New Format: Conquest

[Zunon]

I would like to propose adding support for the Conquest format in XMage. Conquest is a community-run Commander variant focused on competitive balance and variety of viable strategies.Implementing Conquest in XMage would provide players with more variety and attract those interested in this emerging format.

Detailed Description

Overview of Conquest

Conquest is a singleton format similar to Commander but with key differences that create a fresh gameplay environment:

• Singleton Rule: Decks are singleton (only one copy of each card except basic lands).
• Deck Size: Minimum of 80 cards, unlike Commander's 100-card decks.
• Starting Life Total:
  • Multiplayer games: Players start with 30 life (Commander is 40 life).
  • 1v1 games: Players start with 25 life.
• Commander Mechanic: any legendary creature or planeswalker can be your commander.
• Commander Damage: Set to 12 damage instead of 21.
• Scry Rule: In multiplayer games, after mulligans and before pregame actions, each player who is not first performs Scry X, where X is the number of players acting before them in turn order.

Card Legality

• Card Pool: All cards excluding:
  • Reserved List cards.
  • Silver-bordered cards.
  • Cards with acorn-shaped security stamps.
  • All cards that involve the sticker and attraction mechanics
• Ban List: Conquest has a unique ban list, including certain powerful cards and the ten fetchlands from Zendikar and Onslaught. which can be found here

Comparison with Commander

• Deck Size: 80-card minimum vs. Commander's 100 cards.
• Starting Life Total: 30 life in multiplayer and 25 life in 1v1 vs. Commander's 40 life.
• Commander Mechanic: No specific commander; greater deck-building flexibility.
• Commander Damage: Threshold of 12 damage vs. Commander's 21.
• Scry Rule: Introduced to balance turn order advantage in multiplayer games.

Please let me know if there are any questions or if further information is needed. Thank you for considering this proposal!

[xenohedron]

Thanks for the detailed writeup.

For workaround at present time, there is a "Freeform Unlimited Commander" that could accommodate some of this functionality. It removes the deck size requirement and ban list and allows any card(s) as commander. Custom Options can override starting life. You would need to manually concede on 12 commander damage, trust singleton and ban list to the honor system, and you wouldn't get the scry rule.

Additional coding needed for full support:

• [ ] The scry rule could be implemented as a custom mulligan

Custom options that don't yet exist:

• [ ] Override deck size requirement
• [ ] Override commander damage needed

I do think this would not be too difficult to implement as a new game mode.

[risgovin]

thanks @xenohedron for the clarification of current available work arounds.

as for implementing as a new gamemode, I took some time looking at GameCommanderImpl.java (and thusly the commander damage watcher etc).

I am certain that everything but the scry rule is already easily doable. a few open questions I had regarding implementing the scry rule specifically are the following: 1) endMulligan() would be the proper override to implement this functionality, is that right? 2) is there a way to get the player's "seat number"/"turn order" in said function? (I did see some references to startingPlayerId in the code base)

[xenohedron]

1. endMulligan() is fired per player after that player keeps their hand. I don't think it's actually used by anything else. It can certainly work for the core functionality, but if one player takes fewer mulligans than another, I think they would end up scrying before all mulligans complete. If you want it to be synchronous after all mulligans complete, then better to override executeMulliganPhase(), call the super and then do the scrying, like VancouverMulligan. Assuming you're fine with Conquest always using London, can extend LondonMulligan and no other overrides should be needed.

2. game.getState().getPlayerList(game.getStartingPlayerId()) will return the players in turn order.