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Greetings, folks! I am an old Magic player (started with Alpha, got out after Homelands) who jus got drawn back into the game. Sadly, I had sold my entire collection when I got out, so I've been starting from scratch. I'll post some of my other deck ideas later, but here's a cheap Magic variant my buddy and I have created. I call it Press-Tine Magic. 8)

It's very simple. I'm sure most of you have seen those Dollar Store special repacks of Magic cards available from Press-Time (or maybe they're just in canada?). Here's what we do: we start with 6 packs of Presstine MTG repacks (that gives you 60 cards, but you could start with more if you want). We do a standard booster draft using a package at a time (warts and all, since these packs often include Unglued, Unhinged and foreign language cards). It makes for some INTERESTING decks. ;)

After we've drafted, we construct minimum 40 card decks. However, instead of throwing land in to make a 60 card deck, we do something different. Each player gets a turn marker (we use 20 sided dice), and five 6-sided dice (one in each color of basic mana - R/G/B/W/U). Each turn, you get a total amount of mana equal to your turn (turn 1 means 1 mana. Turn 6 means 6 mana TOTAL). You can spend the mana any way you want... you can spend your 1 mana first turn as R, then on turn 2 you could spend U and B, then on turn 3 as WWR. You are limited only by the TOTAL amount of mana each turn. You keep track of the mana on your dice, showing how many of each mana you used on the dice (I suppose you could use colored 10-sided die, but we never found the need to spend more than 6 of any mana in a turn). Creatures with land-walking ability can only use it against you if you used mana if that color last turn (for instance, if I spend BBU on my 3rd turn, my opponent could use creatures with swampwalk or islandwalk next turn because I used mana of that color, but he couldn't use foreswalk, because I didn't use any G mana). If you happen to get mana in you packs, you can use it as normal - it becomes essentially "extra" mana. (For instance, if you play a plains on turn 3, then on turn 4, you would have 4 mana of any color plus one W available to you).

We found this worked out pretty decent for making a useful drafting exercise out of these cheap cards. The cards you get in these packs are TOTALLY random, so you often end up having to make absolute rainbows just to get them to work. This way actuall allows you to do something usefull, without having to tune your mana. We usually play foreign cards as best we can - if we can't translate them, or know what card they are from looking at it, then we play creatures as they appear with no abilities. Other spells.... shrug. We have occasionally allowed for subs when you open the pack (for instance, if we REALLY don't want to play with Unhinged or Unglued cards, we sub them out), subbing cards out either color for color, or converted mana for converted mana, from our personal collection of trash cards. We also did one where we subbed out the crappy cards, replacing them with rares, then mixing all the cards up, and drawing 10 cards "boosters" at a time, and drafting those.

It really challenges your drafting abilities with cards like this. I guess it's kind of like a cube draft, but not as labour intensive. 8)

Thanks, and look forward to posting more. 8)