Having a backup plan is all well and good, but I feel like you've got it backwards. The primary plan is the primary plan because it's the best one, the one with the best chance of winning. The backup plan is the next best chance of winning. And so forth. You switch to the backup plan when the chances of the first plan succeeding become lower than the backup. All these decisions are predicated on trying to win the actual game, though, and playing your best. If you've got your better plan as your secondary, then there's no logic to when you switch plans - because logically you should switch the moment the game begins.
Maybe I'm too much of a min-maxer to make any logical sense out of what you're saying, but it sounds like the best deck in your meta would be one with a primary plan that falls apart like tissue paper, to give you the fastest excuse to start playing towards a robust combo plan that's your "backup".
I don't follow this "when your plan falls apart" scenario though. A combo can fall apart, sure, because it's dependent on specific cards which could be removed, but if your plan is, say, "beat face with zombies" or whatever, then unless someone strips all the zombies out of your deck I'm not sure at which point you'd be incapable of acting on your plan.
Decks without combos can, of course, have backup plans, and they don't have to be bad decks, either. People in this thread keep acting like the only alternative to including a combo is having a precon-grade deck that falls apart against a stiff breeze, when that's obviously not the case. A good deck should either have a very robust plan, or multiple backups if the primary plan becomes untenable, but there are myriad ways to do that which don't need to include a combo.
Not that this is even specifically about combo - it's about building a deck that plays the way you want to play it, whether that's combo or something else. If you build a deck trying to do X but with backup plan Y that turns out to be stronger...then you've made a Y deck with an X backup plan, not the other way around. If you can't find a way to make your X plan the most viable part of your deck and still make your deck perform decently, then I'd say that's a failure of deckbuilding.
As far as having answers, then I think it sort of begs the question - if you're so worried about being plan-less and having your primary wincon dismantled, then what exactly do you do if your backup combo gets answered? I would think if your goal was to avoid being stuck without a way to win, you'd want the most durable backup plan possible, not something that will presumably fall apart if a single card in answered. Which, strangely enough, is how many decks in competitive play in other formats work - fragile but powerful primary plan, with a weaker but more durable backup.
I can tell where you're coming from and how my structure feels like it's going against some sequence of logic. Let's start with this: "The primary plan is primary plan because its the best one." There we have our first disagreement - the primary plan is the way you hope to win with, the janky brew idea(s) you intended as the deck's base and not necessarily the "best" one. The "Combo" is the backup because its the one that needs the least components in order to technically win, but if you win with said combo you are actually just "closing the game proper" than actually "winning", because you've failed to win via the primary objective.
Yes, at the start of any given game, the backup "combo" is inherently more powerful because you can tutor for it straightaway and win, but as I said, closing the game without accomplishing your primary objective is "pointless" so to speak. Doing so while your primary objective pieces have not been disposed of is doubly insulting to the deck's brewing purpose. Of course, this is only within context of decks of equal or lower calibre - if plunged into complete cEDH, it becomes your typical logic of "best plan = primary plan... or rather, given the prevalence of removal... the decoy plan."
I can already feel your potential cringe of the start being like that - I'm spending resources (draw, tutors) building on a weaker plan, but at the same time I'm also forced to spend the same resources on removal and the like to deal with threats (and combos if combos are someone's primary plan). By the time the primary plan is worn down to be impossible, not only do I lack the resources to promptly just summon the backup, part of several combos might have already been spent since it's important to make sure your combos aren't just "two cards stuck into the deck", each and every piece must also have synergy with the primary weaker plan.
Let's use the zombie plan as an example (since I actually have one) - My primary plan is to beatdown with as many zombie (preferably the 2/2 tokens I collect) as possible. I do have my share of counterspells to stop wipes, but the secondary plan against wipes is to sacrifice them and let Plague Belcher/Vengeful Dead do the job (likewise, against pillowfort and the like, Shepherd of Rot is also a secondary plan). The kicker comes in when I know I have run out of resources to reliably ensure I can muster enough zombie (tokens) for either plan against the opponents' plans and/or life totals in time - now I need to use whatever resources I have (usually draw, not tutor) to find Gravecrawler and Phyrexian Altar (or Rooftop Storm and some sac outlet) and I'm potentially still screwed if either Belcher or Vengeful is completely out of the realm of recovery.
If we're playing cEDH within the closer group and/or the new player outright declares cEDH and/or tells us to play our best, gravecrawler, altar and plague belcher might be out as early as first to third turns (depending on draw/tutors) and it would still be answered safely. In such games, the "backup" plan becomes the "decoy" plan because you expect it to fail and it's actual purpose is simply to exhaust the opponent's resources. The primary plan usually still retains because we're spending each other's removals on each other's "decoys" (hence the actual need for several backups/decoys in some decks). If I walked into a casual game doing that it would be a three-turn game at most that doesn't even accomplish the decks' primary goal because the decoy won... so it's a decoy victory and essentially as worthless as a backup/closer one (which is why they're the same).
If I removed the teeth of the decoy/backup plans, all I'm left is the midrange grindfest that honestly makes the primary plan itself boring (especially since the combos are also interweaved into the theme - Gravecrawler is equally useful in sac-lose-life plan even when not infinite and Altar is great ramp for the deck regardless, I could replace Altar with Ashnod's instead, but it falls to the Magic Feather argument - I have the Phyrexian which is better why "cripple" myself during deckbuilding instead of when playing? Sure in theory I could swap Altars depending on the players, but in practice I usually play with people of the same caliber and my resources are already split across multiple decks of around the same level (so they can form an apocalypse constructed cube), so that means having to double unsleeve and double-sleeve the altars (and bringing said decks with each other all the time, I'm not cherry-picking cards from several other decks to form a sideboard).
As for the "fragile part" - we're in multiplayer edh, with me tilting towards the competitive end... nothing is durable, there are answers for everything by anyone on the table (even for protective measures). The value of a decoy/closer is in how many pieces it requires to assemble so it can either outspeed removal (in cEDH), dispose of removal for the future at a low cost (decoy function) or assemble successfully in the window of opportunity that both draw and removal resources were halted by the primary plan doing well enough to demand all the attention in order cripple it down (backup/closer function). Yes, there are bad times where everything just fails and you just sit there twiddling your thumbs, but the whole design philosophy is to minimize such cases from happening, without decoys/backups, it a whole lot more common than one would imagine.
If you enjoy playing combo, I'd say just play combo. I don't have a problem with people playing combo decks against each other if that's what they like to do. If you want to have a house rule that says "no combos until turn 6" or something, that also seems fine to me. Then people can play their best within that constraint.
In the metaphor, this is roughly letting everyone have a magic feather. That way it's a fair, fun game. You say you don't want him to lose the feather, but if someone sits down with a combo deck you're effectively asking them to play like they don't have one. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be less disrespectful. Personally I'd rather not play at all, than be told I'm supposed to play my deck incorrectly.
As far as people having to sit out, I'm not sure what you're trying to avoid. If most of you have multiple decks, than whatever a newcomer shows up with, you'll be prepared for it. If there are multiple players with only one deck and one has a powerful deck and one has a weak deck...well, that game was always going to suck.
But if you wanted it to NOT suck, the better solution would be to run ANSWERS to the more powerful deck, so that you can dole out an appropriate amount of hate to bring the powerful deck down to the same level as the weaker one. Not pile on to the problem by having multiple combo decks racing to the finish line while the weaker deck has no chance at all.
As far as deckbuilding being the same as playing, I wonder if you're willing to follow that line of thought to its natural conclusion. If someone had all the cards available to them, would you be disapproving if they DIDN'T build FCT or some similarly degenerate, win-on-turn-3 deck? They'd be holding back and you'd feel your win wasn't earned if they built anything less? Why can't people brew for the sake of brewing? I don't put combos in my deck because I want to try to win in other, more interesting ways. Deckbuilding is an experiment, and forgive me if I don't want to experiment with the same cards that have been done to death already. Also it sounds like you're holding back during play (by mutual agreement) anyway, so I'm not sure where this disapproval is coming from. Seems like everyone should just be fine with either, rather than disapproving of both.
This is not a matter of "If you enjoy combo, play combo. If you don't enjoy combo, don't bother at all". This is our solution to "what happens if your primary plan of the brewed deck fails?" Perhaps your solution is "I'll concede and move on to the next game", but to us that is disrespectful, not letting people who still have a chance of executing their primary plan to continue doing so - what fun is there if the game ends abruptly because the first person in the pod decided to concede because he or she couldn't assemble the primary win-con? Scrambling for boring combo last-minute isn't as efficient as just T1 tutoring into it and will take time, time in which participants still on their first plan can continue to do so, whereas people who "conceded" aren't reduced to mere puppet and/or kingmaking positions.
I said this was built and agreed upon by our circumstances - you say this lets everyone have a Magic Feather... and that is true - the core group consists of pretty much experienced players with years of experience and collections, perhaps not to the extreme (although there are a few semi-active players who does bling out their cEDh in OG foils and beta duals). The primary decks we build are all very near-competitive from the get-go and the "inverse mantra" keeps it from being outright cEDH. Again, this is not a matter of "If we enjoy playing cEDH, just play cEDH", we will do that when we feel like it - what we're doing and enjoying is "creating decks that can stretch to meet both ends of cEDh and casual in the same deck" instead of creating purely cEDH and casual decks, because we don't enjoy that.
Perhaps I've phrased my wordings really badly to make sound hypocritical in terms of combo - if you want to play combo, go ahead, we'll definitely have the answers to stop you from doing so. The only mentality I think we're really on opposite ends is that (I think that) you think "as long as you have a combo in the deck, you should always tutor for it as fast as possible and give it your "best"... and leave combos out of your other decks trying to win in other interesting ways", whereas from our own experiences it becomes "your other interesting winning way should have back-up combo so that you would have something to strive for when the plan fails instead of ruining the actual play experience by outright conceding/kingmaking afterwards".
The "interesting way first, combo backup" formula doesn't seem to gel with you because it feels like you're emphasizing on "as long as you have a combo, you should always combo first, otherwise it feels like you're not trying to win" whereas it gels with us because it's a formula that works in pretty much any scenario - casual, competitive and itself as well. If the point of contention is that it feels like we're "holding back" when playing casually, all you have to do is tell us and you'll face the cEDH side of the same decks. If the point of contention to that is that we don't have a purely "casual" deck, then yes, that's the whole point this whole thing was for - because we don't enjoy building "purely casual" decks with no backup, because once the plan fails, it becomes a miserable experience altogether - conceding outright is considered worse than striving for a combo-backup and kingmaking is even worse.
Actually, I think we're just agreeing to disagree here - you pointed here our "holding back" is a mutual agreement, but my whole point of contention is that I had to say that because right before that post your suggestion was to communicate, which implies you thought we didn't (apologies if you didn't mean it that way, but I had to infer with what I have), hence the whole post there. Likewise, this recent post citing answers being important - trust me, we definitely know how important answers are, considering we originate from cEDH or at least very close to it in terms of power.
So (1) bring multiple decks and (2) communicate before you sit down.
If I found out I'd won a game because someone else was sitting at the table with a win in hand and didn't play it, I'd feel like my win was tainted and I'd never want to play with them again.
Same as above. Bring multiple decks. Communicate. Or just bring a sideboard to take in/out the combo stuff.
MJ isn't a good comparison because that's an innate ability. You aren't intrinsically bound to your deck. If MJ had a magic feather that made him good, and without it he'd be roughly equivalent to your skill, wouldn't you rather he just ditched the magic feather and tried his heart out, rather than kept it but played like crap on purpose?
Ah, but we did communicate - in fact what we presented to you is what came out of the communication, which is why I said it's a matter of perspective - there's no right or wrong, but the majority of the core group in my LGS agreed to this "inverse mantra". You could argue that perhaps intrinsically we are compromising and I won't deny that, but the "inverse mantra" was decided taking into account on how we would react to different newcomers to the LGS (not necessarily new players to the game/format overall, could be walk-in experienced player).
Using the MJ and his magic feather example, I would tell you that we wouldn't want him to ditch his magic feather so just we could have a "equal" match - it would be disrespectful to the fact he has the Magic Feather and we know he does. Just like you think us playing our 75% decks and lowering ourselves to 50% to match casual to disrespectful, we think if you could improve your deck with cards you have but you didn't because you outright wanted to "match" a lower tier, to us is no different from putting it into your deck and not playing it out - in my meta, deckbuilding criticism (the good kind) is no different from questioning move decisions in-game as well - "why you didn't play out the game-winning combo" is an equal question to "why didn't you put this fitting combo we know you own into your deck" and the same answer of "I didn't want to win too easily" is met with equal lack-of-approval.
Perhaps saying "Build competitively, play casually" as the inverse mantra is not correct - the correct order is "play casually, build competitively". Our roots lie in managing the way we play so that it doesn't cause players to outright have to divide their decks (or even worse, only have 1 deck (especially newer players) and effectively have to sit out games) into distinct competitive and/or casual decks, we seek to improve all our decks over time still. Building is primarily individualistic process (even if we do give out criticism to assist), but the playing style is a whole lot interweaved between all active players of the group. Telling a player to build a whole another deck of a different tier is a whole lot less productive than telling them our playstyle and have them try to adapt to it. Sure both require change, but we have enough proof over the years to see which one has a better retaining rate.
I've seen this inversion of the EDH mantra a couple times and it really bothers me. It's supposed to be "build casually, play competitively", not the other way around.
Mostly I just don't understand how people could have fun following the inverted mantra. The reason the EDH mantra works is that competition is FUN. Trying your best to win at a game is a pastime that's provided enjoyment for humans since time immemorial. And as long as everyone is playing toned-down decks that don't have easy "I win" buttons, it's a good, satisfying game. I can't speak for everyone, but I wouldn't have any fun playing a deck that I knew I could win with, but intentionally held back.
I've used this analogy in the past and I think it's apt - playing a (powerful) combo deck and holding back is like bringing a NASCAR racer to your buddy's homemade go-kart competition and trying to match your speed. It's condescending, it makes the competition feel meaningless, and I don't understand how it could possibly be fun for you. I'd much rather bring the slowest go-kart of the bunch, and have to fight tooth and nail in order to stand half a chance.
Not to say that "playing competitively" means you're acting like it's day 2 of a GP or something. Take-backsies as long as no hidden info from your opponents was revealed, etc. is all fine. I just mean that I'm always trying to find the best play. It still doesn't need to be taken super seriously when all is said and done.
It's all a matter of perspective. The most important thing to note about "75% / build competitively, play "casually"" (I don't claim to speak for everyone, but I guess there's some common baseline at least with others with similar mentalities) is that the primary win-con is usually by nature a casual win-con (or at least reasonable in the realm of casual) and the "competitive half" (which amounts to pretty much a couple of insta-win combos and tutors) is an adaptation tool to the competitive side of the LGS's meta. "As long as everyone is playing the same something" is not a luxury the flexible LGS walk-in scene can afford, even with core groups in the LGS tilting towards either side of the meta.
On the "mathematical" surface level, you can say that we're not trying our best based on our decklists solely, but the 75%/inverse mantra in by itself is a social agreement within the LGS/group - we are all aware that we're playing with the primary objective of winning with methods that don't really match cEDH standards and may be higher than the typical casual standard (but can be reasonably stopped in the dimension).
Perhaps the gap between competitive and casual isn't as wide in your meta, but 75% isn't exactly "flip a switch - I'm competitive now" - by the time you analyze that your primary plan isn't going to work, resorting to the "competitive half" is already "fighting tooth and nail to win" against decks of the same or higher caliber. Any less than this baseline, you'll be either conceding or passively doing so by durdling (or worse, kingmaking), in which by itself leaves a bad taste.
To put it bluntly, the "competitive backup plan" is essentially us "conceding" in a twisted, yet gracious way - we admit that we aren't going to win with our preferred way, but at least we aren't to just leave abruptly or go down as puppets or kingmakers (especially considering the politics of multiplayer combined with resources of the game) and we're going to throw what is admittedly "more boring combos" as the last wall for you to overcome. Perhaps to you (and people with the same opinions), a clean concede would be neater and more polite, but from our perspective, denying our opponent the chance to play out their strategies or practically staying there as a goldfish is also disrespectful in its own way.
It depends on the deck build - how confident am I that the deck's primary win-condition(s) (yes sometimes they have several) can fully execute their job. If I'm confident they can finish it by themselves, I'm less inclined to include infinite combos and vice-versa. For example, in Karador I roughly consider Jarad with Lord of Extinction to be my primary finisher despite not being infinite (and easily reduced/countered via gravehate) because generally I see Kokusho doing its midrange grinding effectively enough. Meanwhile, Alesha's equipment smashing / aristocrat drain themes often don't seem to finish their jobs even when combined, so there's like 4 infinite combos of varying levels of assembly difficulty to close the game so I won't be left durdling - but I noted to make sure the individual components of said combos also play into the main themes and I don't really keep them in-hand for the purposes of combo-ing until it's made clear I can't win traditionally, so many of my "combos" invalidate themselves by use through the game.
In decks that rely on combos to finish the job, the active effort is there not to tutor for them for said purpose. I don't shy away from tutors either, because I find them necessary to seek answers so I can actually get the main plan moving and not just roll over to the first competitive move made in some games I encounter and even in more casual games they're used to find my card advantage generators instead to get the plan moving reasonably faster and my reliance of getting combo pieces will more often fall to these generators than tutors. That being said, my primary LGS playgroup is 75% tilting slightly towards the competitive side (but not wholly outright cEDH either), so I don't feel particularly ashamed of Tooth and Nailing into-win in a game where I fought off several other similar attempts earlier along with the knowledge there would be more coming if I don't perform one myself either. In the rarer occasions when I play with the more casual groups (due to timings of when I visit the LGS), I adjust my playing style accordingly.
The RC advocates "Build casually, play competitively", but I find that only works within the same tier of "Built Casually" and in a vacuum of the LGS (even with a core pool of regulars), those don't align as well. There are enough "flexible" cards in "competitive tier" that I personally adopted a "Build nearer-competitively-than-casually, then play according to the group in question" and that reflects in my choice of cards like Tooth and Nail over Protean Hulk (TN can bring about legitimate non-infinite threats in casual settings while generally Hulk feels underwhelming when not combo-ed, but that's based on my own decks only, though the idea I'm trying to convey is still there).
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I can tell where you're coming from and how my structure feels like it's going against some sequence of logic. Let's start with this: "The primary plan is primary plan because its the best one." There we have our first disagreement - the primary plan is the way you hope to win with, the janky brew idea(s) you intended as the deck's base and not necessarily the "best" one. The "Combo" is the backup because its the one that needs the least components in order to technically win, but if you win with said combo you are actually just "closing the game proper" than actually "winning", because you've failed to win via the primary objective.
Yes, at the start of any given game, the backup "combo" is inherently more powerful because you can tutor for it straightaway and win, but as I said, closing the game without accomplishing your primary objective is "pointless" so to speak. Doing so while your primary objective pieces have not been disposed of is doubly insulting to the deck's brewing purpose. Of course, this is only within context of decks of equal or lower calibre - if plunged into complete cEDH, it becomes your typical logic of "best plan = primary plan... or rather, given the prevalence of removal... the decoy plan."
I can already feel your potential cringe of the start being like that - I'm spending resources (draw, tutors) building on a weaker plan, but at the same time I'm also forced to spend the same resources on removal and the like to deal with threats (and combos if combos are someone's primary plan). By the time the primary plan is worn down to be impossible, not only do I lack the resources to promptly just summon the backup, part of several combos might have already been spent since it's important to make sure your combos aren't just "two cards stuck into the deck", each and every piece must also have synergy with the primary weaker plan.
Let's use the zombie plan as an example (since I actually have one) - My primary plan is to beatdown with as many zombie (preferably the 2/2 tokens I collect) as possible. I do have my share of counterspells to stop wipes, but the secondary plan against wipes is to sacrifice them and let Plague Belcher/Vengeful Dead do the job (likewise, against pillowfort and the like, Shepherd of Rot is also a secondary plan). The kicker comes in when I know I have run out of resources to reliably ensure I can muster enough zombie (tokens) for either plan against the opponents' plans and/or life totals in time - now I need to use whatever resources I have (usually draw, not tutor) to find Gravecrawler and Phyrexian Altar (or Rooftop Storm and some sac outlet) and I'm potentially still screwed if either Belcher or Vengeful is completely out of the realm of recovery.
If we're playing cEDH within the closer group and/or the new player outright declares cEDH and/or tells us to play our best, gravecrawler, altar and plague belcher might be out as early as first to third turns (depending on draw/tutors) and it would still be answered safely. In such games, the "backup" plan becomes the "decoy" plan because you expect it to fail and it's actual purpose is simply to exhaust the opponent's resources. The primary plan usually still retains because we're spending each other's removals on each other's "decoys" (hence the actual need for several backups/decoys in some decks). If I walked into a casual game doing that it would be a three-turn game at most that doesn't even accomplish the decks' primary goal because the decoy won... so it's a decoy victory and essentially as worthless as a backup/closer one (which is why they're the same).
If I removed the teeth of the decoy/backup plans, all I'm left is the midrange grindfest that honestly makes the primary plan itself boring (especially since the combos are also interweaved into the theme - Gravecrawler is equally useful in sac-lose-life plan even when not infinite and Altar is great ramp for the deck regardless, I could replace Altar with Ashnod's instead, but it falls to the Magic Feather argument - I have the Phyrexian which is better why "cripple" myself during deckbuilding instead of when playing? Sure in theory I could swap Altars depending on the players, but in practice I usually play with people of the same caliber and my resources are already split across multiple decks of around the same level (so they can form an apocalypse constructed cube), so that means having to double unsleeve and double-sleeve the altars (and bringing said decks with each other all the time, I'm not cherry-picking cards from several other decks to form a sideboard).
As for the "fragile part" - we're in multiplayer edh, with me tilting towards the competitive end... nothing is durable, there are answers for everything by anyone on the table (even for protective measures). The value of a decoy/closer is in how many pieces it requires to assemble so it can either outspeed removal (in cEDH), dispose of removal for the future at a low cost (decoy function) or assemble successfully in the window of opportunity that both draw and removal resources were halted by the primary plan doing well enough to demand all the attention in order cripple it down (backup/closer function). Yes, there are bad times where everything just fails and you just sit there twiddling your thumbs, but the whole design philosophy is to minimize such cases from happening, without decoys/backups, it a whole lot more common than one would imagine.
EDIT: Spelling
This is not a matter of "If you enjoy combo, play combo. If you don't enjoy combo, don't bother at all". This is our solution to "what happens if your primary plan of the brewed deck fails?" Perhaps your solution is "I'll concede and move on to the next game", but to us that is disrespectful, not letting people who still have a chance of executing their primary plan to continue doing so - what fun is there if the game ends abruptly because the first person in the pod decided to concede because he or she couldn't assemble the primary win-con? Scrambling for boring combo last-minute isn't as efficient as just T1 tutoring into it and will take time, time in which participants still on their first plan can continue to do so, whereas people who "conceded" aren't reduced to mere puppet and/or kingmaking positions.
I said this was built and agreed upon by our circumstances - you say this lets everyone have a Magic Feather... and that is true - the core group consists of pretty much experienced players with years of experience and collections, perhaps not to the extreme (although there are a few semi-active players who does bling out their cEDh in OG foils and beta duals). The primary decks we build are all very near-competitive from the get-go and the "inverse mantra" keeps it from being outright cEDH. Again, this is not a matter of "If we enjoy playing cEDH, just play cEDH", we will do that when we feel like it - what we're doing and enjoying is "creating decks that can stretch to meet both ends of cEDh and casual in the same deck" instead of creating purely cEDH and casual decks, because we don't enjoy that.
Perhaps I've phrased my wordings really badly to make sound hypocritical in terms of combo - if you want to play combo, go ahead, we'll definitely have the answers to stop you from doing so. The only mentality I think we're really on opposite ends is that (I think that) you think "as long as you have a combo in the deck, you should always tutor for it as fast as possible and give it your "best"... and leave combos out of your other decks trying to win in other interesting ways", whereas from our own experiences it becomes "your other interesting winning way should have back-up combo so that you would have something to strive for when the plan fails instead of ruining the actual play experience by outright conceding/kingmaking afterwards".
The "interesting way first, combo backup" formula doesn't seem to gel with you because it feels like you're emphasizing on "as long as you have a combo, you should always combo first, otherwise it feels like you're not trying to win" whereas it gels with us because it's a formula that works in pretty much any scenario - casual, competitive and itself as well. If the point of contention is that it feels like we're "holding back" when playing casually, all you have to do is tell us and you'll face the cEDH side of the same decks. If the point of contention to that is that we don't have a purely "casual" deck, then yes, that's the whole point this whole thing was for - because we don't enjoy building "purely casual" decks with no backup, because once the plan fails, it becomes a miserable experience altogether - conceding outright is considered worse than striving for a combo-backup and kingmaking is even worse.
Actually, I think we're just agreeing to disagree here - you pointed here our "holding back" is a mutual agreement, but my whole point of contention is that I had to say that because right before that post your suggestion was to communicate, which implies you thought we didn't (apologies if you didn't mean it that way, but I had to infer with what I have), hence the whole post there. Likewise, this recent post citing answers being important - trust me, we definitely know how important answers are, considering we originate from cEDH or at least very close to it in terms of power.
Ah, but we did communicate - in fact what we presented to you is what came out of the communication, which is why I said it's a matter of perspective - there's no right or wrong, but the majority of the core group in my LGS agreed to this "inverse mantra". You could argue that perhaps intrinsically we are compromising and I won't deny that, but the "inverse mantra" was decided taking into account on how we would react to different newcomers to the LGS (not necessarily new players to the game/format overall, could be walk-in experienced player).
Using the MJ and his magic feather example, I would tell you that we wouldn't want him to ditch his magic feather so just we could have a "equal" match - it would be disrespectful to the fact he has the Magic Feather and we know he does. Just like you think us playing our 75% decks and lowering ourselves to 50% to match casual to disrespectful, we think if you could improve your deck with cards you have but you didn't because you outright wanted to "match" a lower tier, to us is no different from putting it into your deck and not playing it out - in my meta, deckbuilding criticism (the good kind) is no different from questioning move decisions in-game as well - "why you didn't play out the game-winning combo" is an equal question to "why didn't you put this fitting combo we know you own into your deck" and the same answer of "I didn't want to win too easily" is met with equal lack-of-approval.
Perhaps saying "Build competitively, play casually" as the inverse mantra is not correct - the correct order is "play casually, build competitively". Our roots lie in managing the way we play so that it doesn't cause players to outright have to divide their decks (or even worse, only have 1 deck (especially newer players) and effectively have to sit out games) into distinct competitive and/or casual decks, we seek to improve all our decks over time still. Building is primarily individualistic process (even if we do give out criticism to assist), but the playing style is a whole lot interweaved between all active players of the group. Telling a player to build a whole another deck of a different tier is a whole lot less productive than telling them our playstyle and have them try to adapt to it. Sure both require change, but we have enough proof over the years to see which one has a better retaining rate.
It's all a matter of perspective. The most important thing to note about "75% / build competitively, play "casually"" (I don't claim to speak for everyone, but I guess there's some common baseline at least with others with similar mentalities) is that the primary win-con is usually by nature a casual win-con (or at least reasonable in the realm of casual) and the "competitive half" (which amounts to pretty much a couple of insta-win combos and tutors) is an adaptation tool to the competitive side of the LGS's meta. "As long as everyone is playing the same something" is not a luxury the flexible LGS walk-in scene can afford, even with core groups in the LGS tilting towards either side of the meta.
On the "mathematical" surface level, you can say that we're not trying our best based on our decklists solely, but the 75%/inverse mantra in by itself is a social agreement within the LGS/group - we are all aware that we're playing with the primary objective of winning with methods that don't really match cEDH standards and may be higher than the typical casual standard (but can be reasonably stopped in the dimension).
Perhaps the gap between competitive and casual isn't as wide in your meta, but 75% isn't exactly "flip a switch - I'm competitive now" - by the time you analyze that your primary plan isn't going to work, resorting to the "competitive half" is already "fighting tooth and nail to win" against decks of the same or higher caliber. Any less than this baseline, you'll be either conceding or passively doing so by durdling (or worse, kingmaking), in which by itself leaves a bad taste.
To put it bluntly, the "competitive backup plan" is essentially us "conceding" in a twisted, yet gracious way - we admit that we aren't going to win with our preferred way, but at least we aren't to just leave abruptly or go down as puppets or kingmakers (especially considering the politics of multiplayer combined with resources of the game) and we're going to throw what is admittedly "more boring combos" as the last wall for you to overcome. Perhaps to you (and people with the same opinions), a clean concede would be neater and more polite, but from our perspective, denying our opponent the chance to play out their strategies or practically staying there as a goldfish is also disrespectful in its own way.
In decks that rely on combos to finish the job, the active effort is there not to tutor for them for said purpose. I don't shy away from tutors either, because I find them necessary to seek answers so I can actually get the main plan moving and not just roll over to the first competitive move made in some games I encounter and even in more casual games they're used to find my card advantage generators instead to get the plan moving reasonably faster and my reliance of getting combo pieces will more often fall to these generators than tutors. That being said, my primary LGS playgroup is 75% tilting slightly towards the competitive side (but not wholly outright cEDH either), so I don't feel particularly ashamed of Tooth and Nailing into-win in a game where I fought off several other similar attempts earlier along with the knowledge there would be more coming if I don't perform one myself either. In the rarer occasions when I play with the more casual groups (due to timings of when I visit the LGS), I adjust my playing style accordingly.
The RC advocates "Build casually, play competitively", but I find that only works within the same tier of "Built Casually" and in a vacuum of the LGS (even with a core pool of regulars), those don't align as well. There are enough "flexible" cards in "competitive tier" that I personally adopted a "Build nearer-competitively-than-casually, then play according to the group in question" and that reflects in my choice of cards like Tooth and Nail over Protean Hulk (TN can bring about legitimate non-infinite threats in casual settings while generally Hulk feels underwhelming when not combo-ed, but that's based on my own decks only, though the idea I'm trying to convey is still there).