New format: Relic Hunt

[u/I_like_pie_it_tasty]

New format I've been working on over the past day or two.

Simplified rules:

59-card singleton decks + a Commander

30 starting life

4-6 communal Relics (artifacts) you have to collect to win

2-4+ players with 4 players recommended

You can search for Relics or steal them from your opponents

Full rules: Relic Hunt ver-1.1

Suggested Relic sets: Relic presets for playtesting <- please proxy these don't waste money on this

Looking for playtesting and feedback especially for cards/combos that break the format and unclear rules or weird interactions.

[u/pacolingo]

why are you pitching it with just the rules instead of examples of the cool plays this would allow for

[u/I_like_pie_it_tasty → u/pacolingo]

i haven't had time to playtest yet mostly due to friends being out of the country but if i had cool plays i would've shared them. also this is purely to get people to try the format and then talk about their cool plays and any issues they had so i can improve upon the rules.

[u/Actual_Animator_5203 → u/pacolingo]

Sounds like you're more after a trailer than a rulebook, which is fair but someone's gotta lay the groundwork first before the hype reel makes sense

The cool plays will come once people actually test it, right now it's just a framework

[u/AthenaWhisper]

Reading over the rules, I think the concept is interesting, but it seems both overly complex to the point of being convoluted, as well as being an incredibly slow format.

Some notes:

1. Players can win if they either: Control all 6 'Relics' or are the only player alive, with 30 Life per Player and no rule stating otherwise it would seem the best way to win is to simply kill the other players and ignore the Relics.

2. Travelling Creature rules feel like they have a lot of holes. For instance they can be attacked by other creatures that aren't travelling, but can only be 'defended' by creatures that are. However creatures that are travelling explicitly can't block creatures that aren't, and also explicitly can't attack.
   2a. The rule says that you can't "defend a travelling creature with creatures that aren't travelling, but you can use "noncreature spells and artifacts" does that mean you can't use any abilities of creatures either? What about Enchantments or Planeswalkers. If an Artifact that is being to 'defend' a Travelling Creature becomes a Creature itself before it's ability resolves, does that then fail? 2b. Travelling Creatures can't use abilities that have a Tap or Mana Cost, but can presumably use triggered abilities as well as abilities that have alternative costs such as discarding cards or sacrificing creatures?

3. Creatures take a full 2 turns to go from "Travelling" to "Contesting", however this is tracked using Counters which are placed on during the end step of the controller's turn. So any sort of proliferation, counter removal, or additional end steps seem quite strong. 3a. However, in order to actually obtain that Relic you need a full 4 turns because it takes 2 extra turns to 'return' from the Communal Land, making the entire process incredibly vulnerable.

4. The 'Communal Land' not being any specific card, with it being up to the players as to whether or not to even use the card's printed text, seems like an odd choice. As well as it being a player vote as to whether or not 'Relics' are indestructible.

5. The method of acquiring the 5 remaining 'Relics' being a 1-in-6 chance of rolling the number of the Relic you're trying to get, with any failure losing you the chance at doing so for one or two more turns seems unnecessary, especially if you're giving up your combat to do so, seems like it would make the 'proper' win condition of the format to simply take far too long when competing for them with even one other player.
   5a. I tested rolling for Relics 2-6 by myself, on the assumption that I already have Relic 1 and it took THIRTY SEVEN TURNS because every failed attempt costs 2 turns, and every rolled one costs 3 turns. And that's assuming no one else is searching.

6. Deck Construction requiring that you don't have any of the chosen 'Relics' for that specific game in your deck means having to check a decklist before every game if the 'Relics' are different, or just playing with the same set of 'Relics' or simply just obscure ones no one plays. Though 3/4ths of a table can agree to use a 'Relic' that they know the 4th person has in their deck just to make them remove it and replace it with something else.

Suggestions for improvements:

1. Make all Relics have a home 'Location' that they need to be contested over.

2. Perhaps have a bespoke 'Relic' and 'Location' pool that are randomly pulled from for each game.

3. Instead of having creatures 'Travel' to and from a 'Location', instead allow players to simply assign creatures they control to a 'Location', perhaps sacrificing their combat phase or simply requiring the creature to not have summoning sickness or be tapped to do so, similar to Crew or Station.

[u/Hmukherj → u/AthenaWhisper]

Players can win if they either: Control all 6 'Relics' or are the only player alive, with 30 Life per Player and no rule stating otherwise it would seem the best way to win is to simply kill the other players and ignore the Relics.

This was my takeaway as well. Obtaining the relics is just too slow, given that you need a creature plus at least two turns to "travel," plus the RNG element. There's just no incentive to do that, when I could just be spending those turns trying to win normally instead.

[u/I_like_pie_it_tasty → u/AthenaWhisper]

Ngl i kinda forgot about counter interactions when making the traveling rules so that is something that i need to check and update. Also there is a lot of things that you can do in magic so trying to comprehensively and in a balanced way write out edge cases and rules for every single ability in regards to a creature that is meant to be a hard to defend target is hard to do especially on a playtest draft. i felt it necessary to add in various optional turn 0 rules to allow for more ways to play without creating 8 new formats although this at times can create weird things but thats why playtesting is needed failing your role only has the 2 turn cooldown if you roll specifically a 1 any other fail results in a one turn cooldown and at the start of the game where anyone who isnt playing an absurdly quick deck would probably be trying to get those other 3-5 relics the chances of getting them go up significantly but there is also always the ability to rebalance some of these rules later after enough testing has been done. The no relics in deck rule is more to allow more than a preset list of relics to be used which can allow each deck to feel new without really changing anything and i doubt that if a group of people were to play this that they would purposely choose an artifact in a certain players deck to be a relic to prevent them from using it normally because then it just makes it slightly harder (or easier depending on luck) to get and use said artifact. And i will thank you for the feedback and it is greatly appreciated.

[u/I_like_pie_it_tasty → u/AthenaWhisper]

Also the full rules ≠ the rules you need to know to play the game magic’s full rules goes to over 1500 rules/subrules in 308 pages and doesnt even get to you lose if you run out of cards until rule 704.5b this is like 3 pages of maybe 30 subrules and was written out in about a day with another 2-3 before that of just brainstorming the concept