The four planar decks that ship inside Planechase Anthology are perfectly playable as-is, but they only scratch the surface of what the box's full 86-card Planar pool can actually do.
Once you own the whole set, nothing stops you from breaking apart the included ten-card decks and building your own custom planar deck from scratch.
This is genuinely one of the most replayable parts of owning Planechase Anthology: the same 86 Planar cards can produce a very different game experience depending on which ones you actually put together.
This guide covers the construction rules you need to follow, how to think about pacing, and what a well-built custom planar deck actually looks like in practice.
A legal planar deck needs at least ten cards total, drawn from any combination of Plane and Phenomenon cards, with no two cards in the deck sharing a name.
You can include at most two different Phenomenon cards in a single planar deck, a hard cap that exists specifically to keep the deck's disruptive, one-time effects from overwhelming the game.
A ten-card planar deck, the legal minimum, produces a tighter, more predictable rotation of planes, since you will cycle back through the same cards relatively quickly in a longer game.
A larger deck, drawing from more of Anthology's 78 planes, spreads that rotation out and introduces more variety, at the cost of any individual favorite plane showing up less often.
Every plane offers both a passive, ongoing effect and a chaos ability, and a well-built planar deck should not lean entirely on one or the other.
Mixing planes with strong passive effects alongside ones with rewarding chaos abilities keeps every roll of the die meaningful, rather than making chaos rolls feel like an afterthought.
A two-player game moves through planes more slowly than a four-player free-for-all, since fewer total turns pass before the group rolls a planeswalk symbol.
For smaller tables, a tighter ten-to-twelve card planar deck keeps favorite planes cycling back reasonably often; larger multiplayer tables can support a bigger, more varied deck without feeling repetitive.
Including one or two phenomena adds a genuine wildcard moment to the game, since their one-time, table-wide effects can dramatically reset an advantage one player has built up.
If your group prefers a more predictable, plane-only game, it is entirely legal to build a planar deck with zero phenomena and skip that added unpredictability altogether.
Treat your first custom planar deck as a draft rather than a finished product; noting which planes actually came up and how the group reacted to them makes the next revision far more informed.
Swapping out one or two underperforming planes after every few games, rather than overhauling the whole deck at once, is the most reliable way to land on a build your group genuinely enjoys.
Keeping a short running note of which planes actually got a reaction at the table, good or bad, makes each revision faster than trying to remember it all after the fact. That habit alone will save you from second-guessing a swap several sessions later.
Start by pulling your favorite ten to twelve planes from across all 78 in the box, mixing a few strong passives with a few strong chaos abilities, then add one or two phenomena if your group wants more chaos.
Play a few games with that build before making further changes; it is easier to identify which specific planes underperform once you have actually seen them flip at your own table. Keep the rest of the pool sorted in a flex binder so swapping planes stays easy.
Ten cards, made up of any combination of Plane and Phenomenon cards.
A maximum of two, and they cannot share a name.
Generally yes, since more turns pass before the group cycles back through the deck.
Yes, phenomena are entirely optional as long as the deck meets the ten-card minimum.
The included ten-card decks are a great starting point, but a custom build from Anthology's full pool is where the format really opens up. Keep your build together in its own deck box once it's finalized.
Test a few combinations before settling on a final build; the right mix depends heavily on your own group's table size and appetite for chaos.
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