5-Color is too expensive. There, I said it.

Every time I show up at a premier event here in the Kentucky area, I always get drawn in by the 5-Color players. I gladly pay my $25.00 entry fee in every prerelease and go 1-3 drop — at which point I scurry over to watch Jason Dooley riffling through his 250-card deck, and then promptly pick my jaw up off the floor. Between the “NO” Counterspell, the foil set of power, and the sharpie-altered dual lands, there is an amazing string of plays going on, and it always looked like a blast....

....Until you realize what it would take to actually build one of those piles.

Between the dual lands and fetch lands necessary to just fix the mana, you would already have reached the limits of most people's budgets. Even Prismatic requires multiples of the $10 fetch lands, not to mention the other random chase rares you wanted to run. Sword of Fire and Ice, Mirari’s Wake, the Judgment Wishes, pain lands, the list goes on, and on, and on.

My team and I decided to do something about the price tag of the 250-card formats. My goal in this article is to present to you an alternative. We call this format Type 5, and it can be just as much fun, and I guarantee it will be at least half the price tag, which is a huge factor. In short, this format is Highlander Prismatic, using the Type 2 card pool.

Now, for the meat and potatoes: the rules of Type 5.

Deck Construction Rules

1. Your deck must be at least 250 cards, with at least ten cards of each color.
Basically, we took the Prismatic/5-Color base, and altered it slightly to fit the card pool. Red and white had very few cards worth playing — and at the end of the day, fitting ten cards that you don’t even want to play takes away from the fun. Plus, the first set in the card pool is chock full of bomb-tastic artifacts, and I can’t tell you how cool it is to imprint on Panoptic Mirror. We wanted to make sure that people had room for all the cool, techy cards they wanted to play.

2. Get some cool-looking cards. No, seriously, go out and get some.
Think of Type 5 as the budget 5-Color. Therefore, half the appeal should be the encouragement to get creative. Grab some Sharpies and get to doodling. I know you’ve got a spare Kokusho, so grab a marker, draw an arm, and write some reference to “burninating the countryside." The funnier, the better.

And, of course, the more foils the better.

Other Type 5 Rules

1. The Ten-Card Opener
Yep, you read correctly. Ten cards in your opening hand. This is a fairly new rule, one we just put into effect in the last month or so. We found that with this format, seven card hands often resulted in mulligans, which did nothing but waste time, since the mulligan rules are so liberal. This format was meant as something to do in between rounds at a tournament, or just a way to kill a little time. Mulligans just increased the amount of time you weren’t doing anything, so we figured we needed a solution. We upped the opening hand size (and, by default, the maximum hand size) by three cards, and it seems to be working, without proving to be degenerate.

2. Mulligan Rules
So, you draw your ten-card opener, and see Islands and nothing but green and red cards. Hey, it happens — especially in a highlander deck as large as this. In tournament play, you’d have to reshuffle everything, draw one less card, and probably still have to mulligan.

To simplify, we decided to just toss the old hand somewhere in the middle of the deck, shuffle once or twice, if you want, and then draw a new hand, one card smaller than the first. Feel free to be as strict or as lenient as you want to with mulligan rules; it's really up to you.

3. The Banned and Restricted List
First, the restricted list: Every card, excluding non-basic lands. This is Highlander, remember?

Seriously, though, some cards proved to be more degenerate than fun, so they needed to get the axe.

Arc-Slogger
A five-mana 4/5 that Shocks for one red would be far too broken. R&D felt that old Arc-Sloggy Slog needed a drawback. In this format, though, his drawback is almost non-existent, and thus he's an overwhelmingly efficient creature that just kills all the fun you were supposed to be having (along with all the creatures that formerly occupied the table.).

Sundering Titan
A fairly obvious inclusion. This format thrives on basic lands, and this guy can jump into play way earlier that anyone can possibly be ready for him. In the first few games of this format, someone would play a fourth-turn Bribery and/or Acquire and they would opt not to get Titan so the game could continue. Since ending the game so early usually isn't fun, we axed the 7/10 split.

Bribery/Acquire
These cards were just unfair. They were Tutors that denied your opponent a card. They both dropped Bosh, Iron Golem into play for a very low cost. They got Eternal Witness and Mindslaver respectively. In short, they were banned for much the same reason everything else has been banned; they ended the game in an unfair and sudden manner, and no one enjoyed that.

Rude Awakening/Myr Incubator
These cards both end the game abruptly, and very few cards in the Standard card pool deal with them... Well, that's not true. Most of the cards that deal with them are unplayable, but they had to be in your deck if you wanted a chance to survive these monsters, and we didn't want people metagaming overmuch.

Gifts Ungiven
I think it took us too long to break this card — but with our most recent Gifts pile, the game ended on your next untap. You could gifts up Eternal Witness, All Suns' Dawn, Choice of Damnations, and Twincast. By no means do you want your opponent to Gifts again, so you have to give them Choice and Twincast. Try playing through that sometime. Well, and have a good time while you're doing it.

Keep in mind, these bannings are through Betrayers of Kamigawa. While Saviors is legal, we have only played a little of Type 5 with Saviors cards, so we’re still trying to figure out if anything needs to go. So far, Eternal Dominion seems very overpowered. Choice of Damnations is amazing, but I don’t think it's overwhelming.

Deck Building Tips
Now, I've played Type 5 since its incarnation, and I’ve noticed a couple of things. First, this format is hugely about artifacts. Equipment in particular is a force to reckon with. As a result, grab any and all artifact hate and jam it into the deck. You can pass on a few, if you like (such as Dismantle) but be prepared to deal with a bunch of powerful brown cards. Also, make sure you’ve got a Naturalize and Creeping Mold, because Hondens will show up.

Also, I've noticed that countermagic is very weak, except for two exceptions. Given that Time Stop acts as a Counterspell, a Time Walk, and a Fog effect all at once, it's easy inclusion. The other counter spell worthy of Type 5 is Overwhelming Intellect. This card is amazing. It will almost always draw you six or more cards, and it counters their bomb. I love seeing this card in my hand, and would love to see it a little more often.

As a final tip towards building your deck, include every piece of two-drop acceleration you can find. This format boils down to accelerating and fixing your mana, then dropping bomb after bomb after bomb. You would also be wise to include Darksteel Ingot, Ur-Golem’s Eye, and Gilded Lotus, as they have been great for me.

The Future of Type 5
Standard will be rotating soon — and as such, we are faced with a decision. We currently operate off of the Type 2 card pool, so the logical step would be to rotate the decks with the Standard rotation. However, not only would we lose a ton of mana fixing, acceleration, and just all-around interesting cards, it would also be a huge hassle, and it's just not an attractive idea.

The other idea with this rotation is to add new sets to the card pool as they are released. No longer could we explain Type 5 as “Type 2 Prismatic Highlander," but we do get to keep these cool cards we’ve fallen in love with. Grim Reminder is a personal favorite of mine that I’m not looking forward to losing.

Additionally, it would allow the presence of divergent decks. Currently, with such a small card pool, the decks are only different by ten to twenty cards. Now, while this doesn’t matter too much, I’d prefer to have deck archetypes emerge, just as in 5 Color. That won’t happen for a while, but slowly the decks will become more and more different, and will allow for more exciting games.

Officially, I’m on the side of not rotating the decks. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, though, so feel free to post your opinions on the message boards.

So, there you have it. Our humble little format has provided us with many hours of entertainment, and I suggest you give it a shot. It would warm my heart if I saw even two new people at the next prerelease enjoying a game of Type 5. If you have any questions, post them in the forum, or feel free to email me at Dragonegg5@hotmail.com.

Until then, may you always have artifact hate for that damned Panoptic Mirror.

Scott Schauf
A member of Team Ramrod