Fun and Interesting Ideas for Two-Headed Giant!
The Kitchen Table forum
Posted on Aug. 21, 2014, 4:27 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 Two-Headed Giant.
What is Two-Headed Giant? This is basically a two-on-two format. You start with 30 life between the two of you, and poison works to 15. Nothing is shared between the two of you, so you cannot use another's mana, and things that would target or choose a player or an opponent, only targets one player on the team, not both. You also cannot use a sideboard.
Hands and hidden zones can be seen by all members of a team. The phases of a turn are also shared, so you play stuff simultaneously, attack simultaneously and have only one upkeep and end step for your team. Instead of player priority it is team priority.
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 teammate is playing? Or do you have a friend you always play with and have two decks that synergize so well?
Do you have any house rules? Shake things up a little, shaka-shaka.
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~
Oletorpedo says... #3
We don't have any "official" house rules, but we try not tp play with cards that, when cast, deals damage or discards cards etc to "each opponent". The reason for this is because these cards are basically twice as good. In other words, you can play Gray Merchant of Asphodel if you want, but people will stare at you, roar at you, they might even bite you a bit. We're an odd bunch.
August 21, 2014 7:54 a.m.
Oletorpedo says... #4
A thing we like to do in our group, is to play THG Planechase. It is the tits. It gets really chaotic and weird. And, we're planning on doing a EDH-THG planechase soon, which should make for an intersting night.
To answer some of your other questions, my favorite deck to bring to the table is a Golgari-deck consisting of sac outlets, Blood Artist and Ogre Slumlord ++. Things will die when playing THG, and when they do, why not take advantage of it.
Usually we pair up randomly, and we don't see any decks before they hit the battlefield.
I find that THG is an awesome way of getting new people into the game, so we play it quite often when we're teaching friends how to play.
Awesome thread BTW!
August 21, 2014 8:09 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #5
Except for maybe a couple casual constructed games in college, I've only ever played 2HG in the Sealed format. The key thing there is getting a good partner, both in the sense of being a good player and someone who you have a strong mutual understanding with. My brother was my best partner for the events I played in, because not only was he a very good player but we knew each other well enough that we could do our "table talk" without having to say very much at all. Sometimes we could just draw our card for the turn, look at the board, look at each other, and know exactly what we were going to do.
Knowing how to split up a Sealed pool between two players can be tough sometimes, but I remember having the best results when one head was playing aggro and the other head was playing control, with both of them also having some midrange qualities. This often meant my brother was playing a bunch of good Red and Green creatures turn after turn while I used Blue and Black removal, countermagic, and evasion to keep the way clear and the opponents off-balance.
August 21, 2014 9:50 a.m.
My casual playgroup plays 2HG with some significant rule changes, and i'm actually very curious to hear peoples opinions on this. The main differences can be summed up as differentiating "player" and "opponent" differently. While "player" is still taken as each individual, we consider a team to be 1 "opponent". We also treat combat differently, in that your teams creatures will not be treated as a whole when attacking (ie we attack at the same time but treat our creatures separately). This prevent things like exalted or battalion from triggering based on your teammates creatures.
Why? Well frankly we didn't look up the rules until long after we started, and this way just made sense. We now stick with it out of habit, but it has certain merits. Mostly that it appears to stop some cards from having a significant power boost as compared to in a 1v1 game. Purphoros, God of the Forge , Infectious Horror , , Exsanguinate etc. The general idea is that we want to play our 1v1 decks in a 2HG format without having their functionality significantly changed. Purphoros, God of the Forge + Tempt with Vengeance landing for 4 1/1s and 8 dmg is proportional... landing for 16dmg is not. We don't want to build 2HG specific decks, and this effectively prevents us from doing so.
It's far from perfect, in contrast, these rules actually under-power some cards. Agent of the Fates is a good example, where the team chooses only one creature from both their creatures in play to sac. hence compared to 1v1 your return is lower for triggering him. But as a whole, these rules seems to keep things more comparable to 1v1.
I really wonder about other peoples thoughts on this, as I certainly think WotC put more thought into their rules then we did. But we haven't come across a compelling argument to change over yet, based on how we want to play.
August 21, 2014 10:21 a.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #7
Battalion or exalted wouldn't trigger via your teammates in regular 2HG brcap, the reason for this is that you don't control your teammates creatures.
Active player and non active player refer to the entire team, so it is activeteam and nonactive team. Certain defending player and attacking player cards refer to both as one player, like if they control a black creature or something, other than that, you have you have to choose which defending player or which attacking player.
August 21, 2014 3:19 p.m.
HeroInMyOwnMind says... #8
How do most tables feel about things like Sorin Markov and Magister Sphinx ?
We play with a consolidated life total, so when "that guy" drops it during the game (even though we have an unofficial ban and he knows it), I just don't know the best way to handle it. Dropping from 80 to 10 in 4v4 seems silly.
August 21, 2014 5:54 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #9
Obviously life total changes in anything above 2 vs 2 would be banned. But I never seen anyone play them in my casual area. They are fine in 2 vs 2, as 10-20 damage for a 6-7 drop isn't really bad. Especially when they are both unlikely to come across cards.
August 21, 2014 7:10 p.m.
My friends and I enjoy our 2HG games alot, We have 40 shared health, and basically follow our rule of "Two heads, one body" so each opponent, means both heads, and buffs like Glorious Anthem only effect the one players creatures. The most fun I have is when I run my Zombie deck, and my friend runs his Goblin deck. Cauldron of Souls with his 1/1 tokens, and Black Market usually gives me loads of mana to drop pretty much anything. And with all the death, on both of our fields, his Goblin Sharpshooter is just a menace. Probably the most fun/terrifying game was Affinity/Tooth and Nail vs Fairy Tribal/Soldier Equipments, where they got a tooth and Nail off, grabbing Platinum Angel and Leonin Abunas . We were just barely holding on at 7 Life, while they were -54, Till I FINALLY got to bounce the aunas, and Sower of Temptation the angel for the game, before the Lightning Greaves on the field.
August 22, 2014 1:41 p.m.
HeroInMyOwnMind My understanding was cards like Sorin Markov
and Magister Sphinx
reduce change a 2HG team with a different mechanic. I thought the official rules treat player/opponent life totals separately when a card would seek to target them individually. ie. the Team has 30 life. The opponent uses Sorin Markov
's -3 or casts Magister Sphinx
targeting that team (but actually only one of the players/opponents), so the game temporarily splits the teams life total between teammates, here each having 15 life. It would reduce one of those players/opponents life totals to 10, and then recombine them - leaving the life total at 25.
September 4, 2014 2:07 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #12
Uh no brcap, it doesn't work like that. While you can target each person individually, they both have the same life total. They share that life total regardless of any effect that is done to them. If one person's life total becomes 10 life the entire team becomes 10 life.
Gatherer rules text:
6/15/2010 - In a Two-Headed Giant game, this ability basically causes the team's life total to become 10, but only the targeted player is considered to have actually gained or lost life.
September 4, 2014 2:11 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #13
@brcap: That was true in an older version of the 2HG life rules, but the current rules are as Femme_Fatale describes.
September 4, 2014 2:28 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #14
Why did they change that? Was it because that it makes the card generally ineffective in 2HG? I would much rather have it at that method than the current method. It balances many more cards out than the current system does.
September 4, 2014 2:32 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #15
Those rules about the shared life total were changed to the current version because the previous version was deemed to be too confusing and complicated. Splitting the life total, remembering to round, doing math on one of them, then recombining is surprisingly easy to screw up. The old way also made several cards that halve/double/set/etc. life totals either do a whole lot of nothing or do something a player not already familiar with the details might not expect.
Femme_Fatale says... #2
As for me, I LOVE sacrifice and death decks. This is normally golgari decks, and specialize in powerful enchantments and creatures to provide a massive advantage upon something dying. This normally requires using my teammate as a shield while I build up.
I'm talking a board with ... Blood Artist , Butcher of Malakir and Gutter Grime , then chucking down a Living Death , and watching everything proc, and you win! Good to have a little more than just two creatures out, or just one Reassembling Skeleton .
Or you could, mill them with Gutter Grime and Altar of Dementia .
Or decimate their board with Reassembling Skeleton , Butcher of Malakir and a sac outlet.
The ramp generally consists of things like Dark Ritual . Sakura-Tribe Elder and Viridian Emissary . I generally always use Altar of Dementia as a sac outlet, mainly because it is SO much fun to watch them be milled away in a golgari deck even though it has anti-synergy with Living Death .
As for ban-lists ... nothing competitive unless everyone is going competitive. Because one competitive combo deck can just decimate the entire game.
House rules, I really love sharing the entire board state with my teammate. Basically, things that say "you" effect you both. In that, we share the graveyard, share the exile zone, share the battlefield, share the mana and occasionally share the hand, so max hand size becomes 14.
I like this because then I can take control of my partner's board state to use as my ramp for all my really expensive stuff. A constant Reassembling Skeleton reanimation can use up a lot of mana, especially when compared with Dark Prophecy .
Other than that, life total generally increases by 20 for each player there is. So instead of regular 2HG having 30 life, we have 40. If you have 3 people on your team, you have 60. If there is an uneven amount of players, like 4 and 3, both teams would have the highest amount of health "allowed" out of the two. In this case both would have 80 health. Poison counters work the same way, +10 more poison counters required for each person beyond the first.
My most chaotic experience was when it was like 5 vs 4 (I balanced out the team of 4), it was so hard to communicate during battle, and the guy facing me had to shout to the other end to inform them that a 14/15 Steppe Lynx was swinging at him. It was in highschool at lunch, we never got through that match.
August 21, 2014 4:31 a.m.