Starting Life

[Corwin72]

I could not find a place to ask this so I thought I would start a new thread.
Is there a way to set starting life at a higher or lower level.
I would like to play really epic games with 50 or 100 life.
Any thoughts?

[frwololo]

I believe this could highly disrupt the balance of the game.

Take "lightning bolt" for example. in a game where players have 20 life, lightning bolt is a pretty strong card against a player. in a game where players have 100 life, I'd rather spend it on a creature to kill it, not on a player...

I believe the AI relies a lot on such things.

(That being said I implemented that kind of functionality in Wagic yesterday, so that players can create new rules for the game . But with great power comes great responsibility. If you - as a player - decide to change the starting Life, you should also create new cards and new rules to go with it )

[zerker2000]

"Essence Shunt deals 40 damage to target player. If this damage does not kill that player, you lose 40 life." . Quite reasonable for some Vintage combos actually.

[Corwin72]

I am not saying that it is not broken,
I know it radically skews the game but there are some times that i really want to play with big effects like plainswalkers's ultimates and giant dragons.

[apthaven]

I used to remember the old Shandalar game, where in the final boss of the game had a huge 1000 life against your measly 20.

Your goal was to deal as much damage as possible before losing.

It wouldn't be a really bad idea... at least for the AI.

On the human side however, cards like Felidar Sovereign would make winning too easy

[zerker2000]

Which is why you might change it to (a normally identical) "if you have at least double your starting life total". Take that 1000 life AI . Anyways, with a good enough cardpool, an ∞life player can probably be milled efficiently, and ∞life a ∞card one gotten rid of by a Door to Nothingness, Phage the Untouchable, or Blood Tribute + Sanguine Bond trick, as long as aforementioned players don't have too many nasty "Pay X Life" tricks(lol Channel Fireball: I killed you at twenty life along with your 40 saprolings, so much for your Rhys the Redeemed). Also, for Shandalar, two words: Donate Transcendence (which I hope are available ).