Planechase Anthology is one of the more unusual box sets Wizards of the Coast has ever released, built entirely around turning a normal game of Magic into a chaotic, four-player trip across the Multiverse.
Released on November 25, 2016, it gathers material from two earlier Planechase products into a single, ready-to-play package, aimed at both new players discovering the variant and veterans wanting a convenient reprint of everything at once.
Unlike most Magic box sets, Planechase Anthology's real draw is not new cards at all. It is oversized Planar cards that actively change the rules of the game while you play.
This guide covers exactly what ships in the box, how the multiplayer variant it enables actually works, and why this specific 2016 release remains the easiest on-ramp into Planechase today.
Planechase Anthology contains four ready-to-play 60-card decks reprinted directly from Planechase 2012, each one including eight rare cards: Chaos Reigns, Night of the Ninja, Primordial Hunger, and Savage Auras.
Alongside the decks, the box includes 86 oversized Planar cards (78 planes and 8 phenomena), four individual slide deck boxes plus one oversize slide deck box, 35 double-sided token cards, a special edition planar die, four Spindown life counters, and a strategy insert booklet.
Planechase is a Magic variant, most commonly played multiplayer, where each player also maintains a separate planar deck made of oversized Plane and Phenomenon cards sitting alongside their normal 60-card deck.
At the start of the game, the top card of the planar deck flips face up and its effects take hold immediately, actively altering the rules everyone is playing under until the group moves to a different plane.
On their turn, the active player may roll the included six-sided planar die, which has two special faces (a planeswalk symbol and a chaos symbol) among four blank faces.
Rolling planeswalk moves the group to a new plane; rolling chaos triggers that plane's unique chaos ability. The first roll each turn is free, and every additional roll that turn costs increasingly more generic mana.
Planechase Anthology's 78 plane cards combine the original 40 planes from 2009's Planechase, the 32 new planes introduced in Planechase 2012, and six brand-new promotional planes exclusive to this 2016 release.
The eight phenomenon cards all carry over unchanged from Planechase 2012, since phenomena did not exist as a card type in the original 2009 release.
Buying Planechase Anthology is meaningfully simpler than tracking down the original 2009 and 2012 products separately, since it consolidates the best of both into one purchase with everything needed to start playing immediately.
Every deck already comes with its own ten-card planar deck built in, so a new group can be playing a full four-player Planechase game within minutes of opening the box.
Every regular 60-card deck in Planechase Anthology is a straight reprint of Planechase 2012 material; no new nonland cards were introduced in the standard decks for this release.
The genuine novelty is entirely on the Planar side: those six promotional planes are the only cards in the entire box that never appeared in any earlier Planechase product, and worth a dedicated page in a binder once you start sleeving singles.
The box appeals to two overlapping groups: existing Commander players looking for an easy way to add multiplayer variance to game night, and Magic history fans drawn to a box that gathers material from across the game's many settings.
New players benefit too, since the included strategy insert covers the multiplayer rules clearly enough that a group with zero prior Planechase experience can be playing within minutes of opening the box.
November 25, 2016.
86 total, made up of 78 plane cards and 8 phenomenon cards.
Chaos Reigns, Night of the Ninja, Primordial Hunger, and Savage Auras, all reprinted from Planechase 2012.
Yes, six promotional Plane cards exclusive to this release.
With everything needed already in the box, the fastest way to see what Planechase actually feels like is to pull one deck out and start playing tonight. Store the rest in a deck box so the set stays organized between game nights.
Once you have played a game or two, the rest of this guide series covers each deck, every plane category, and how to build your own planar deck from the ground up.
!
