Multiplayer when odd number of players

Hi,

I was wondering if you had any suggestions on how to best make do when you get a player group with an odd number of players. More specifically, I'm talking game win/loss conditions, under otherwise regular Magic rules (I'm not asking for variants like "no mana but only one card per turn" or "everyone shares the same deck and blablabla")

- I want to avoid getting to a point where one or more players have died yet the game is still going on.
- I would like to avoid "the first one to kill someone else (typically your pre-designated target) wins" : that's what we resort to in this case and I find it messy / unsatisfying as it's basically impossible for a somewhat slower deck to compete.

I was wondering if anyone had any good proposal.

The only thing I've got is a bit clunky (though it somewhat works I guess) : make 2 teams (2HG style) where the team with less players starts with higher life, so that each player has the same number of damage to deal to win. For example
- take the largest team, let's say it's 2 people (versus 1). Regular 2HG startup is 30 life, so 60 life would usually be distributed. 60 life between only 3 players here => each team gets 20 life per opposing player.
- 3 vs 2 : 3HG usually has 80 life to distribute => 16 life per opposing player => 32 life for the 3p team versus 48 life for the 2p team.

Thanks :)

Well are you playing 2hg because you like it that much or because it somehow developed to this point? FFA is much more balanced when you stay with some simple rules (which also could be applied for 2hg I think).
For the most part we don't allow politics. Like no ganging-up-talk at all. We don't want to risk it resulting in false promises and Rain of Salt :tongue: We don't go further than e.g. when seeing someone is about to attack "hold it! begin of combat step I STPS this creature!" which could be some fatty that was fending off attackers in front of a certain player and now sets the option to finally attack him. The second implication of this is, that by deciding everything for yourself and analyzing a board you will most likely want to fight other currently strong players who are about to push you down and to some degree ignore the 15€ dwarf deck player (we have one). This way you give the dwarf guy a chance to establish a board while having challenging opponents early on. If you were to attack this guy instead you'd open up for an attack from the other strong player and risk taking a huge swing.
Maybe you could establish this behaviour in your group, too. Otherwise I'd definitely recommend playing FFA and then switching to 2hg when you're even numbers.

Necro'd, but I used to play MP a decent amount so this thread matters to me.

I'm not sure I'm following the OP (doesn't want a first person to eliminate an opponent to win, but doesn't want the game to go on after a couple people are eliminated... those sound close to each other). But I'll try with some variants. I usually did some version of last man standing so that slower decks still had a chance but they needed to survive early on still.

With odd players, FFA is pretty good, with the politics aside, although we did last man standing so eventually the politics would break down and not mean much, plus it introduced strategy that wouldn't normally appear in a 1v1 (Protect opponents that I can beat so they can beat the decks I can't - ie Rock defends scissors, so scissors can beat paper and then rock can smash scissor after paper is gone - other players see this and it makes for interesting plays and interaction regardless).

There are also variants that avoid this by just being able to influence players within a range. Either attack only the person to your left and only get attacked by the one on your right, but you can target either/their permanents with your spells.

If 2HG vs a 3HG due to odd numbers, you can also distribute the starting hand size as well. If both teams start with the same number of cards (21/3 vs 21/2), I'd probably choose to play on the short team, but you can always modify it similar to the modified life total start so its like 8 cards for the short team/player and 6 for the higher up team/player. I mean people do this with the Vanguard cards, so why not here? Or, put the two stronger players as a 2HG and make the three weaker player 3HG. I've done this before and its surprisingly effective unless the strong players are playing some tricked out power combo deck.

I'm not sure if "emperor" style is part of the "official" multiplayer rules, but you could do a 3HG (emperor) vs a 2HG (regular). the 2HG must take out one of the side flanks and then kill the emperor (through that side, if that makes sense), whereas the emperor team has to kill both parts of the 2HG, so the number of opponents to eliminate is technically the same. Make your own house rules about passing creatures if you want.

If you are looking for alternate win conditions, it would probably be best to get the group to agree on them ahead of time so they can alter decks accordingly. You might be able to do a points based deck and first to, say, 10 points is the "winner" unless there is one person left standing, then the highest point total "wins." This may get tricky to keep track of all of that, but who knows:
-First to get 10 lands in play - 1 point
-First to successfully cast a 4 color spell - 1 point
-First...5 color spell - 1 point
-Largest creature cast in the game - 1 point
-eliminate one opponent - 1 point
-Play X number of spells/creature/whatever (in the game, on one turn) - 1 point.
-Last person standing - 2 points.
etc, you get the idea.
For a twist, make it so people can lose points. IE someone got a point for 10 lands, then it got destroyed so they lose the point until they get the 10th, or allow people to "steal" points and only allow one point for 10 lands get allowed during one game. So whoever got 10 lands first gets it, then if they lose it, the person who gets 10 next gets it, etc. Kind of like Settlers of Cataan, if you are familiar with that.

This way, in theory, a player could get eliminated but depending on how the point system goes could still technically win, with alternate rules. Not sure how crazy you wanted to get with this.

The (multiplayer) world is your oyster!