The beautiful part of playing with cards is their versatility. In a standard deck (not a Standard deck), there are fifty-two cards of four suits — and nothing more. Yet somehow, hundreds and thousands of games have spawned from these fifty-two cards: complex descendants of Whist such as Suicide Spades, games of solitaire involving two decks like St. Helena, and deck aberrations like Old Maid.

There are several thousand Magic cards. How many different games do you play with them?

Standard and booster draft? Extended season is over, so I know you're not playing that (and a nice pat on the back for me going 5-2-1). You say you've played every form of Standard since Type 2 was born?

Congratulations! You're the perfect consumer and Wizards loves you.

Have you ever read the complete Comprehensive Rules? I have (no, thank you, save the applause). The first time was right after the new Sixth Edition rules upset. In case you were wondering, not much changed between Fifth and Sixth Edition, but the rulebook certainly seemed longer and lacking in poetic prose. To this day, there isn't a player alive who can answer those hard Licid/Humility/Opalescence/double-Intruder Alarm/Shrieking Drake/Aluren multiplayer questions.

So why do we adhere only to the rules hammered out by Wizards and the DCI? Maybe Magic was meant to have a few aesthetic alterations. Grab your cardboard signs and let's pack a lunch, a checkered tablecloth, and have a wonderful picnic. Just say “no” to buying a case of new cards! Instead, why don't you play a new game? Forget Magic and find a game that brings out a greater challenge and a decrease in your financial woes.

I know you might be confused. I didn't intend for anyone to stop playing with Magic cards! Heavens to Betsy, no; by all means, play with your cards. Just make a few changes. Teach an old dog new tricks. The sky is limitless. Destroy some clichés.

One of my favorite “quick” Limited formats is the booster war. Some individuals participate in a hack-and-slash version without using lands, and they are entitled to any format they choose. However, in an attempt to serve up a more tactical variant, here is what I play.

Booster War (2+ players)
Speed: 15 minutes
Resources: (1 pack) / player
Skill: Winning only two packs in a draft?

Sure, you can easily play a booster war with more than two players — but that only works if you win three packs!

Players with fresh winnings have an incurable itch to crack open their hard-earned boosters. Why not give them a test drive first? Grab a small stack of basic lands to share and dig into your new fifteen cards. Take a gander at your broken commons and Blood Funnel and decide how many of each basic land to add to your pack (twelve lands is average, with a distribution of 3-3-2-2-2). Shuffle. Play.

What could be simpler?

Changing the laws of a Magic game is simple. Take one rule that players take for granted and play R&D with it. Perhaps all colorless mana costs must be paid for with colorless mana; maybe all cards in play are of type “Permanent” and all spells that would affect an Enchantment, Artifact, Creature, or Land instead affect Permanents; or you could just add a single line to every spell that is played. Draw a card?

Can't Rip (Any Limited Format)
It's easy. Play a draft with the caveat that every spell has the added sentence “Draw a card.” What could be simpler?

Oh. Don't get decked.

So how does one change the rules of Magic? How does one make a new game? Obviously rewriting the Comprehensive Rules is a bit of a joke. You can, however, offer a few tweaks to the game. Popular examples of constructed formats are Prismatic and Tribal. I utterly and completely support Casual formats such as those. They're child's play, though; mere tweaks of the game. Limited is an equally plausible medium for rolling out the Sharpie and creating a new game.

1,000 Blank Magic Cards (3+ players)
Resources: Paper and Pencil, Rock and Cave Paint, Blank Magic Cards, and a Wizards of the Coast pen?
Skill: Imagination and your inner Timmy/Johnny

1,000 Blank Cards begins the game with a “deck” entirely of blank cards (or pieces of paper). If you don't have blank paper, actual Magic cards will work.

When playing 1,000 Blank Cards, your turn consists of writing a Name, a Picture, an Ability, and (optionally) a Point Value on a card. You then play that card. The winner at the end of the game is the person with the most points. While it sounds very easy to play (and it is), the skill is in making your opponents laugh, in creating wild cards, and in playing with something memorable.

Why? At the end of the game, you select a mere one tenth (or an agreed upon number) of the played cards to add to the “permanent deck.” The next time you play, shuffle those selected cards with a bunch of blank ones. The real winners are the ones who make cards that endure this rigorous culling.

Playing 1,000 Blank Magic Cards is no different. Yes, you can play a 0 casting cost artifact with the slightly overpowered ability “When you play this, you win the game”... but why? Instead, play “Palindrome,” an Enchantment that reads, “Players may only play spells that have names that read the same both forwards and backwards (ignore punctuation and capitalization)” for one white mana. Your opponent might then play “Level” on their turn, destroying all permanents with an odd casting cost.

In general, give your card a Name, Casting Cost, Type, Text, and Power/Toughness where appropriate. A picture and flavor text would be a nice addition. Also, if you don't want to keep redrawing the card frame, there are a few places you can print out empty cards online. Don't forget to save some of your crazy creations at the end of the game for the next.

I did lie. This is a recurring habit and one day I will stop. Wait, there I go again.

You can tip the game on its head. The cards are tools, after all. Here's an example.

The King's Magic (2 players)
Resources: A stack of thirty-two creatures, one set of chess pieces

Any set of rules can be used to draft the cards required to play the game, but one of the more interesting is the Half-Life method. Shuffle the cards and split them into two piles of sixteen. In turn, each player chooses any stack and splits the cards in the stack into two equal piles. The stacks will shrink down to eight, four, and finally two. When a player chooses to split a stack of size two, he instead selects one card to keep and gives the other to the opponent. Continue until all the cards are drafted.

Now, using a chessboard setup, either with an actual board or an imaginary 8x8 grid, play your cards to the grid face down into the starting sixteen positions of a chess game, marking each card with the respective chess piece. Flip the cards face up after they are all placed. Play a normal game of chess, with the caveat that when a piece moves into a space occupied by the opponent, combat occurs (rather than an ordinary capture) with the “attacker” as the moving piece. The two creatures duke it out as in a normal game of Magic and the loser is removed from the gameboard. To pay for abilities, assume you have enough colored mana in your mana pool equal to the number of pieces you have captured and that “attacking” creatures can't use activations that require tapping.

“Check” and “checkmate” depend on what would be the result of combat between the King's card and its attackers. To add flavor to the game, shuffle a random set of global effects together (enchantments like Rolling Stones, artifacts like Cursed Totem, and creatures like Goblin King) into a small deck. When a pawn captures a piece, flip over one of these cards and either “put it in play” or replace a current effect in play.

Add and reform the rules as you see fit. Whatever you choose, have fun and be true to both games.

Giving consent to go postal with the rulebook is not a suggestion to use Magic cards as skeet targets... Unless you're working with a Clay Pigeon, of course. Always include at least a little bit of the original game in your formats, or I can't be the one to blame for any broken friendships. It's the game you love, so make sure you keep that passion in your new rules.

Most importantly, you can do all of this without spending a single dime, or whatever a pack of cards costs these days (surely not more than a quarter). Magic can be new every time you play it, so shuffle up a stack of commons, cut your cards in half for a healthy game of Concentration, and give all your lands “T: add 2 to your mana pool.” Rules were made to be broken.

Always have fun.