"250" or more correctly, "5Color" is managed by a Committee of members that stipulates the format specific rules and maintains the updated banned and restricted lists. In a nutshell, the format is akin to Vintage with the threat density diffused across all colors (a deck requires at least 20 cards of each color) and a deck size minimum of 250 cards. Ante is played, and Chaos Orb/Falling Star are legal.The official website has rules and the current B&R, as well as a relatively healthy forum.

My Glowrider/Cutpurse deck should score a 3 against the Academy Researchers deck. If I Lotus out the Glowrider, the opponent will not be able to play their Lotus. It's a small victory, to be sure, but it takes me from tied for 12th to tied for 10th I think. A mild "w00t" would appear to be in order. No? Not in order? Ok, "w00t" rescinded.

I voted for Goblin Welder. Every now and then WotC prints something just so amazing on face that it seems difficult to believe. Dark Confidant, while amazing, actually strikes me as "fair". Same goes for Meddling Mage. Welder has never appeared to be fair to me, it just so fundamentally breaks the rule of "one must pay for one's spells" that my mind boggles that it made it past the development cycle in that form (they didn't even add "play this ability only when you could play a sorcery"). Even if the CMC was or it would still get played in Vintage.

That said, Xantid Swarm is another amazing creature in this same vein. Crazy undercosted, stunning pseudo card advantage.

Hello, I'm Jeb. I started playing while in Berkeley for grad school, circa 1997. I inherited some older cards, but never anything better than one of each revised dual. I was a DCI Judge for a spell, was -very- active on #mtgwacky back when we were all SRP's, and have a sad, sad attachment to green (I'm trying to get over it!) Here's some of my ancient articles: A snarky Judge Report. A creakingly old intro to card/tempo advantage. An embarrassing-in-hindsight report from the Dojo.

I have been playing 5-Color to the exclusion of all other constructed formats since about 2001, and have recently decided to roll some of my 5C decks into a nifty Vintage library, minus the Contracts and Jeweled Birds, of course. 5-Color where my largest contribution to the game as a whole occured. I developed the 5C-Draft format with Mark Gresbach, and I have to believe my conversations with Paul Barclay/Mike Fuelle on DCIJUDGE-L were the first inklings of MaskNaught.

I'm active on the MOTL and 5-Color boards (as "jeb").

Having been in the Bay Area and Chicagoland until 2003, I miss tremendously the store/tournament scene I had available to me in those locales. I am in Southern California now (greater LA area), and I can tell you it is a wasteland for organized play north of Orange County. Also, the two kids under age three cramp my playing time slightly. 

I, too, have been in the market for played power cards. One of the tricks I have put to use is a search on eBay's trading card section for "played -never". This filters out a lot of the noise and picks up basically all of the decent cards without having to think about it overly. Most users aren't eBaying "4@ MTG Stone Rain played cond", for example. The "-never" part is there because there are a lot of auctions for crummy cards that were "NEVER PLAYED", which obviously is not what we're after.

I, too, can recommend the T/A forum on http://magictraders.com/. Post a BuyList there with what you're after and be patient.