MTGNexus

My group played a couple of games of planechase this weekend. It's been half a decade since I've played planechase and I forgot why it's so annoying! It feels like a good concept with poor execution. I like the variance the planes add to the game, but man getting stuck on one for 3 turn cycles is a thing, and people sinking mana into rolling the planar die just bogs down the game.

I have some ideas of how to do things differently, but I thought I'd poll the crew. Any of you try out alternate rules that you found to make it more fun, keep the game alive?

I haven't done much experimenting with changing around the base Planechase rules, but I will give a shout to the Blind Eternities Map variant - instead of flipping to a random different plane, you instead have some agency to try to navigate to a plane that's more beneficial for your deck (or away from planes that are helping out your opponents).

Beyond that... I could see a variant where you combine it with monarch / initiative - whenever you would get a monarch / initiative trigger, you instead flip a coin to see if you planeswalk or chaos ensues. Would cut down the dice rolling / repetitiveness significantly by limiting it to once per turn.

I really love Planechase. My only house rule is that at least once per turn, the active player must roll the planar die at least once. It helps to minimize time in planes that may be disproportionately helping some players.

My group plays "map" style. The table shares the same planes deck, each time a new plane comes into play the current player chooses which direction it connects to the old plane. Each player can only planeslwalk to a new plane or an old plane directly adjacent to current location.

You need a big table for this method, or play on the floor. XD