Challenge: Tribal Night

The idea: everyone picks (or is randomly assigned) a creature type — Goblins, Zombies, Elves, Dinosaurs, whatever your collections support — and builds a deck where the commander and as much of the 99 as possible shares that type or explicitly supports it (anthems, tribal payoffs, tutors for the tribe).

Why it stays interesting

Tribal decks tend to have a distinct identity and game plan, so a pod full of them plays very differently to a pod of generic goodstuff piles — and it's an easy way to justify building around an off-meta creature type nobody would otherwise touch.

Cost control

Agree a shared price ceiling per deck before anyone starts buying — e.g. "no deck costs more than £50 including the commander." Since tribal decks lean on a handful of specific payoff cards rather than format staples, the cap is usually easy to hit without proxying, and it stops the challenge turning into whoever already owns the most expensive tribal staples.