Monday, March 3, 2014

How to do Limited events

I've been noodling this for some time now.  I stated earlier that in games such as this, people who have lots of money tend to be able to dominate, as they can acquire the more effective cards more easily.  Limited formats help override this, giving everyone a more equal starting point.  Limited, at least from my understanding through Magic, Dragon Ball Z, and UFS, comes in two forms: Sealed deck and Draft.  In a Sealed Deck event, everyone just gets X packs of cards (DBZ also gave out starters because they were very necessary) and makes the best deck they can from that pool.  In a Draft, players all open one pack, choose a single card in that pack to keep, and pass the rest to the player on their left.  They then choose a card from what was passed to them, and so on.  They pass to the right during the second pack, and back to the left with the third.  Basic lands are very necessary in Magic, and since they're by far the most common card type, the organizers will always have an abundance of them available for players to use.  Players get to make smaller decks to compensate for the craziness, about 2/3 the size of normal.  I always enjoy playing Limited formats, especially Draft, and now you're going to get my take on how to handle this.  Let's rock the boat, baby!

My Little Pony unfortunately has many obstacles preventing it from being played in either of these, but fortunately this community is a creative one.  I think I has the solution.   I would prefer the Draft format, but this would apply to Sealed, as well.  For any card that has a power requirement, you can pay 2 action tokens for each point of power you would've otherwise needed (this compensates for how few core characters you're going to have).  This would normally make cards like Spring Forward ungodly expensive, but the next point helps with that.  Each player's main character is going to be unnamed, has 1 power, and is all colors.  In other words, each player gets something like this:
Yep.  Yep.  You guys are all going to be playing "____________."  (Yes, there is a link there.  It's hilarious.)
Now we just have one problem: the problems.  Ah gotcha covered.  I'll have to try this out to see what technique I really want, but here's my immediate idea.  Since your deck is already going to be kind of rainbow-fied, and it's almost impossible to get problems matching your deck like this, we've got to compensate.  In order to allow your deck to function and give each problem its own individuality, you can change a color required if you can double it with a different color.  For example, if you have Cloudbursting, you could confront it with 2 pink instead of 1 blue.  That also means you could have 1 blue as the off-color.  For the specific pair problems like Not Enough Pinkie Pies, you would have to double both if you don't have enough pink or blue.  You could use 6 white & 4 orange, 3 blue & 4 purple, etc.  No using the same color for both, though.  All colors have to be different.  Problem decks would also be 6 cards (2 from 3 packs), and there would be no such thing as a starting problem.  You just shuffle it up and flip the top to begin.
As for getting the problems, we know that every pack contains two problems, a common and uncommon.  When packs are opened in a Draft, everybody must put their two problems face-down into the problem pool.  After the packs have been taken, the problems are spread out, and whoever is in seat 1 picks their first problem.  Seat 2 then picks, and so on until you get to seat 8.  Seat 8 then picks two problems, and picking order moves backwards.  Seat 1 gets the first pick of it all, but then also gets the biggest garbage.  Seat 8 gets no gems, but is a lot more consistent.

I tried very hard to find a non-traumatic zombie.
One last bit.  Because this is a Limited thing, your deck is going to be at least 30 cards (2/3 of normal).  The power level is obviously going to go down, and we probably can't just let players deck themselves into a stalemate.  At the same time, white loves a full discard pile.  How do we reconcile this?  We draft discards.  Oh, we're headed into uncharted territory now, but let's charge on through!  When a player has to draw, flip, or reveal a card from the deck and can't, both players will work together to make a new deck.  The affected player chooses one card to go back into the deck and one that will stay in the discard pile (set it aside for now).  Then the opponent does the same.  Once all cards have been picked for something, shuffle the new deck, and now anytime a card is put in the discard pile, it's immediately banished!  You'll still have a bit of time, though.  If the deck runs out again, just do it again with the cards still in the discard pile.  If this keeps up enough times that you lose the entire discard pile, there's just no saving you.  Your deck's gone.  Keep in mind that if all this got started because you had to reveal or draw more than you had (Inspired, Let's Get this Party Started, Nightmare Moon, etc.), the cards you already had in your deck do not get shuffled in the new deck.  They will remain your top cards.  Also, anything that looks for cards hitting the discard pile, like Dr. Hooves, will still take effect.

There you have it.  It's unrefined, since I haven't had the opportunity to try it out.  You obviously need at least 8 people to make this happen, but it should make for a very interesting time if anyone's willing to try it. The summary of all the rules is below.  Good luck, all.  Make this work, if only because I love drafting!


  • Standard draft procedure, but separate problems into a face-down pool first.
  • After drafting all the packs, players draft problems Catan-style.
  • Main deck of 30, problem deck of 6.
  • Shuffle all your problems together, and the top problem is your starting problem.
  • All players' mains are ____________.  It has 1 power, is all colors, and does not boost.
  • If you lack the power you need to play a card, you can pay 2 extra tokens for each point of power you would've needed.
  • If you can't get the specified amount of a color for a problem, you can change that color by getting double of another one.
  • If you have to do something with the top of your deck and can't, players draft your discard pile and everything that ever gets discarded is banished.  Draft again each time you're out.

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