos and trades her Phyrex­ian Ghoul for my Dragon! This may be bad, but I am able to start unload­ing some seri­ous threats. I play out Kel­don Cham­pion, and Bull Cerodon, while Kathryn plays out most of her hand into a Zom­bie army. We’re at a bit of a stand­still, since nei­ther of us can deal lethal and Cliff­side Mar­ket will just flip the life totals of who­ever attacks first into a counter-attack death.

While we’re star­ing each other down, I roll and planeswalk:

I can’t empty my hand, and have to pass my turn. Kathryn man­ages to empty her hand by burn­ing away two Dark Rit­u­als, and gets seven new cards. Things are NOT look­ing good. I’m not sure what to do, so I just start rolling. I’m lucky enough to roll chaos and dis­card my hand, which means that I get to draw seven cards… includ­ing Insurrection!

Kathryn untaps and plays out her entire hand of Zom­bies, pre­sent­ing a ridicu­lous force and draw­ing seven more cards — prepar­ing for a seri­ous beat­down. I untap and cast Insur­rec­tion, swing­ing for about a mil­lion dam­age and the win!

Wrap-Up

As I men­tioned at the top of this arti­cle, my casual play­group has been 100% con­verted over to Plane­chase. So do I have any com­plaints about Plane­chase? The only major com­plaint is that only four decks cur­rently exist. I want more! The only cur­rent solu­tion is to swap in other decks. Most of the time my play­group has stuck to the actual Plane­chase decks, but we have exper­i­mented with sub­sti­tut­ing in other pre­con­structed decks. This has worked out pretty well, but it’s def­i­nitely notice­able that Jace vs. Chan­dra (for exam­ple) was not designed for either Plane­chase or mul­ti­player. I’ve found that the Shad­ow­moor/Even­tide pre­con­structed decks work out pretty well.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Gar­golin­ski
spgmtg@gmail.com