This is a set of rules for people who like deck building challenges. If you liked Tiny Leaders (R.I.P.) and you like the restrictions needed to make Companions work (even if they arguably should never have been allowed in EDH …) then you’ll probably enjoy this. The rules are as follows -
Decks cannot contain cards with generic mana symbols in their casting cost.
Note: both X and 0 are considered generic mana costs. Coloured/generic hybrid mana costs (like Beseech the Queen) are also considered part generic and illegal. Phyrexian mana costs are legal (because there is no generic mana cost option involved only coloured mana or life).
Gray areas: Non-land cards without mana costs (like the Ancestral Visions cycle) and cards costing snow mana are legal but feel a bit strange. As technically are cards costing colorless (with the colorless mana symbol) although that's a moot point since all of those cards currently also cost generic mana.
So overall that's it, a grand total of one rule, but believe me the difficulty is huge - staples like all the mana rocks including Arcane Signet are unusable even though mana fixing is very important when the entire deck is made up of cards with heavy coloured mana requirements.
Below is my first attempt at a deck using the NGMC challenge rules-
I took the deck to my LGS's regular Wednesday EDH tournament and although I didn't win my pods, I still think that despite the restriction it performed well, I felt like I was a relevant threat on the table.
Potential future updates (I couldn't find copies for the night and/or didn't want to fork out for them before at least testing out the deck) - Phyrexian Obliterator, Temporal Extortion, Ghost Council of Orzhova and Lim Dul's Vault.
Random Musings: Of the 3 colour options Bant gets the short end of the stick in this format since Ultimatums are the biggest spells available and Clarion Ultimatum is useless in singleton formats. I can't help but think that Mono Green or 2 colour using Green would be one of the stronger options for this challenge thanks to having access to all its standard G cost mana dorks and huge threats like Gigantosaur, Primalcrux, Rushwood Elemental, and Khalni Hydra. 4-5 colour decks would also have a lot of great options but i'm not sure if the power level of the cards makes up for the difficulties of getting the right colour mana. Big creatures and spells are at a premium in this format with casting costs over 5cc being rare.
Ultra Hard Core Variant: Although I believe that this challenge is already difficult enough there is an even more difficult variation you can try (at your own risk) which is - No generic mana at all. This bans Kicker/Buyback etc. with generic mana costs and activated abilities with generic mana costs.
Hope you enjoyed the article, hit me up with any NGMC decklists or ideas about the challenge.