Well, i thought i'd toss out one of my favorite casual formats...
Here's bascily how it work:
You take a bunch of decks and toss 'em together into a preferably huge stack of cards - Think 300+
Then you gather a bunch of friends and play...All drawing from the same stack and putting used cards into the same graveyard.
It works best if you trust the people you are playing with, since otherwise you might end up loosing cards or getting your cards worn by people who do not care.
It's generally a good idea to have green as the primary color, due to mana fix.
We usually draft our starting hands, drawing 7 cards each, and then drafting...This is to ensure that everyone gets the necessary amount of mana to play their spells - Generally speaking, pick lands above anything else!
Tutoring can get quite annoying, so try to limit the amount of tutors in the deck.
Cards like kodama's reach are quite good, but it's painfull to search for the basic lands - Our newest solution is to just have a stack of basics next to the deck, where we then just pick from that stack rather then search the whole deck for lands.
Due to the nature of the format some cards are just not fair, or not rules-wise workable.
Cards such as living death should therefore not be added....Flashback cards, and dredge cards are often problematic...And we don't include them.
Other then that there are just some cards which are plain unfair or which puts the game to a halt...Here are the cards we've pretty much banned:
Sensei's top - This card pretty much means that you can control what everybody draws since you're all drawing from the same stack.
Brainstorm - This card screws the next 2 players by giving them something they can't use...it's ancestral on crack in TWF
Library of alexandria - Starting with this card is usually game-winning, it's much stronger then most other card-drawers since the game usually goes long, and land destruction is usually not present.
Psychatog - The graveyard grows very fast when 4+ players share the yard, so it will grow incredibly fast.
Goblin charbelcher - Strangely enough this card usually does way too much damage turn after turn.
Cataclysm - We played with this card once and the game pretty much never ended, since whenever anyone was in problems they'd cast it, tutor it up, recur it or whatever.
Kokusho, the evening star - The life swing is way too good in this format...So good that when tutoring or recurring this was almost always the target when it was available.
Biorhytm is close to being too good aswell, since wrath, cast a dude, biorhytm just ends the game.
You should also be carefull with draw7's....having a few in the deck is fine, but when you reach 7 or so it gets rediculos...sometimes screwing the balance up badly.
The abyss is also quite annoying, since the game is long enough as it is.
Oath of druids and the like are usually very annoying since everybody just stops playing when they hit the board.
X-spells are generally very strong, so we don't include fireball/earthquake effects, since they usually end up as the strongest cards in the deck, and just ends the game when drawn....stroke of genius is way more fair.
Lifeloss cards are generally not that strong, dark confidant is a liability...and skeletal scrying is good, but risky etc.
Power cards are fine, they're not really all that unfair...We've played with moxen, ancestrals, time walks, loti etc. without the game degenerating.
Generally speaking, if you feel like a certain card would be too good or too useless, just cut it before you even start playing.
Oh, and when you're making the deck, why not flip over your binders for expensive usually unplayable cards and just slap 'em in? Anythings pretty much playable, nicol bolas wouldn't be all that bad in twf to be honest!
Well thats pretty much it, expect the game to take along time.
/Zeus
