The Pitch
In standard Magic games, players take the role of planeswalkers who encounter one another and duel. The assumptions are that each competitor arrives fresh to the fight, fights for nothing, and fights to the death (0 life). That's fine for a tournament environment that has to be equivocal, but I'd rather have someone show up bloody to a fight, victory mean more than just winning, and close matches carry more weight than a one-sided beating.
Overview
Linked Campaigns use two teams of three decks (whether that's three decks with three players or three decks with one player on each team is up to you). Each Round, both teams put up a deck that will be playing while its other two decks Recover from their previous Beatings. The players for each playing deck prepare for the game, but lose life or mill cards according to their previous Beatings before they mulligan. At the end of the duel, each player totals up the beatings for their deck and the winner takes a Location card for their team's Command Zone. Location cards have points (some have abilities) and the first team to 20+ points wins.
The persistent damage (explained further in "Beatings," below) ensures that even whenever a fight is close, the winner is that much weaker for their next game. The location cards (explained further in "The Blind Eternities," below) add value to each duel without having an in-game effect that creates a 'win more' environment. Both systems give a player a way to reconcile the value of staying in a game for the possible victory (winning the location) against the value of conceding (to prevent unnecessary beatings).
The Details
The Round
The linked campaign consists of a series of rounds. During each round, each team—starting with the last round's winner or selected randomly for the first round—declares which one of their decks will be playing this round, any activated abilities of locations they control they're using, and which other decks are recovering (see "Beatings," below).
The first thing a team does on each round is to declare which of their decks are dueling. A chosen deck does not recover this round and will play a game of Magic against a deck chosen by an opponent. A team cannot subsequently change the deck they're dueling with this turn. The last round's winner choses their deck first, giving the last round's loser an advantage.
After decks are chosen to play for the given round each remaining deck, starting with the the team that won the last round, can activate one ability of a location their team controls instead of recovering.
Finally, if a deck hasn't activated a location ability, they can recover by removing two beatings.
Beatings
Beatings are damage for the Linked Campaign system (but they aren't called "damage" because that refers exclusively to damage dealt within a game). Whenever a game is over, each deck gets one beating for every two life below twenty their player has and for every six cards they have in their graveyard or exiled. Whenever a player starts a game with a deck that already has beatings, they have to lose two life or mill six cards from the top of their library before mulliganing. If a player mulligans, they leave any cards milled from beatings in their graveyard.
Example: A player finishes a game with 11 life, and 7 cards in their graveyard. They have 9 life below twenty, which means 4 beatings. They only take 1 beating from the card in their graveyard, so they have 5 beatings total. They can begin their next game by losing 0 life and milling 30 cards, losing 2 life and milling 24 card, losing 4 life and milling 18 cards, and so on, all the way down to losing 10 life and milling 0 cards.
Example: Another player finishes a game with 16 cards in their graveyard, 3 exiled cards, and having taken 5 damage from a Lava Axe when they were at 1 life. They have 19 cards total exiled and in their graveyard, so they take 3 beatings from that. Their life total is treated as 0--not -4--and they take 10 beatings from their life total. That player has 13 beatings and if they start a game with that many, they'll have to start by losing 18 life (9 beatings) and milling 24 cards (4 beatings), losing 10 life (5 beatings) and milling 48 cards(8 beatings), or losing life and milling values in between those.
Looking at the last example, milling 54 cards (9 beatings) will result in you drawing out and losing when you try to start the game with a full hand of seven cards. Even if you mulligan down to three or four cards, you're still starting on a very dangerous clock. Generally speaking, if a deck has 17 or more beatings, they can't duel. If all of your decks are unable to duel because of beatings they've taken, you lose.
The Blind Eternities and other zones
The Blind Eternities is the name of the deck of cards representing locations from across the multiverse. The top location card is drawn and revealed after the decks are chosen for the current round, but before they allocate the life loss and milling that result from their beatings. This means that decks are chosen before knowing the stakes, but each player can allocate their life totals and deck sizes to accommodate the importance of the location drawn.
Each location card has a point value. Most are only worth a single point, but some are worth far more than that. Many of the single-point locations have a special ability, letting you destroy locations, replace locations, or help your team recover.
Location cards your team controls are kept in a common team Command Zone and a team wins the campaign by having a number of locations with a total point value at or above 20. Locations' abilities can target other locations, which means that they are capable of targeting and affecting locations in another team's command zone. Whenever locations are sacrificed or destroyed, they're put into a common zone called The Graveyard of Eternities instead of into a player's graveyard.
Current Locations
The Linked Campaign system is currently only concerned with its own balance and functionality, so having locations that affect duels is not a priority. It's important to remember that teams take turns activating location abilities; you cannot use one location ability in response to another.
Standard Removal - 3 points - Sacrifice [CARDNAME]: Destroy target location.
Replacement Removal - 2 points - Sacrifice [CARDNAME]: Destroy target location. Its controller reveals the top card of The Blind Eternities and puts it into their command zone.
Renewal Location - 2 point - Sacrifice [CARDNAME]: Put a location from The Graveyard of Eternities on top of The Blind Eternities.
Victory into Recovery - 1 points - Your team loses this round's game: All decks on your team (even the deck playing) remove two beatings (this is in addition to any recovery by decks that aren't playing). A game of Magic is not played this round and the opposing team reveals and gains control of the top card of The Blind Eternities.
Swing Location - 6 points
Low End Points 01 - 7 points
Low End Points 02 - 7 points
Medium Points 01 - 8 points
Medium Points 02 - 8 points
High End Points 01 - 9 points
High End Points 02 - 9 points
Manipulating Acceleration - 2 points - Sacrifice [CARDNAME]: Look at the top three cards of The Blind Eternities. Put two of those cards into The Graveyard of Eternities and the remaining card on top.
Recovery into Acceleration - 1 points - Skip a deck's Recovery this round: Look at the top card of The Blind Eternities. You may put it on the bottom of The Blind Eternities.
Playtesting indicates these thirteen locations give the campaign forward inertia without running too quickly or having the removal eliminate the ways to win.
Problems
Archetypes
Homer Simpsonitis – I've played this out with a 100 card deck. It was glacially slow, but it could take tons of damage. It didn't do much, but sit in for a turn or two while the other two decks recovered. It makes me think that maybe a hard limit on 17 beatings to stay out of combat or an automatic ejection when a deck hits 20 beatings would be in order. On the other hand, having a fat, ineffective sumo deck didn't seem to be that big of an advantage.
Dredge (I imagine) – I don't know much about dredge decks and none of my friends play them, but I'm sure that the ability to take a round one fall and roar back into the fight with a loaded graveyard is something that dredge players would salivate over. The alternative is putting cards milled from beatings into exile instead.
Healing – Just like the Homer Simponitis decks, this sort of deck could hop in, turn their beatings into life loss, and proceed to drop an unyielding stream of lifegain spells before conceding to enjoy the removal of a handful of beatings.
Red Deck – This was the most egregious offender in test runs. Hitting dropping a handful of lightning and conceding before the opponent could stabilize meant that one team had a single deck flanked by a pair of meat shields. It was quick, vicious, and worst of all, unsatisfying for the other team. The only saving grace was the value of the locations; running Healing or Red Deck Wins to manipulate beatings involves concessions. The current locations were built to be powerful enough that losing even one was a big drawback (one of the reasons the removal locations have a few more points is so that they're more useful in these scenarios).
Concession
The problems raised by concession. The rules, as written stipulate that players can concede a game of Magic at any time. That rule exists for a reason; real life happens and the game has to be built to deal with that. In a Linked Campaign, it becomes problematic because of 'hit and run' archetypes like Healing and Red Deck Wins, and concessions rendered in response to something like a 10 point Fireball or a lethal attack, leaving before the action completes and avoiding a stack of well-earned beatings.
Concessions from the Campaign itself are tricky, but not too difficult to deal with. A deck is basically a way for a team to shrug off two beatings every turn and respond to an enemy deck that others may be a poor match against. It's promising to let the teammates of the conceding player funnel beatings off of themselves and onto their ally until the leaving deck is at 20 damage or so, and simply spot them a 'ghost deck' that can activate location abilities and take two beatings off an allied deck instead of recovering each round.
Concession from a duel in a round is still allowed. I think it's in the rules for a good reason. On the other hand, if you've earned a stunning turnaround victory, you should get to administer beatings as well as claim the location. The best option I can think of now is that if a player concedes during your turn or while you have a spell or ability on the stack, you can continue playing against a phantom opponent with a phantom life total and a phantom deck. You can continue attacking unblocked, causing discards, milling cards, and administering poison counters until you convert the injury to the phantom player into beatings for the enemy. That said, you could conceivably end up with a situation where a player just messes around when they could be ending the game and a concession could put a player in an even worse scenario, so they're punished for making a concession that helps move the campaign forward.
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