5-Color Magic The most electrifying format in Magic
Have you ever cast Demonic Consultation for Demonic Tutor because you didn’t want people to know what you were tutoring for? Ever played an eleven-player game for ante? Ever been 19 years old and traded back your winnings of Mox, Mox, Juzam for a case of beer from your 30 year-old opponent?
5-Color is not what it used to be, and recent talks about the banned and restricted lists have had people wanting to recapture that feeling. While players will never agree whole-heartedly on the cards allowed, isn’t it nice to have a format where our voices are heard?
Recapturing the “glory” of old 5-Color days isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, since it’s something different for everyone. For many of us, it was an escape from well-known formats, a chance to play favorite cards that normally went untouched. The early days of 5-Color aren’t the same (chronologically) for everyone. Someone that started playing in 2001 might remember loading their deck with Invasion dragons or putting to use their Memory Jars.
The early days of 5-Color were ridiculous. 1997 was a crazy year. 5-Color was played by 15 people and we scrambled to get Undiscovered Paradise, City of Brass, and Fellwar Stone. Decks varied between 200 and 400 cards and we played for anything. If you didn’t play four Inheritance you were the sucker. Most games were multi-player, and if you anted a rare, you were the minority. No one had a combo deck, but once in awhile you’d run across a combo in your deck or a combo with the cards on the board. A Wheel of Fortune didn’t mean two guys drew new hands, it meant 6 individual players had stuff to cast; usually a Firestorm, Lightning Bolt, Terror, Fork, and Disenchant would fly out of people’s hands. Phyrexian Portal became the most targeted artifact for destruction followed closely by Jayemdae Tome. Everyone played Derelor. Yeah, everybody. Yeah, Derelor. And Serra Angel, Shivan Dragon, Mahamoti Djinn and Sengir Vampire used to beat down. Clone was gripped until one of these hit the table. Diamond Kaleidoscope and Jungle Patrol used to crank out blockers to produce mana. Will-O-the-Wisp protected us. Desertion was the biggest blowout in history. Not a single person had four Birds of Paradise.
I think by now most people are familiar with the story of the banning of Darkpact. If not, it’s amusing, I’ll tell it again. We were playing two-on-two in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin at Lake Country Comics, the birthplace of 5-Color. Mike Laffin and Brian Kowal were on a team, though my teammate escapes me, might have been Nick Bach or Luke Diaz. Darkpact allows you to switch the top card of your library with any card in the ante. Laffin cast Darkpact and traded it for HIS TEAMMATE’S dual land. Kowal was, of course, furious and Darkpact was banned instantly.
These aren’t tales to tell you how it used to be. They are lessons about how things used to be and how lucky we in the casual Magic setting have it now. Lucky that there are 5-Color players who care enough about the format to post daily about cards on the B&R lists. When there were changes, I used to e-mail 21 people so that everyone from Oconomowoc, Pewaukee, Wauwatosa, and Milwaukee could be updated. Now there are voters, and debates, and most importantly, lots of players.
I’ve been fortunate to have made lots of friends because of Magic and recognized for my involvement in this format. We should be thankful that we’ve got lots of new ways to kill a Derelor.