Wizards of the Coast just announced that there will be a new product, Planeschase, that will augment multiplayer play. There will be more details coming on Monday in Mark Rosewater’s column but until then we have been left to our own devices to draw conclusions from the following items in the official release.

Planechase Symbol

• There will be four Planechase Game Packs released on September 4th, 2009: Elemental Thunder, Metallic Dreams, Strike Force, and Zombie Empire.
• Each game pack will contain 10 all-new plane cards, a ready-to-play 60-card deck, a six-sided planar die and a Planechase strategy insert with multiplayer rules.
• Each of the 60-card decks will include 8 rares, and will be composed of cards from throughout Magic’s history - including a preview card from Zendikar.
• The 10 oversized plane cards comprise a planar deck. They feature all-new artwork depicting some of the more exotic realms of the Magic multiverse.
• Each of the cards in the 60-card decks will be black-bordered and tournament legal. This means that these cards are legal for use in any tournaments where the original printings are still legal.
• Planechase release events will be held September 4-6, 2009. Watch magicthegathering.com this summer for details.
• Initial Concept and Game Design: Brian Tinsman (lead), Aaron Forsythe, Peter Knudson, and Kenneth Nagle
• Final Game and Deck Development: Mike Turian (lead), Dave Guskin, Peter Knudson, Scott Larabee, and Mark Purvis, with contributions from Mark L. Gottlieb
• MSRP: $19.99

I do know that the new product will be playable within the Elder Dragon Highlander format ( a format I have recently started carrying around a deck for in case anyone wants to grab a game at Regionals this weekend) but it is by no means limited to that format.

My recent forays into EDH have gotten  me to thinking about older multiplayer formats that we used to run at Grey Matter events and Neutral Ground.

Some art from Planechase

One of the most popular and memorable eventss was always the Grand Melee that we held after each of our big tournaments. There were often upwards of 200 players seated in a circle and playing for a variety of prizes that ranged from first kill to bounties on specific players heads (which were often placed there by players outside the event) to highest kill counts. There were obviously all sorts of degeneracies that occurred (it was during these events that Zvi first stood out asa future evil genius) and the events generated their own unique banned list and specific rules. When one player killed an entire table of nealry 100 players in one fell swoop the concept of gravestone counters were introduced, which meant that when a player was killed his seat would remain until the active player passed their turn. This meant that players could not “pull” players into their range by killing players on either side of them.

More art from Planechase

Sometimes you would find that the games would bog down — with the meter running on a hotel ballroom no less — and we began to pack a deck of cards with global affects that would be randomly put into play after every turn around the table. Cards lilke Howling Mine, Mana Flare, and Underworld Dreams were put into play for everyone and it would usually be just the prod that players needed to move the game along. I have to wonder if the Planechase cards won’t serve a similar function or if they are like the Vanguard cards that used to be a part of Arena play. The Vanguard cards would change your rules for the game; altering your hand size, life totals, and the way your cards fucntioned.

I think my favorite Melee format was the old Anaconda Sealed Deck Draft Melee that we would do late nights at Neutral Ground. It was a Sealed Deck draft with as many players as wanted to play. Players would draft a card from a Sealed Deck and pass left, just like a normal draft. Except in this format you had to draft lands as well. As an addtional wrinkle you could snake cards in and out of the deck each pick as long as you had one more card than you started with after each pass. So if the deck came to you three picks in and you wanted four cards from it, you could slip the three cards you have already picked back into the deck and take all four cards you wanted. The tension of drafting the lands made for a fun late night format best played out in diners with accompanying adult beverages.

Hmmmm….might be time to bust out some Ice Age Sealed Decks with some other members from the senior super series come September.