Cobra Cards Player Community ~ View topic - Bored of one on ones and multiplayer games? Try RBoT!

LotR TCG Wiki

→ Card Sets:

All

→ Forums:

TLHH

Cobra Cards Player Community Forum Index

Forum index » Magic: The Gathering » MTG Strategy Article Contest

Author

Message

Rate this article!

5 (Best)

[ 0 ] 0%

[ 1 ] 25%

[ 2 ] 50%

1 (Worst)

[ 0 ] 0%

Total Votes : 4

Ilvaldi

Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 10:22 pm

Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 59 Location:

--- description ---
Guidelines for a fun new Magic: The Gathering game format that can really shake things up.
--- end description ---

Are you bored of playing one on one and knowing that whatever you pull out of your MUC, you still lose to weenie? Do you hate it when play a stall deck against 4 aggro decks? And are you tired of playing a game that is not even a challenge for your super powered psychatog deck?

Fear not, you need Ryan’s Bag of Tricks (aka, RBoT)!

First of all, I would like all you readers to know, I AM NOT RYAN. The idea came from a friend of mine named Ryan. I thought it deserved justice to be posted on this website.

In RBoT, all the rules of MTG applies to the game, whether one on one or not. However, there is one difference. There is an extra deck--one that is not playable--placed at the center of the table. This deck is known as Ryan’s Bag of Tricks.

So what does this deck have? What does it do?

Well, as my friend Ryan puts it: "A magician never tells the secrets to his tricks."

But I’ll spill the beans: Global enchantments, sorceries that you would most likely never play, and high-costing, game altering stuff.

You see, RBoT is a format that forces the first player of the game to reveal the top card of RBoT, put it next to deck, and does what the card tells that player to do. For example, lets say I flip a Wrath of God. When I flip that card, all creatures are destroyed. No mana cost paid, nothing, clean, cut and simple.

The player reveals the card during his or her upkeep, and the ability triggers every time on every other player’s upkeep. When it’s player one’s turn again, he or she reveal the next card that is on top of RBoT.

Now, lets say you play white weenie. Back to the Wrath of God scenario, when I flip the card on turn 4 (my last turn before you kill me and you have just played everything in your hand), your screwed. However, you could call for a "shuffle," which allows you to cancel the effect currently being played. When you do call shuffle, you HAVE to shuffle RBoT (or else it wouldn’t be called "shuffle"). Along with that, you flip the next card on top of RBoT, regardless if you weren’t the first player of the game. You also have the choice of calling "flip," which cancels the effect and forces you flip the next card on top of RBoT, regardless if your the first player or not. You can only call "shuffle" and "flip" once per game.

Now then, lets say you’re "intrigued" about this, you "want" to make a RBoT of you own. Well then, lets handle some discrepency.

First of all, although I said earlier that the spells in RBoT basically cost zero, you still have to pay the cost that the spells request. For instance, I flip a Savage Beating and I want it entwined. Well then, I need to pay 1R. However, when you pay for the spells in RBoT, you pay as though the spells were colorless. So if I was white weenie, I could pay 2 instead of 1R to entwine Savage Beating.

Second, RBoT lets you use ANY type of Magic card. So when I say "spells," I mean enchantments, sorceries, instants, creatures, lands, arifacts, etc.

Third, Magic the Gathering obviously did not have rulings made for RBoT. Nor did it have cards for RBoT. So when you design your own RBoT, you can do your own rulings and judgement as to what the cards do. One ruling I would like to mention is Flame Rift. Since Flame Rift triggers every upkeep, in a multiplayer match with 5 people. By the time it is the 5th plaer’s turn, Flame Rift will have dealt 20 damage to all players if no one decides to "flip" or "shuffle." So you could rule that Flame Rift only occurs during the first player’s upkeep.

Some suggestions for begginer players or players who don’t know where to start. Use spells that could prolong the game to make it more exciting like Wrath of God. Add in spells that you would never try in a deck like Warp World or Eye of the Storm. Make the game creative with things such as Mana Clash and Game of Chaos.

I will post a new article soon talking about an advanced form of RBoT.

P.S. La_Sin_Grail doesn’t really enjoy the idea cause he always flips bad cards that mess him over.

La_Sin_Grail

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 9:01 pm

Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland

Define always- I played the game once, and found that it was almost pure luck. Much easier to just flip coins.

It's a decent article, but I won't rate it for fear of being biased because I hate the format.

Note: How should the voting work? Decent article, but I hate format. What should I base it on?

Ilvaldi

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 9:14 pm

Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 59 Location:

I don't know La_Sin_Grail, why not flip a coin (lol)? Very Happy

Cobra

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2005 2:46 am

Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 1202 Location: Austin, TX, USA

Voting criteria are entirely up to each individual. (This is ultimately about what the player community wants to read, after all!) If you're torn, just compromise and give a mid-range rating. Smile

http://cobracards.com -- Web's best deals on Trading Card Games.

edud

Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 4:13 am

Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 6 Location:

I can see how the casual format could work, but your writing style is too sparse and the article was too short to convince me to try the format.
You barely explain the 1st section, which I believe to be a game-setting rule that changes everytime it is a certain player's turn? Your wrath of god example is a little narrow and it sounds like free spells for control decks. Well you ceratinly solved the problem you posted in the begining...it does sound a lot loke random luck.
I didn't really enjoy this ariticle but maybe would if you could slow down and explain why people would like the format, which really is distracting should we play it from real deck construction and playtesting.
Don't bother giving advanced rules until you clean up this article. I barely understood the rules before you came up with exceptions.

Ilvaldi

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:05 pm

Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 59 Location:

Thank you edud for your advice. Well you were right that it was game changing. And I guess my example of Wrath of God sides more with control. Well then let me lay it down in listed format:

1) RBoT is a bunch of MTG cards made into a deck of MTG cards that does not function as a regular MTG deck (like CAL or weenie)

2) The top card of RBoT is revealed on the first player's turn (during that player's upkeep if you want to be specific).

3) People enjoy RBoT becuase, as you said, it is random luck.

Your jumping ahead of the game though, edud. Your right as to my article sucking horribly, but I'm just laying down the rules first. I will use this section to have the rulings handled.

In my next article, I will be fair and show you examples in which RBoT will kill control and wreck decks with counterspells. Also, how RBoT can turn some tournament cards into the most godliest and horrifying things that even a deck loaded with banned cards can't do.

But for now, try out the format even if your unsure about it. If there are questions, post here.

I'll name some cards that would support weenie and fast decks in RBoT:

Savage Beating with entwine (remember: you can spend mana as though it were mana of any color in RBoT. So even if you don't have red mana, you can still be able to pay for the entwine cost).

Overrun

glorious anthem

concerted effort (imagine four 2/2's and a skirmicher along with a glorious anthem)

And in my next article, I will show how more effective theses spells can be in the new and advanced format.

BrianBoitano

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 5:26 pm

Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 124 Location: Houston, TX

I love the idea! I’ve played a game very similar to this, which is really just for killing time at prereleases and FNM in between games and such.
I don’t know what it was called, so I’ll name it "Jin’s Weirding". The basic idea was, anyone who just couldn’t stand the crap rare or their 10,000th copy of that common they just got, could donate it to JW, but no duplicates except for "Howling" creatures. When I started playing, the JW deck was about 350 cards or so.
Players start with 20 life, and they each share the JW deck.
On their first turn, players draw a hand of 3 cards.
Players have infinite mana, and do not suffer mana burn.

JW was great, anything could happen. Some of the most useless cards were prized draws from JW, like the invokers from Scourge. There were a few cards that made you win the game automatically, like the Flamewave Invoker, but it was so much fun when things like that were foiled by something just as unlikely.

Thanks for the bit of nostalgia!

Forum index » Magic: The Gathering » MTG Strategy Article Contest

All times are UTC - 4

Page 1 of 1 [7 Posts]