[kodt]

That (and pauper) are the best ways to play. Or using preconstructed decks.

Trying to be competitive in Modern or Standard or even EDH requires spending at least $500+ per deck unfortunately (Vintage & Legacy even more I'm guessing). Though if you have a group of friends who play casually, it can be fun.

[Manuel_D]

The most fun I had was a company MTG bracket where we opened a new pack once a week. We'd keep the same cards throughout the whole block (3 sets back in the day, so quite a while). Trades were allowed but only between the same rarity. So everyone had to build a deck with (roughly) equal power, and had to think of a relatively original deck using the cards available to them.

There was still some metagaming. Getting ahold of mythics had a greater degree of randomness, and if you had a buddy that was running a separate color deck you could effectively pool cards.

[bart_spoon]

Yeah, that’s usually referred to as a “Sealed League” by a lot of local game stores that run them. I agree that they are tons of fun.