7 Political Multiplayer Formats for Magic: the Gathering – Part One (Assassins, Assassins and Thugs & The Hunt)

The Magic: the Gathering Multiplayer and Casual Format Gateway is a hungry beast.  On the surface of the internet there’s only a handful of popular casual formats.  Drill through the layers, though, and an upwelling of  variations burst through.  My gateway included the basic thirty-three.  There are hundreds left to explore.

Missing from that original line-up were a slew of formats full of political intrigue, where players take roles and argue their way to victory.  I’m correcting that now.

Assassins

Number of Players: 4+
Prep Time: Quickish
Rules Baggage: Mild
Speed Compared to Cutthroat: Faster
Skill or Casual: Both
Political: Shenanigans

Free for all Magic takes time.  That’s okay, as long as the game is fun to play.  Unfortunately, you can’t control the attitudes of other people sitting around the table.  Two hour games lead to cranky players.  And cranky players get defensive.  Why did you kill my creature?  Why are you attacking me?  Can’t you see I’m trying to end this game?!

Thus enters Assassins, a variant which first saw print in The Duelist #8.  In Assassins, each player is given a mark and is tasked with killing their secret opponent.  Whenever a player kills their mark, they gain that dead player’s mark as their new secret opponent.  The person who kills the most marks wins the match (though, special consideration is given to the last player standing.  It counts as a tie-breaker.)

Assassins alters the game in two important ways.  The first is that players don’t waste as much time whining their way out of an attack.  Since killing a mark is each player’s most important goal, and no one knows whose mark is whose, then little is accomplished by complaining.  If you’re the mark, then no amount of pleading will stop your assassin from trapping you in a dingy alley, tackling you to the ground, and stabbing, stabbing, stabbing their way to victory.

That’s not to say politics is dead.  Far from it.  In an open-ended game, politics can drag as players attempt to maintain a sense of stability.  When players hang their hat on a threat and an objective, though, conversation picks up.  Players can’t waste the game hiding.  They need other players in order to survive the oncoming slaughter.  Which leads us to our second important change that Assassins brings to the game.  Since the player who kills the most marks gets the most points, aggressive decks are rewarded.  If you kill three opponents in a five player game before the fifth player turns on their control engine, then you win.  Three kills beats one kill plus last man standing tie-breaker.

For the most commonly accepted rules of Assassins, see Adam Styborski’s version (It’s the top section of his article.  If you want want Adam’s version without the article, you can go here instead.)  Technobabel wrote a another take on the format, with some variations on the classic rules.

All four of those sites include some variation on “First write everyone’s name down on a slip of paper, and put those names into a hat.”  That’s a bad idea for two reasons:

1.)  Depending on where you play, some players might not remember who everyone is at the table.  And it won’t do to ask people their names after you pull your mark out of the hat.  Lucky for you, you’re playing Magic, and probably own excess chaff cards.  In a five player game, give each player a card, face up, to represent themselves (five basic lands, perhaps?) .  Shuffle a duplicate of each of those cards, and pass those cards out face down.  The face down card represents each player’s mark.  In the rare event that no one brought enough extra duplicate Magic cards with them, a deck of 52 playing cards should do.

2.)  Odds are, when you pass out marks, that someone will get themselves.  I’d explain why, but the math for this would take up it’s own article.  The important take away is that each time you hand out marks, you’re more likely to force a redo than be ready to play.

You’ve probably seen this problem work itself out before.  It happens whenever a group of gift-givers decide to go ‘Secret Santa‘.  This is easy to work around, though, if players can access smartphones.  Go to drawnames.com, type in everyone’s avatar name and e-mail address and hit ‘Send’.

If there aren’t enough smartphones available to make this a simple option, there are other work arounds.  Here’s one: Assign avatars at random, face down.  Let each player look at their face down avatar, then pass around the marks pile to each player, face down.  Each player looks at the available marks, chooses one, then passes the rest along.  After each player chooses their mark (and the last player confirms they did not choose themselves) reveal all avatars.  If you do this, then the only player who could get their own mark, dramatically reducing the chance of a redo (in an eight player game, the odds of redo are 12.5%.  Much, much better than somewhere in the sixty percentile range with the original ‘names in a hat’ method.)

Assassins and Thugs

Number of Players:  5+
Prep Time: Quickish
Rules Baggage: Mild
Speed Compared to Cutthroat: Faster
Skill or Casual: Both
Political: Shenanigans

While looking through the information online for Assassins, I realized I never played it the right way.  Kind of.  What really happened was my friends and I picked up Assassins, saw that someone was likely to get themselves when drawing lots, and adapted the rules to handle that.  It never occurred to us that we were doing something unique.  I’m sure a number of other playgroups made the same decisions we did, but I can’t find them online anywhere, so I guess I need write the rules out myself.

When a game of Assassins and Thugs begins, players choose their marks secretly, and at random.  Whenever a player dies, all players reveal their roles.  Whoever has that player as their mark (whether or not they dealt the final blow) is that player’s assassin.  Any player who has their own card as their mark is a petty thug.  The assassin benefits the most, gaining six life, and drawing three cards for a fulfilled contract.  The thugs kick the dead man and loot his corpse, with each thug gaining two life and drawing one card for their ministrations.  After the bloody mess is tossed into the local water supply, all the remaining players hand back their mark cards, and the marks are handed back secretly, and at random.

Players don’t play for points in this version of Assassins.  You want to kill other players because it will influence your position in the greater game.  Sometimes, this will result in a slower game, and sometimes it will result in a faster game; all out swinging isn’t so bad if you know it will result in a six point life gain (and deny another assassin their six points of life.)  Thugs might sit on their hands, since any player death will result in them gaining two life and a card.  But… any player death will result in the thugs gaining two life and a card.  Woe be to a player who shows weakness with three active thugs at a table, eager to receive new contracts.

The Hunt

Number of Players: 4+
Prep Time: Quickish
Rules Baggage: Mild
Speed Compared to Cutthroat: Fast? Slow? Depends on the players, really.
Skill or Casual: More Casual
Political: Less than Cutthroat?

Way back in 2002, when Magicthegathering.com was brand-spanking new, Anthony Alongi wrote about a format called The Hunt, which also solved a number of problems with Assassins.  When The Hunt begins, each player claims a random secret mark, but unlike Assassins, each hunter’s range encapsulates themselves and their mark.  Furthermore, if they attack their mark, or target their mark’s things, then that mark can attack and target their hunter for the rest of the game.  Whenever any player dies, that player’s hunter gains the hunted dead’s marks.

If, when drawing or claiming marks, you happen to draw yourself, then you become a rogue.  Rogues aren’t limited by who they can attack and target.  They still need to be judicious, however.  Since each player they stab at enters into their range, becoming a player who can target and attack in response.

The format sounds engaging.  It probably doesn’t work when Johnny, Combo Player comes a-callin’… but if no one abuses the rules, it should be fun.  I wish I could link to someone besides Mr. Alongi.  But, outside his article, I can’t find a reference to The Hunt anywhere.  I don’t suppose you’d be interested in helping to resurrect the format?  It’s only mostly dead.

~

Move on to Part Two: Bang! Magic, Throne Magic, The Dark Melee and Octant.