Five-Color

[Kowal]

I was in IRC today and I was being heckled for being too much of a skirt wearing nancy to play Five Color.  So I started doing a little research, and lo and behold that format looks to be fucking fun.

Obviously I'm too much of a pussy to play with power, but the opportunity to play with chaff like Spite/Malice, and weird shit like Chaos Orb, it too hot to pass up.

Has anyone else checked this format out?  There's a website at www.5-color.com that has all the specifics in rules and the Banned and Restricted list.  I've got a pile of damn fun cards put together I'm hoping to get to play at GenCon this summer.

[rvs]

it's actually been around for a while now. I wish I had a Mox Crystal though.

[Kowal]

I remember reading Kurtis Hahn articles on FiveColor like, two or three years ago.  I just never bothered checking it out because I was too caught up in transitioning from 1.5 to 1.

[Smmenen]

Team Meandecker Kevin Cron, aka Cha1n5, is on the 5 color voting committee.

Steve

[Bram]

Moved to casual.

People without posting rights in Community want to respond to this. Also: it's about casual magic

[carlossb]

There have been a Magic Invitational with 5-color rounds (2001),

http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/event.asp?event=MI01

with Jewelled Bird being a stupid/broken card...

[Ephraim]

Having looked over the five-colour rules, I dislike it intensely and here's why:

1) It is unnecessarily complicated. The dexterity cards are banned in Type 1 because they create chaos not just within the game itself, but also at the table. 5-C eliminates this problem by stating that once Chaos Orb is cast, all cards are fixed in place, as through through a pin stuck in the middle of them. You're no longer allowed to rearrange your cards, you can't tidy your side of the table. You can't stack or unstack piles of land (not that you'd want to - they've ignored early rulings about Chaos Orb so that if a Chaos Orb lands on a stack of cards, everything below it is destroyed, whether they're actually touching or not.)

Furthermore, it has a banned and restricted list rivaling (exceeding?) that of Type 1. It seems to me that since 5-C uses the same cardpool as Vintage, for the most part, but has deckbuilding rules that automatically harm some strategies, the banned and restricted lists should be much shorter, reflecting how some cards are "unbroken" by the larger deck sizes. The only card on the banned list that truly makes more sense in 5-C than in Vintage is Battle of Wits.

2) It requires one to play for ante. Real Magic stopped even suggesting ante a long time ago because it reduces Magic from a card game to a mind game. "Well, I could play with my Library of Alexandria, but what if it gets anted and I lose?" Magic has evolved in such a way as to encourage players to play to the best of their ability with the best resources at their dispossal. 5-C adds a term to the equation that discourages players from playing with the best resources at their dispossal, by making them afraid they're going to lose. If you want to give people a reason not to play their old rares, just ban the card outright and make the reason universal.

[brendan]

5 colour has a variety of problems, possibly the most important of which is that the people who create the banned/restricted list do so based on pet hates/likes of the cards rather than any interest in the 'health' of the format. Note the incredible quantities of chaff that is restricted, and yet the strongest card in the format (contract from below) is unrestricted.

Hell, a portion of the restricted list is restriced purely due to their interaction with contract.

[Tha Gunslinga]

Contract is 5-color.  There are some people who want to ban/restrict it, but it hasn't gotten the axe yet, thankfully.

As to the "chaff" that's been banned, well, 5-color is different than regular type 1 due to the inconsistencies of a 250-card deck.  It's slower, for one, and more prone to mana- and color-screw.  The cards that have been banned and restricted usually are for a good reason.


On another note, if you're worried about playing without sleeves and playing for ante, then just sleeve your deck up and play for crap rare ante or something.  I just play for fun, and my deck is fully sleeved.

[xzero]

Sleeves are for pansies.  I play sleeveless, and always will.  I do play power without sleeves.  And I am going to blackborder out my duals, and I still won't play sleeves.

[TheMuffinMan]

I have been looking at 5 color for a long time now and it does seem very intresting. However, it is very hard to find tournaments and other people to play. The problems that i have found are:

1) You create a deck for the 5 color format and consequently not able to play it against many other 5 color competetors. This results in a 5 color deck which just turns into a lame casual deck.

2) The cards you want to play in 5c you may need for other decks therefore you are constantly taking things out of the deck making it rather lame.

3) There is lack of support for the format in terms of rules resources and articles to help get an understanding of how to acutally get involved.

I think it would be a really fun and intresting format. I for one would like to participate and enjoy it as it looks really cool. However, it seems that with the problems that I listed, making a deck will just result in it sitting in a box somewhere being pulled out to play for merely casual events.

[briane]

Hi.

Having looked over the five-colour rules, I dislike it intensely

The format is American; the name of the format is "5-Color."

You seem to have limited exposure to the format.  Your "intense" dislike seems akin to people "intensely" disliking Type 1 after reading about decks like Long.dec and Draw7.dec.  Give the format a chance: you'll probably like it more than you expect.

The dexterity cards are banned in Type 1 because they create chaos not just within the game itself, but also at the table.

Playing with (and against) Chaos Orb requires very little change to one's play habits.  See below.

5-C eliminates this problem by stating that once Chaos Orb is cast

Not "cast," but "revealed." As soon as Regrowth targets Chaos Orb (or you show Chaos Orb as your 'target' for Enlightened Tutor), your cards are 'pinned.'

You're no longer allowed to rearrange your cards, you can't tidy your side of the table. You can't stack or unstack piles of land

If tidiness is so important to you, then why were your lands stacked in the first place?

(not that you'd want to - they've ignored early rulings about Chaos Orb so that if a Chaos Orb lands on a stack of cards, everything below it is destroyed, whether they're actually touching or not.)

It seems to me that you're actively seeking to complain.  

One of the guiding principles of the format is "Don't be a [jerk]."  People don't play Haunting Echoes because resolving it is too big a hassle.  People routinely *ask their opponents* to help them search for cards in their library.  When the question of Tempest Efreet and Soul Foundry was raised, the response was simply "Don't be a [jerk]."  

"Look, my Chaos Orb would have destroyed your Blood Moon, if you hadn't hid it underneath your Seal of Cleansing."  Hiding cards is not in the spirit of the format.

People not as intelligent as you have been able to handle the rules for Chaos Orb.

Furthermore, it has a banned and restricted list rivaling (exceeding?) that of Type 1.

Exceeding.  We also have a larger playable card pool, though.  I don't see many competitive Type 1 decks playing Nature's Lore.  I don't see many budget Type 1 decks playing Krosan Tusker.

It seems to me that since 5-C uses the same cardpool as Vintage, for the most part, but has deckbuilding rules that automatically harm some strategies, the banned and restricted lists should be much shorter, reflecting how some cards are "unbroken" by the larger deck sizes.

This is patently untrue.

Some cards are restricted due to the slower pace of the format.  Future Sight, notably, is ridiculous in 5-Color; I was praising the card to Azhrei (obligatory name-dropping) well before the card saw public interest in Type 1.  While most competitive 5-Color decks don't play with Planar Portal, it probably should remain restricted.

At the other end of the spectrum, Moxes are also restricted for a similar reason.  If Moxes were unrestricted (in which case, Type 1 players might see a jump in price), then you're more likely to see Turn 1 Dwarven Miners.  The 5CRC, the guiding body of the format, seeks to remove the impact of lucky draws on the format.

I'm interested in knowing, specifically, to which cards you are referring.

2) It requires one to play for ante.

I also know of no one that plays for real ante.  Not locally, not among my friends across the country, and (allegedly) not even at 5-Color Worlds.

[Dr. Sylvan]

I think the only reasons I don't have anything to do with 5C are ante, dexterity, and it being too much trouble to randomize a 200+ card deck. The last is pretty insurmountable. Shuffling takes up enough time in my games already without increasing the deck to the size where I literally cannot handle the whole thing at once.

[Colossus]

I think the detractors of this format are just whining.  5-Color is ridiculously fun.  If you get 4 of your friends to throw to-gether decks you'll find yourself playing a lot of cards you otherwise simply cannot play (because they aren't legal in anything but type I, and aren't fast enough to be competitive there.)
Whining about dexterirty cards?  Come on, there're what, two of them in print?    Both of which are restricted in the format?  How many games do you expect that singular Chaos Orb to hit the table?  Yes, Falling Star is a nightmare of mine too- all my 3/3's are dead because he flips better than me!
The banned.restricted list is that way for a reason- anyu card that tutors os excessively powerful in a format forcing you to run more than 250 cards in your deck.  True- they have missed some stuff (leading to the brokeness of Quiet Speculation in the format, and the ability to search for any land with Reap and Sow and Sylvan Scrying whereas crop rotation got the big restriced bullet), but that just gives the games more unique kick.

There're lots of options for 5-Color deck construction!  Like tons!  Some of my favorites include:
1. The all black deck.  Uses black duals, and the tainted lands (if you've got a swamp, they're duals) as its mana base.  Runs black cards, multi-color black cards (like Mundungu, never thought he'd see play) and things that help out black cards (the Familiars that make black spells cheaper.)  This one is a lot of fun- just because its 5-Color, but all you're stuff is black.
2. Proteus Staff- Proteus staffing into play a Darksteel Colossus or Serra Avatar is a lot of fun in a 250 card deck.  Nightsoil is so good in the deck too- remove their graveyard creatures, while giving you Saporlings.  With space to run close to 80 removal spells in a deck,and with Reshape being un restricted this one is cute, if nothing else.
3. Any tribe that has cards of all colors- lots of fun to use wizards, or clerics (Storm Shaman, the red cleric!) and put to-gether ridiculous sets of dudes that have never seen play to-gether before.

Here are my top three reasons to play 5-Color:
1. Timmerian Fiends- taking moxen for Homelands cards is an invaluable joy.  Even if you're playing casually and don't keep the cards at the end of the game, that look on your opponant's face is priceless.
2. Divining Witch is broken.  In a 60 card deck use it more than once you're probably decking yourself to death.  
3. You play all five colors.  You play 250 cards in your deck.  What is not to like about a format that offers SO many options?

My final word on the format is to say this- I will forever consider anyman who can consistently win in 5-Color with a decking deck to be the King of All Magic.  Consider it a challenge.

[Hydra]

Been looking around these boards for quite some time now, but never really saw anything that really cried out at me to register and post, but this finally did it.  I'm a long-time 5-color player, and it's my favorite format.  Many of the banned/restricted cards look odd compared to the type 1 lists, but the formats are quite different.  

At 250 cards, games tend to run a long time, even for combo decks, so mana-extensive cards like Panoptic Mirror are quite playable, and almost always end the game then and there.  Lands tutors and such are also quite a bit more powerful in the format than in type 1, which is why things like Sylvan Scrying are banned.  Things such as playing for sleeves seem a bit extreme to some people, but the format was designed for fun, so things like card condition and seemingly marked cards aren't issues.  I've seen people play cards that were torn to pieces and taped back together without anyone complaining about it.  

I'm not sure if it still is an official rule or not, but for a very long time a rule existed that required you to offer a trade back of some sort for any card won in ante, the exception being Jeweled Bird.  It's a very fun format to play in casually, and you'd be quite surprised on the wealth of strategies 250 cards can offer you.  A lot of people will play pet cards or cards with modified pictures and such for fun.  I personally will almost always put one Pangosaur into my deck, a tradition which goes back to Regionals 2001 when Kurt Hahn ranted to me how awful the card was.  He's right, but it still stays in the deck as a joke.

It's definitely something to take a look at.  Even if you don't play your power it is still quite a fun format.

[Crazy Pierre]

5-Color is a great format.

I tried to get it going here in Ottawa, and was partially successful at doing so. I had 2 or 3 buddies that tried it, organized a 5-color FNM (so to speak) and made sure there were decent prizes. People knew Ante was part of the format, and this led some people to build decks with only commons and uncommons.

Whatever.

Aggro is really rewarded in this format, as you can find near infinite amounts of 1 or 2 drops with 2 power and get them out rather quickly. If you are able to "stabilize" and reach mid-game, the sweepers become very effective.

And yes, Contract From Below rocks da house. B for 7 cards, revealing until you hit a nonbasic land or rare or uncommon? Oh ya. I had my Jeweled Birds too, the ante loss hurts far less when you can give them a funkified Jeweled Bird (my chinese buddy wrote all sorts of chinese slang on his) for your dual or what not.

Biggest card I lost was Moat. Lost a Cursed Scroll too. Won a Morphling and two duals.

As an aside, those of you that play Magic Online and enjoy 5C may want to give Prismatic a whirl. It's basically 5C with Invasion Block forward, and Battle of Wits the only banned card.

Interestingly enough, it has developed house rules similar to the "Don't be a [jerk]" written of above, namely:

No Land D.
No Legacy Weapon.
No Sundering Titan.

You get the idea. Online, you have an excellent amount of land search in the form of Explosive Vegetation, Rampant Growth and so on, but you can still get hosed hard if someone starts throwing a Creeping Mold or Titan your way.

The "No Land D" rule had led to cards such as Unholy Grotto and Contested Cliffs being banned as well, since they can't really be dealt with.

There haven't been many ante games so far. I've played one or two, for uncommons, since the game doesn't feature a "flip till you reveal" feature.

It's really different from irl 5C, but quite enjoyable nonetheless.

I can't wait for the Bringers and Joiner Adept to get online.