Planechase 2012: Set Guide, Mechanics & Card List

Some Magic products are built for the tournament grinder. Planechase 2012 - officially styled Planechase (2012 Edition) - is built for the group who wants their Commander night to get a little weird. Released in June 2012 with set code PC2, it's a collection of four standalone game packs, each one a self-contained toolbox for a chaotic, multiplayer-first format where the very ground beneath your feet changes every turn.

What is Planechase 2012?

Planechase 2012 isn't a booster set - it's a product line. Each of the four game packs comes with:

• A 60-card deck
• Ten oversized plane cards (the Planar deck)
• A six-sided planar die
• A strategy insert with multiplayer rules

The total card count across the product is 156 cards, spanning both the regular-sized deck cards and the oversized planar cards. The set is a follow-up to the original Planechase (released September 2009), which first introduced the format. Where the 2009 release established the concept, Planechase 2012 expanded it - most importantly by introducing a brand-new card type, and by injecting 21 genuinely new, Eternal-legal cards into the game.

Themes and mechanics

How Planar Magic works

Planechase 2012 is built around the Planar Magic variant format. Alongside your regular deck, each player brings a Planar deck - a randomised stack of at least ten oversized plane cards. At any point during the game, exactly one plane card is face-up and its effect is active for everyone at the table. Think of it as the battlefield having its own personality: sometimes beneficial, sometimes punishing, always unpredictable.

The engine that drives the whole thing is the planar die. On your turn, at any time you could cast a sorcery, you can roll it. Rolling is free the first time, but each additional roll costs one more generic mana than the last - {1} for the second, {2} for the third, and so on. The die has three possible outcomes:

• The planeswalker symbol (⊕): The current plane goes to the bottom of its owner's Planar deck, and the rolling player reveals a new plane from the top of their own Planar deck. You've just planeswalked.
• The chaos symbol (chaos): A specific triggered effect on the currently active plane fires. Every plane has its own chaos ability, so this is always context-dependent.
• A blank face: Nothing happens. Most faces on the die are blank, which keeps rolling from being a reliable button you press every turn.

Rules note: The escalating cost of re-rolling is the key design lever here. It means you can theoretically keep rolling until you planeswalk, but doing so costs real mana - so it's a genuine decision, not a freebie.

Phenomena: the new card type

The biggest mechanical addition Planechase 2012 brought to the format is the Phenomenon card type. Phenomena slot into your Planar deck just like plane cards, but they work differently: when a Phenomenon is revealed, its one-time effect triggers immediately, and then the player automatically planeswalks to the next card. You never stay on a Phenomenon - it's a burst of chaos you pass through on your way somewhere else.

This is a meaningful distinction from plane cards, which persist until someone rolls the planeswalker symbol. Phenomena are more like events or story beats: a sudden storm that sweeps the table before everyone lands somewhere new.

New Eternal-legal cards

One of the reasons Planechase 2012 mattered beyond its own format is that it introduced 21 new cards legal in Eternal formats (Legacy, Vintage, and by extension Commander). Each of the four decks contributed six new cards, with one card appearing in all four decks. Three reprints in the set also received fresh artwork: Armored Griffin, Concentrate, and Dark Hatchling.

For players who picked up the product not for the planar format but for the deck cards themselves, those new additions were a genuine draw.

Limited and draft

Planechase 2012 is not a format designed for traditional booster draft - it comes in fixed game packs rather than booster packs. The 60-card decks in each pack are preconstructed, ready to play out of the box with the Planar Magic rules. If you're looking for Limited or Draft content, this isn't the set for that; the design is entirely oriented toward multiplayer casual and Commander-adjacent play.

Lore and setting

By its very nature, Planechase is a tour across the entire Multiverse. Rather than anchoring the story to a single plane, the format invites players to planeswalk through wildly different locations - each plane card represents a distinct world with its own flavour text, art, and mechanical identity. The chaos and wonder of plane-hopping is the setting. There's no single narrative thread; the story is the table's shared experience of landing somewhere new and figuring out how the rules of that world change the game.

Lore aside: The original Planechase (2009) established this plane-as-card-type concept, and the 2012 edition built on it. The Phenomenon card type fits neatly into this worldbuilding logic - some things you encounter while planeswalking aren't places, they're events.

Release events and promos

At the release events held for Planechase 2012, attendees could receive a special promo card that wasn't included in any of the four game packs: Stairs to Infinity. If you're hunting for a complete Planechase 2012 collection, that promo is the one piece you won't find inside any product box.

Set legacy

Planechase 2012 is remembered fondly as exactly what it set out to be: a multiplayer format enhancer that makes any game feel like an adventure. The Phenomenon card type was a smart evolution of the original design - adding dynamism and variety to Planar decks without bloating the rules.

The 21 new Eternal-legal cards gave the product real value for Commander players and Legacy brewers, making it more than a novelty purchase. And the four preconstructed decks meant you could hand one to a friend and start playing immediately, with zero deck-building required.

In the years since, the plane cards from Planechase 2012 have been reprinted and redistributed through later products - most notably in Commander sets that incorporated the Planechase format. The format itself has enjoyed a genuine resurgence, appearing as an official variant in Magic Online and informing later products like Planechase Anthology (2016). If you've played a Commander night where the table voted to add plane cards to the mix, you're playing in the tradition Planechase 2012 helped cement. ✨