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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Chaotic is Good: Overview of Chaos Magic
July 8, 2008

So, is everyone excited for the upcoming Eventide prerelease?  I know I am.  The last prerelease I went to was Lorwyn, and in two separate flights I was one match win away from walking away with free product.  I'm eager to do better this time, and that means brushing up on Sealed Deck strategy. 

In the meantime, it's a delicate quandary for deck mechanics like myself.  All those deck lists in my inbox-- do I fix them now and take a chance that Eventide is about to give us a card that works much better than the one I suggested?  Do I wait for Eventide to go public, and keep you all waiting?  I'm reluctant to do the former for sake of deck fix quality, but the latter leaves my readers high and dry for longer than I'm comfortable with.  As a compromise, here's a little extra article I've been meaning to write for a while. 

The issue is a common problem among groups of friends who play Magic-- eventually things start to stagnate.  Some people don't want to build new decks that frequently, so games start playing out the same way.  The solution?  A new multiplayer format.  Not one that requires decks be built to its rules, like Prismatic or Elder Dragon Highlander, but one that lets you play those same decks and still make whole new game states arise.  Two-Headed Giant is good for this, but in this case the only change is often how many players you have to beat.  The format I'm talking about, as the article title may have suggested, is Chaos Magic. 

Now, some people may know Chaos Magic as simply where you attack and target whomever you want, as opposed to variants where you must "attack left" and the like.  I always thought of that as Free-For-All... when I thought of it by any name at all, since those are the default rules I've always lived and played by.  Chaos Magic, as I know it, is a format first introduced to me through The Ferrett's articles on Magicthegathering.com.  Some of you may now know to what I refer, but if not, here are the basic rules.  

Chaos Magic Rules: 

1.At the beginning of the game, a separate deck-- The Chaos Deck-- is placed in the center of the table.  This deck cannot contain creatures. 

2.At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player rolls a six-sided die.  On a 6, that player reveals the top card of The Chaos Deck and plays it without paying its mana cost.  This action does not use the stack and can thus not be responded to. 

3.If the card is an instant or sorcery, it does not use the stack either.  If it is an artifact, enchantment, or land, its abilities take effect as though it were in play under control of the player who revealed it.  It is not, however, considered to be "in play", and is therefore not a legal target for cards like Creeping Mold or Vindicate, and will not be affected by cards like Warp World. 

It's that simple, and that complicated.  Originally in my group, only instants, sorceries, and non-Aura enchantments were fair game for a chaos deck, but we've since warmed up to the idea of artifacts.  If the artifact has a tap ability, it's implied that you "tap" it, even though it's not in play.  We haven't found any lands that look good enough to use yet, but from a rules standpoint they should work.  All you really have to avoid is creatures-- they couldn't attack or block, and if they could, they couldn't be killed.  Auras create a lot of problems too-- a Chaos card doesn't stop affecting the board (if it's a permanent) until another Chaos card is played.  Chaos cards don't go to any player's graveyard, and can't be sacrificed or moved to any other zone.  If you use Auras in a Chaos deck, you need to figure out what happens when the thing it's enchanting leaves play. 

If you're still not really grasping how Chaos Magic works, here's a less technical explanation.  Get a bunch of cards together.  Shuffle them up and put them in a pile.  Then, on every player's turn, there's a chance that that player will get a random one of those cards for free.  It works sort of like the items in the Super Smash Bros. games-- they just drop every once in a while, and subtly alter the state of the board, usually in favor of the player who gets them. 

So how do you build a Chaos Deck?  It's easy.  Everybody has some extra cards lying around that they don't want, and usually some of them are cards you'd sort of like to see get played, but you don't have a deck that would benefit from them, or they cost too much mana, or you only have one, or whatever.  Gather up all those cards.  For sake of illustration, here's my deck. 

Overwhelming Instinct, Yamabushi's Storm, Syphon Mind, Ornate Kanzashi, Rain of Gore, Soul Feast, Balancing Act, Aphetto Dredging, Infest, Ivory Mask, Seek the Horizon, Diabolic Tutor, Roar of the Wurm, Convalescent Care, Urza's Guilt, Mnemonic Nexus, Kyren Negotiations, Counterbalance, Heed the Mists, Ideas Unbound, Suppression Field, Living End, Congregation at Dawn, Soratami Cloud Chariot, Psychogenic Probe, Simplify, Bottomless Pit, Blood Clock, Hair-Strung Koto, Cryptic Gateway, Feral Lightning, Armageddon Clock, Blatant Thievery, Syphon Soul, Truth or Tale, Commune with Nature, Demoralize, Telepathy, Folk Medicine, Journeyer's Kite, Smallpox, Tower of Fortunes, Flame Rift, Feudkiller's Verdict, Promise of Power, Culling Sun, Fervent Charge, Muse Vessel, Sins of the Past, Night of Souls' Betrayal 

I don't expect folks to be familiar with all of those, but if you are, you'll see what kinds of cards make for a good Chaos Deck. 

Some kinds of cards to avoid?  Well, Treasure Trove was rejected on the grounds that it requires blue mana to activate.  Avoid anything that requires the player who flips it to be playing a certain color, or creature type for that matter.  Aphetto Dredging in our deck is already on the warning list.  Lightning Helix kind of scared some folks in our group when I suggested it, but those same people saw no issue with Soul Feast.  Apparently targeted creature destruction is a dangerous area, as it gives decks with no answers to creatures a way to sneak out wins they shouldn't be able to.  But global effects, i.e. effects that say "all" of something, are all right because no matter who flips them, they have an equal chance to pants everybody.  Before we really warmed up to Chaos Magic, we had a rule, "no instats or sorceries with targets", but that was just too restrictive.  You should also avoid anything that assumes too much of the player who flips it.  All you can really assume about the player's deck is A) they have creatures, and B) they have lands.  Also avoid anything that doesn't make sense at the beginning of your upkeep on an empty stack, like counterspells or combat tricks.  Cards like Demoralize are all right, since they let you sneak in extra damage that turn, but be careful-- we used to have Path of Anger's Flame in the deck as well, and it was just too useless if flipped up in the early game or after a ruinous set of combat phases. 

Some kinds of cards to add?  Well, card draw is nice because it doesn't ask anything of you except that your library have cards in it, and it doesn't make the game feel too random because it doesn't give you anything your own deck couldn't have given you.  Our Chaos Deck used to contain Counsel of the Soratami, Night's Whisper, and even Mental Note (I mostly was glad to finally have a use for it), but they started coming up too often.  Also anything that says "each player", or anything with a static ability. 

You can also think about what sort of strategies you don't want to encourage.  If people aren't being aggressive enough, don't add Hissing Miasma for them to hide behind, add Orcish Oriflamme, Chameleon Blur, or Thoughtweft Gambit.  Are people losing to artifacts and enchantments because nobody packs maindeck artifact/enchantment removal?  Try Simplify or Fracturing Gust, whichever solves the problem more efficiently.  Darksteel Colossus running rampant?  Try Threaten.  Hordes of tokens?  Evacuation solves that. 

Really, use whatever cards you think would be funny to have randomly go off for someone in the middle of a game.  The main goal of Chaos Magic is to create fun moments.  Big splashy effects like Worldpurge or Everlasting Torment are nice.  Cards you always wanted to play but never wanted to pay for, like Flame Wave, Game of Chaos, or Time Stretch.  Cards you just wanted to find a use for, like Telepathy or Reviving Dose.  And depending on your playgroup, you may want a "Squire" in there just to be the booby prize-- we used to use Errand of Duty for that until we got sick of having to care about banding.  Now that honor probably goes to either Mnemonic Nexus or Telepathy. 

If you want to add even more randomness to this format, you can always monkey around with the odds.  Change the trigger from rolling a six to rolling a five or six.    Change it to a coin flip.  If there's a D+D player in the group, break out the funky dice and see what shakes loose.  If the format seems too random, then you can add a way to make the Chaos deck flip on command, or give other players a way to squelch the deck.  Say, give each player the abilities: "Pay 5 life, discard a land card: Play the top card of the Chaos Deck" and "Pay 3 life: Target player can't play Chaos cards this turn" or something.  If everyone in the group agrees to it, why not?  After all, the whole point is to make games more fun, and for some people, it's more fun to exert control than to be slave to chance. 

If you hadn't heard about Chaos Magic before, I urge you to try it.  Getting a bunch of "fun looking" cards together and having them go off randomly during a game is an incredibly fun experience that can shake up stagnant multiplayer groups and take pressure off of players who spend most of their time striving to win.  Yes, it sort of sucks when someone beats you with a Chaos card, but you had just as much chance to get that card as he did, so it's hard to feel bad about it for long.  And when you luck your way into something big and game-changing, it feels soo good. 

If your group does try it out, or already has been, feel free to send in your Chaos lists.  I'd love to see them! 

Have fun and good luck!