How do players draw their initial cards, turn order? What cards make up the communal tower, several random decks combined, or do players create one communal deck, or do they create individual decks specialized for this format?

I played something like this before where we literally shuffled a few decks together, different sleeves and all, and we would draw and play cards without paying their mana cost. Lands were included and could be used to activate abilities and pay costs and such; if you wanted to hold onto a spell past your turn instead of simply casting it, you'd have to pay its mana cost. It wasn't very polished, but fun

I play a format similar to this using my Cube, except that for mana you can put a card from your hand face down on the battlefield once per turn. That card counts as your land drop for the turn and is a basic land that counts as all land types (no mana problems and it saves on having to haul extra land cards around). The way that I play also allows players to have their own individual graveyards so that cards such as Living Death can be used to full effect.

I've found that this sort of format makes for a good break after everyone is wound up from playing a few games in a more competitive format. It's also a good way of introducing newer players to the game without issues related to deck building and mana troubles infringing on the experience.

Ha! Neat format, I like it! Needs a little refinement on specifics and such, but the basic idea is good. <3

Pretty awesome. Not sure how this would actually work, it seems a bit complicated, but definitely original. Ha, "search your tower for a basic land card." That's good...

First sentence had me hooked. To give you an idea of the unbalanced power of the playgroup, I run an optimal version of Naya Blitz with four Voice of Resurgence and two Thundermaw Hellkite , and the guy next to me plays Maze's End control with one copy of the maze.

sounds kinda fun... we have done this a few times at my LGS... not identical but something very similar... . when someone opens a box we putt all the commons and uncommons into 2 large stacks. the commons can be played as cards on the field etc and the uncommons are used for lands(basically draw one of each stack per turn.) the color of mana on the card drawn from uncommon stack is the color mana it taps for. duals tap for either or and of course artifacts tap for colorless.

it normally becomes a festive free for all and as someone else said stuff like this is a great way to unwind and to maintain friendships with the people whose decks you have just clobbered in FNM events... lmao... :D

I've played something very similar to this! It was a singleton 'deck' made up of about 1000 cards. There were several piles separated into land and non land cards. What we did was you drew 7 cards of whichever pile, land or non land. Then when you drew you could draw either land or non land. We also had a shared graveyard. Things were quite interesting playing singletons with 8 people!

as SaberTech said, that is exactly how i play the format

My friend has this but we play it EDH style with all the colors and the Commander is Reaper King

I take it mill is not a viable strategy?

Ok kidding aside, it looks interesting.

I really like the bare bones of this format

I have something similar, made from the remaining proxies of a crapton of edh deck edits. Sleeved up and stacked about 200 cards high. It's something like 30 of each color, artifact and gold. The gold is split of kinda wonky but fun.

1 Library, 1 Graveyard a pool of basic and a stack of facedown non-basics. Every time you draw you either grab a land or draw from the library. Everybody usually grabs the non-basics the first couple turns but there are a few Rupture Spire effects that can hurt you randomly 1st turn.

Seems somewhat like my shop's "Type4"
Essentially there is a large 600ish card singleton deck, no rules on it.

Each player starts with a 5 card hand, you can cast any card for free but you can only cast 1 spell per turn. there are tutors, there are broken cards, extra costs can be paid as much as you like for free. Ever kicked a spell for abillion? kinda fun. makes buyback broken though. Still insane

The version we play is creature heavy ad the person that built the deck focused it on every creature type while at the same time he picked creatures that would not break the game. So we have creatures Giant Oyster and the like to make it fun. You really have to play politics with the deck.

Land a Balustrade Spy and everyone else loses before your next turn.

I'm assuming there would be some kind of small ban list, such as the above. Would something like Anger be permitted? He might be kinda fun.

I think Anger would definitely be permitted and fun to use. Same with others like Filth and Brawn .

This is my communal tower deck: Communal Tower

I am still tweaking it, but so far it is very fun and interesting to play with. I would definitely recommend going by the singleton rules for the most part, with maybe just a few duplicates if something works really well.

After some testing with friends, I added a bit of a tweak to the rules - we play where you can either discard a card for a land once per turn, OR discard a card to draw two cards once per turn. We found it to be a lot more fun that way, and make more weird graveyard shenanigans possible.

i saw people playing this at my locals lol. this is a great idea!

Thank you everyone for your comments! This is pretty aged by now haha but I'm hoping to revive the concept with my new play group. Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

EvenDryke has a great decklist for the format and has made some nice rule changes/additions, definitely improved upon the original concept. Thanks!