Emperor

Emperor is a casual multiplayer format for Magic: the Gathering played by teams of three players. Each team has one "emperor", who is protected by the other players on their team. If an emperor loses the game, their entire team loses.

Setup
Each team sits together on one side of the table, with team members deciding the order in which they're seated. The emperor is the player seated in the middle of the team. The remaining players on the team are "generals" (or "lieutenants" ) whose job is to protect their emperor while attempting to take down the opposing emperor. Players randomly determine one of the emperors to go first, and turn order then progresses to the left.

Gameplay
Each player plays as an individual. Players can collaborate by looking at each other's hands and discussing strategy, but each player keeps a separate life total (starting at 20), hand, library, battlefield, and so on. The one difference is that all creatures on the battlefield have the "Deploy" ability: "{T}: Target teammate gains control of this creature. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery." However, just like in a normal game, when a player is eliminated from the game, all cards they own (including creatures controlled by other players) are exiled and then vanish from the game, and if that player controlled permanents that are owned by other players, they stay in the game and return to their owners' control.

Players may only attack opponents seated immediately next to them. This means that at the beginning of the game, emperors can't attack anyone because no opponent is sitting next to them. In addition, emperors have a "range of influence" of 2 and generals have a range of influence of 1; a player's spells and abilities they control can only count and affect themselves and players within a number of seats equal to their range of influence. When a player is eliminated; this means that in order to attack the opposing team's emperor or affect them with spells, a team must first defeat one of the opposing player's generals!

Winning and losing an Emperor game works differently than normal. A team loses the game when their emperor has been eliminated; it doesn't matter whether they have any generals remaining or not. This means that a general that's been eliminated from the game can still win if their team eliminates the opposing emperor later on!

The Emperor format can be played with more than two teams; in that case, the appropriate Free-for-All rules are applied. The format can also be played with more than three members on each team, as long as each team has the same number. Each extra player on a team is an additional general. That means that some generals won't be sitting next to an opponent (they'll be between two teammates), so they can't attack anyone at the beginning of the game. Be sure to increase the ranges of influence accordingly.

Rules
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