Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 : the enemy of my archenemy

Posted by on June 27, 2011 in Game Diaries

Chandra Nalaar saved my life yesterday, and I wasn’t expecting it at all. It was my first game of Archenemy mode, and I was going in blind. Chandra and Sorin Markov were my partners, and we were facing off against a powerful Koth. The first few events were mana and board sweepers, and my team was having trouble putting our defenses together. I took the brunt of the attacks, and my life total was falling fast. I was prepared to restart the match, when Chandra suddenly began picking off creatures that were attacking me. That help gave me the space I needed, and my team roared back and took down Koth’s 40 life.

After the jump, is Archenemy mode a great group game?

Given Magic requires two people, let’s define multiplayer Magic as any mode which requires more than two participants. Magic has a lot of these: two headed giant, free for all, emperor; but the newest is Archenemy mode. In Archenemy, three normal players act simultaneously (with shared game phases) against another player with a doubled life total and a set of event cards. Event cards can include powerful creatures that join the archenemy’s team, mana acceleration to help speed up the game, or damage cards that hurt creatures and players.

The most interesting thing about Archenemy mode is the way it encourages you to choose your team of attackers around roles. After the first game with Chandra and Sorin Markov, I went into the deck editor, and tuned Jace’s blue deck, removing as many creatures as I could and replacing them with every counter and bounce spell that was available to me. For the rest of the games in Archenemy mode, I played a support character, keeping the archenemy’s biggest creatures and most powerful spells off the table while my allies took care of the damage. It was a style of play that I had never experienced in Magic before.

Unfortunately, Magic can only be twisted so far. While Archenemy mode does support team based strategies, it is still a game of dropping creatures, playing spells, and doing damage. And the largest affect of Archenemy mode was to make me miss what I consider to be the greatest multiplayer collectible card game ever created: Babylon 5.

The Babylon 5 Collectible Card Game was marketed and sold like any other. My first exposure to it was through the Minbari Vs. Humans boxed set, which I purchased, tried, wasn’t impressed with, and soon stored away. When played with two, the game encouraged players to play around each other, rather than engage and interact. The game ended up being discontinued in 2001.

It was two years later, at the encouragement of a fan of the game, that I picked it up again and soon a group of us were playing the game weekly. With four or more players, each representing a race and faction from the Babylon 5 universe, the game’s mechanics; which seemed so unfocused at the two player level; suddenly became clear. Babylon 5 was a game of diplomacy, agreements, backstabbing, deals, and betrayals that was played on top of the card game.

My favorite deck exploited one of these mechanics. I played as the Non-Aligned Worlds, a group of smaller powers in the Babylon 5 universe, and I stuffed my deck with cards that let me alter the racial tensions in the game. In the Babylon 5 card game, players represent a faction of their total race, but the races themselves also matter. While I might want to attack another player, if our two races were friendly, I would suffer negative consequences of going against my race’s preferences. My deck not only protected my interests (by ensuring that my race was friendly with all races at the table), but also allowed me to make deals to encourage or discourage wars that other players wanted.

It’s this type of metagame that Magic multiplayer lacks. In Magic, free for all tends to a simplistic game of “attack the leader”, rather than a game which encourages players to negotiate and ally in the interest of common goals. Archenemy mode is a step in the right direction, but it still exists within the overall paradigm that drives traditional Magic. It would be interesting to see what Wizards of the Coast could do if they put their hand to pushing multiplayer in a more strategic direction.

Tomorrow, can a game like this really have a final boss?
Click here for the previous Duel of the Planeswalkers entry.

Before his last move, Wader had starter decks for 15 different collectible card games hidden in a box in his closet. After that move, the number is down to 3. He currently lives with his wife and sons in Washington, DC; and is pursuing a doctoral degree in Economics.

  • Anonymous

    Interesting, you should look up the new Commander gametype for MtG that Wizards is selling right now. Particularly the Political Puppets deck which is exactly the deck type you described. Of course any multiplayer game is only as good as the people you’re playing with; the nice thing about Magic is that it’s big enough that it’s easier to find a playgroup than smaller games.

  • malkav11

    One thing about Magic is that it was originally designed for one-on-one play. They’ve moved past that in some ways, but it never entirely escapes its roots, which is why it doesn’t really work for me anymore.

    Jyhad/Vampire: The Eternal Struggle was a much more multiplayer oriented game that Wizards brought out not too long thereafter (later they sold it to White Wolf, who owned the license in question anyway), and which I much prefer. It’s not as political as you describe Babylon 5 being, since there are explicit antagonistic relationships defined, but there is still a layer of that to things. You can’t really expect to ally with your predator (who is attacking you and profits by eliminating you) or your prey (who is your target) but the other players involved may be courted to some degree, and there are vote cards with powerful effects that are manipulated by the political power of the vampires the players control, and/or vampiric powers of manipulation, mind control and seduction.

  • Wader

    I never played Jyhad, but what you are describing sounds almost like a card game of the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer, and that sounds like a fantastic idea for a game.

    I have heard good things about Magic: Commander, but $45 for a starter deck is making me shy away from it. I am just not that rich.

  • malkav11

    A bit, possibly. The other big idea is that while you do have the ability to enact direct effects on the world (“master” actions), they cost you resources directly (and your resources are also your life) and IIRC you can generally only do one a turn. Most of what you do is through lesser vampires that you’ve brought under your control through a steady process of feeding them from your limited resource pool. Each one of these minions has its own ability set and other stats, determining what card actions they can take and to what level of effect, and each one can (generally) act once per turn. It’s a really cool, thematic game and I love it. Unfortunately no one else plays it.

  • Orsson

    I’ll plug Vampire/Jyhad as well. I had an experience with it similar to your introduction to Babylon 5. Both are games that just don’t make sense in the traditional 1-on-1 format.

    Having found a Vampire group a couple years ago, though, I finally discovered what the fuss was about. The game is an exceptional political game, with lots of tension over when to intercede on another player’s behalf or when to let someone fall. Because of the round robin format (attack to the right, defend to the left), you have to keep aware of the fact that someone building up power across the table may eventually be targeted you!