As far as I can tell, pure "casual" value doesn't necessarily account for much.
Where casual seems to come into play is collector value - e.g. cards people get just to have, not necessarily play with.
To give an example:
Shahrazad is an Arabian Nights rare that is absolutely unplayable (literally banned in every format). But it's a fun card to play kitchen table magic with. And it is worth approximately $50.00 at TCGPlayer mids. Ydwen Efreet is also an Arabian Nights rare. It's not competitive, and not particularly fun. It is worth $9.00.
However, casual appeal for not particularly rare cards is not nearly as lopsided - Gruul Ragebeast is popular in casual in my area at least, and Five-Alarm Fire isn't. Neither are rare enough to be considered particularly collectible. And both are worth $0.25 at mid values.
From that, it seems that "casual appeal" really functions more as a filter for which noncompetitive ultra-rare cards are "collectible" and which ultra-rares are simply not noteworthy.
I doubt Ral Zarek is good enough for legacy. While he may be powerful, at 4cmc and blue, he competes directly with Jace, and loses. Badly. I'd go so far as to say that even a stasis deck would rather play Jace.
Can't Shardless BUG's G1 against combo be improved pretty simply (at a pretty fine-grained level) by just adding more thoughtseize/hymn/duress?
Or is it more complex than that?
It's a bit more complex.
Extra discard does improve your combo matchup somewhat. But the problem is that they don't put any pressure on your opponent. Team America is significantly more aggressive than Shardless BUG, which is a large part of the reason that it has a better matchup against combo - they have less time to recover from prevented combos and discard. Team america is only slightly more effective at stopping the first combo attempt than shardless, but it will kill them before they can go off again much more reliably.
Its only going to be playable because of the token it makes, it seems annoying against ur delver tbh.
I could see a couple decks picking them up to hate on ur delver more, thing is the card is sub-par against w based removal and combo.
Its not bad, but I don't think it'll make it further than fringe play.
Voice isn't very good against Delver decks. Skylasher probably causes more problems for them than Voice. At least with Skylasher they have to remove it, against Voice they can just race. Scryb Ranger is also better, largely for the same reasons, plus it has a somewhat useful ability.
My two cents:
What does Voice really do? It's just a 2/2 with a pseudo Grand Abolisher and Doomed Traveler effect stapled on - powerful but nothing overly special. While it's a fine card, I wouldn't include it over the following in any deck equipped to run it:
Any of those cards has either more sheer power or more utility than Voice of Resurgence.
I'd say that Voice of Resurgence's viability in Legacy was over-hyped by people who either became too excited when they read it, or who have a poor understanding of the Legacy format. While I can't be certain, I'll go out on a limb and say that this won't be a good card in Legacy barring massive changes to the format.
1st draft, went Selesnya, got allied with Simic, got a bad pool, went 3-1.
2nd draft, went Boros, got allied with Gruul, again nothing too special happened, went 3-0-1 (undefeated, then split the packs with last opponent).
3rd draft, went Rakdos, got allied with Gruul. Got a TON of great Gruul and Rakdos stuff. Ended up going down to just Gruul.
Match 1 -
Game 1 drop a Feral Animist turn 3. Opponent drops a Vassal Soul. Enchant Animist with Madcap Skills turn 4, and beat for 5. Opponent drops a Righteous Authority on his vassal soul, beats for 7 in the air. Turn 5 - miss my land drop. Attack with animist, bloodrush Slaughterhorn onto it, then double the animist and hit him for 16 and game.
Game 2 - beat for a while, then drop Gruul War Chant and end it pretty fast after that.
Match 2 was nothing too special. Just general beats, and win it 2-0.
Game 2 - after a long and grindy game, I eventually flood out and he finally gets there.
Game 3 - we get a few turns in, with him having 2 creatures and me eventually having Feral Animist and 6 lands. Attack with Feral animist when he's tapped out. No blocks. Pump Feral Animist 2 times and beat for 8. While he kills the animist next turn, that early 8 points was enough for me to put out a steady stream of attackers and kill him quickly.
As this was a late one on Sunday, there were no more games after this one. Ended 3-0.
In my experience, BUG control is very good against combo (heavy countermagic and discard), and Delver decks are also very good (countermagic and aggressiveness). Esper Stoneblade is good (also heavy countermagic, plus good anti-storm options). Since it's entirely combo, probably not a bad idea to modify them to remove the cards that exist for the fair matchups, and dedicate your sideboard to specific combo hate.
Or you can homebrew something that basically has no game against fair decks, but is extremely punishing against combo. Effectively a deck with no board removal, and just a crapton of counterspells, discard, and combo hate.
It can get complicated. For this, I am assuming I'm playing at a Competitive REL event, with limits for match time.
1. If I have absolutely no way to beat someone. For instance, if they gain infinite life, and I can't do infinite damage/lifeloss - scoop. No point in stretching it out.
2. If my opponent has a vastly superior position to mine, such that I am unlikely to win, it depends:
Game 1 - scoop and move on to the next game.
Game 2 - depends. If I lost game 1 - no scoop. If I won game 1, and I feel that I can draw the game out past the time limit and 5 turns (without breaking the rules, that is) - no scoop (for example - playing against the legacy lands deck - if I won game 1, but they have something of a lock going, I may continue to play, just because it takes them THAT LONG to actually win). If I won game 1, and don't think that I can legally stretch the game such that I end the match 1-0, scoop and move to game 3 to avoid a tie.
Game 3 - no scoop until it is made clear that I have absolutely no chance.
If there are no time limits, I never scoop until it is 100% that I can't win.
Yeah, I frequent two LGSs and one has a glass display for their best cards. The one I'm referring to doesn't have one, though. They have a solid counter and store all of their singles in binders.
Then it sounds like the "really cool" binder is his equivalent of the glass display. Maybe his store doesn't have room for a display or something like that.
Yeah. It's the glass case where $5+ cards
are stored. One of my LGS' also has a special binder that's not well advertised - but it's more of a "cards the owner doesn't particularly want to sell" binder.
My experience with Jund, like all decks that are just piles of good cards, has been that it doesn't have any particular weakness, except maybe a little bit to combo (no FoW, but it does have a crapton of discard). Instead, you should focus on what it is that they do that hurts you the most. If it's the discard, run target redirection/graveyard recursion/leyline of sanctity effects. If it's creature combat, run more removal/mass removal (EE is particularly effective).
One thing I'm noticing about this list is that the creature mana curve is much tighter than jund. Would Aether Vial be worth exploring? It would allow us to keep counterspell mana up. Although I'm not sure what I would take out for it.
Before I begin, I apologize if this or a similar deck was already posted. Didn't see anything first two pages, or through a search.
What is this deck about? It's about playing the most underplayed card type in magic - enchantments. And winning.
The core of the deck:
Sphere of Safety - This card is, at worst, a mini Ghostly Prison. However, by the time it usually comes out, it makes it virtually impossible for your opponent to attack with anything.
Assemble the Legion - This is your win condition. While it's usually panned as being too slow, in our deck, it not only provides stall, it eventually provides us a win condition.
The deck is pretty straightforward - ramp as fast as possible and start playing your game-breaking enchantments. Mass removal available for the obvious reasons.
Sideboard cards are pretty straightforward. Nevermore comes in to hose your opponents hate - they probably won't be packing any game 1. Door to Nothingness comes in if your opponent sides in Illness in the Ranks. As far as mainboard, I am testing Merciless Eviction to see if I like it, or if I just want to run 4 Terminus.
Fringe play is better than no play. I'm already considering Blind Obedience in my Modern Soul Sisters maindeck, as Syndic of Tithes performed surprisingly well there--so well that he ate removal.
In Modern, Blind Obedience outright shuts downs Sunny Side Up and slows down Exarch Twin and Twin Pod by at least a turn--all problematic match-ups for Soul Sisters.
In Legacy, Blind Obedience slows down Sneak Show (by at least a turn if they're on the Sneak Attack plan) and heavily slows down Combo Elves (when it's on the Glimpse of Nature plan, it's harder to untap Nettle Sentinel, and with all the tapped Elves, it's more likely to choke on a lack of mana). It also ticks off MUD and its love of hasty Metalworkers and Kuldotha Forgemasters with Lightning Greaves, though it doesn't shut it down.
I'll address your comments in order:
Modern:
1. Umm, how does it do anything to Sunny Side Up? That deck plays 0 creatures.
2. Exarch twin is Tier 2, maybe even less now.
3. Soul sisters is Tier 2 at best. And this card won't make soul sisters significantly more relevant.
Legacy:
1. Already mentioned the Sneak/Show thing (which, by the way, it almost completely shuts down Sneak Attack, because Sneak Attack sacs the creatures end of turn). Sneak/show is Tier 1.5/2, and there's already other, better, ways of screwing with that deck.
2. Yes, I mentioned elves already. Except elves is now more of an aggro deck without hasty creatures. Glimpse combo plan is to force people to keep their countermagic in their deck, which is otherwise worthless against them. Except countermagic shuts down glimpse even better than blind obediance. Their weaknesses are to faster combos and board wipes - this does neither.
3. Lightning greaves is hardly crucial to MUD, which, by the way, is also Tier 2. Congrats, you used up how many slots in your deck to slow MUD down about half a turn on average?
I do believe this card has potential in standard. But to say that it's "great" in older formats is just flat out wrong.
Where casual seems to come into play is collector value - e.g. cards people get just to have, not necessarily play with.
To give an example:
Shahrazad is an Arabian Nights rare that is absolutely unplayable (literally banned in every format). But it's a fun card to play kitchen table magic with. And it is worth approximately $50.00 at TCGPlayer mids. Ydwen Efreet is also an Arabian Nights rare. It's not competitive, and not particularly fun. It is worth $9.00.
However, casual appeal for not particularly rare cards is not nearly as lopsided - Gruul Ragebeast is popular in casual in my area at least, and Five-Alarm Fire isn't. Neither are rare enough to be considered particularly collectible. And both are worth $0.25 at mid values.
From that, it seems that "casual appeal" really functions more as a filter for which noncompetitive ultra-rare cards are "collectible" and which ultra-rares are simply not noteworthy.
It's a bit more complex.
Extra discard does improve your combo matchup somewhat. But the problem is that they don't put any pressure on your opponent. Team America is significantly more aggressive than Shardless BUG, which is a large part of the reason that it has a better matchup against combo - they have less time to recover from prevented combos and discard. Team america is only slightly more effective at stopping the first combo attempt than shardless, but it will kill them before they can go off again much more reliably.
Voice isn't very good against Delver decks. Skylasher probably causes more problems for them than Voice. At least with Skylasher they have to remove it, against Voice they can just race. Scryb Ranger is also better, largely for the same reasons, plus it has a somewhat useful ability.
My two cents:
What does Voice really do? It's just a 2/2 with a pseudo Grand Abolisher and Doomed Traveler effect stapled on - powerful but nothing overly special. While it's a fine card, I wouldn't include it over the following in any deck equipped to run it:
Tarmogoyf
Scavenging Ooze
Gaddock Teeg
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Qasali Pridemage
Any of those cards has either more sheer power or more utility than Voice of Resurgence.
I'd say that Voice of Resurgence's viability in Legacy was over-hyped by people who either became too excited when they read it, or who have a poor understanding of the Legacy format. While I can't be certain, I'll go out on a limb and say that this won't be a good card in Legacy barring massive changes to the format.
2nd draft, went Boros, got allied with Gruul, again nothing too special happened, went 3-0-1 (undefeated, then split the packs with last opponent).
3rd draft, went Rakdos, got allied with Gruul. Got a TON of great Gruul and Rakdos stuff. Ended up going down to just Gruul.
Match 1 -
Game 1 drop a Feral Animist turn 3. Opponent drops a Vassal Soul. Enchant Animist with Madcap Skills turn 4, and beat for 5. Opponent drops a Righteous Authority on his vassal soul, beats for 7 in the air. Turn 5 - miss my land drop. Attack with animist, bloodrush Slaughterhorn onto it, then double the animist and hit him for 16 and game.
Game 2 - beat for a while, then drop Gruul War Chant and end it pretty fast after that.
Match 2 was nothing too special. Just general beats, and win it 2-0.
Match 3 -
Game 1 - guy has 10 pieces of removal. Finish the game off with Gruul Ragebeast and Pyrewild Shaman.
Game 2 - after a long and grindy game, I eventually flood out and he finally gets there.
Game 3 - we get a few turns in, with him having 2 creatures and me eventually having Feral Animist and 6 lands. Attack with Feral animist when he's tapped out. No blocks. Pump Feral Animist 2 times and beat for 8. While he kills the animist next turn, that early 8 points was enough for me to put out a steady stream of attackers and kill him quickly.
As this was a late one on Sunday, there were no more games after this one. Ended 3-0.
Or you can homebrew something that basically has no game against fair decks, but is extremely punishing against combo. Effectively a deck with no board removal, and just a crapton of counterspells, discard, and combo hate.
1. If I have absolutely no way to beat someone. For instance, if they gain infinite life, and I can't do infinite damage/lifeloss - scoop. No point in stretching it out.
2. If my opponent has a vastly superior position to mine, such that I am unlikely to win, it depends:
Game 1 - scoop and move on to the next game.
Game 2 - depends. If I lost game 1 - no scoop. If I won game 1, and I feel that I can draw the game out past the time limit and 5 turns (without breaking the rules, that is) - no scoop (for example - playing against the legacy lands deck - if I won game 1, but they have something of a lock going, I may continue to play, just because it takes them THAT LONG to actually win). If I won game 1, and don't think that I can legally stretch the game such that I end the match 1-0, scoop and move to game 3 to avoid a tie.
Game 3 - no scoop until it is made clear that I have absolutely no chance.
If there are no time limits, I never scoop until it is 100% that I can't win.
Then it sounds like the "really cool" binder is his equivalent of the glass display. Maybe his store doesn't have room for a display or something like that.
are stored. One of my LGS' also has a special binder that's not well advertised - but it's more of a "cards the owner doesn't particularly want to sell" binder.
What is this deck about? It's about playing the most underplayed card type in magic - enchantments. And winning.
The core of the deck:
Sphere of Safety - This card is, at worst, a mini Ghostly Prison. However, by the time it usually comes out, it makes it virtually impossible for your opponent to attack with anything.
Assemble the Legion - This is your win condition. While it's usually panned as being too slow, in our deck, it not only provides stall, it eventually provides us a win condition.
Oblivion Ring/Detention Sphere - Our removal, and they also help with Sphere of Safety.
Verdant Haven - Mana fixing and ramp. The unsung hero of this deck.
Underworld Connections - Card advantage. Helps us find Sphere of Safety and Assemble the Legions.
So, without further ado, the deck:
4x Temple Garden
4x Godless Shrine
3x Breeding Pool
3x Overgrown Tomb
3x Hallowed Fountain
2x Sacred Foundry
2x Watery Grave
1x Blood Crypt
2x Stomping Ground
4x Farseek
4x Supreme Verdict
3x Terminus
1x Merciless Eviction
Enchantments:
4x Verdant Haven
4x Underworld Connections
4x Sphere of Safety
4x Assemble the Legion
4x Oblivion Ring
4x Detention Sphere
4x Nevermore
4x Blind Obedience
3x Curse of Echoes
2x Rest in Peace
2x Door to Nothingness
The deck is pretty straightforward - ramp as fast as possible and start playing your game-breaking enchantments. Mass removal available for the obvious reasons.
Sideboard cards are pretty straightforward. Nevermore comes in to hose your opponents hate - they probably won't be packing any game 1. Door to Nothingness comes in if your opponent sides in Illness in the Ranks. As far as mainboard, I am testing Merciless Eviction to see if I like it, or if I just want to run 4 Terminus.
Diabloknk - Diabloknk - 8tl7lffr
Decklist will be pm'ed shortly.
I'll address your comments in order:
Modern:
1. Umm, how does it do anything to Sunny Side Up? That deck plays 0 creatures.
2. Exarch twin is Tier 2, maybe even less now.
3. Soul sisters is Tier 2 at best. And this card won't make soul sisters significantly more relevant.
Legacy:
1. Already mentioned the Sneak/Show thing (which, by the way, it almost completely shuts down Sneak Attack, because Sneak Attack sacs the creatures end of turn). Sneak/show is Tier 1.5/2, and there's already other, better, ways of screwing with that deck.
2. Yes, I mentioned elves already. Except elves is now more of an aggro deck without hasty creatures. Glimpse combo plan is to force people to keep their countermagic in their deck, which is otherwise worthless against them. Except countermagic shuts down glimpse even better than blind obediance. Their weaknesses are to faster combos and board wipes - this does neither.
3. Lightning greaves is hardly crucial to MUD, which, by the way, is also Tier 2. Congrats, you used up how many slots in your deck to slow MUD down about half a turn on average?
I do believe this card has potential in standard. But to say that it's "great" in older formats is just flat out wrong.