A couple of years ago, I approached some friends with a dream: To recapture the sense of desperation from the old Magic: The Gathering vidja game of having to use things like Giant Tortoise and Unstable Mutation because they were the best card available to you at that moment.
That same weekend, I bought the Highlander animated series on DVD. We brilliantly combined them into a single concept, The Absurdly Large Highlander Deck, which a friend subsequently took with him to Boston, so we just spent the afternoon putting together a new one.
The concept is simple:
There can be only one of most game elements, including the desk, discard pile, and so forth. There is one huge deck that everyone draws from, which is made primarily of underpowered cards (of which, other than basic lands, there can be only one instance). You draw from a common library and discard into a common graveyard (from which you can reanimate etc).
It's a lot of fun, because you need to play giant tortoises and such, and the entire game hinges on a well-timed Giant Growth again.
Now the gimmicky part is that everyone's an immortal. This means that while lots of things can kill you, you'll just shrug them off. Everyone starts off at 20 life, and if you are reduced to 0 (or get poison counters or whatever) you come back at 10 (or 40/20 or whatever). UNLESS you are reduced to zero life by an opponent who has declared you to be his or her target. If an opponent fixes on you (with the reminder that the Game is afoot, and consequently "there can be only one") then only one of you will walk away from the confrontation. The attacking player has until the end of the current turn (which isn't necessarily his/her turn) to finish off the defending one, or it's presumed that some improbable sequence of events occurred, and the defending player has outwitted the attacking one and turned the tables, causing the attacker to lose and consequently be dead.*
At this point, the defeated player's "quickening" (i.e. all permanents, cards in hand, etc.) pass to the defeating player and the game goes on until one player is victorious.
This takes several hours and is uniformly amazing.
*And in general Fog-like effects call the whole thing off.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I'm not sure about the immortal part, but the one giant deck with one of everything that everyone shares part is cool.
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)
I believe it's spelled "vidya gaem".
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C-x C-s C-x k RET
It is, as I said, gimmicky, but it does help when four hours in (because it can go for four hours) everyone wants to see the game end in a fantastic display of fireworks.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
It also makes it slightly less appealing to attack weaker players, and also there's more opportunity for spite, which is the basis of all modern intellectual competition.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I shall have to try this at some point.
What goes into the giant deck? Just one of each lame leftover card you have handy? Is there any sort of color focus or is it just random?
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Was it a car or a cat I saw?
We just kinda run through the stack picking out anything which looks fun but you'd never be able to play it (Goblin Game, whirling dervish, Spirit of the Night), or for which you feel nostalgia (wolves/bears/tims), or which has some particular implication for this format (reanimation).
There's also a premium placed on stuff that speeds things up (howling mine, mana flare) or absolutely changes the status quo (warp world/thieves auction) or makes it into the end of a 'splosion movie (Furnace of Rath). Try to keep removal/control elemenets reactive and not proactive (counters/permanent destruction is good, discard and land destruction are bad).
Part of the fun is drawing some random, forgettable card and finding that it turns you into a beast. (Goblin War Drums for some reason.)
Oh and I should mention that you'll find it boring and awful if you don't ignore max hand size.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
http://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/136ery
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My little cousins used to play Yu-Gi-Oh! in a similar way when they were just starting out. Based on whoever's house they were at they would just throw all of the cards into one big pile and then play battle royale matches or 2v1 and a big part of it was luck of the draw and just making the best of what you have.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!