Let's just say that a few guys in my playgroup aren't happy with my "casual" decks....
A few of them are newer players and get upset when my "broken deck" annihilates them. I don't understand whats preventing them from purchasing sinlges instead of buying boxes. Last night i participated in a casual dci sanctioned tournament at a local LGS. Played my buddy round 2 and this is how it went....I had liquimetal coating, gorilla shaman and spellskite out on the field and he immediately conceded, flipped out and said was basically a "tryhard", i was using a "broken combo". I don't understand his flawed logic.
They don't understand the formats. They think my deck is "legacy" but it's actually casual, from we all know...liquimetal coating isn't viable in Eternal formats.
Have any of you's experienced this? Is it my superior deck building to their blunt approach to the current standard meta? How far can casual be pushed with a playgroup?
Since there is no "official" casual, casual is whatever you want it to be.
It could be kitchen table slap-you-with-my-vizzerdrix magic or uber competitive unrestrained, unrestricted magic.
Because of it's unofficial nature, there are no restrictions. There's no meta, no card legality, and massive card pool, any deck is possible in casual, so there's no leveling ground. If you are in a casual playgroup, chances are you are all pretty much at the same level. If not, and try to play with random people at your LGS then you are bound to find all sorts of decks and players, with widely clashing ideas about what casual magic is really about.
As a 100% casual players myself, here are the guidelines from which i play, the cards i use, the strategies/decks i allow myself to create and the meta i seek:
Casual = Fun
Casual = no lockdowns.
Casual = No mass Land destruction
Casual = no invisible staker - ish cards. Its a 2 player game, interaction needs to happen.
Casual = no T3 wins. I want to be able to PLAY cards before losing
Casual = cheap cards. in magic, $$$ = win and we don't encourage that philosophy
As such, there are decks that where either banned in our playgroup, or generally frowned upon (ie: i won't play with you if you run that deck)
Examples of decks that where banned in our paygroup:
> a armadillo cloakc hexproof deck (see invisible stalker)
> An elf-ball with global mass destruction (Ld is not fun, period.)
> A warp world deck that took forever to resolve (we play 4+ players, so...)
> an uber agro merfolk deck with about 12-16 lords (too fast, too powerful)
Casual rules are blurry. Try playing for fun rather than playing to win.
you are wrong, any combo can be casual, there are no rules for casual, the rules for casual come from your playgroup, so if you playgroup dont let you to use some decks or the combo above, the decks and combo still casual, but isnt allowed in your specific playgroup.
so, to avoid "fighting rules", sit with your playgroup and check what is allowed or not.
just saying that because in my playgroup you can use any deck, the time and the friendship make us to change the decks to be balanced for a casual play, or upgrade to a broken deck just to test sometimes.
@edit
nicolarre showed most of the faces of casual, but the mix differ from playgroup for playgroup.
just using the nicolarre "casual faces" what is the base in my playgroup:
Casual = Fun
the others you can use, but not all the time, also if you want to use a "hard" / "OP" deck, you can say what deck is and try to fight another deck in same power level.
if you are having fun playing the deck you like and your opponent is having fun playing his deck, regardless of who wins, it casual.
If you are regularly criticized for your "op" playing style, "op" decks or all around "casuallessness", you either find yourself a new playgroup or tone down your decks to suit the comfort level of those around you. not much to it.
Why is there this idea that casual doesn't mean winning? If casual was defined by not caring about winning, then people wouldnt get upset when they lose to powerful decks. Like any game, there is a winner and a loser. If you and your opponent have fun, even better. But don't get discouraged because your opponents exhibit poor sportsmanship.
Also, I am cool with the Liquimetal Coating, Gorilla Shaman combo. The best use of it is for land destruction, which can suck. But this is where tuning a deck to the meta comes into play. Like you mentioned, your friends can buy new cards. If your deck was such a problem, I would just make a white deck with stuff like Stony Silence/Null Rod and Linvala, Keeper of Silence/Humility.
As for what is casual to me, its about doing things you cant do in other formats because they are too slow. Like casting Colossus of Sardia off powerful stuff like Tolaria Academy and Sol Ring then untap it with Voltaic Key.
Casual is about playing within the power of your playgroup. Any deviations outside of this are going to be viewed as overpowered, unfun, unfair etc etc
If the group grows in skill/knowledge as most groups do, so to will your card pool
I would argue that anyone playing mox monkey isn't casual or has a really particular meta. I would also argue that anyone playing Liquimetal Coating is casual so I think you're fine.
Depends what else you play in your deck but I've found somone playing both in a Vintage tournament last year. As long as your deck isn't too similar too this one, I think you're casual.
Reading some of the old threads, and thinking about this a little bit more, one thing that occurs to me is that "casual," is, in some real sense, simply any kind of Magic where the players in the group make collective decisions about format legality, additional banned or restricted cards, other kinds of deck restrictions ("no combo" being a common one), and so on. Some casual metagames will frown on decks that are broken as a whole, where others only prohibit cards that are considered to be broken individually. Some will permit 4x Black Lotus, others adhere strictly to specific (and often augmented) banned and restricted lists). I think this variety indicates that "casual," at the core, is about finding games of Magic that satisfy different understandings of what constitutes "fun."* This isn't a terribly novel observation, but it does point to the central problem of "casual" Magic - namely, different things are "fun" to different people. The answer, I think, is not to try and figure out what's "casual" or not in any broad sense, but rather to ask the players within your metagame what they consider "fun." Rather than saying "combo's aren't fun," (for example), what is fun? Each casual playing circle is different - what's fun for me, or my friends, doesn't say anything about what might be fun for you, or your friends - and saying "well, the internet says my deck is casual, so there" won't make your friend feel any differently about it, so it doesn't really help the situation anyway. Ask your playgroup what kinds of decks they consider fun to play, and to play against. You may find that you disagree. If you do, you have to negotiate that difference with your friends - if your perspectives are far apart, in order to keep playing Magic together, everyone is going to have to give something up. I think is the core of "casual" Magic, anyway: negotiated compromises to try and maximize the "fun" for everyone.
*As an aside, I think it's worth noting that Magic played according to DCI-sanctioned format legalities, with DCI B&R lists, tends almost inexorably towards playing the "best" decks at any given time, provided that winning is, to a greater or lesser extent, the goal for each player. With the increasing use of programs like cockatrice, which remove budget constraints, this tends to be the case even more. In this sense, then, all "casual" rules are an attempt to arrest this process and permit a different metagame to emerge - one that satisfies the participating players' ideas of what constitutes "fun" Magic.
Carom, your second paragraph actually describes what is happening. It's true that without the budget restriction on Cockatrice (which may one day see it's heir), decks can be built to be the best. You should see my future Hydra deck I'm building and my defender deck.
One cause a lockdown on attacks, but permit sorceries and instants to deal massive damage to the field while the other seems small enough at the beggining and then ends up with massive 120/120 on the field and ready to rampage on the body of the eldrazies.
Both deck can be considered casual, but it depends on the type of house rules your meta play. Since each person has a different view of casual, ask your meta their definition.
If I had to define casual: No eldrazi, no cheap infinites (like infinite turns), no mass land destruction, no cards that specify ''Win the Game'' and no cards that specify ''Target player lose the game''. The last two can be pretty obscure when someone argue that every card has some kind of specification of win the game written on them (someone once asked if Fireball was one, not by my definition of WTG and PLG), but let's keep it simple: Door to Nothingness and Azor's Elocutors are prime example of what I mean.
It's starting from there that you can define your own playgroup casual rules, by finding what each other players don't really find casual and building decks around your casual definition, then meeting their casual definition by thinkering with your deck.
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Casual crazy magic player, otaku maniac, unrully cosplayer, what did you expect me to be?
They're probably just mad that they're new and don't know all the cards as well as you.
1) I've seen it written a few times in these threads that Casual decks need to be resilient and to have utility. Tell your friends to play 1-mana kill spells if your creature-based combo is getting them down. Or like main-boarding artifact hate a la Acidic Slime.
2) I'd recommend finding a thread about Casual staples and why they're good and showing it your newer friends. Someone makes one every couple months so they're always kicking around. It could open your friends' eyes to pitfalls in their deckmaking, making their decks better and your kitchen table fun again.
3) If your older cards make them mad, just play Modern-legal/new cardframe cards in your Casual group until they have a substantial collection of older or more powerful cards to match yours.
I think casual is more of a mindset than a format. See, in my meta, "casual" means both people go in to the game expecting a roughly fair match and being good sports about it. With the variance of deck ability, this means we usually work out ahead of time what fair means for each specific game. We ask if a deck is "roughly legacy combo" and that implies "can it win by turn 2?"
Because of this mindset we have had some of the best games when casual just meant "no B+R list," so we had academy decks, we had channel+emrakul, we had tinker, we had recruiter goblins, mystical tutor reanimator, legacy knockoffs and so on. And yeah, this was casual, because of the mindset. We knew what we were going in to and anted to go at it with the big guns and no artificial rules, so we did.
By the same token, sometimes games where we used low power decks were decidedly not casual. You go in with the wrong mindset, come off as hostile, even if you are using some low power midrange deck, it isn't a casual game. You poorly match decks with the opponent? same problem, it becomes utter domination and no longer a game. That isn't particularly casual becase it violated the "lets have some good fun" mindset.
So really casual just means your games are somewhat laid back. You still play to win, but you are not hostile and you try to have a fair match, and everybody has fun. So yeah, casual can just as easily be flash hulk as it could be ramp into something big. (Ok, so maybe not flash hulk, that fails every form of interaction test)
My definition of casual is twofold:
The first is creating restrictions for myself on deckbuilding that I wouldn't normally have for a tournament. There are so many cool cards and interactions in Magic that rarely get explored because they're not good enough for tournament play. I don't worry about whether it'll be 'too annoying' or 'unfun' by other people's standards; after all, so many of my friends play Magic differently it would be impossible to accommodate for all of them. I often do try to put in a certain amount of interaction in my decks because one-dimensional combo decks rarely make for fun games (outside of tournaments). Still, this doesn't stop me from making Sway of the Stars combo and whatnot just to see how well it'll do.
The second part is I try not to choose a deck that's totally over- or under-matched for my opponent. It's pretty easy to tell whether or not a deck is making for fun games, so after a while I end up scrapping a lot of decks that don't work or are too boring.
Casual shouldn't be "what other people are okay with you doing." That's what tournaments are for. It should be about what you want to do. (This is under the assumption that people won't want to run decks that are way too powerful for their playgroup. That's not fun for either side imo, but it seems obvious no one would want to play with you if you do that.)
I don't see how you go anywhere if you say casual is not about doing "what other people are okay with you doing" while still acknowledging that "it seems obvious no would want to play with you" if you try "to run decks that are way too powerful for [your] playgroup." Either your deck choice is constrained by your playgroup or not.
I don't see how you go anywhere if you say casual is not about doing "what other people are okay with you doing" while still acknowledging that "it seems obvious no would want to play with you" if you try "to run decks that are way too powerful for [your] playgroup." Either your deck choice is constrained by your playgroup or not.
Yeah I suppose that doesn't quite make sense. I just prefer to look at it as "if people don't like this, I won't have a good time, so I won't do it" rather than "if people don't like this, I won't do it."
I feel like it should still be true even without the "people getting mad at you" factor, but I haven't figured out why yet.
Here's a good casual rule that goes on our kitchen table:
- the card must be EDH legal. There are cards that are banned in Legacy that are still "fair" if not built around. Fine examples are Frantic Search and Gush among other things.
- the card must cost below $10 under magicinfo. There's a reason why cards are pricey. They're good enough to grab that value.
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I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
Here's a good casual rule that goes on our kitchen table:
- the card must be EDH legal. There are cards that are banned in Legacy that are still "fair" if not built around. Fine examples are Frantic Search and Gush among other things.
- the card must cost below $10 under magicinfo. There's a reason why cards are pricey. They're good enough to grab that value.
Everybody has their own rules for defining Casual. Main thing is the play group should establish the ground rules, and make sure everyone somewhat agrees upon them.
IMO I am think the OP's combo deck is feasible in casual, and it is sensible to SB in artifact removal when playing against it in subsequent games.
However you don't want to be "that guy" in the casual play group who always sticks to this "default pet deck" which everyone has grown tired of playing with. Sure your pet deck is dominating your casual play group and that makes you feel good about yourself, but think about how others would feel.
If your buddy (I would assume a close friend of yours) can get angry at you and a deck of paper cards, it is an indication that you're straining everyone's relationships. Give the deck a rest and bring a different deck to the play group next time. Show your friends that you are willing to change things around to have fun, not just to dominate. (There's Standard/Modern if you want to hone your edge)
Also, it is not nice to proclaim that you have "superior deckbuilding skills", especially to your own friends. Sure you could be good at building decks, but use your gift to help them improve and build better decks. Everyone will appreciate you better.
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A few of them are newer players and get upset when my "broken deck" annihilates them. I don't understand whats preventing them from purchasing sinlges instead of buying boxes. Last night i participated in a casual dci sanctioned tournament at a local LGS. Played my buddy round 2 and this is how it went....I had liquimetal coating, gorilla shaman and spellskite out on the field and he immediately conceded, flipped out and said was basically a "tryhard", i was using a "broken combo". I don't understand his flawed logic.
They don't understand the formats. They think my deck is "legacy" but it's actually casual, from we all know...liquimetal coating isn't viable in Eternal formats.
Have any of you's experienced this? Is it my superior deck building to their blunt approach to the current standard meta? How far can casual be pushed with a playgroup?
Casual rules are blurry. Try playing for fun rather than playing to win.
It could be kitchen table slap-you-with-my-vizzerdrix magic or uber competitive unrestrained, unrestricted magic.
Because of it's unofficial nature, there are no restrictions. There's no meta, no card legality, and massive card pool, any deck is possible in casual, so there's no leveling ground. If you are in a casual playgroup, chances are you are all pretty much at the same level. If not, and try to play with random people at your LGS then you are bound to find all sorts of decks and players, with widely clashing ideas about what casual magic is really about.
As a 100% casual players myself, here are the guidelines from which i play, the cards i use, the strategies/decks i allow myself to create and the meta i seek:
Casual = Fun
Casual = no lockdowns.
Casual = No mass Land destruction
Casual = no invisible staker - ish cards. Its a 2 player game, interaction needs to happen.
Casual = no T3 wins. I want to be able to PLAY cards before losing
Casual = no cheap infinite combos (no niv-mizzet, the firemind + ophidian eye)
Casual = no OP decks, cards, strategies.
Casual = cheap cards. in magic, $$$ = win and we don't encourage that philosophy
As such, there are decks that where either banned in our playgroup, or generally frowned upon (ie: i won't play with you if you run that deck)
Examples of decks that where banned in our paygroup:
> a armadillo cloakc hexproof deck (see invisible stalker)
> An elf-ball with global mass destruction (Ld is not fun, period.)
> A warp world deck that took forever to resolve (we play 4+ players, so...)
> an uber agro merfolk deck with about 12-16 lords (too fast, too powerful)
http://alteredartmagic.blogspot.com/search/label/Nicolarre
or in my Humble Alter Gallery at DeviantArt: http://nicolarre.deviantart.com/gallery/
In my perspective i think that combo is casual. It's slower and since i'm playing R/G, gamble and ancient stirrings are my only "tutors".
----
you are wrong, any combo can be casual, there are no rules for casual, the rules for casual come from your playgroup, so if you playgroup dont let you to use some decks or the combo above, the decks and combo still casual, but isnt allowed in your specific playgroup.
so, to avoid "fighting rules", sit with your playgroup and check what is allowed or not.
just saying that because in my playgroup you can use any deck, the time and the friendship make us to change the decks to be balanced for a casual play, or upgrade to a broken deck just to test sometimes.
@edit
nicolarre showed most of the faces of casual, but the mix differ from playgroup for playgroup.
just using the nicolarre "casual faces" what is the base in my playgroup:
Casual = Fun
the others you can use, but not all the time, also if you want to use a "hard" / "OP" deck, you can say what deck is and try to fight another deck in same power level.
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Also, zeromd is right. If your playgroup consistently accuses you of not being casual enough, you're not being casual enough.
If you are regularly criticized for your "op" playing style, "op" decks or all around "casuallessness", you either find yourself a new playgroup or tone down your decks to suit the comfort level of those around you. not much to it.
http://alteredartmagic.blogspot.com/search/label/Nicolarre
or in my Humble Alter Gallery at DeviantArt: http://nicolarre.deviantart.com/gallery/
Also, I am cool with the Liquimetal Coating, Gorilla Shaman combo. The best use of it is for land destruction, which can suck. But this is where tuning a deck to the meta comes into play. Like you mentioned, your friends can buy new cards. If your deck was such a problem, I would just make a white deck with stuff like Stony Silence/Null Rod and Linvala, Keeper of Silence/Humility.
As for what is casual to me, its about doing things you cant do in other formats because they are too slow. Like casting Colossus of Sardia off powerful stuff like Tolaria Academy and Sol Ring then untap it with Voltaic Key.
BUWGRChilds PlayGRWUB
BUWGR Highlander GRWUB
UBSquee's Shapeshifting PetBU
BW Multiplayer Control WB
RG Changeling GR
UR Mana FlareRU
UMerfolkU
B MBMC B
If the group grows in skill/knowledge as most groups do, so to will your card pool
Depends what else you play in your deck but I've found somone playing both in a Vintage tournament last year. As long as your deck isn't too similar too this one, I think you're casual.
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=8699&iddeck=63484
I would define every formats not sanctionned by Wizards of the Coast or games in those formats with any restrictions added as casual.
*As an aside, I think it's worth noting that Magic played according to DCI-sanctioned format legalities, with DCI B&R lists, tends almost inexorably towards playing the "best" decks at any given time, provided that winning is, to a greater or lesser extent, the goal for each player. With the increasing use of programs like cockatrice, which remove budget constraints, this tends to be the case even more. In this sense, then, all "casual" rules are an attempt to arrest this process and permit a different metagame to emerge - one that satisfies the participating players' ideas of what constitutes "fun" Magic.
One cause a lockdown on attacks, but permit sorceries and instants to deal massive damage to the field while the other seems small enough at the beggining and then ends up with massive 120/120 on the field and ready to rampage on the body of the eldrazies.
Both deck can be considered casual, but it depends on the type of house rules your meta play. Since each person has a different view of casual, ask your meta their definition.
If I had to define casual: No eldrazi, no cheap infinites (like infinite turns), no mass land destruction, no cards that specify ''Win the Game'' and no cards that specify ''Target player lose the game''. The last two can be pretty obscure when someone argue that every card has some kind of specification of win the game written on them (someone once asked if Fireball was one, not by my definition of WTG and PLG), but let's keep it simple: Door to Nothingness and Azor's Elocutors are prime example of what I mean.
It's starting from there that you can define your own playgroup casual rules, by finding what each other players don't really find casual and building decks around your casual definition, then meeting their casual definition by thinkering with your deck.
Any deck that doesn't run answers or account for another deck's strategy.
That's been my experience with "casual."
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
I always knew that Academy combo decks were "casual".
@OP: I think it's not about finding what is casual but about finding what makes you love the game.
The first rule of Casual Magic is that you do not talk about Casual Magic.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
1) I've seen it written a few times in these threads that Casual decks need to be resilient and to have utility. Tell your friends to play 1-mana kill spells if your creature-based combo is getting them down. Or like main-boarding artifact hate a la Acidic Slime.
2) I'd recommend finding a thread about Casual staples and why they're good and showing it your newer friends. Someone makes one every couple months so they're always kicking around. It could open your friends' eyes to pitfalls in their deckmaking, making their decks better and your kitchen table fun again.
3) If your older cards make them mad, just play Modern-legal/new cardframe cards in your Casual group until they have a substantial collection of older or more powerful cards to match yours.
Because of this mindset we have had some of the best games when casual just meant "no B+R list," so we had academy decks, we had channel+emrakul, we had tinker, we had recruiter goblins, mystical tutor reanimator, legacy knockoffs and so on. And yeah, this was casual, because of the mindset. We knew what we were going in to and anted to go at it with the big guns and no artificial rules, so we did.
By the same token, sometimes games where we used low power decks were decidedly not casual. You go in with the wrong mindset, come off as hostile, even if you are using some low power midrange deck, it isn't a casual game. You poorly match decks with the opponent? same problem, it becomes utter domination and no longer a game. That isn't particularly casual becase it violated the "lets have some good fun" mindset.
So really casual just means your games are somewhat laid back. You still play to win, but you are not hostile and you try to have a fair match, and everybody has fun. So yeah, casual can just as easily be flash hulk as it could be ramp into something big. (Ok, so maybe not flash hulk, that fails every form of interaction test)
The first is creating restrictions for myself on deckbuilding that I wouldn't normally have for a tournament. There are so many cool cards and interactions in Magic that rarely get explored because they're not good enough for tournament play. I don't worry about whether it'll be 'too annoying' or 'unfun' by other people's standards; after all, so many of my friends play Magic differently it would be impossible to accommodate for all of them. I often do try to put in a certain amount of interaction in my decks because one-dimensional combo decks rarely make for fun games (outside of tournaments). Still, this doesn't stop me from making Sway of the Stars combo and whatnot just to see how well it'll do.
The second part is I try not to choose a deck that's totally over- or under-matched for my opponent. It's pretty easy to tell whether or not a deck is making for fun games, so after a while I end up scrapping a lot of decks that don't work or are too boring.
Casual shouldn't be "what other people are okay with you doing." That's what tournaments are for. It should be about what you want to do. (This is under the assumption that people won't want to run decks that are way too powerful for their playgroup. That's not fun for either side imo, but it seems obvious no one would want to play with you if you do that.)
Rasputin Dreamweaver EDH
Yeah I suppose that doesn't quite make sense. I just prefer to look at it as "if people don't like this, I won't have a good time, so I won't do it" rather than "if people don't like this, I won't do it."
I feel like it should still be true even without the "people getting mad at you" factor, but I haven't figured out why yet.
Rasputin Dreamweaver EDH
- the card must be EDH legal. There are cards that are banned in Legacy that are still "fair" if not built around. Fine examples are Frantic Search and Gush among other things.
- the card must cost below $10 under magicinfo. There's a reason why cards are pricey. They're good enough to grab that value.
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Currently Playing- EDH
GGGOmnath, Locus of the LifestreamGGG
BBBShirei, Lord of PoniesBBB
UWRasputin Dreamweaver, Russia's Greatest Love MachineUW
UBWZur, Killer of FunUBW
UGWTreva, Princess of CanterlotUGW
RWTajic, Master of the Reverse BladeRW
RRRZirilan, How to Train Your DragonRRR
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Gelectrode
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IMO I am think the OP's combo deck is feasible in casual, and it is sensible to SB in artifact removal when playing against it in subsequent games.
However you don't want to be "that guy" in the casual play group who always sticks to this "default pet deck" which everyone has grown tired of playing with. Sure your pet deck is dominating your casual play group and that makes you feel good about yourself, but think about how others would feel.
If your buddy (I would assume a close friend of yours) can get angry at you and a deck of paper cards, it is an indication that you're straining everyone's relationships. Give the deck a rest and bring a different deck to the play group next time. Show your friends that you are willing to change things around to have fun, not just to dominate. (There's Standard/Modern if you want to hone your edge)
Also, it is not nice to proclaim that you have "superior deckbuilding skills", especially to your own friends. Sure you could be good at building decks, but use your gift to help them improve and build better decks. Everyone will appreciate you better.