* zero "4x" slots allowed
* up to three "3x" slots allowed
* any number of 1x and 2x slots allowed
And you said two colors, one of which must be blue. But you didn't say exactly two colors. So is UBR okay?
EDIT: Is (Cartographer) legal? It's common, and from Rath Block. But not common in Rath Block.
Here's the Gatherer query that everyone wants: http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&block=|[%22Rath%20Block%22]&rarity=|[C]
You forgot to mention something important - Mirrorweave is currently at 50 cents! I bought mine a long time ago though. But this card does so much. I've been tempted to add it to every casual deck that can cast it. (Frequently do.) This card is so much fun as an instant. During your opponent's declare attackers phase you can turn everything into a Shield Sphere. Mirrorweave on Protean Hydra (maybe you're playing tribal hydras?) is better than a one-sided Wrath because you'll also remove hard to deal with creatures like Stuffy Doll. Phantom creatures and graft creatures work, too. I like the idea of playing Mirrorweave on someone else's Royal Assassin in a multiplayer game. Also make that play during someone else's attack step, of course. How about if your opponent uses Hypergenesis/Elvish Piper/Tinker/Dramatic Entrance/Polymorph to cheat a non-Progenitus into play? Well now you get to swing with it first! (It sounds like I'm selling a household cleaner, doesn't it?)
I've played the Countryside Crusher deck a ton. I could probably write an article just on that deck. I eventually figured out that the best deck was 4x Crusher, 3x Soul's Fire, 53x lands. The sad thing is, even with all those lands you still have about a 20% chance to 'miss' (0-2 lands) with the Crusher. There are 7 non-lands in the deck after all. But more often than not you get away with it. Some opponents will "make the right play" by waiting until the last second before Incinerating the giant. So they'll wait until the upkeep triggers are on the stack, or they'll wait for you to swing before they exile it. But if they do that then he's already thinned your draw and you might be holding another giant. It's a shame that this guy rotates out when the "Landsapalooza" rotates in.
In the right context, that's definitely Classic playable. All in AdN puts Tendrils on the stack and you mess up their kill turn with them being emptied of resources. Burn might splash for this for their sideboards. Grove of the Burnwillows can trigger this at will which would be cool if you can somehow tutor for all the copies easily (or make your own). The latter is getting a bit janky, but shows potential if another piece arrives.
Plus this combos really with Sanguine Bond in Standard. With SB out, just cast two of these for 20 damage.
I've seen a concession for my "turn 1, Savannah, go". So stupid. But It's worth noting that my 4 Skullclamps have never earned me a concession. They don't look like a threat, and I myself look desperate when I start clamping my own guys for cards. The other people either don't get it, or they're civil. If they're going to concede to things like Jitte, they should concede to that too. I bet Tolarian Academy will be super popular in the casual room. No, seriously! They'll concede to Underground Sea, but they'll type "Nice deck" if you combo Tolarian Academy into Memory Jar into Time Spiral into Darksteel Collossus. (Hypothetically.) It's kind of weird. People concede strictly to LD/counters/discard/infinite combos. But those aren't the 4 most unfun or unfair things I can do to you in the casual room either. Martyr-Proc, Crucible of Worlds, and dredge all dodge the concession-sense.
Some part of the problem is that some people will always concede. You can't stop it. You might mull to 5, but they won't notice and they'll concede anyway. Personally I never concede. F6 is right there.
I support counters, LD, and discard in the casual room. LD without Sinkhole can be hard to win with. Discard isn't on everyone's concession list. The thing that bugs me about no counters is that it makes two entire classes of cards - instants and sorceries, unanswerable. So I can Terror your creature, but I'm not allowed to stop your Overrun? Why would you care if I countered your creature or Terminated it? For dealing with creatures, Terminate is strictly better for the CMC. But you can't reason with them. The crazy part is that Vindicate and Desert Twister are cool beans, but Counterspell isn't. Why?
A close friend of mine has had a rat/stone deck for a while, it's really good up until the point where you run into echoing truth, extirpate, or mass removal.
First of all, many thanks for the comments, great to see such a wide range of views. Realistically we're not talking about issues that can be solved, but I think it's still useful to air our views / frustrations.
Secondly, yes I should have included discard, that was an oversight, it's very much another flavour of the concession pie (and that phrase is a great example of why you shouldn't write late at night whilst drunk).
I think what irks me most is the instant, no explanation quit. Whether it's at the sight of the first counter, the first Stone Rain, or having opened a suboptimal hand. If you can take the time to explain yourself ("Sorry, I've just played three counter decks on the trot and I really fancy trying something else,") then it's hard to find fault. But that petulant instant 'I don't like that card so off I go' quit is just plain rude.
Yes it takes seconds to find another game, but the irk lingers. Perhaps it's just me. The nature of the internet is that it gives many people the anonymity necessary to allow their more hostile urges to surface. Just take a look at any message board on any subject you care to name. That translates to Magic when people choose to mouth off at you, the shuffler, Wizards, or even when they just plain quit without a word.
It seems a lot of you take AJ's view, and let bygones be bygones. Realistically, that's the only workable approach, but idealistically I'd like each game to be played out in a friendly and courteous manner, whatever the cards. And I still say LD and counters are casual. LD especially because, to put it bluntly, it's 'not very good'. Yes it's irritating to not be able to play your spells, but stick it out and chances are you'll win anyway.
And I'd say the same for infinite combo. It's just a different style of game, back the rich tapestry thing I was slightly pretentiously droning on about in the article. I have a janky wither deck which includes the Devoted Druid / Quillspike combo. It's an infinite combo, well known and easily stopped. It's certainly not the main point of the deck, but ignore it and you lose. I don't have a problem with that sort of deck in the casual room, its power level is consistent with the average and the cards are legal. What more is there? (Rhetorical question)
One final thing, foils are fine obviously. I mentioned a 'foil Arcbound Ravager' as an example of an expensive card mostly because 'Arcbound Ravager' itself didn't feel expensive enough and I had a mental block so couldn't think of a better example.
Oh and finally, I love Liliana Vess. She's in my favourite mono black control deck along with Vampire Nocturnus and others. I consider it to be a casual deck.
The one thing no one mentioned here is infinite combo aka Solitare which I don't see very often myself but hear a lot about in the chat. Infinite Combo seeks to set up infinite turns/mana etc and then eventually beat you over the head until you are dead. The only danger to such a deck is specific artifact or enchantment hate or counterspells (preferably in the tier 1-2 category). Casual? I don't know. Infinitely annoying? absolutely.
I should note that what you said here has been echoed by many past voices including myself and The Ferrett. It is a topic that will ever be controversial and multifaceted. There will be occasions when I am playing someone and I just end up not having fun and I concede. Is that wrong? I don't think so. It takes moments to find an opponent. I never jump on other people's tables so people who join mine and aren't friendly sometimes get the boot. This is just how it is. Every player while having a modicum of responsibility for the fun of others is ultimately only answerable to themselves and your balete ability (Blocking people on MODO makes them unable to join your games, thankfully.) This means if you don't want to play someone again you don't have to. Which somewhat makes the whole question moot.
Now onto the subject of the metaphor (what is the meta for?) Flipping over the game board is a hostile and aggressive thing people do when they are 3. Getting up and leaving is something adults do. It is not the outcome that matters but the style in which you do it. If you are civil and considerate in your concession there should be no umbrage or outrage from the opposing side. It is not to their benefit to make their opponent unhappy either. I don't mean discomforted by losing which everyone playing a serious strategy game against intelligent people should be prepared for. I mean unhappy. I am perfectly happy to play against the most horrendous decks imaginable (including the dreaded Infinite Combo) if my opponent chats me up a bit, has a minimal sense of humor, isn't complete bore, and doesn't refuse to respond to any comments.
Interesting note, I had a conversation with another player the other day that started because he managed to stack a whole bunch of goblins on top of his 100s deck in a devastating manner while I was mana screwed.
I said: "Wow goblins, looks like you got your combo. Is there a point in continuing this?"
he said: "Huh?"
then a minute later (still waiting for him to pass priority
he said: "Oh!... Good game!" {Quit}
Never in my mind was I ready to quit myself. I just found it amusing that his whole game plan was very apparent and was inevitable. I was making light though perhaps in a sarcastic way of the fact that I had no chance. His response was a reversal. I didn't expect him to quit because I was ruining his fun. I didn't think I was.
Anyway I think this can be talked about for ages and everyone has their own take on it. Good article.
Too bad that the people playing tier 1/pure counter/pure LD/$$$$ decks are all going to continue doing whatever the hell they want anyways.The people in the casual room playing noncasual decks know what they are doing and just dont care. My solution:add em to your block list. I have blocked over 100 people this summer alone, mostly for playing tier 1 decks in casual room (glen elendra archmage into baneslayer...how fun). I also explain to people why I am doing so, in the hopes that they will be more responsible in the future.
The reality is you cannot stop children from doing what they want to do though.
My personal approach is to go for a broad view. In order to accomodate everyone elses' playstyles in as concise a matter as possible, I go by the mantra, 'play what you like, concede when you want'. If someone wants to go mull, mull, concede, that's their perogative. If they want to play an all-foil pro tour deck, that's their perogative. Anyone can bring anything to the table, and anyone can get up from the table at any time.
1- Discard: Discard belongs to the same group with LD and Counters. People hate discard too. Maybe not as much as the others but they still do.
2- Planeswalkers: This is the new generation of complaints. People still haven't adjusted themselves to planeswalkers and thus they always lose to Elspeth and they don't like this. So no. No planeswalkers either.
Those two points were also important and I wanted to mention them.
I personally don't do the following in the casual room:
a) Play LD.
b) Play with more than 4 counters (and they must be soft counters such as Remand).
c) Play with more than 4 discard (oh and they shouldn't be Duress or Thoughtseize, looking at opponent's hand is bad!).
d) Play powerful planeswalkers such as Ajani Vengeant but do play Chandra Nalaar.
And I concede to:
a) Heavy LD. A few Stone Rains or Avalanche Riders are okay but an entire deck around those is boring.
b) Netdecks. I know that I can't win against Fae when I'm not playing a deck as strong as the Fae. And if I want to play against the Fae, I know where I can find them.
Nice article I’ve had my fare share of complaints in my time playing in casual
A few things though bearing in mind I don’t limit myself to what cards I play in casual.
I play ME duals in classic and don’t get a single complaint but as soon as I play Bitterblossom I don’t hear the end of it sometimes the same goes for Elspeth.
The tier one decks always makes me laugh I’ve been accused of running these quite a few times in Std but I don’t read the deck list’s so I wouldn’t know what a tier one std deck looks like. Must be something do with bant decks from what I’ve been playing when people disconnect.
There’s only one type of deck I don’t play in the casual room and that’s classic decks with the potential to win on turn 1 / 2 you know other casual decks won’t stand a chance and it’s a waste of both players time, for these I stick to the tournament practice room.
The last thing I have to say is foils I like playing foils all my basic lands are foils and whenever possible I upgrade other cards to foil as well, I used to get a lot of stick for this but I’m glad to say it’s completely died down now.
Nice article, even if i don't agree 100% with you.
I think this problem will never go away and we might call it the "casual game" problem but it's not really that. It's more a "people misbehave on the internet" problem.
Let's see my profile:
- only spend about 25$ a month on boosters + tickets, so no big collection here
- have next-to-zero money cards (I never spent more than 1 ticket on a card)
- don't make/play Tier One (or Tier Two) decks
- never built a LD deck
- always have a not-that-strong standard draw-go dedicated counter deck to play once in a while
- play 99% of my MTGO games on the Casual room
- playing Magic since 1994 so I know how to build an efficient non Tier One deck with budget cards (I probably win 60%-75% of the games I play)
- always polite, I greet the opponent, make remarks about the game, etc
I shouldn't have many problems unless I was playing with my counter deck, right? Wrong.
I meet misbehaving/whining/quitting/disconnecting opponents on about 10%-20% of the games I play. The games my opponents are losing.
The way I see it, most people play for fun, but many people equal fun with winning so they misbehave when they're losing. And in internet, everyone knows, it's easy to quit or insult the opponent. So they do it, many using the "that's not casual" crutch.
I agree with most of your points. I don't like seeing tier one decks in casual. I had a discussion with an opponent the other day who was playing a tier one deck. His comment was he couldn't find a game in the tournie room and he needed practice. My response was he wasn't learning anything in the casual room by beating second rate decks. I still played it out, and lost.
I also understand people's dislike of land destruction as it hinders your ability to actually play the game. I mean it is not fun at all to sit there doing nothing with no lands in play while your opponent goldfishes against you. This is also likely why people don't enjoy dedicated permission decks. While I do not concede to dedicated LD it not something I like seeing in the causal room.
As for counters I have no problem with them. My personal experience is if you are playing dedicated permission people tend to concede. But I play alot of u/x aggro control which will usually have some counters (3-6 spells) and I rarely run into concessions.
I think the bottomline is people come to the casual room to have fun playing the game they love. And most of the things that are frowned upon are things that don't let you participate in the game. LD (and to a lesser extent dedicated permission) tend to leave one person sitting there watching the other person play. As a result you get concessions.
I experienced something like this earlier in the week. I joined a match and the person was playing the Time Sieve deck combo. I don't know if this is consider tier one, but playing aginst it is dull. I told my opponent I would finish the first game but I wasn't going to play the match becuase the deck was dull to play against win or lose. Either I was goldfishing or they went off and I never got a turn again. I won the game, conceded the macth and moved on to another more interesting game.
The Exodus Deck Challenge is for the Exodus release, there for it can only use cards from the Tempest Block. The restriction on Tempest and Stronghold cards is to ensure that the Exodus theme decks focus on Exodus cards. This means that cards from sets other that Tempest, Stronghold, and Exodus cannot be used.
Wizards of the Coast has not placed a restriction on the number of decks that a player can submit, though as the host for this challenge PureMTGO is free to limit the number of decks. The Challenge is split into two parts, deck building and deck naming. To have the best chance of winning the naming challenge, you would typically want to wait to see which deck wins so you can try to match the theme of the deck.
Prize eligibility for this challenge follows the normal MTGO rules.
Hope that clears things up. Have fun and good luck,
Chris
Does the Magic Online account validation part mean that if we are in a state (like Texas) where recieveing prizes is not allowed, that we cannot win the contest? I know most people click "yes" to the prize elligibility even if they are in one of those states, but will we get into trouble for winning?
Interesting topic and I, for one, am the sort of player that keeps away from 'Casual' because of the impossibility of understanding what my opponent means by Casual.
I have the knowledge and understanding that there is a person on the other end of my MTGO screen and I do respect that they are there to have fun.
I understand your groupings of cards and why people do not like to see them in 'casual' even if I don't agree that they should not be there. I think even Tier-1 stuff can be played 'casually' because any game that has no prize is by (my) definition, casual. Having said that I also understand that budget-jank.dec is always going to loose to Teir-1.dec so there is little point in playing out such a one sided match.
Partly to blame is the very fact that we are playing MTG:O. We expect to switch on the PC when we like and play a game whilst watching tv or whatever. If you had to jump in your car, drive even 10 minutes to a venue where you played MTG:P and that 2 hour slot was the only time you were going to play that week. You would see less 'emo-rage' quitting. It's all too easy to dump a game that is not going exactly how you want it to and start up the next in MTG:O.
As well as your examples above I'm sure you have also encountered these two scenarios:
Hero: Hello and Good Luck
Villain: Hello and Good luck
Hero: chooses to play first and keeps his hand
Villan: Mulligans to 6
Villan: Concedes.
Hero: Topdecks an answer and casts it.
Villan: Rants about WotC
Villan: Rants about the Shuffler
Villan: Rants about how lucky Hero is
Villan: Rants about how much of a Noob Hero is
Villan: Rants about quitting Magic for Good
Villan: Disconnects
Neither of those are based on a specific card they are just Villain not getting thier own way. I hate it, but this is the internet so it's here to stay. It does keep me well away from the casual room unless I'm tempted back there by an article or a format that looks like fun. Sadly it doesn't normally take too long for me to remember why I don't play in the casual room.
I can do that. But to clarify:
* zero "4x" slots allowed
* up to three "3x" slots allowed
* any number of 1x and 2x slots allowed
And you said two colors, one of which must be blue. But you didn't say exactly two colors. So is UBR okay?
EDIT: Is (Cartographer) legal? It's common, and from Rath Block. But not common in Rath Block.
Here's the Gatherer query that everyone wants: http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&block=|[%22Rath%20Block%22]&rarity=|[C]
This is an amazing sideboard card. Blightning Aggro will love this. Excellent.
LE
You forgot to mention something important - Mirrorweave is currently at 50 cents! I bought mine a long time ago though. But this card does so much. I've been tempted to add it to every casual deck that can cast it. (Frequently do.) This card is so much fun as an instant. During your opponent's declare attackers phase you can turn everything into a Shield Sphere. Mirrorweave on Protean Hydra (maybe you're playing tribal hydras?) is better than a one-sided Wrath because you'll also remove hard to deal with creatures like Stuffy Doll. Phantom creatures and graft creatures work, too. I like the idea of playing Mirrorweave on someone else's Royal Assassin in a multiplayer game. Also make that play during someone else's attack step, of course. How about if your opponent uses Hypergenesis/Elvish Piper/Tinker/Dramatic Entrance/Polymorph to cheat a non-Progenitus into play? Well now you get to swing with it first! (It sounds like I'm selling a household cleaner, doesn't it?)
I've played the Countryside Crusher deck a ton. I could probably write an article just on that deck. I eventually figured out that the best deck was 4x Crusher, 3x Soul's Fire, 53x lands. The sad thing is, even with all those lands you still have about a 20% chance to 'miss' (0-2 lands) with the Crusher. There are 7 non-lands in the deck after all. But more often than not you get away with it. Some opponents will "make the right play" by waiting until the last second before Incinerating the giant. So they'll wait until the upkeep triggers are on the stack, or they'll wait for you to swing before they exile it. But if they do that then he's already thinned your draw and you might be holding another giant. It's a shame that this guy rotates out when the "Landsapalooza" rotates in.
In the right context, that's definitely Classic playable. All in AdN puts Tendrils on the stack and you mess up their kill turn with them being emptied of resources. Burn might splash for this for their sideboards. Grove of the Burnwillows can trigger this at will which would be cool if you can somehow tutor for all the copies easily (or make your own). The latter is getting a bit janky, but shows potential if another piece arrives.
Plus this combos really with Sanguine Bond in Standard. With SB out, just cast two of these for 20 damage.
I've seen a concession for my "turn 1, Savannah, go". So stupid. But It's worth noting that my 4 Skullclamps have never earned me a concession. They don't look like a threat, and I myself look desperate when I start clamping my own guys for cards. The other people either don't get it, or they're civil. If they're going to concede to things like Jitte, they should concede to that too. I bet Tolarian Academy will be super popular in the casual room. No, seriously! They'll concede to Underground Sea, but they'll type "Nice deck" if you combo Tolarian Academy into Memory Jar into Time Spiral into Darksteel Collossus. (Hypothetically.) It's kind of weird. People concede strictly to LD/counters/discard/infinite combos. But those aren't the 4 most unfun or unfair things I can do to you in the casual room either. Martyr-Proc, Crucible of Worlds, and dredge all dodge the concession-sense.
Some part of the problem is that some people will always concede. You can't stop it. You might mull to 5, but they won't notice and they'll concede anyway. Personally I never concede. F6 is right there.
I support counters, LD, and discard in the casual room. LD without Sinkhole can be hard to win with. Discard isn't on everyone's concession list. The thing that bugs me about no counters is that it makes two entire classes of cards - instants and sorceries, unanswerable. So I can Terror your creature, but I'm not allowed to stop your Overrun? Why would you care if I countered your creature or Terminated it? For dealing with creatures, Terminate is strictly better for the CMC. But you can't reason with them. The crazy part is that Vindicate and Desert Twister are cool beans, but Counterspell isn't. Why?
I'm on GMT as well and I have no issues finding a game of classic tribal at the most its a five min wait.
A close friend of mine has had a rat/stone deck for a while, it's really good up until the point where you run into echoing truth, extirpate, or mass removal.
so hard to find 12 cents these days
First of all, many thanks for the comments, great to see such a wide range of views. Realistically we're not talking about issues that can be solved, but I think it's still useful to air our views / frustrations.
Secondly, yes I should have included discard, that was an oversight, it's very much another flavour of the concession pie (and that phrase is a great example of why you shouldn't write late at night whilst drunk).
I think what irks me most is the instant, no explanation quit. Whether it's at the sight of the first counter, the first Stone Rain, or having opened a suboptimal hand. If you can take the time to explain yourself ("Sorry, I've just played three counter decks on the trot and I really fancy trying something else,") then it's hard to find fault. But that petulant instant 'I don't like that card so off I go' quit is just plain rude.
Yes it takes seconds to find another game, but the irk lingers. Perhaps it's just me. The nature of the internet is that it gives many people the anonymity necessary to allow their more hostile urges to surface. Just take a look at any message board on any subject you care to name. That translates to Magic when people choose to mouth off at you, the shuffler, Wizards, or even when they just plain quit without a word.
It seems a lot of you take AJ's view, and let bygones be bygones. Realistically, that's the only workable approach, but idealistically I'd like each game to be played out in a friendly and courteous manner, whatever the cards. And I still say LD and counters are casual. LD especially because, to put it bluntly, it's 'not very good'. Yes it's irritating to not be able to play your spells, but stick it out and chances are you'll win anyway.
And I'd say the same for infinite combo. It's just a different style of game, back the rich tapestry thing I was slightly pretentiously droning on about in the article. I have a janky wither deck which includes the Devoted Druid / Quillspike combo. It's an infinite combo, well known and easily stopped. It's certainly not the main point of the deck, but ignore it and you lose. I don't have a problem with that sort of deck in the casual room, its power level is consistent with the average and the cards are legal. What more is there? (Rhetorical question)
One final thing, foils are fine obviously. I mentioned a 'foil Arcbound Ravager' as an example of an expensive card mostly because 'Arcbound Ravager' itself didn't feel expensive enough and I had a mental block so couldn't think of a better example.
Oh and finally, I love Liliana Vess. She's in my favourite mono black control deck along with Vampire Nocturnus and others. I consider it to be a casual deck.
6 days notice isn't much time to build a deck if you want it to be creative, original and not totally bad. :p
Where do you stand on Liliana Vess? (I consider her very casual but fun too)
The one thing no one mentioned here is infinite combo aka Solitare which I don't see very often myself but hear a lot about in the chat. Infinite Combo seeks to set up infinite turns/mana etc and then eventually beat you over the head until you are dead. The only danger to such a deck is specific artifact or enchantment hate or counterspells (preferably in the tier 1-2 category). Casual? I don't know. Infinitely annoying? absolutely.
I should note that what you said here has been echoed by many past voices including myself and The Ferrett. It is a topic that will ever be controversial and multifaceted. There will be occasions when I am playing someone and I just end up not having fun and I concede. Is that wrong? I don't think so. It takes moments to find an opponent. I never jump on other people's tables so people who join mine and aren't friendly sometimes get the boot. This is just how it is. Every player while having a modicum of responsibility for the fun of others is ultimately only answerable to themselves and your balete ability (Blocking people on MODO makes them unable to join your games, thankfully.) This means if you don't want to play someone again you don't have to. Which somewhat makes the whole question moot.
Now onto the subject of the metaphor (what is the meta for?) Flipping over the game board is a hostile and aggressive thing people do when they are 3. Getting up and leaving is something adults do. It is not the outcome that matters but the style in which you do it. If you are civil and considerate in your concession there should be no umbrage or outrage from the opposing side. It is not to their benefit to make their opponent unhappy either. I don't mean discomforted by losing which everyone playing a serious strategy game against intelligent people should be prepared for. I mean unhappy. I am perfectly happy to play against the most horrendous decks imaginable (including the dreaded Infinite Combo) if my opponent chats me up a bit, has a minimal sense of humor, isn't complete bore, and doesn't refuse to respond to any comments.
Interesting note, I had a conversation with another player the other day that started because he managed to stack a whole bunch of goblins on top of his 100s deck in a devastating manner while I was mana screwed.
I said: "Wow goblins, looks like you got your combo. Is there a point in continuing this?"
he said: "Huh?"
then a minute later (still waiting for him to pass priority
he said: "Oh!... Good game!" {Quit}
Never in my mind was I ready to quit myself. I just found it amusing that his whole game plan was very apparent and was inevitable. I was making light though perhaps in a sarcastic way of the fact that I had no chance. His response was a reversal. I didn't expect him to quit because I was ruining his fun. I didn't think I was.
Anyway I think this can be talked about for ages and everyone has their own take on it. Good article.
Too bad that the people playing tier 1/pure counter/pure LD/$$$$ decks are all going to continue doing whatever the hell they want anyways.The people in the casual room playing noncasual decks know what they are doing and just dont care. My solution:add em to your block list. I have blocked over 100 people this summer alone, mostly for playing tier 1 decks in casual room (glen elendra archmage into baneslayer...how fun). I also explain to people why I am doing so, in the hopes that they will be more responsible in the future.
The reality is you cannot stop children from doing what they want to do though.
guess i missed the block theme..
My personal approach is to go for a broad view. In order to accomodate everyone elses' playstyles in as concise a matter as possible, I go by the mantra, 'play what you like, concede when you want'. If someone wants to go mull, mull, concede, that's their perogative. If they want to play an all-foil pro tour deck, that's their perogative. Anyone can bring anything to the table, and anyone can get up from the table at any time.
There are a couple of things I must add:
1- Discard: Discard belongs to the same group with LD and Counters. People hate discard too. Maybe not as much as the others but they still do.
2- Planeswalkers: This is the new generation of complaints. People still haven't adjusted themselves to planeswalkers and thus they always lose to Elspeth and they don't like this. So no. No planeswalkers either.
Those two points were also important and I wanted to mention them.
I personally don't do the following in the casual room:
a) Play LD.
b) Play with more than 4 counters (and they must be soft counters such as Remand).
c) Play with more than 4 discard (oh and they shouldn't be Duress or Thoughtseize, looking at opponent's hand is bad!).
d) Play powerful planeswalkers such as Ajani Vengeant but do play Chandra Nalaar.
And I concede to:
a) Heavy LD. A few Stone Rains or Avalanche Riders are okay but an entire deck around those is boring.
b) Netdecks. I know that I can't win against Fae when I'm not playing a deck as strong as the Fae. And if I want to play against the Fae, I know where I can find them.
LE
Nice article I’ve had my fare share of complaints in my time playing in casual
A few things though bearing in mind I don’t limit myself to what cards I play in casual.
I play ME duals in classic and don’t get a single complaint but as soon as I play Bitterblossom I don’t hear the end of it sometimes the same goes for Elspeth.
The tier one decks always makes me laugh I’ve been accused of running these quite a few times in Std but I don’t read the deck list’s so I wouldn’t know what a tier one std deck looks like. Must be something do with bant decks from what I’ve been playing when people disconnect.
There’s only one type of deck I don’t play in the casual room and that’s classic decks with the potential to win on turn 1 / 2 you know other casual decks won’t stand a chance and it’s a waste of both players time, for these I stick to the tournament practice room.
The last thing I have to say is foils I like playing foils all my basic lands are foils and whenever possible I upgrade other cards to foil as well, I used to get a lot of stick for this but I’m glad to say it’s completely died down now.
Nice article, even if i don't agree 100% with you.
I think this problem will never go away and we might call it the "casual game" problem but it's not really that. It's more a "people misbehave on the internet" problem.
Let's see my profile:
- only spend about 25$ a month on boosters + tickets, so no big collection here
- have next-to-zero money cards (I never spent more than 1 ticket on a card)
- don't make/play Tier One (or Tier Two) decks
- never built a LD deck
- always have a not-that-strong standard draw-go dedicated counter deck to play once in a while
- play 99% of my MTGO games on the Casual room
- playing Magic since 1994 so I know how to build an efficient non Tier One deck with budget cards (I probably win 60%-75% of the games I play)
- always polite, I greet the opponent, make remarks about the game, etc
I shouldn't have many problems unless I was playing with my counter deck, right? Wrong.
I meet misbehaving/whining/quitting/disconnecting opponents on about 10%-20% of the games I play. The games my opponents are losing.
The way I see it, most people play for fun, but many people equal fun with winning so they misbehave when they're losing. And in internet, everyone knows, it's easy to quit or insult the opponent. So they do it, many using the "that's not casual" crutch.
PS: let's not forget complaints with discarding
Haha! That was nice.
Just for the record, I won't be playing Goblins. I like more elegant yet ruthless tribes!
LE
I agree with most of your points. I don't like seeing tier one decks in casual. I had a discussion with an opponent the other day who was playing a tier one deck. His comment was he couldn't find a game in the tournie room and he needed practice. My response was he wasn't learning anything in the casual room by beating second rate decks. I still played it out, and lost.
I also understand people's dislike of land destruction as it hinders your ability to actually play the game. I mean it is not fun at all to sit there doing nothing with no lands in play while your opponent goldfishes against you. This is also likely why people don't enjoy dedicated permission decks. While I do not concede to dedicated LD it not something I like seeing in the causal room.
As for counters I have no problem with them. My personal experience is if you are playing dedicated permission people tend to concede. But I play alot of u/x aggro control which will usually have some counters (3-6 spells) and I rarely run into concessions.
I think the bottomline is people come to the casual room to have fun playing the game they love. And most of the things that are frowned upon are things that don't let you participate in the game. LD (and to a lesser extent dedicated permission) tend to leave one person sitting there watching the other person play. As a result you get concessions.
I experienced something like this earlier in the week. I joined a match and the person was playing the Time Sieve deck combo. I don't know if this is consider tier one, but playing aginst it is dull. I told my opponent I would finish the first game but I wasn't going to play the match becuase the deck was dull to play against win or lose. Either I was goldfishing or they went off and I never got a turn again. I won the game, conceded the macth and moved on to another more interesting game.
The Exodus Deck Challenge is for the Exodus release, there for it can only use cards from the Tempest Block. The restriction on Tempest and Stronghold cards is to ensure that the Exodus theme decks focus on Exodus cards. This means that cards from sets other that Tempest, Stronghold, and Exodus cannot be used.
Wizards of the Coast has not placed a restriction on the number of decks that a player can submit, though as the host for this challenge PureMTGO is free to limit the number of decks. The Challenge is split into two parts, deck building and deck naming. To have the best chance of winning the naming challenge, you would typically want to wait to see which deck wins so you can try to match the theme of the deck.
Prize eligibility for this challenge follows the normal MTGO rules.
Hope that clears things up. Have fun and good luck,
Chris
Saturday week might be possible. I have my weekly online D&D scheduled for 4:30 Eastern, but that should be enough for a 0-2 drop.
Does the Magic Online account validation part mean that if we are in a state (like Texas) where recieveing prizes is not allowed, that we cannot win the contest? I know most people click "yes" to the prize elligibility even if they are in one of those states, but will we get into trouble for winning?
My basic guideline is 'play what you want, concede when you like'. Even a bad tribe can win with good support cards and skilful piloting.
Interesting topic and I, for one, am the sort of player that keeps away from 'Casual' because of the impossibility of understanding what my opponent means by Casual.
I have the knowledge and understanding that there is a person on the other end of my MTGO screen and I do respect that they are there to have fun.
I understand your groupings of cards and why people do not like to see them in 'casual' even if I don't agree that they should not be there. I think even Tier-1 stuff can be played 'casually' because any game that has no prize is by (my) definition, casual. Having said that I also understand that budget-jank.dec is always going to loose to Teir-1.dec so there is little point in playing out such a one sided match.
Partly to blame is the very fact that we are playing MTG:O. We expect to switch on the PC when we like and play a game whilst watching tv or whatever. If you had to jump in your car, drive even 10 minutes to a venue where you played MTG:P and that 2 hour slot was the only time you were going to play that week. You would see less 'emo-rage' quitting. It's all too easy to dump a game that is not going exactly how you want it to and start up the next in MTG:O.
As well as your examples above I'm sure you have also encountered these two scenarios:
Hero: Hello and Good Luck
Villain: Hello and Good luck
Hero: chooses to play first and keeps his hand
Villan: Mulligans to 6
Villan: Concedes.
Hero: Topdecks an answer and casts it.
Villan: Rants about WotC
Villan: Rants about the Shuffler
Villan: Rants about how lucky Hero is
Villan: Rants about how much of a Noob Hero is
Villan: Rants about quitting Magic for Good
Villan: Disconnects
Neither of those are based on a specific card they are just Villain not getting thier own way. I hate it, but this is the internet so it's here to stay. It does keep me well away from the casual room unless I'm tempted back there by an article or a format that looks like fun. Sadly it doesn't normally take too long for me to remember why I don't play in the casual room.