Feature
Two variants a table lays over the game it is already playing. TurnZero HQ runs the planar deck and the scheme deck for you: a real planar die with the escalating cost, the current plane face up with its rules text, and one seat playing schemes against everyone else.
Both of these variants are great and both of them are a nuisance to run. Planechase needs a shared pile of oversized cards, a six-sided die nobody can find, and somebody keeping track of what the roll costs this time. Archenemy needs a second deck that only one player owns, a different life total for that one seat, and a memory for which ongoing schemes are still doing something three turns later.
That overhead is why most pods try one of them once and never get the box out again. It is also, awkwardly, exactly the kind of bookkeeping a tracker is for. TurnZero HQ already knows whose turn it is, what the life totals are and who is at the table, which is most of what running either variant actually requires.
Turn Planechase on in setup and the app rolls you a ten card planar deck out of every plane and phenomenon ever printed. You can swap cards in and out, search by name, or shuffle a fresh ten, and none of it is required: the switch is one tap and the table is ready.
The plane is a card, not a label. The chip at the middle of the board names the plane the table is on, and tapping it opens the card at readable size with its full rules text: the static ability and the chaos ability both. That text is the whole reason anybody looks at a plane, and a tracker that showed only the name would have replaced the card with a caption.
A real planar die. Six faces, one chaos, one planeswalk, four blank. The roll button carries what the roll costs, because the cost goes up by one every time you roll in the same turn and resets when the turn passes. It is the rule tables get wrong most often, and the app is keeping it for you rather than expecting you to.
Rolling and planeswalking stay two steps. The app shows the face you rolled and then offers the walk, because that is how the rules work and because somebody at the table may want to respond in between.
Phenomena are handled properly. A phenomenon can never be your starting plane, and a table sitting on one gets a line saying to resolve it and planeswalk away. Planes go to the bottom of the planar deck when you leave them, never out of the game, which is what makes a ten card deck last a long night.
The planes you have been to are kept as you go, so the recap at the end of the game has something to say about the evening beyond who swung at whom.
Archenemy is asymmetric on purpose, and the app treats it that way. Switch it on and you get a twenty card scheme deck; pick the archenemy's seat on the table diagram, the same place you set a Two-Headed Giant pairing, because who the villain is is a fact about who is sitting where.
The life totals are the rules by default and yours by choice. The archenemy starts on 40 and everyone else on 20. Both steppers are right there in setup, because a Commander pod usually keeps 40 on both sides, and forcing three players to 20 against a Commander deck ends the game before the schemes get going.
Schemes are set in motion, not just drawn. One tap turns the top scheme face up with its text. Ordinary schemes are abandoned to the bottom of the deck once they have done their job; ongoing schemes stay face up in their own list until something abandons them, which is the distinction that is easiest to lose track of at a real table.
Everyone can see it. The scheme in front of the archenemy travels with the rest of the live game, so the three players on the other side are reading the same card, on their own phones, without leaning across the table.
TurnZero HQ already asks what shape your table is: a duel, a four player free for all, Two-Headed Giant. Planechase and Archenemy are not answers to that question. Four people playing Archenemy are still a four player free for all in every way the seating, the win odds and your deck ratings care about. What changes is that there is an extra deck on the table and somebody owns it.
How deck ratings work in TurnZero HQ →So they are two independent switches, which also means you can have both. Planechase Archenemy is a game people genuinely sit down to play, and putting the two variants in one dropdown would have made that combination impossible to express. Everything else about the night carries on normally: the game still counts toward standings, the deck still moves its rating, and the variant is recorded on the game so your history knows what you were actually playing.
Pods who like Planechase but never get the box out because of the bookkeeping
Groups who want to try Archenemy without one person having to buy and carry a scheme deck
Tables looking for a way to shake up a night that has settled into the same four decks
Stores running a casual variant night and wanting the same records they get from an ordinary one
No. TurnZero HQ builds both decks out of the same card catalog everything else in the app reads, so every plane, phenomenon and scheme ever printed is there whether or not the box is on your shelf. If you do own them, nothing stops you playing with the physical cards and using the app for the die and the record.
Ten cards is the rules minimum, and that is what the app rolls you when you switch Planechase on. You can add more, and plenty of groups play thirty or the whole box. The count sits on the setup row so you can see what you are about to play with, and it turns amber if you drop below ten rather than blocking the game from starting.
Six faces: one chaos, one planeswalk, four blank, which is the physical die. It also prices the roll for you. The first roll of a turn is free and each one after costs one more generic mana, per the rules, and the count resets when the turn passes. That is the number tables forget most often.
The app shows the face and offers the walk as a separate tap. Rolling and planeswalking are two steps in the rules, the roll triggers and the trigger resolves, and there is a window in between where somebody can respond. Collapsing them into one animation would take that window away.
The archenemy starts on 40 and each opponent on 20, which is what the rules say. Both numbers are editable in setup, because a Commander pod running an archenemy usually keeps 40 on both sides rather than handing three players a game that ends before the schemes get going.
Yes. They are two switches rather than one dropdown, so a table can turn on either or both. Planechase Archenemy is a real thing people sit down to play, and the archenemy walks the planes with everyone else.
Yes. The plane, the scheme and both decks travel with the rest of the live game state, so every device looking at the game shows the same plane the table is sitting on. Only the host device can roll the die, planeswalk or set a scheme in motion, which is the same rule every other board control follows.
Planechase and Archenemy, with the planar deck, the die and the schemes handled for you. Free to start.
Create Free Account