Planechase – First impressions

I got my hands on Planechase -thanks in part to an early fathers-day present. I must admit I was pleasantly surprised.

When I first saw some of the cards, I printed a copy and tried a few one on one games with them. I wasn’t all that impressed. The nature of the cards made the duel style of game a lot more swingy. Playing with Planechase in multiplayer was a different issue altogether. In fact the Planechase  environment was less about the decks and more about the journey.

I played in 3 games today. The first was an eleven player monstrosity that was not that much fun, even though I won it. In hindsight we should have split into a five and six player game. Magic seems to have an upper limit of six-eight in the chaos format. The second and third gmaes were 5 player afairs which went much more smoothly.

I didn’t make may notes, but here are some cameos

• An almost complete circuit of the Naar plane
• Getting 17 saproling tokens from my Verdant Force thanks to a series of chaos events in Otaria
• Never getting to use said saprolings due to Serra’s Realm
• Having 10 people count down out the 10 cards going into your graveyard on Lethe Lake
• Watching a player hit the chaos symbol at the Academy at Tolaria West before playing a land, and then planes walk away in the same turn

The final tale involves me passing on Naar on with the count on 5 and then to my horror watching the recipient play Furnace of Rath and say end. It was as the table was cleared without anybody having a chance to draw a card! 12, 14, 16, 1nd 18 damage was dealt in quick succession!

So there you have it. A totally fun time was had, and I can’t wait for some more of the action.