The way most people play Planechase is a single deck of planes and phenomenons, but this is technically incorrect. The proper way is that each player has their own planar deck, but this was mostly tossed for logistic reasons, the primary one being if you are all on different planes, how are you making your fists contact each others' faces? I suggest a few twists to the preference of the play group.
A quick refresher on Planechase rules: rolling the planar die is only done at sorcery speed, the first roll of a turn is free, the second costs 1 mana, the third costs 2 mana, etc. The abilities of planes use the stack. I don't have a confirmation on this, but I get the impression that the rolling of the planar die functions as an activated ability, and TBH I think it shouldn't be counterable just because of its unpredictable nature, but feel free to correct me on that if you can send me a ruling on it :)
Drafted Planechase
The first one I'd like to discuss is what I call "Drafted Planes." For Commander Planechase, each player takes turns (roll for first to determine order, the person who does this last takes the first in-game turn) drafting a single plane card face-up from the available planes at the table. Once each player has selected X planes (see "How many planes should each player draft" below), all the phenomenons (minus any the table unanimously votes to exclude) and the chosen planes get shuffled to form the game's single shared Planechase deck.
How many planes should each player draft?
Whether your table would rather reshuffle the planar deck and start it over (because of there being favorite planes or phenomenons that the entire group likes) or have a large deck to avoid that problem informs whether you should have a higher or lower number of planes drafter per player.
If your table prefers a smaller deck, then you will likely want a deck of 3-4 planes per player. If they prefer a larger deck, you will want closer to 8-10 planes per player.
In a typical 4-player game of Commander Planechase, you will planeswalk at least 15 times. This varies a lot based on the draws, what decks are being played, and so on. Decks that like to flood the board with mana sources, such as artefact powerstone decks or landfall decks, are likely to increase the number of times the die is rolled. This can be mitigated as you like, see "More Limitations" below.
What is the order of operations for the following pregame tasks?
- Choose your deck. This step is just for players who have multiple decks, but that's most Commander players.
- Draft your planes and determine turn order (as explained above).
- Explain your deck's premise to the table (E. G, "This is a modified creature Naya deck, its focus is modifying creatures and getting triggers off of how many modified creatures I control. I specifically avoided favoring any method of modification over another, so I have about equally as many equipment, auras, and counter producing sources. On a scale from 1 to 10 with Competitive EDH being a 9, I'd estimate this deck is a 4 or 5."; "This deck is a Skullbriar, the Walking Grave Voltron deck based heavily, but not exclusively, on counters. For a challenge, I restricted the card options to not include any proliferation effects or tutor abilities. On a scale from 1 to 10 with Competitive EDH being a 9, I'd estimate this deck is a 5 or 6.")
In my experience, players will choose and explain their decks together, allowing players to pick decks of similar power level but not overlapping strengths too heavily. If this is the case for your group, you can add to the chaos by having the first person to pick their deck have it chosen randomly. Regardless, you may choose to pick your decks secretly instead, draft your planes, and then explain your deck after the first turn, or even sillier, you can draft the Planechase deck before players pick their decks.
Elimination Draft:
Sometimes a player will find that they just aren't fond of any of the available planes. When this happens frequently, it may be beneficial to introduce this variation. When a player drafts a plane, they may instead choose to remove a plane from the stack of draft options.
Remove some planes from the options based on the table's preferences:
I prefer to remove any planes from the options that specifically benefit a set of colors played by only 1 player at the table. If a MonoBlue control deck, Azorius vehicle deck, White soldier tribal deck, and a Jund aristocrats deck end up on the Jund plane, only one player will be happy about it. Similarly, several other planes are usually just not fun for most players, or make the game much more complicated to track. My personal list of planes that fit this criteria is in the Sideboard. My personal list of planes that fit this criteria unless you choose a More Chaos variant is in the Maybeboard.
More Chaos:
If you want to have a very messy game, you may choose to have the Chaotic Aether phenomenon be permanently active for the game. You may also decide to use a standard D6 for the planar die, and have the 6 face be planeswalk, and any number of the other sides be chaos to the preference of the group.
Flexible Chaos:
A more player-oriented version of this variation. Use a standard D6 for the planar die. 1-2 is Planeswalk and 5-6 is Chaos Ensues. However, when a player rolls the planar die for the first time each turn, they may choose to spend 2 or 4 life to increase the odds of one of those two outcomes. If they choose to spend 2 life, then they choose to either have Planeswalk also occur on a 3 or have Chaos also Ensue on a 4. If they paid 4 life, then they choose to either have Planeswalk occur on a roll of 1-4 or have Chaos Ensue on a roll of 3-6.
More Limitations:
If you have a table where infinite mana combos are a possibility, you may run into a situation where a player may just keep rolling the planar die, hoping that they eventually roll into a win. This tends not to be fun. Here are a few rules you can modularly implement as needed to avoid this problem:
- You cannot (roll/pay to roll, table's choice) the planar die a number of times per turn greater than (how many opponents you have/players in the game, table's choice).
- As an additional cost to rolling the planar die, you must pay life equal to the amount of times you have already rolled it this turn.
- As an additional cost to rolling the planar die, you must put a stun counter on each mana source used to pay for the additional cost of rolling the planar die.
Un-Games:
If you are playing a game with lots of silver border cards, I suggest implementing this rule. Whenever a player Planeswalks, their opponents have 5 seconds to say "We're out!" If none of them do, the player who Planeswalked rolls a D10. If at least one of them does, then one of the Planeswalking player's opponents with the lowest life total (choice of the Planeswalking player in the case of ties) rolls a D10:
- Choose a player. They create a Food token. If their life total is greater than their starting life total, they create 2 Food tokens instead.
- Choose a player. They gain life equal to the greatest number of cards in any player's hand. If every player has the same number of cards in their hand, the chosen player gains the same amount of life plus 3 instead.
- Choose a player. They draw a card. If they have no maximum hand size, they draw 2 cards instead.
- Choose a player. They exile an instant or sorcery with a mana value of 1d6 or less from their graveyard. You may copy it and cast it without paying its mana cost until end of turn.
- Choose a player. They discard a card. If they have no cards in their hand, they instead mill 2 cards.
- Choose a player. They sacrifice a creature. If they control no creatures, they instead exile the card in their graveyard with the highest mana value.
- Choose a player. Until end of turn, whenever a creature attacks that player, it gains afflict 1. If the chosen player controls no creatures, instead of gaining afflict 1 the creature deals 1 damage to any target other than the chosen player or permanents controlled by the chosen player.
- Choose a player. They damage to themselves equal to the number of cards in their hand. If they have no cards in their hand, they reveal the top card of their library and take damage equal to the revealed card's mana value.
- Choose a player. They search their library for a basic land and puts it into play tapped. If they do not have any basic lands in their library, then any other player may pay 2. If no one does, the chosen player creates 2 treasure tokens.
- Choose a player. Exile any number of cards in their graveyard, then that player shuffles the rest of them into their library. If there are no cards in the chosen player's graveyard, tap and place a stun counter on target land controlled by the chosen player.
