George is one of the regulars in my playgroup. He played Magic ages ago, but he left the game for several years. Over this past year, he has come back in a big way, playing some online and as much paper Magic as he can. He gets involved in tournaments, but he really gets his crazy deck-building juices flowing with our multiplayer group.

Recently, he was playing Momir Basic and tried to decide if there was a way it could be ported to actual cards. Building the decks was no problem, but recreating the randomness of the cards would be the real problem. How many creature cards would it take to recreate the feeling of randomness that Magic Online provides?

After considering this, George went through hundreds of creatures in his collection, sorting them into piles according to casting cost. After going through an estimated 2,000 or so cards, he boxed them up and brought them over to run the initial testing of Momir Live!

The other major difference from the online version is that we would be playing it multiplayer. There were seven of us ready to go, so while we shuffled the huge piles of cards (George hadn't had time to separate identical cards or big groups of particular colors), we considered how best to proceed.

We were also concerned that some of the effects we would run into would lead to game resets far too often. There would probably be five or six new creatures coming out at random each round. This many creatures means that mass damage or bounce would lead to global resets.

Both of these issues suggested that a chaos variant where everyone can attack everyone was probably not the best idea. We decided to go with Attack Left as a variant instead. With fewer opponents as threats, we hoped this would keep the game moving. We also set a limited range for spells and effects. This meant that the spells and effects would only be felt by you and the players to your left and right. This would dramatically limit the usefulness of Wrath effects, since it would weaken you, but not all the other players in the game. Finally, we decided to be true to the online form and treat all the creatures as tokens. This meant that they did not stay in the graveyard or go to your hand if bounced. Any flicker effect was as good as any spell destroying a creature.

Action!

Before we could get started, we needed to shuffle. George had separated the creatures according to mana cost, so while he piled the cards onto the table, everyone started shuffling. We were careful not to look at any of the creatures that were in the stacks of cards. We all wanted to keep the game as random as possible, so no one wanted to know any of the cards included in the stacks. Piles for each mana cost up to 10 were set up, and the cards were piled high. Way high.

Those of you who can count to ten will notice more than ten piles of cards.¹ George figured he would need more cards in the 2-, 3-, and 4-mana-cost range, so he chose extra creatures in those ranges, and we made two stacks for those cards.

Rather than a play-by-play I'll mention a few highlights:

Spencer was being attacked repeatedly and only had one more land in hand when he lucked into Primetime. He managed to attack with him twice before he was removed, setting him up to go after the 10-mana cards way ahead of everyone else.

For the rest of you who are saying, “Big deal. Some shmuck drew a Giant Shark. Poor bastard,” well, that is true, but the story is too good for you to miss.

The night we decided to try out the Momir Live format, Andy from CommanderCast was joining us. CommanderCast is the premier Commander podcast. Andy and a group of recurring regulars host this podcast that discusses all things Commander-related. I recommend you check out the site and podcast.

Andy contacted me over a year ago when CommanderCast was just getting established, and the Muse Vessel had been running for a month or so. We appeared on an episode of CommanderCast, and I kept in regular contact with Andy. When I discovered he was coming for PAX East that year, I invited him over to join my Magic group for an evening. Naturally, when PAX East came around this year and Andy announced he was going again, I invited him to come over again.

This season of CommanderCast included an episode in which everyone facetiously referred to Giant Shark as one of the most dominant creatures in the game. Weeks later, Andy received two, anonymous deliveries that ended up being well over 1,000 Giant Sharks. Since then, more and more Sharks keep appearing, running his total to over 2,000. When Andy randomly flipped over a Giant Shark as one of his 6-drops, it blew my mind and brought a great laugh around the table.

Or, you could just lucksack into him at exactly the right time! I was being attacked by the Primeval Titan and another creature (when one of the creatures attacking you is Primetime, you tend to forget about the other creatures), while Aaron, my opponent to my left, had three different creatures that were completely stopping any attack I could make. I played Malfegor and discarded the four cards I happened to have in my hand when he came into play, killing every creature my opponents within range controlled! I couldn't have planned this better! I managed to kill Aaron before Malfegor was destroyed.

Malfegor does dramatically reduce your ability to ramp up or even get more creatures. With any card-draw, beyond the single draw each turn, being very unpredictable, he makes you pay a horrible price for many turns afterward. Soon after I killed the opponent on my left, I was killed. Malfegor puts you into the position where you have to decide if you want to play another land or get another creature. I just could not match the creature growth of my opponents who didn't have to make that decision for several more turns.

Andy pulled this card, and his only decision was how many lands he should leave in his library to ensure he didn't deck himself. I believe he chose to exile thirty-five lands. Not surprisingly, he proceeded to kill one player after another on each of his following turns. Josh, sitting to his right, did manage to take him out before Andy could get around the board, but this thing is just a complete house.

I think by now you can see the bizarre interactions that happen in Momir Live. Cards that have questionable value are suddenly amazing, while others that normally destroy an opponent are rendered worse than the usual vanilla creature. Sun Titan was another example of a great creature gone completely lame.

Problems and Possible Solutions

Momir Live is very much still a work in progress. The initial games brought a few issues to the fore:

1. Repeats

Everyone agreed that removing all the repeated cards would make gameplay better. While having duplicates of some cards would be interesting, everyone agreed that a big part of the fun of Momir Live is seeing all the varying card interactions. Having copies of one card reduces the interactions and makes the game less fun.

2. Vanilla Creatures

I am part of the group that would like to remove all the vanilla creatures as well. The exciting plays happened when spectacular creatures hit the battlefield. Why not maximize the stack with these creatures? The other group wanted to keep the completely random feel for Momir Live, which means keeping vanilla creatures in the stacks. For now, it looks like George will be keeping them in the stack, but this is something that I will push for in the future.

3. Shuffling

The benefit of Momir online is that any card could come up and there is no shuffling. I suspect you will want to shuffle the stacks before the start of any evening of Momir Live. Thankfully, if you are playing multiplayer (and why wouldn't you—Momir Live is an awesome multiplayer format!), there are plenty of you to shuffle the piles. We shuffled up the piles of cards in minutes before we started, and it required that much shuffling only because they weren't randomized beforehand.

4. Cards-Per-Turn Limit.

We limited everyone to playing only one card per turn. This should probably be changed to add some strategy to a mostly luck-based format. Do you want to play two 3-mana creatures on turn six or one 6-mana creature?

5. Token Creatures or Cards?

I would have liked to see the creatures count as creature cards. This would let you bounce them to your hand and play them out from your hand later. It would let creatures with graveyard abilities do what they were supposed to do. I felt this would open up more options and cool plays. I think this is something that we will try in future tests, but I don't see any real problem.

6. Stacking the Stacks

Since the stacks are not truly random, since George doesn't have every creature in Magic, why not pick and choose the creatures you want to include in an effort to maximize the fun in the game?

While this idea sounded interesting, George has decided against it for now. It would be a lot of work going through and picking specific creatures. For a game still in its infancy with us, he wants to be sure that this is something we'll play regularly before putting in that level of work. It also turns Momir into a weird Cube, and the randomness of the format is what draws you to it. If you want to build a funky Cube, build a Cube.

7. Style of Multiplayer

We chose Attack Left with a range of one for the reasons I've discussed already. We may change that in the future to chaos and no range. I feared that the game would become bogged down, but I don't think that will be a problem. George put a wide selection of creatures in the stacks, and whenever it looked like the game would slow down, some new creature shifted the game's dynamic. Most players generally prefer chaos and no range, and I think it will work for us.

Momir Live was plenty of fun, and I'm looking forward to playing again in the future. The bizarre card interactions and random game swings made this a lot of fun. I think anyone who enjoys Planechase, Archenemy, or any format that adds a layer of chance to the game will love Momir Live. As things become more streamlined, you can expect to hear about this again in the future.

Bruce Richard

Bnrichardhotmailcom

¹ Those of you who are particularly observant will notice the New Phyrexia coasters!