Rainbow/Star Magic

My link to the rules for the Star format on the right has become broken.  While writing about a recent Star Draft we did, I also discovered that the mtg.fandom wiki had (what I consider) some mild misinformation and that its links were also broken.

I want a place that I can refer to for a long time, so here's my own knowledge of the formats known as Rainbow and Star.

Rainbow

Rainbow is a five-player format that I first read about in the Magic Pocket Players' Guide, which was published in 1994.  

My cousin gifted me his copy many years ago.

 

In Rainbow, each player gets assigned one of the five colors, then everyone sits in a circle in the order on the back of a magic card.  You have to build your deck with only uncolored cards and cards of your given color.  Your teammates are the people to your right and left and your opponents are sitting across from you.  If both of your opponents die before you do, then you win.

Confusingly, turn order doesn't go straightforwardly clockwise.  That's because you don't want teammates taking turns after each other.  Instead, you skip over one player when you pass.  Thus, starting from the white-player's turn, the order would go like this: White -> Black -> Green -> Blue -> Red -> White.  (This is likely where the later name "Star" came from, as the turn order traces out a five-pointed star.  Good thing the Satanic Panickers didn't hear about this format!)

Star

Star is the same thing as Rainbow, but without the deck color requirement.  (The wiki linked above disagrees with me on the terminology.)  This makes things a lot more reasonable for casual play, as you don't have to sort out the colors beforehand.  

It's an excellent format, but I only recommend it for casual games.  Although there are teammates, there aren't well-defined teams, as your two teammates are enemies themselves.  This means that you aren't really relying on your teammates to do anything beyond attack each other and your opponents.  Although it's good for you if your teammates swing in for more damage than your opponents, in many ways it's really up to you to attack more than your teammates.  Speaking of attacking...

Cutthroat

Cutthroat is another relic of the Pocket Players' Guide, applicable to both Star and three-player magic.  It's great for speeding up these formats, but I haven't played by the exact original rules.  The rule I've used is that your attacking creatures can be blocked by either of your opponents, independent of who you declared them to attack.  Any combat damage dealt to one player actually lands on both defenders.  There are some complications:

• You may not be able to block creatures your teammate can.  For example, if we're attacked by a Mountainwalk creature and I have mountains but the other defender doesn't, then I can't block but they can.
• Combat damage triggers only on one of the players, so Ophidian-effects only trigger once.  (I'm sure there's an elegant rules-adhering implementation of this, e.g. a la Hydra Omnivore, but I don't know if there's anything official.)

I cannot emphasize how much this speeds games up.  There's already a bit of weird politicking that happens with teammates; removing the decision of who-to-attack cuts down on an enormous chunk of it.  If you're unsure, start with Cutthroat Star.

What is the original Cutthroat variant?  In addition to the above combat modifications, any other changes in life also affect both teamed-up players.  This happens on each player's turn: the two opponents share all life total changes.  From the guide: "If one of the[m] casts a Lightning Bolt on the other, they both take 3 points of damage."  (I honestly cannot tell whether this would be extremely fun or frustratingly hard to maintain.)

Practical Seating and Teams

In reality, sitting next to your teammates has some downsides:

• Teammates are more likely to share cards in their hands more often.  (I consider this a downside because it slows things down; you may not.)
• It's hard to see your opponents' creatures.
  
• The turn structure is hard to maintain.
  

The turn-passing point is important.  It's so abnormal to skip players' turns that it just doesn't work well in practice.  Someone will forget at some point and people will have to back up when the mistake is realized.  Don't do it!  Instead, sit next to your opponents, and just proceed in clockwise turn order.  This solves all of the downsides above.  Yes, maybe now it should be called "Pentagon" instead of "Star"; it's still better.  Again, if you are in any way unsure, do this.  I wish I had done this before.  (For the rest of this post, I'm going to assume players are seated in this orientation.)

Ranking Players

If your group wants more than just winners and losers, you can rank people in the order they leave the game.  The first player to die is in last place, followed by the other people who die in order.  The first player to win is in first place, followed by up to one other winning player. 

For example, if the five players are A, B, C, D, and E, and A dies, followed by C, then E, the ranking is:

1. B wins first prize for eliminating their two opponents first.
2. D wins second place for winning.
3. E is the best loser, for dying last.
4. C is the middle loser, for dying second, and
5. A is the first loser for dying first.

There can certainly be draws at certain spots due to simultaneous deaths.

Some Mediocre History  

Fallen Empires Rainbow: My first experience with this is in 1995, organizing a Rainbow match with decks constructed from Fallen Empires cards.  I was on Green and built a Thallid deck.  I feel bad for the person who was stuck on Red, though perhaps they could have built a better deck than we realized.  The pump knights were the real winners here.  We were young and some team rules were broken, so the dynamic wasn't quite right.  This was still wicked fun.  It worked well because of the lack of multi-colored cards in the set.

Onslaught Rainbow: Some college friends of mine and I split a box of Onslaught five ways and used that limited pool to build a deck.  I was on Blue and got lucky with an Arcanis the Omnipotent.  (I think the White player also got their legendary pit fighter.)  Unfortunately one of my opponents was goblins, which were quite good in that set.  Again, this was wicked fun and again this worked mostly because of the dearth of multi-colored cards at that time.

Star Drafts: I've done a few star drafts (two or three), all of which have all been fun, but we only implemented the practical seating arrangement this last time.  That made things go much more smoothly.  (And, as I mentioned there, I think that was the most that I've ever laughed during a Magic game.) 

I think I would even be willing to try the original Cutthroat rule!  Maybe.

That's my take on Star, and its predecessor, Rainbow.  I hope you get a chance to try it out!  Let me know if you learned this a different way or played it differently.