Ok, so you want to play a budget based format. In theory I have no problem with that HOWEVER I do feel you should look at limited at that point. Money becomes less of a problem if you guys draft cards that you already have and the games will be radically different each time. Try this: Take 45 cards you like and place them down on the table. Then have each person take cards that they want to play with for that night and go from there.
If you REALLY want to do a price based format you need a standard way of looking at a card's price and then figure out how often the price is checked for changes. On Magic Online there is an unoffical format called "Heirloom" that has the rules that all commons have to be under 5 cents, uncommons 10, rares 25 cents and mythics a dollar. No one really seems to play that format but it is something to think about. Something to ponder over is possibly having a banned list or, more simply, an allowed list.
Honestly though I like the duel deck idea where it is 1 mythic, 4 rares, some commons and uncommons.
Thinking up new varients and such is fine but keep your expectations in line. If you are looking for a format that can become the next big thing look at how well pauper has done in paper vs digital magic. Essentially no format has really exploded because of arbitrary price caps. Pauper decks CAN be cheap but I can easily see a few being FAR more expensive than you may realize.
Yes, restrictions will build innovation but that is only true to a certain point. Feel free to try something like heirloom (http://mtgoheirloom.webs.com/heirloomrules.htm) but I would expect to put in a lot of legwork to get people to like it.
This past April and May I was taking a short course for adults (I was the youngest in the class at 21) in American history from the civil war to Bush Years. Well the "instructor", Dewilda, Read straight from the book BUT would rephrase the sentences from time to time and then spend another 3 or 4 sentences explaining what she tried to say. Well she would then give us take home tests over chapters that we had not covered because Dewilda tried to read the book to us. I pointed out how this was redundant which caused many other students to agree.
Long story short I got singled out in the class as "the trouble maker" and she would go out of her way to belittle any commentary I had on the teaching of the class. I ended up with a B in the class and the protests of the students in her class got her ass fired.
I did a couple of videos on Pauper Affinity. I don't want to self advertise or anything but it should be a good way to kill an hour or two. I haven't made anything new recently though I could be pushed to make something new. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h2df9ezY1Q&feature=channel_video_title
Deck naming is sort of like the names for people. Some are average, some make sense and some have a long backstory that doesn't explain much. The newest decks tend to just say what their main "theme" is. A BG Infect deck is a deck with the primary colors being Black and Green with the creatures having infect or winning through infect. Wolf Run Red is a Red deck that uses Kessig Wolf Run to win. However as you start looking at older decks things get wierd. The first deck, to my knowledge, with a name was called "The Deck". It was a mono blue control deck (Or MUC for short. Mono blUe control). Dredge is a deck that uses the graveyard and cards with the dredge mechanic to do silly things.
Mill decks come form the card Millstone. Generally "milling" is the short hand for "putting the top x cards from your library into your graveyard". Mill decks try to win via the "If you draw a card when your library has no cards in it you lose" rule.
Reanimator is a deck archtype where you try to put big creatures into your graveyard then Reanimate them to get absurdly large creatures into play very quickily.
TES is The Epic Storm which is a combo deck where you try to cast 10 spells in 1 turn and then win via a Tendrils of Agony which will copy itself for each spell cast before it.
If you look under the casual decks section you'll find a primer (http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/forumdisplay.php?f=569) which talks about some of the different archtypes. Keep in mind that magic has some 10,000 unique cards (I'm hazy on the actual number) so there are a LOT of decks under the general tree of Aggro/Control/Combo.
In Standard there is a deck called Solar Flare which is supposed to be a reincarnation of a similar deck that was around 5 or 6 years ago. Is it s a BWU (also called Esper which is the name of a BWU plane from the Shards of Alara block) control deck that tries to put big creatures into the graveyard and then bring them back. The actual name "Solar Flare" I think comes from the card Angel of Despair because she has a blackened sun behind her and she was played in the deck.
I'm not totally sure where the 13+ comes from. The closest thing to a curse word in the game is the card "Damnation". Magic is a fine game although it can be a bit expensive if you let it. There is some demonic imagery (which some might find objectionable) but there is little gore and no naked people running around or sexual imagery.
You are pretty close with what a draft is. Each person buys 3 packs and then you pull 1 card form each pack and pass them around until everyone has a set of 45 cards to make a deck with. It is a really fun format but I wouldn't get into it for a while.
Something to consider would be getting some of the 30 card intro decks that many local gaming stores have for free or for very little money. They cover the basics of how to play pretty well and also give a decent idea of some of the finer details.
It also wouldn't be a bad idea to play with your son; My dad and I played magic together a few years ago and it was a great bonding activity. Magic is deep enough and complicated enough that even adults can (and do) appreciate the nuances. Also good for you checking out magic before your son plays it. Responsible parenting for the win!
Wizards if the coast put out a video series early last year that covers many of the basics of the game on youtube. The first video can be found here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadqHggATe8
Fastest win in legacy was turn 2 (many, many times) was turn 2 with Cephalid Breakfast.
Pauper would be turn 4 after I played out my deck on turn 3
Longest games come in 2 varieties. One is a 1v2 game of EDH where I was milled out by Gwafa Hazid. "I play a dude" "oh nice dude you have there, draw a card! Too bad he'll never hit me. Oh, you played another dude? Yay for that intruder alarm you got there..." The game took roughly 4.5 hours. Multiplayer is about 5 hours with HALF of that time being for the one guy who kept shuffling his time warp effects and finding them again.
I guess it should also be noted there have been games on Modo where the objective of my deck was to make enough dudes that my opponents computer/modo would crash from memory issues. However that deck was a bit of a gambit as, more often than not, my end of modo would clog up and crash and I'd lose the match because it took my computer longer than 5 minutes to restart.
The deck in modern used Blazing Shoal and Progenitus or Reaper King to do a turn 2 win. It was really, really good. Infect as a mechanic seems to be on a knife's edge in terms of power. On one hand most creatures with infect funcitonally have their power doubled because it only takes half the damage to kill. On the other hand the toughness of the critters tends to leave something to be desired. Most infect decks aren't fast enough to beat aggro and not crafty enough to out-******* control. So they fall into this territory where they ask themselves each turn "Does my opponent have Doom blade, Dismember, Go for the Throat, Mana Leak or any number of other ways to interact. Infect doesn't do well with interactions.
We have 5 girls who play magic at our LGS regularly. There might be more who play Yu Gi Oh and pokemon but I mostly ignore them. Of the magic girls I have dated 2 of them, the 3rd has a financee and the other 2 are dating some of my magic buddies. One of the gals hates my guts and the others think I am pretty cool for the gal hating my guts. Sadly my LGS has a younger crowed so there tends to be a LOT of drama. Most of the gals tend to be pretty average deckbuilders but it isn't horribly uncommon to see one of them in the top 8 of a 30 man FNM. One of the lessons I have picked up is that it takes a certain kind of gal to play magic and that is exactly the kind of gal I shouldn't date.
The combo is pretty straight forward. With Stasis and Chronatog on the field youskip your next turn at the end of your opponents end step. Then your opponent plays again and skips their untap step again, continues turn and then you skip your turn again. Essentially you lock yourself out of the game while your opponent draws their entire deck and mills themselves. However you want to combine it with something like Frozen Aether so that they never get to play spells again.
I should also mention that in terms of "fun" your opponents/ friends will get really tired of it really quick. It's a fun little combo but beware before you sink too much money into the deck. A Howling mine or other card draw effect wouldn't be bad either.
A cube is a dedicated set of cards you draft from. It can (and often seems to be) the best (usually 440) cards ever printed. They come in powered (power 9) and non-powered (no power 9) varieties. They are a LOT of fun to draft.
While I don't actually have an indepth comment to add I would like to point out that magic players are, in fact, very intelligent and love the lore of this game to a degree I hadn't thought of. Well done!
The cards I would want would allow for more deck archtypes while keeping the format distinct from legacy. Goyf, Bob and rav shocks of course but I'd also like to see fact or fiction (my favorite card), cycle lands and foil reprinted. Gush would also be interesting to see.
If you REALLY want to do a price based format you need a standard way of looking at a card's price and then figure out how often the price is checked for changes. On Magic Online there is an unoffical format called "Heirloom" that has the rules that all commons have to be under 5 cents, uncommons 10, rares 25 cents and mythics a dollar. No one really seems to play that format but it is something to think about. Something to ponder over is possibly having a banned list or, more simply, an allowed list.
Honestly though I like the duel deck idea where it is 1 mythic, 4 rares, some commons and uncommons.
Thinking up new varients and such is fine but keep your expectations in line. If you are looking for a format that can become the next big thing look at how well pauper has done in paper vs digital magic. Essentially no format has really exploded because of arbitrary price caps. Pauper decks CAN be cheap but I can easily see a few being FAR more expensive than you may realize.
Yes, restrictions will build innovation but that is only true to a certain point. Feel free to try something like heirloom (http://mtgoheirloom.webs.com/heirloomrules.htm) but I would expect to put in a lot of legwork to get people to like it.
Long story short I got singled out in the class as "the trouble maker" and she would go out of her way to belittle any commentary I had on the teaching of the class. I ended up with a B in the class and the protests of the students in her class got her ass fired.
Five with flores is pretty good to check out too.
Mill decks come form the card Millstone. Generally "milling" is the short hand for "putting the top x cards from your library into your graveyard". Mill decks try to win via the "If you draw a card when your library has no cards in it you lose" rule.
Reanimator is a deck archtype where you try to put big creatures into your graveyard then Reanimate them to get absurdly large creatures into play very quickily.
TES is The Epic Storm which is a combo deck where you try to cast 10 spells in 1 turn and then win via a Tendrils of Agony which will copy itself for each spell cast before it.
If you look under the casual decks section you'll find a primer (http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/forumdisplay.php?f=569) which talks about some of the different archtypes. Keep in mind that magic has some 10,000 unique cards (I'm hazy on the actual number) so there are a LOT of decks under the general tree of Aggro/Control/Combo.
In Standard there is a deck called Solar Flare which is supposed to be a reincarnation of a similar deck that was around 5 or 6 years ago. Is it s a BWU (also called Esper which is the name of a BWU plane from the Shards of Alara block) control deck that tries to put big creatures into the graveyard and then bring them back. The actual name "Solar Flare" I think comes from the card Angel of Despair because she has a blackened sun behind her and she was played in the deck.
You are pretty close with what a draft is. Each person buys 3 packs and then you pull 1 card form each pack and pass them around until everyone has a set of 45 cards to make a deck with. It is a really fun format but I wouldn't get into it for a while.
Something to consider would be getting some of the 30 card intro decks that many local gaming stores have for free or for very little money. They cover the basics of how to play pretty well and also give a decent idea of some of the finer details.
It also wouldn't be a bad idea to play with your son; My dad and I played magic together a few years ago and it was a great bonding activity. Magic is deep enough and complicated enough that even adults can (and do) appreciate the nuances. Also good for you checking out magic before your son plays it. Responsible parenting for the win!
Wizards if the coast put out a video series early last year that covers many of the basics of the game on youtube. The first video can be found here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadqHggATe8
Pauper would be turn 4 after I played out my deck on turn 3
Longest games come in 2 varieties. One is a 1v2 game of EDH where I was milled out by Gwafa Hazid. "I play a dude" "oh nice dude you have there, draw a card! Too bad he'll never hit me. Oh, you played another dude? Yay for that intruder alarm you got there..." The game took roughly 4.5 hours. Multiplayer is about 5 hours with HALF of that time being for the one guy who kept shuffling his time warp effects and finding them again.
I guess it should also be noted there have been games on Modo where the objective of my deck was to make enough dudes that my opponents computer/modo would crash from memory issues. However that deck was a bit of a gambit as, more often than not, my end of modo would clog up and crash and I'd lose the match because it took my computer longer than 5 minutes to restart.
I should also mention that in terms of "fun" your opponents/ friends will get really tired of it really quick. It's a fun little combo but beware before you sink too much money into the deck. A Howling mine or other card draw effect wouldn't be bad either.
A cube is a dedicated set of cards you draft from. It can (and often seems to be) the best (usually 440) cards ever printed. They come in powered (power 9) and non-powered (no power 9) varieties. They are a LOT of fun to draft.