Fun and Interesting Ideas for Emperor!
The Kitchen Table forum
Posted on Aug. 21, 2014, 5:36 a.m. by Femme_Fatale
In an effort to make this forum popular, let's see the kind of decks people really have fun with in Emperor.
Emperor is mainly a 3 on 3 variant of 2HG, with some interesting ideas. There is one emperor in the center and two generals on the side for your team. You may go up to any number of players, like 5 vs 5 or 7 vs 7. The goal is to kill the opposing emperor. Life is not shared, so each player has 20 life, board states are not shared, and you cannot communicate about what you want to do or are going to do or what is in your hand to only your teammates. Turns go clockwise for each player, not all players on one team go simultaneously. The team that goes first actually only has the general to the left of the emperor go first, and since it is clockwise, the enemy's right hand general goes next, and so on.
When a player dies, or loses the game, any permanent, spell on the stack, or effect like Act of Treason that that player controls, immediately leaves the game when that player loses.
Players may move creatures into neighbouring allied player's battlefields. A creature can only be moved when it can attack. Meaning it must be untapped, not a creature with defender, and not have summoning sickness. A creature can only be moved when you can legally summon a creature. Any number of creatures can be moved, but each creature can be moved only once. Once a creature is moved, it gets summoning sickness again. You can't summon a creature into another player's field.
However, the control of that creature does not change, and only attacks on their controller's attack phase, not the attack phase of the player of the battlefield they are on. Creatures can defend the player of the battlefield they are on however, but only the controller of the creature chooses which creatures will block which attacking creatures.
If creatures are forced to attack, but have no adjacent enemies, then they are automatically moved to an ally battlefield and attack the enemy that played the spell or ability that forced them to attack. For example, Bident of Thassa would force the opposing players that are out of range to automatically move into range of the player that activated Bident of Thassa 's ability only if they can attack.
If you take control of a non-creature permanent, it teleports to your battlefield. This does not happen with creatures, as they are only forcibly moved to one adjacent player that is the closes to you, regardless whether or not that creature is tapped, has summoning sickness, or has defender. The creature is not forcibly moved again if the control effect ends. After this, movement must happen normally. If the creature ends up in an enemy general's or emperor's field, you can use that creature to attack adjacent enemies, or block allying creatures that are attacking that enemy. Note however that once that creature moves off of enemy territory, the creature cannot move back onto enemy territory again. Unless the control effect ends and control goes back to its original controller, in which case it is technically in enemy territory again and the creature is forcibly moved one territory closer again.
When a player dies, every creature that belongs to another player that is on the battlefield of the player that just died, dies also. Nothing can be regenerated from this fate.
There is a limited range of effect in emperor. Basically, you can only target players that are in two territories away from you. So at the start of the game and you play Thoughtseize , you cannot target the opposing emperor, just yourself, one of your generals, or one of the opposing generals. This also applies to global effects, so Coat of Arms at the start of the game would not effect any player that is more than two territories away.
However, creatures can increase this range if moved. The range of effect increases to territories away from wherever a creature you control currently resides. So if you have a really massively complex 7 vs 7 game, moving creatures is vital for global effects to reach far off players, and for you to allow more targets for instants and sorceries.
There are some cards that don't specificy whether they are targeting spells or global spells, so it is up to the players to come to an acceptable solution to this problem.
Now for the questions!
What kind of deck do you play, and how is it perceived on the kitchen table?
Is it a deck that you play regardless of what your teammates are playing? Or do you have some friends you always play with and have your decks tailored to synergize with each other?
Are you usually the Emperor or are you one of the generals on the side?
Do you have any house rules? Shake things up a little, shakabakawaka.
Any ban-lists? A particular card, or a type of deck, or a certain deck in general?
Let's hear your experiences! Share the joys and ideas, and others will be able to try some new things out~
Rhadamanthus says... #3
You use a very interesting variation of the "deploy creatures" option. I'd never heard most of that before.
It's been a while since the last time I played Emperor, but when I did we used these variations: 3 vs. 3, no "deploy creatures" option, range of influence for spells and abilities is 2 for Emperors and 1 for Lieutenants, attack range is 1 for everybody. The only "ban list" I remember us having in place was that two particular people couldn't both play their Sliver decks at the same time, regardless of which teams they were on.
My favorite deck to play as the Emperor was this deck, because I could help my Lieutenants mess with their opponents while I set up a board-hand-graveyard state that's extremely difficult to beat:
Spirits and Arcane Playtest
Casual
SCORE: 4 | 0 COMMENTS | 1443 VIEWSMy favorite deck to play as a Lieutenant was an older, slightly less crazy (but still very scary) version of this deck, because BLAM:
Goblin Burn Playtest
Casual
SCORE: 2 | 2 COMMENTS | 1698 VIEWSAugust 21, 2014 10:04 a.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #4
yeah, most don't know about the deploy creatures. It makes the otherwise boring build up as emperor very interesting, because then tribal decks can become quite useful in providing back up to your teammates. It is just that in casual matches, tribal decks are really overpowered.
I just took the wording off of the WotC ruling guide and shortened it a bit, so it is how it should be played, it is just an unknown thing in casual because it is complicated at times.
As for your Spirit and Arcane deck Rhadamanthus, I think that would be an awesome deck to play as emperor. I mean you've got the time to build up for the necessary mana needed, and you can use it for constant back-up for your generals on the side with all the removal.
One thing I noticed was that generals were most effective as aggro beatdown or speed decks, to quickly get at the enemy emperor, while emperor was best at slow gradual build decks that can provide an instant win when they can swing against your opponent.
August 21, 2014 2:46 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #5
The only rule I can find for deploy creatures is that it gives them the "Tap: give me to a teammate as a sorcery" ability. All the other stuff about controllers not changing, getting pulled by forced-attack effects, attacking from an opposing player's battlefield, etc. sounds like someone's house-rule variant.
Sometimes a control Lieutenant can also be very helpful, because when played well it makes one of the opposing Lieutenants completely useless, and can give the Emperor even more time to build up to something amazing.
August 21, 2014 3:04 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #6
These rules came straight from the WotC rulings page, so they are the proper method of playing.
August 21, 2014 3:21 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #7
Okay, I was going by the CR, which doesn't document any of that other stuff in the section on Multiplayer variants (800). That is very interesting.
August 21, 2014 4:42 p.m.
It is interesting banning whole decks. I can see running an alternate win condition deck in the Emperor slot is pretty much really dirty. You may have enough time to set it up. I built three decks for Emperor. One was mainly assisting my allies with card drawing spells and land enchantments, to accelerate their mana production. Another used Doubling Season and every planeswalker at the time. This was way before Contagion Clasp and its ability. The last was the one I liked the most using Limited Resources with targeted land destruction and Mox Diamond.
Femme_Fatale says... #2
As for my own experiences, I don't have too much special. Emperor is really fun, it is just getting the area of targeting ingrained into everyone's head.
The largest thing we have is the ban-list though. We ban entire decks as not everyone can decide as to which cards are pivotal to a deck, I mean, if I could get everyone to follow, the ban-list would be a lot easier to follow and a lot more lenient as it would just be key-cards, not entire decks.
The ban list includes ...
For the generals in 3 vs 3 matches, no RDW decks or storm decks. (two RDW deck generals each only targeting the enemy emperor? LAME SAUCE.)
For the emperors in 3 vs 3 matches, or any "out of attacking range" player inside a 5 vs 5 or higher match, no tribal decks, no infinite combos, no automatic win conditions like Biovisionary . Imagine an elf deck getting free board state for 7 turns. Or imagine having a pod deck with free board. Biovisionary decks are just bullshit, as I learned from everyone hating my Biovisionary deck :D
August 21, 2014 5:44 a.m.