For Magic, I'm wanting to hold about 3 tournaments.

The town I come from is very casual when it comes to playing Magic... I would say I'm one of the better players and when I go to bigger cities, I don't statistically do extremely well. T2 baffles most players here. Most are familiar with ban and restricted lists of course. I would say they most play Vintage but they don't have any real power to compete with anyone on a real Vintage level.

That being said, I'm trying to figure out what sort of tournaments to have throughout the day.

Right now, I'm thinking 1 EDH tournament where it's going to be a multi-player free for all game. And each player will get points for defeating another player. Of course, anyone running a direct damage deck will be at a huge advantage, so should I put a restriction on that?

I also want to do a booster draft. Should I require that at least 8 players play and how much is fair to charge if I get an Innistrad booster box?

You can get a box online for around $100. Coolstuffinc.com has boxes for $99.99 and free shipping on orders over $100 so pick up a couple boxes depending on how many people you feel might show up and you're all set.

You can get 6 sealed pools per box so it works out to $16.67 per person.

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Originally posted by tragicmagic:
Of course, anyone running a direct damage deck will be at a huge advantage, so should I put a restriction on that?

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my LGS has EDH tournaments that give you points for certain achievements AND take away points for certain achievements. You could institute something similar.

I don't remember them all, but here's a few I remember off the top of my head:

+1:

Eliminate an opponent from the game.
Be the first to be eliminated from the game.
Control five or more artifacts.
Eliminate a player who has more creatures/permanents than you.
Control {some number} of creatures with the same creature type.

-1:

Taking a consecutive turn beyond the second.
Eliminating a player before turn 4.
Conceding (people were conceding before a player would kill them)

If your concern is that people will just run burn decks for easy kills (which is largely unfounded as most wins come from big creatures, creature swarms, or combos as I've found), you could simply say that you will not get a point for direct damage. But, I don't think that's really needed. That kind of single-minded deck will largely be hated out and even if that player manages to burn out one person, it's unlikely they have enough resources to burn out multiple people (remember you all start with FORTY life). Creatures are more efficient when it comes to dealing out damage.

I played in an EDH tourney with a substantial list of "achievements" and "demerits" and in our pods of 4, being the last alive was worth 5 points, and controlling at any time during the match, a permanant of every colour was also worth 5.

The winner of the event played Sliver Queen, and in all three rounds my table never even had the -potential- for all five colours of permanant to be on the field.

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Originally posted by tragicmagic:
Next question:
What kind of prizes are good for a being on a budget? I'm thinking no more than a fat pack type thing for 1st place. I may buy some of the novels for consolation prizes, and certain singles too.

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I think that singles would be good, since you can trade for them

A big problem is calling it a "tournament". This naturally attracts people who play spikey decks, like Erayo or those green ramp decks I complain about. Call it a "game day" or something.