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Following my latest Shifting Lineaments article, I received some good responses (from one person in particular). I felt inspired by him, and so I have decided to dedicate my next three articles to him; Amadeus. Don’t feel slighted other guys, you too can read if you want. I think I’d like it if you did, but most importantly, I’d like to repay Amadeus's dedication to reading my ramblings with a couple of articles directly up his alley. This article will be dedicated to my proposal to you for playing true Casual online, and not just playing Standard with a couple of older cards mixed in.
Magic Deck Vortex has been the casual player’s domain for as long as I can remember. In my mind, a Casual player would be defined as someone who does not go to tournaments, but does like to play Magic; and all of the cards that they own. While normally, a Casual player will abide by the Vintage Restricted and Banned lists, they seem to really have their feathers ruffled by Block Rotation, which is why they don’t very much care about the Standard or Extended Formats, since they don’t like the cards that they bought not being playable. This gets a little fuzzy once you turn this into an online aspect, mainly because we Casual players typically only play on Magic Workstation or Apprentice, and in either case, we have access to every card ever created. This simply is not in the flavor of Casual play, as you know for a fact that you would never see a Mox played by your buddy while playing around the dinner table. He simply cannot afford to pay the hard-earned cash to buy one, let alone play with it. A while back, I was developing this idea while working on a Magic Arena League for the MDV website. My main focus was to try and make the Casual Format as truly casual as possible. This became a problem when discussing it with my clan mates, as they had different ideas as to what Casual play should look like. However, there were a few fundamentals that we agreed on:
That is about it. From there, we all had some wild ideas, and while their ideas are not important right now, mine are, as I am writing the article. Sorry guys… I almost had this part of the format sold to them, as it made sense in all aspects, but they were hesitant, as I believe that they wanted the normal more than the alternate. I am talking about reducing the maximum card copy count from four to three. What this does is totally alter your deck construction. Normally, you could play only nine different spells and a compliment of lands and have great chances of drawing into your needed spells (9 x 4 = 36 spells, 36 spells + 24 lands = 60 cards). By reducing this count to three, now to get 36 spells, you need a minimum of 12 different spells. This also makes the likelihood of copy deck not as high. With the standard four-of rule, you could change a Shock to a Volcanic Hammer and claim it different, but with more spell slots, you are more likely to change out more of those slots, leading to more diverse decks.
Casual decks probably should not be casting Dragonstorm to get four Bogardain Hellkites, nor should they be casting Upheaval and playing a Psychatog then telling you to go. A Casual deck would not be playing every single artifact land then casting Broodstar with Lightning Greaves, and for heaven’s sake it would not be playing those crazy Skullclamp affinity variants!! What is different about my abuse versus these abuses? The fact that my combo took about twenty turns to set up and the opponent had all night long to break it up. Certainly, when I was set up they could not break it off, but Dragonstorming on turn four is not fun in Casual play if you win then and there. That is not to say that the Format should handcuff people, because I believe that breeds sissification of players. I don’t think that instating a personal Worship on players to keep them alive for so many turns is needed, but a Sportsman type of self-control is in order. If your combo goes off before say turn five, and you kill or cripple your opponent, try toning it down. Give them a chance to put up a defense or disrupt you. You can certainly Dragonstorm on turn four, but how about searching for Nicol Bolas or a Crimson Hellkite? Feel free to play Affinity, but leave Skullclamp in your binder, or burn it, whichever best suits you. Regarding the Restricted list, I have always loved playing with a Restricted list. Back in the beginning, even Standard had one. Cards like Land Tax, Balance, and Black Vice were way too powerful, and so they were restricted. Those cards make playing fun. However, some cards are just not fun in a practical sense. I have developed a list of cards that I think should be on the banned list for Casual play:
These cards are all found on the current Restricted List with a few exceptions where they would never be able to be acquired by Casual players, such as Mana Drain. I think these cards would most likely be too strong and/or not easily attainable anyways, thus should be removed from play. Further, since I already explained why I love Restricted lists, I would like to share my Restricted List:
In addition to the above lists, I have instated a Seasonal Banned List. What exactly is the Seasonal Banned List? It is a list of ten cards that are temporarily banned for no particular reason other than to shake up the environment. In week one you could see this list:
…and then the following month brings a list that looks like this:
The list is also used to black line a certain card that seems to be being over played at a given time and force players into being creative again instead of being stuck in a rut. Sure, this list may seem to get a little tedious, as you must keep up with which cards are black lined at the given time, but it does keep players in the loop by making them continue communicating with each other to keep tabs on the current list. And how do you determine what the current list is? You simply have each person in your group nominate a group of cards. Each player then gets a list of all the nominated cards, and the top ten cards voted for get black lined for a month. A lot of players seem to sometimes forget that there are thousands of different cards to make your decks from. This list helps remind them of that by picking off a strong card in their deck and making them choose a suitable replacement. Note that these custom rules really only work if you have a dedicated group of people that you play with, such as clan mates or school friends; you can’t exactly hope that a random guy on MWS is going to abide by your rules. This concludes this edition of Shifting Lineaments. Tune in next time when I continue my look at the Casual Format, and focus on a little overlooked aspect of Casual play: Metagaming. Signing off.. cpn
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The
next thing that we talked about was the Restricted and Banned List. This also
ties in closely with the Sportsmanship of Casual play. There really is no way to
enforce a Restricted list at your buddies house. If he did show up and plop a
Lotus and Mox on the table before you had a turn, you could complain, but most
likely he’d just tell you to shut up. For years, Casual players have policed
themselves and have played the Sportsmanship way, which is not abusing broken
cards. Don’t get me wrong, I am infamous for getting people locked up in a
Browse/Digger lock and recurring Balance, Disenchant, Counterspell, and Jester’s
Cap. I am not talking about that. I think that is plain old good fun. What I am
talking about is when someone sacrifices a Memory Jar, draws up another Memory
Jar, discards a spare card to untap Library of Alexandra via Mind over Matter,
casts the second Jar, sacrifices it, and gets another in the next hand,
repeating this until all four Jars have been played. Somewhere along the lines
they have Mana Shorted you and cast a Megrim. They then end their turn, and
force you to discard seven cards four times, doing 56 points of damage to you.
That is what I am talking about.
Ante
and Flip Cards
Aether
Vial