Skittles

I'd like to talk about a casual format, particularly my favorite casual format – Skittles. A five color, peasant, highlander format, which requires equal numbers of every color, as well as artifacts. Gold cards and hybrids are handled in a unique way in Skittles - they count as a percentage of each color in their cost. For example, a card like Grixis Charm would count as a third each of Red, Black, and Blue. This creates an interesting challenge to deckbuilders on how to best equalize the color percentages when using cards like these.

Deck building and creation is half the fun of the format, searching for old type two or extended cards which you loved playing but can’t find a place for them anymore. My favorite thing about skittles is how cards in this format are bombs and are trash in every other format, like Ghost-Lit Stalker for example. Since the format is slowpaced, a sorcery speed, discard four cards can often win you the game. Making your opponent discard 3-4 valuable cards is worth the cost. The goal of the format is to keep playing cards that gain you card advantage, being a two for one creature or a Draw spell. The more ways you have for stopping the opponent the better, however, you don’t want to one for one. This is the reason Swords to Plowshares is mediocre in Skittles, it doesn’t net an advantage. The attrition war is everything, from hitting land drops turns one through seven, to accelerating with artifact mana or Kodama’s Reach.

The fundamental turns of skittles are turns six through eight. This is when the bombs are cast that will determine who’s ahead in the attrition war for the mid to late game. Once you lose the card advantage race or attrition war it becomes harder to dig yourself out of the hole, but there’s ways to turn the tides, such as Haunting Hymn and Tidings. These two cards are the type of bombs I mentioned before - others include Slice and Dice, Ghost-Lit Stalker, Jetting Glasskite, Hymn of Rebirth, Harmonize, etc. While a turn five Haunting Hymn won’t win the game instantly, it will put you far ahead for later on. One way to avoid getting bogged down in an attrition war is to play cheap threats; since most of the decks focus so much on two-for-ones, significant threats are something that decks generally lack. Control decks take time to set up and control the game, fast draws often stump these control decks. Most skittles decks are control decks with creatures with strong abilities, because their abilities are powerful and interactive most people opt to play them over one casting cost beaters. The deck I've been playing lately is below. Feel free to use it as a baseline to start feeling the format out for yourself:

Lands

1 Wasteland
1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
1 Nantuko Monastery
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Meadow
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Savage Lands
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Arcane Sanctum
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Shimmering Grotto
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Mirrodin's Core
1 Plains
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Terramorphic Expanse

Creatures
1 Stonecloaker
1 Phyrexian Gargantua
1 Shriekmaw
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Etched Oracle
1 Jetting Glasskite
1 Thornscape Battlemage
1 Ana Battlemage
1 Eternal Witness
1 Nucklavee
1 Ghost-Lit Stalker
1 Mulldrifter
1 Stormfront Riders
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Ancestor’s Chosen

Spells
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Tidings
1 Bant Charm
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Haunting Hymn
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Naya Charm
1 Jund Charm
1 Harmonize
1 Slice and Dice
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Resounding Thunder
1 Spectral Searchlight
1 Dromar's Charm
1 Rise/Fall
1 Wayfarer’s Bauble
1 Momentary Blink
1 Twisted Justice
1 Cone of Flame
1 Opportunity
1 Reap and Sow