I haven't played really since Fifth Dawn, I only started round the time 8th came out. I've had an odd game or two with decks people have basically just put in front of me and said "Here play this" though, just haven't been collecting or building decks myself or playing regularly.
So here's an interesting little something that surprised the stuff out of me once: One of my friends, who doesn't play Magic, came up with this combo. The Mirrodin block (and these three specific cards) are still legal in Extended, I believe.
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Clock of Omens- 2x
Staff of Domination-
Gilded LotusTap the Lotus. You now have three mana in your mana pool.
Tap both staves, to trigger the Clock's ability. Untap the lotus.
Pay 2 mana to untap both staves.
???
Fireball
It's so cheap and so specific (and so friend combo player) and that makes it hilarious.
Also, here's something to do if you have a few friends who play. Get probably eight people together. Get a deck of ~40 cards per player of commons and uncommons, and a stack of land about 2/3 that size (you don't want to run out). Also bring something in the vicinity of 4 rares per player, or more. More is probably better.
The decks go in the center.
Everyone draws from these. You can choose to draw from the regular or the land deck.
Alternatively, the restricted land rules: Land is shuffled into the regular deck and a land pile is also supplied. You can draw from the land pile if you didn't play a land last turn, and when you draw your hand, if you have less than 3 land in it you can discard a card (shuffle it back into the deck) to draw from the land pile until you have three land. This is of course optional.
Every time a player is eliminated, and every tenth turn, all players left in the game pick up a rare and give it to the player to their left (yes, they get to see it). If no rares are left,
everybody loses they instead draw a card as normal. Aside from that, you play as normal, however the maximum hand size is 12 cards.
We call this Chaos magic. And it's awesome. It's where we discovered that infinite mana combo. Also, it's not a good idea to have more than one Darksteel Colossus in the rares. We had four once and one person got two of them and it was aaaaaaa.
