Only if attacking your ally is a legal decision you could have made without the Mindslaver. Rules on this seem to vary from group to group.

You have no allies or teammates in pentagram magic... only opponents and non-opponents. You can only declare attacks against an opponent, so you can't attack a non-opponent ("ally"). Mindslaver can't force you to make an illegal play[CR710.4], and it must be legal from YOUR perspective, not the slaver's. So Mindslaver can not make you attack a non-opponent.

ok how about a shards pentagram, using each of the 5 alara shards, where each player is a different shard.

this way you can have them sat in a formation where the shards each "bleed" into each other.

Grixis-Jund-Naya-Bant-Esper

i reckon that could make for a funky game.

thoughts on this...

"You have no allies or teammates in pentagram magic... only opponents and non-opponents. You can only declare attacks against an opponent, so you can't attack a non-opponent ("ally")."

I thought we didn't have allies though?

Shard pentagram seems interesting, with players getting a random shard each game.

exactly your just given a number 1-5 then you sit in your seat and you have 5 minutes to look through your deck and work out how it plays then get your game on so to speak

We play pentagram every time we play socially. Originally, we even played star, with colour focused decks, but it just boiled down to who got their colour hosers quickest. I suspect the same would occur in a shard based game.

There was a version of Star magic printed in the Duelist (Issue 4 I think, I'm researching to be sure and to find the exact rules as they were printed in the magazine). One of the best features I remember from those rules, that I think would lend itself well to casual EDH, was blocking "en passant." (1)

The idea was that if the player sitting in the W position wants to attack B, his creatures must move through U's territory to do so. So U had the ability to block first, any creatures not blocked went through to B, who then chose blockers. Combat step was then finished simultaneously.

Where this got intersting in the games I remember, was that since W and B are both U allies, politically he has a hard choice to block (help B, make W mad) or not block (Help W, make B mad).

Also, IIRC, the winner was the person to kill both enemies (not just have 2 enemies dead). For example. B and G are dead. If W kills R - W wins (though U would also have 2 dead enemy colors). Lastly (I can't recall if this was a house rule when I played in Detroit, or if it was printed in the Duelist as well) when we played, if (using my earlier example) R killed himself or died to drawing an empty library or in any way wasn't killed by W or U, then the former allies turned on each other for the final win. Ignoring all of this shortens games and we rarely played it out.

I imagine this would work in EDH with true star (monocolored, sitting the correct positions) Allied Colors, Enemy colors, Shards, Wedges or just any five decks sitting random/assigned locations.

Mostly I just think the "En Passant" rule would make a lively addition to the political nature of EDH.

V/R

HK

1: En Passant is a chess move that was borrowed for the rules printed in the Duelist. Learn more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_passant

by definition of the rules, everyone wins if you kill the board with one spell?

Yes. A giant earthquake kills everyone.

Sounds like a fun variant of EDH to try some time.

We have played this a few times with the Commander pre-con decks. It works out pretty well that way. We did have a rules debate over whether you can win if you're already dead (i.e., if you died first, but then your two enemies are the first pair of enemies to die).

That's why I mentioned the person who makes the killing stroke wins. So, yes a 40 point earthquake would be a game winning move, more reason for the enemies to work to prevent it (and the allies wouldn't like it much either).



In every game I played, once you died you can't win, because part of the victory condition was killing your enemy. If you didn't deal the lethal (whether or not both of your enemies are dead) you didn't win. If you are already dead, then I don't think you dealt the lethal (aside from a mutual destruction, dying as you kill the enemy. I would guess playgroups would decide then if that's considered a victory.

V?R

HK

We actually use this over here. Simply, the players to your sides may block creatures that you send to your opponents if you would have to "pass" through them. It certainly adds new dimensions to the game.

Is auto-wins still accepted in this format?

Example: Felidar Sovereign?

My groups tend to avoid those cards as they are rather non-interactive and don't rely on other players actions to achieve, but they would work as normal.