Does anyone have any special house rules for physical playing with their friends and collection?
I managed to suck a good amount of my friends in, so we've made space and adaptations for up to a 5 player game. These games get very lengthy, and the decks become pretty huge but they're a blast. We've made up some rule variations along the way though. Such as, nobody is allowed to play a deck that is dedicated swarm, and obviously OP'd cards (
Galadriel, LR) are house errataed. With four shadow players, if you aren't playing dedicated twilight choke or defender plusses, you're going to lose the game if one person has a swarm deck simply because there are too many minions to, ahem, stream to the field.
We also implicated a new strategy when doing our own sealed leagues. We get five starter decks and get randomly assigned one, and then take the booster box of the main set (we only play movie) and distribute seven of the packs amongst ourselves (7 x 5 = 35), as well as one each of the expansions. After building the best possible deck, things change a little bit when it comes to bidding, because there's one booster pack still left....
Whoever bids the most (or wins the
Ro-Sham-Bo battle) gets the choice of choosing in what position they go, OR opening the booster pack and taking two cards of their choice, which they must display to the table, including the ones they replace if they choose to replace instead of merely add. They are then sent to the bottom of the totem pole in regard to choosing in what position their fellowship goes. Rinse and repeat down the line, until all positions are decided. Typically, once it gets to the third position, deciding gets tough. This is done to add a wild card aspect to the game and increase burden bidding, which makes it more fun.
Another thing we've thought about trying to do is using partners in the game somehow. Haven't hashed out what this would look like yet, but that's another reason why I'm posting this.
If you have any wacky house rules, or suggestions on how you liven/change up gameplay, post them here!