What are all of the popular casual formats?

[TheShadow]

Hey everybody, I'm looking for some links / information on popular casual formats for my playgroup to start trying out. We're all getting sick of multiplayer legacy/extended, and if we have to sit through another 2 hour long emperor game one of us is going to flip. Any suggestions for some other formats we might try playing?

I've seen mention of "Highlander," "250," "Skittles," "Type 4," and "Singleton (pretty self-explanatory?)" but I'm having a hard time finding some comprehensive rules/restrictions for these formats. Perhaps I'm just not searching the forums hard enough, but if anybody has some links to the information we'll need to play these formats it would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if anybody has suggestions on different formats we could try playing or any kinds of "house rules" they find to be particularly fun I'd be glad to hear about it. For example, in our group we've all donated some permanents with global effects (i.e. howling mine, furnace of wrath, etc) to a community stack that we sometimes treat as a mini-deck where the top card of the stack is revealed and affects the game as if it were in play for an entire round of turns, before a new global affects replaces it.

Let me know what casual formats you're playing for fun with your group. Thanks.

[EnialisLiadon]

A lot of those are made by people who had a cool idea.  So unless they have their own site with their rules, or someone posted the rules somewhere, you'll have to ask someone who knows the format well enough to teach you.

I'm a huge fan of skittles.  When my group does get together for magic, we bring a different deck each time--preferably something zany.  Keeps it interesting.

[jcb193]

We simply play T1 highlander with 100 card minimums.  This lets you play all your favorite cards, but minimizes overpower.  The only cards that have been too powerful, seem to be Library of Alexandria and some of the silly creatures (Multani, etc).  With 100 cards, creature removal is not always as plentiful.

The other thing we are debating is tutors and fetchlands, as these are more of a technical aspect.  The game slows down SOOOOO much with fetchlands, tutors and 100 card decks. 

I love the idea of random global rounds (mana flare, howling mine, strip mine, abyss, etc), though haven't been able to get my friends on board.  I think this is a nice aspect to multi-player, though definitely favors the 1st player of the round (unless you have 5 negative and 5 positive cards).

Good luck.

[TheShadow]

So what exactly is highlander? Or skittles, for that matter? We don't know how to play any of these formats. Occassionally we'll find some funky banned/restriction lists for some of these formats, but we don't know anything else about them. Anybody with a few minutes to post the rules of some of these formats, please do so.

We've been toying around with the idea of just 60 card legacy singleton decks, but other than that we know no other casual formats.

None of us possess any real power, either, and we aren't going to bother with proxies for this.

Again, thanks for the suggestions, but the rules for these formats would be greatly appreciated.

[jeblucas]

"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.

[nelsonsdelights]

Whew.... You really know how to ask a wide open question. There are lots of answers and all of them are valid. Wizards has a few sets of rules for Multiplayer varients. Other web sites have some rules and variations available but you would need to REALLY hunt and search for something worth while.

Jeblucas offered some really good info on 5Color (Prismatic), and Wizards has some information on rules varients and banned lists here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/rules/prismatic

Rules for Emperor can be found here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/rules/emperor
Caviat: There are several variations of this style, and everyone plays it a bit differently.

Here is an interesting varient called Frontier magic: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/rules/frontier

There are cool write-ups on this site for the Skittles and Type4 architypes. Highlander (1 of any card max in a deck) has several varients, so rules are very difficult to come by.

Other varients I've heard of (though not necessarily recommended) could include Pentagram (5 player), Hand/Land drop (any number of players), and Tribal (any number of players).

Pentagram is a standard Magic environment and any format can be used for rules, banned, and restricted lists. Players sit in a circle. The 2 parties across from you ar your enemies and the people to your immediate left and right are your allies. Allies CANNOT be attacked until BOTH opponents are eliminated. Adds an interesting twist to the game as each ally has 1 common enemy and is an enemy to your other ally. (Fun with diplomacy)

Land/Hand drop is a game where each player gets 5 lands to start, and once your hand is depleted you draw a new hand of 7 cards. Not cool or recommended, but definately broken fun.

Tribal runs a minimum of 20 creatures from the same tribe (goblins, elves, etc), some minor support cards and land. This format is quite popular, and can be found at some local stores as a major archetype. Not sure about a banned/restricted list for this one, but it could be developed pretty easy.

And, Finally, Rambo (all for one). Probably the loosest and most widely played version of multiplayer. Big games can take quite a while and aren't for the faint of heart. This is primarily what we play (3-4 people), some games fly while other stall out to a crawl.

Any of the above are a lot of fun to play, and can be altered with house rules to keep them fun. We found a great way to spice up our Magic time by adding Avatars. Some groups allow you to choose your avatar to compliment your deck, we make our selections totally random to add some spice to the game. The Avatars are quite cheep and can be found on eBay and the such quite frequently. There are 32 actual printed versions available (4 sets of 8).

Hope this helps you in some way.