I’m posting this here primarily as I don’t really know where to contact you guys directly. I just wanted to let you know that I’m 48, I’ve never contributed to a patron, I’ve never played cedh, and I’ve never played via online with a camera (spelltable and the like), but soon (next month or so) I will be, your channel inspired me, and I’ve watched a hell of a lot of content over the past six or so years. Keep up what you’re doing. People listen.
Kyle I just wanted to say, I became a huge fan since the Take 5 joke on the “I hate your deck” episode. you’re by far the most entertaining player out there’
If I've never seen a combo before, I will ask to see it played out 1. Because I think learning new combos is interesting and 2. The person performing the combo may want to actually go through the steps and explain what the combo is (has happened quite a few times), but after that, I'm conceding to save time
@@Dracomandriuthus I think people are pretty fine with whatever they're able to match. If someone has one-sided mld and nobody else is ready for or able to fight it, then it may not be a fair game
Remember, just because it's call Play to Win doesn't mean it has to be competitive. It's a nice refresher to see casual talk from a channel that doesn't seem so commercialized!
Wort players represent! I started it as a budget list but fell in love with what Natural Order can do such as cheating out Nyxbloom and Regal Force (or Avenger of Zendikar) for 4 mana
I totally agree with Casual EDH being so important to just consistently hit land drops. In decks where I have lots of other low drops to play (merfolk, party time, 3cc commander) I pretty much cut all ramp outside of sol ring and run 40-43 lands. Even with a lower curve its so useful to recast commander or double spell in the late game. As far as danger of flooding, you kind of have to run a lot of card advantage in commander as a multiplayer format anyways. So it can get you out of the flood. And if you arent flooded, its still good to get more land drops so you can play more of the cards you draw.
Love hearing your casual thoughts and seeing casual games. I think you both have a super fun and healthy mindset on casual because you get the sweatiness out in CEDH!
YAY casual! I watch CEDH content, but only play casual, so I love this stuff! Also.... I may have just put Obliterate into my casual Lord Windgrace deck, but my justification is that it doesn't kill my commander, and I can immediately reanimate 2 lands from my graveyard with him, so its VERY much breaking parity and moving my gameplan along
The very first game of Commander I ever won was partially due to Jokulhaups (obliterate but counterable for 2 less mana, for those unaware) in my Neera Chaos deck. I had ramped off my opponents' spells with the wand from baldur's gate so I had enough to follow with Delina and the blue Braids, and I ended up getting better things to put down off braids than my opponents (namely bubbling beebles while the two remaining opponents had enchantments, and a hulking metamorph that won by copying beebles while they both had 9 life left) The main reason I cast it was one of the players was on Kenrith. With over 30 lands out. And 30 more life than the next highest total. And Kenrith already had like 10 commander tax. He would've won the game if not for the Jokulhaups and jt taught me that the nuclear option is sometimes necessary - if one player has almost every land in their deck out and no one else is above like, 9, by all accounts you've broken parity by putting rampy mcgee so far behind everyone else he can't recover, even with blue braids out
Replying in case y'all haven't found it. You can look at their linktree for decklists in the description. They have a section for their casual decks to find the lists. (Been 2 months but should be the same mostly)
The problem with a lot of the land destruction cards in my opinion is that players don't know when to play them 90% of the time and the just drag the game out for like hours longer than it needs.
I don't mind mld if I'm in a fair matchup. If people can't play through it, answer it, or do something equally strong... it's probably an unfair fight which will create salt
Agreed. I just built a Thalia and the Gitrog Monster deck with landfall and land destruction. The first game I nuked the lands and lost so fast. I’ve learned to save it for the round when I can get 5-6 lands back and win right after the land wipe.
Hey Dylan, I have taken out all my ramp from my Wilhelt zombies deck. I think you are right, I want more zombies and stuff that revolves around the theme rather than having ramp with no zombies in play. I think some decks do not need ramp and my build is one of them. Wilhelt wants sac fodder and zombies so I can create more zombies, draw cards, kill stuff, drain life, reanimate them, etc. You should definitely try it out!!
I really value your opinions on casual, you bring a unique perspective to this discussion! I've also been trying to take inspiration from 60 card formats into my edh deckbuilding.
As a casual Commander player who does not play cEDH, I really appreciate your perspective on casual play. While I personally think Thoracle and infinite loops should be out of bounds for casual decks, I can see your point in evaluating case by case how well they may fit a deck's theme and power level. One thing I was surprised to see was the absence of Rhystic Study from the top ten salty list. It's public enemy number one in my book, and I think the cavalier way it gets auto-included in Blue decks fully justifies responding with Notion Thief in self defense.
I think for non cedh, anything is fair game as long as the game is matched. Mindset and deck-wise. If I'm sitting down for a social durdle and one person is cutthroating the table or my frog tribal is against thoracle control, it's gonna suck!
Love hearing you guys talk about casual Commander, you both have a really solid philosophy for playing at casual levels which no doubt comes from having the separation of mindset in cEDH - I think 2024 is the year I put together a cEDH list myself but there's not many players at that level at my LGS so I haven't taken the leap yet!
ABSOLUTELY LOVE how hyped are you two talking about your casual commanders deck... Is very uplifting. Thanks! P.S: Yeah, all basic lands should be full art lands.... We are not in 1998 anymore.
Also: I am once again asking for a banlist review podcast. I'd love to hear yall's thoughts on what on the banlist you'd like to see be unbanned and thoughts on if anything should be banned that isn't (especially from the CEDH perspective).
This episode really jived with how I’ve felt about casual lately, I’ve got a casual taiyam deck that was getting a little too competitive with tutors and stuff that I’ve decided to take out in place of just fun synergistic cards, but also just have a combo that takes 3 cards to assemble in case the game goes way too long, because that’s a thing my playgroup has established is okay
In regards to the basics, I agree - either I try to use a bunch of different basics that i just enjoy, or match them to the deck I'm building a sultai Skeletons deck and all the basics are the Midnight Hunt bundle non-fullart basics, because they all have skulls in them. Unfortunately this means I need thr borderless shocks from ravnica remastered, because overgrown tomb has skeletons in its art as well and i do want those to match Casual decks are most fun when you've built around a very specific aesthetic theme - the most fun I've had building a deck was my Athreos Shroud-Veiled Elden Ring themed deck.
I think your guys’ opinion on casual is extremely valuable. Operating at the top a lot of the time can give you insights on the more casual formats that other people tend to not realize when they jam stuff like thoracle or food chain lines in a deck, and having such a good and healthy position in both the local communities alongside other big online content communities shows a sincerity to your opinions that I don’t often see with other content creators tl;dr, your vibes are great and any format you discuss would be healthy as a result
Only playing edh once in a blue moon or playing brawl at home i find myself in the same boat with wanting to win but keeping it casual. Love your guys' content, i aspire to make a cedh deck and join the scene when i get the pieces. In the meantime i love brainstorming my dice rolling theme deck, making it as powerful as it can be without all the tutors, fetch lands, and infinite loops.
I have an esper land destruction deck with Alela, Artful Provocateur with the idea being that I get rewarded for playing mana rocks in the form of faeries that produce a real boardstate and a real clock, and blowing people's lands is a wincon/tempo play that doesn't reset me. But I can basically never play it, and it has been shelved for a long time now. Which brings me up to my point and a point that I believe PleasantKenobi brought at some point; if these cards (arma, RoW, land destruction period) are "soft banned" and frowned upon but 100% legal according to the rule book, what are we doing? Either ban them completely or play them the way they're supposed to be played and accept that in the correct circumstances, it's the way some decks win. But having an "official" banlist and an imaginary one that requires 4 hours of rule 0 conversation is just poor game design in my mind.
I think you make a great point about casting Armageddon when you have Avacyn out and are using it as a finisher while you're smacking people with big angels. A lot of these salty cards come down to pertaining to the same, and the biggest, problem in casual EDH: They make the game go longer. I urge all casual players to build their decks to prioritize progressing the game rather than stopping people from doing stuff. I'm not saying you shouldn't run removal or symmetrical board wipes, but certainly consider going down on the latter. Sometimes you really should just let the person with the sickest board win and go to the next game. As an example, you could replace Ghostly Prison-effects with goad cards. They accomplish the same thing: Your opponents will have a harder time swinging at you - but one makes life totals drop and the other hinders people from attacking, which also means they will have more blockers up so other players can't attack them effectively either.
Ehat are your thoughts on Thassas Oracle being used as a value card in a noncedh version of Azami wizards deck? Yes the deck runs mind over matter combo but the main wincons are lab man and jace. Deck runs 34 total wizards and only mana rocks being sol ring, arcane signet, sapphire diamond and thought vessel.
hehe, Avacyn/Armageddon is one of my favourite MtG memories. I was on 5C spell slinger with OG Narset in play and bounced Avacyn in response to the Armageddon.
You guys are by far the best mtg youtube channel/content creators out there right now. I have an imoti deck that people get salty to, but every time i cast an expropriate or a vorinclex i rather promptly win the game. Im also a jund cedh player so i might be a bit biased towards you guys but whatever jund is awesome.
My pet deck is a newer Commander pair from the Dr. Who set, Sixth Doctor and Romana II. The theme is Historic Permanents, just cards that you would love to have multiples of. It's not a popular pairing, but it does some strong stuff. Elesh Norns, Grand Arbiters and the like.
If your doing like a casual wort tokens deck you can play cards like massive raid (I think there's a 1 mana version). There's a ritual that let's you add a red for each creature you control also.
Just a little thing about what you said, gruul storm IS actually a pretty competitive deck in Historic on MTGA and partly in Modern/Timeless as well! Abusing Goblin Anarchomancer and Birgi as a sort of Legacy Ruby Storm to make all your Reckless Impulses 0 mana draw 2 and eventually winning with Underworld Breach. The gruul is still mostly a splash for Anarchomancer, Questing Druid, and Abundant Harvest, but it's an important one!
Hell yeah, casual can be so much fun and some of those decks sound like a hell of a good time! Happy to see some love for casual, since I'm not playing cedh currently even though watching you for over a year really makes me want to.
I legit have a story where my friend cast a copied Expropriate with the one on the stack and we all thought we were dead and were interested in what he was going to do to kill us so we all gave him 8 extra turns. After his 8th extra turn, he passed and we all got another rotation and then he killed us on his 9th turn. He was playing Krark/Thrasios and couldn't find his out turn after turn.
I took all of my tutors out of my primary casual commander deck (Marchesa, tBR) to help power it down for more chill games, but I chose to leave in the Mikaeus + Triskelion combo, because sometimes a game just has to end. 😂 Without tutors, if I get both cards in hand, it’s time to pack it up. Your Rooftop Storm chat made me feel validated in this choice.
With my edgar deck, I did the Vampire go wide smash I found using alot of effects like Impact Tremors or Purphoros to hit life totals. Also Throne of God pharaoh works well to kill off life totals. My group hates it when I pull eddie out to play
Would love to hear your guys' take on Sam Black's methodology for building casual commander; less rocks and more lands. Basically the idea is more about consistency with hitting your land drops rather than ramping ahead and getting blown out first. I've taken some decks and started running 43 lands and few to no rocks and it just feels so good to always be hitting my land drops and never get blown out by a wayward vandalblast or rec sage
I think it depends greatly, in my pod we avoid board wipes to the games don't drag on, so ramp is safe. I'm aiming for a value engine over wincon anyway so I'll hit my 36 lands too
Yay casual decks! Your points about ramp are really interesting, I’ll have to think about that for my decks. You touched on voltron a little bit when talking about Aragorn - what are your thoughts on it in casual EDH? It doesn’t really show up in cEDH besides some Jeska/Ishai lists, so curious if you enjoy that playstyle from your own decks or your opponents.
Acererak the Archlich and rooftop storms is a 2 card zombie combo I know you werent looking for combos that small, but it does exist. You could complete his dungeon and get the attack triggers.
My playgroup has a cool rule 0 for randoms joining our pod in the shop, generally its a replacement rule we have for cards we dont allow, lets say for winter orb, instead of letting the owner of it switch it out from their deck, we just say that its a grim monolith instead and have a paper for them to remember on the side, same things apply for other cards as well, at least those players dont have to switch decks or find a different pod instead
I have Thasa's Oracle in a deck with hermit druid, but all the lands are nonbasic tapped lands so its a slow build and my causal group is okay with it. so thats also an option. I'm a combo player and I'm always looking for fun combo and seeing how I can make it causal. Funniest one was turning all lands into 2/2s and wiping with massacre wurm basically winning the game.
Dylan, re your G&G deck - I know it's a casual deck, but it's worth noting that Phyrexian Altar + Repository Skaab + Zombie Apocalypse is a game ending death loop. Obviously it's a casual deck, and you don't wanna necessarily build around combo, but you can make use of all of those pieces, so it might well be worth baking it in there. It's one I built into Varina at the suggestion of a fellow brewer and it's been very worth it.
Obliterate is in my Lord Windgrace Deck, most people just scoop but it is part of how I win the game, as I can rebuild my land state quickly. But we're talking high-power level as well.
As a casual player, I like your perspective on casual. I also agree with most of what you guys say. I'm on year 11 of playing EDH and I think a lot of the issues your talked about self correcting/policing make sense and I agree with.
Cam, if you're not playing Storm King's Thunder in your Wort deck, you HAVE to try it 😂 Also I disagree on the Obliterate bit just a little- as long as an opponent is presenting an overwhelming boardstate prior to Obliterating (as they *should* do), then I'm totally cool with scooping it up. It's when some ding-dong without a snowball's chance in hell of winning decides to Obliterate into a board where everyone has dumped all of their resources into play and thus stalls the entire game by another hour that I get particularly pissed off in a casual game. At some point, you should know not to play a card if you don't understand how to play it or when the most opportune time is to play it. Just hold the damn thing unless the whole table is okay with an enormous disruption in the game OR you are holding up Boros Charm or Avacyn is in play or something. Also, 100% of all the issues with banned cards would be totally fixed if the banlist *were not* considered as guidelines, but in fact, were designed for the purpose of a balanced format instead of a "fun experience" because "fun" is an entirely subjective metric, but "balanced" is equitably fair to all players.
This Wort deck sounds awesome, I like janky strategies like this. funny enough, mono green storm with that Ooze commander is quite powerful in casual commander. I would love to see some sort of deck list. 15:50 rooftop storm + Acerak the arch lich = infinite enter the dungeon triggers so long as you don't choose toom of annihilation, luckily, lost mine of Phandelver kills the table as one of the rooms says "each opponent loses 1 life". but I can see why a casual table is not ok with a 2 card infinite combo. I have this is my Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver zombie deck, but I always tell people it's in there and if they aren't ok with it, I'll play something else. another fun combo with my commander is this: Willhelt the Rotcleaver + Poppet factory (the back side of poppet stitcher) + Grave crawler + phyrexian altar, so like, 4 card combo that makes infinite 3/3 zombies
On the topic of the banlist, I think it works for people with regular healthy playgroups as y’all described, but there’s so many people out there with large LGS’s, or friends that are dicks in their playgroup, or almost anyone at a convention, and the banlist fails to provide in those situations. Doesn’t always mean that it won’t work out anyways, but it often does, and we often don’t hear those stories because the players it failed might just stop playing.
Hey Dylan, you should use the Swamp from Seb McKinnon's Secret Lair, its more of a Knight/Zombie, but it would fitt the theme and would match the border/frame of the Island you chose for Gisa&Geralf!
Rem karolus stalwart slayer is really good with earthquake and red sweepers dill. Don't know if it fits your theme but definitely worth looking at I think.
If a deck features a crapton of ramp, and doesn't care especially about hitting land drops you can run way more ramp effects and just stay mid 30s for land count, my Gruul Eldrazi deck sits at 36, including a Temple of the False God (it runs lots of land ramp effects), keep in mind stuff like Kessig Wolf Run are lands that can just take over games. Are you on Crescendo of War in Jeskai Aragorn? It's a pretty neat-o effect if you think you'll be hard to block, if it goes around a few times the game goes absolutely nuts. I for one enjoy a good Static Orb deck, I have two of them myself, Boros Weenies/Wipes and Dimir Discard/Rack. I don't play them without discussion obviously, but neither is a cEDH deck (I use Stasis in cEDH, which is way more fun). I think a variety of decks can include some 'anti-social' options for when people want to play a 'dirty' game. To me if a person can set up a Stax/Discard/Rack engine deck that just wastes people's time taking forever to finish an inevitable win during which the opponent struggles to do anything while losing life, then they've earned it just like the guy who floods the board. Rack is worse than Edgar Vampires, but Edgar tends to warp metas until everyone runs +5 wipes to 'handle' him.
38:00 I love that someone that's respected in the the space says this. I feel like too many players think that an experience that is "not competitive" is necessarily "collaborative" and that is just not true. My decks may not be built for 100% efficiency and winrate, but once the 7 cards have been drawn, I'm gonna try to win. Yes, sometimes I'll do a suboptimal play because I think it'll be cool or fun, but by and large I'm trying to win. And a lot of people are under the impression that "Trying to win" and "Having fun" are somehow mutually exclusive, but MtG is an inherently adversarial game, the whole point is trying to beat your opponent while stopping them from beating you. In my perspective, playing MtG but "Not trying to win" is kind of like playing basketball but not dribbling. You can do it, sure, but why play basketball then? Why not play something else? I've had bad experiences while playing decks with quite a bit of removal/control (Particularly a Yorion blink deck with lots of ways to control the board) of people literally yelling at me and calling me names for it, because I'm "Not letting the others play". Not to mention when Agent of Treachery/Lavinia of the Tenth hit the board. In one particular instance I'll never forget, a 5c Slivers player who Mana Crypted on 1(!) got ultra pissed at me for playing Lavinia, saying that I just shut down their whole deck and I was an asshole for even putting in the card. These days I don't play that deck a lot even though it's my first one and one of my favourites because of that. In a less complaining vein, I love the way Dylan talks about "solving the puzzle" and his deckbuilding philosophy. It's exactly the way I've been building my decks. In CEDH you would absolutely play a deck that wins 50% of games and does literally nothing the other 50%, but in casual I'd much rather win 10% of games but impact the game one way or another in 95% of games. That's why I like to make my deck streamlined, lots of card draw, especially if I can get it incidentally, and not building decks that are too reliant on commanders. For example when I built Yorion I was considering Brago instead, but building Brago would mean less flicker spell, more payoffs and protections to take full advantage, and would've gotten blown out if Brago got removed a couple of times. I've won games with Yorion without ever casting my commander. When I built a Simic Stompy deck, instead of putting a value piece or a haymaker in the command zone, I put Troyan, Gutsy Explorer. This makes my ramp extremely reliable and I can play one of the tens of haymakers in my 99, with lots of incidental and/or big card draw in the mix.
I agree it's dumb for a mana crypt 5 colour sliver deck to complain you're doing strong things. But I also feel that playing to win, using a competitive mindset in a non cedh game, is a particular experience. I have a lot of well made and interactive decks but I put the social aspect above winning. If everyone can have fun and get running I've achieved my goals for that game, which is another particular experience. The issues arise either when games feel unfair (eg. obliterate or combo against decks that aren't matched for it) or when player mindsets clash mid game (eg. taking out the player who's struggling because they're an easy attack).
@@seanedgar164 But you see, you're doing it too. Why is "Trying to win" anthithetical to "everyone having fun" for you? To me, trying to not lose when someone else is in a commanding position is as fun if not more than me winning or even "Doing my thing", and I'd feel slighted if people just gave me resources for free or just didn't win because it "Wouldn't be fun". A very big part of MtG is the battle of wits, if I just wanted to see cool combos we could just take turns goldfishing our decks. One of the worst games I've ever had was again someone playing some commander that allowed them to constantly reshuffle and draw their hand and they managed to land a Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim and keep it defended for enough that it became unfeasible to remove it. With the tokens constantly growing, he refused to ult Teferi because "Then it's mass land removal and that's bad because you don't get to play" and just basically kept durdling until they stumbled, rather forcibly it felt, onto a win. That game could've been over 10 turns earlier, but the "Everyone's got to do their thing or it wasn't a good game" mentality kept it going far beyond the expiration date. Me personally, I've seen far more games turned unfun by durdling and "Collaborative" behaviour than by overly cutthroat behavior, by a rate of 20 to 1 at least. As Dylan says, at the end of the day it's not my responsibility to make you do your thing, part of the game is deckbuilding, and if the deck you built is bad and so the game is a nongame, that happens, get back on moxfield and fix it for the next round And yes, sometimes you get a shit draw. Sometimes you miss land drops for 4 turns in a row. Sometimes you draw 6 lands in a row. That's the game. You shuffle up and go next. And sometimes you instead pull a win out of your ass. But those memorable moments don't happen if the players just help eachother and kumbaya it. The best win I've ever had was a game where I was basically out for like 7 turns and then managed to Mnemonic Deluge a Windfall and mill out all 3 oppos at the same time. To put it another way, when I play Poker with my buddies for fun, we're not sweating it, counting cards, running through the probabilities and stuff. We mess around, we go hard on mediocre hands for the meme, and generally don't take it too seriously. But what we DON'T do, is playing with the cards revealed or give other players our chips or just bet without looking at the cards; because, while we might not be taking it too serious, we still want to, y'know, actually play POKER. MtG is at the end of the day an adversarial game, why go so hard against the design? If you want to have a collaborative experience, why not play something that's built for it? Re: targeting the struggling player, even if you're playing very cutthroat you don't target a player that's clearly much weaker than the rest of the pod. Why waste resources fighting someone who's not a threat? On the reverse, if I have a beneficial effect that must target an opponent, I'm going to send it to the player who will do the least with it aka: the weakest. That already tends to smooth out a lot of variance in my experience. But with that said, I'm also not going to go TOO out of my way to leave them alone. After all, I'm gonna have to get your hp to 0 at some point, might as well get started if it's not too expensive for me. Just the other day someone got a bit miffed that I kept attacking with some tokens that couldn't block while they were behind and wide open. But hey, I'm not gonna waste those attacks!
Casual is a huge wild jungle island , if you venture outside your regular group - you never know what you might run into. Prob a Rhystic Study in a Wizard tribal deck tho
I have that zombie secret lair land it's the only non full art in my CEDH ayara ,(mono black) deck but it's also the artist proof I got signed at a pre release I went to by the artist. Maybe someday I'll see you guys at an event and play some with it.
Personally as a high powered casual player all of your points are funny to me because EDH is all about having a good time with friends imo, and learning to build and play a deck in a way that has both a solid path to victory and doesn't prevent your opponents from doing their thing has always been the goal to me. It's a hard balance but with the right mindset you can almost always guarantee that the whole table will have a good time regardless of winning or losing. Also it's important to remember that even in casual, there has to be a winner and 3 losers so it's best to make sure everybody understands this before sitting down
100%, my thing is that if both the decks and the playstyles are matched, you'll be ok. My frog tribal vs thoracle or a social durdle vs fast cutthroat are going to suck because it's an unbalanced experience.
i feel like for normal edh i dont see why you still cant play to win. your each even if it has a theme should still have a few win cons. of course talk with your table or if you are playing with a group of friends make your own rules for what can be in a deck or if you allow like otk's but as long as eveyone is having fun and is able to play reg edh is hell fun. i love my lotr watcher of the water draw on other peoples turns. but i have one combo that wins me the gaem if i pull it off but also takes 20 mana and 5 cards and has to be on someone else turn. technically its an otk but i need all the pieces on board. i love reg edh more the cedh just for friend groups for the most part but playing fast and a lot of games is alwasy more fun imo
I played armageddon and cataclysm in my bruna deck. If I can get my 6 mana beater loaded up with enchantments and essentially unanswerable, I can play those cards to fully end the game. I may need to swing 2-3 times per person, but nobody is climbing back after getting their lands removed. It's a card to say "you can pick your cards up and we can move on to the next game." It's not a game extender, it is an ender.
I'm such a fan of $50 casual decks. It's the only way I wanna brew and play casual now. The price limit really incentivizes playing cards you don't usually see-and helps you stick to a theme while you design your deck. Can't recommend it enough! (And that Tivit brew is now dismantled, lol.)
Haven't seen the Wort list, but just in case thought I'd mention Battle Hymn and Burn at the Stake. 2 slightly unconventional storm cards that are just dumb fun.
I'd be interested to see the Wort list - I built her ages ago and she's pretty fun but I need to update the list as I haven't touched the deck in probably 12 months.
Cam, I agree with the putting full art basics in every pack but I do not think they will ever do it since having plain frame basics creates a "chase" or "scarcity" for the full arts which keeps them special and provides a secondary market.
Ngl, I'd totally run Obliterate in a Planeswalker deck. My problem with land destruction and staxy cards is when people just throw them in a deck and don't have a way to win through it/break parity.
I happily play thoracle in casual. HOWEVER, I don't pair it with cards like consultation. I have a sultai self mill deck. Lab man/thoracle/jace are my backup win cons if I haven't reanimated enough. I am milling myself the hard way and I can do it very fast at times (mesmeric orb for example, or traumatize). I'm not winning on like turn 3, it's closer to turn 12 after a long game.
My absolute favorite casual deck is Arwen weaver of hope. The deck is around $100 bucks, but it is SOOOOOO fun, because you can play like 5 pump spells into legolas’ quick reflexes and make like 20 20/20s. Is it slightly jank? Maybe. Is it good? Definitely. Is it fun? YES
I think it’s still fun to play to win in casual. Yes, I like using my theme to win but I also like using the best cards to do that. Personally, I also don’t use these salty cards or cedh staples because i don’t think it’s fun. This doesn’t mean I would stop anyone either. I would expect them to run the best cards of their theme deck as well interaction for their opponents. If you run salty cards I think it just needs to be mentioned for everyone’s sanity.
Thoughts on stax effects in casual?? For example i run Mists of Stagnation in my Taigam Sidisi's Hand deck because it fits the theme of me exiling my opponents graveyards but people still dont think its casual no matter how much work needs to go into making that card do its thing
I run thassas oracle in my Queza Augur of agonies deck. The main goal is to ping people down with life gain and drain abilities and using litches mastery to kill the table with Queza out. Thassa let's me have a chance at winning for decks that gain so much life I can't kill them by drawing my deck. Played three games of EDH yesterday and two people gained infinite life in the first game and one person gained infinite life in the third game. I could replace thassa with a package to loop my graveyard to keep drawing my deck or just cast Thassa Oracle and then shuffle up for the next game. Not the main wincon just a backup in case others are comboing to the point where I can't win.
Ive gotten to where i grab the full art basic from whatever plane my commander is from. Almost have all of them printed. Just waiting for lorwyn full arts
Exactly right, I'm fine with whatever I feel I'm able to match, unfair fights suck. You'll cultivate a better experience as a group than the list, but for pickup and lgs games there has to be a reasonable baseline.
@playtowin Hey Dillon, if you like boros blink, try feather the redeemed. It's great boros control deck and uses blink to create advantage and interaction. I'll post a link to my list if you wanna take a look
Most of my decks only run like 33-35 lands. Any more than that and I start to worry about having enough cards to do what my deck wants to do, while also having enough interaction. My only decks with more than that have lands matter cards/themes. Also I agree with Cam on full art lands. NO reason to not have full arts with them. They arent chased like they used to be, it just feels bad when they aren't full arts
I'm only a casual player and I agree pretty heavily with the philosophy on casual decks. You should always work towards a theme and not just play the best stuff in the game. Sometimes high quality cards are in that theme, and that's okay and should be the case. I've built decks that are ridiculously powerful because every individual card stays on theme as much as possible, at least in comparison to what some other people were doing
I play a shorikai alt win cons deck, and I’ve gone back and forth about putting thassa’s oracle in the deck. It tries to win with things like halo fountain and triskaidekaphile, there’s no infinites or ways to automatically clear my whole deck, but that deck draws a ton of cards and I’ve definitely decked myself before. Does that feel like an acceptable place for a casual thassa’s oracle?
I’m posting this here primarily as I don’t really know where to contact you guys directly. I just wanted to let you know that I’m 48, I’ve never contributed to a patron, I’ve never played cedh, and I’ve never played via online with a camera (spelltable and the like), but soon (next month or so) I will be, your channel inspired me, and I’ve watched a hell of a lot of content over the past six or so years. Keep up what you’re doing. People listen.
Cam’s response from discord (we showed them your comment): “Thank you for sharing, that means a hell of a lot”
This is amazing! Good luck mate
Hey, you're a real one. Best of luck on your journey man!
@@RINNECODA 🍷🗿
I hope you will have so much fun!
Oh I concede all the time. Rather have my time than a slow death. Oh and Armageddon Avacyn was my first EDH deck ever.
Kyle I just wanted to say, I became a huge fan since the Take 5 joke on the “I hate your deck” episode. you’re by far the most entertaining player out there’
If I've never seen a combo before, I will ask to see it played out 1. Because I think learning new combos is interesting and 2. The person performing the combo may want to actually go through the steps and explain what the combo is (has happened quite a few times), but after that, I'm conceding to save time
Concessions are perfectly fine.
Also respect for the geddon angle.
I wish that casual was more okay with disruption.
@@Dracomandriuthus I think people are pretty fine with whatever they're able to match. If someone has one-sided mld and nobody else is ready for or able to fight it, then it may not be a fair game
love your stuff
Remember, just because it's call Play to Win doesn't mean it has to be competitive. It's a nice refresher to see casual talk from a channel that doesn't seem so commercialized!
Wort players represent! I started it as a budget list but fell in love with what Natural Order can do such as cheating out Nyxbloom and Regal Force (or Avenger of Zendikar) for 4 mana
Bounty of might is lethal commander
I totally agree with Casual EDH being so important to just consistently hit land drops. In decks where I have lots of other low drops to play (merfolk, party time, 3cc commander) I pretty much cut all ramp outside of sol ring and run 40-43 lands. Even with a lower curve its so useful to recast commander or double spell in the late game. As far as danger of flooding, you kind of have to run a lot of card advantage in commander as a multiplayer format anyways. So it can get you out of the flood. And if you arent flooded, its still good to get more land drops so you can play more of the cards you draw.
Love hearing your casual thoughts and seeing casual games. I think you both have a super fun and healthy mindset on casual because you get the sweatiness out in CEDH!
I love hearing you say 36 lands +2mdfc because that is exactly the sweet spot I've found in casual commander after years of playing and refinement.
im on the 32 lands and luck
Oh so your casual playgroups don't cut and just let you keep mulliganning to 7? Lol I just scoop and walk away to that nonsense.@@WACHULUKNAT
YAY casual! I watch CEDH content, but only play casual, so I love this stuff! Also.... I may have just put Obliterate into my casual Lord Windgrace deck, but my justification is that it doesn't kill my commander, and I can immediately reanimate 2 lands from my graveyard with him, so its VERY much breaking parity and moving my gameplan along
same lol
Same here, mate.
Glad we're all on the same page 🫡
The very first game of Commander I ever won was partially due to Jokulhaups (obliterate but counterable for 2 less mana, for those unaware) in my Neera Chaos deck. I had ramped off my opponents' spells with the wand from baldur's gate so I had enough to follow with Delina and the blue Braids, and I ended up getting better things to put down off braids than my opponents (namely bubbling beebles while the two remaining opponents had enchantments, and a hulking metamorph that won by copying beebles while they both had 9 life left)
The main reason I cast it was one of the players was on Kenrith. With over 30 lands out. And 30 more life than the next highest total. And Kenrith already had like 10 commander tax. He would've won the game if not for the Jokulhaups and jt taught me that the nuclear option is sometimes necessary - if one player has almost every land in their deck out and no one else is above like, 9, by all accounts you've broken parity by putting rampy mcgee so far behind everyone else he can't recover, even with blue braids out
My principle is that I'm ok with whatever I feel I can match, if we talked pregame I wouldn't be salty because I would have a fair fight
Also I want that Edgar list…it sounds perfect!!!
Me too!
same here, i wanna build a deck with him lol
Replying in case y'all haven't found it. You can look at their linktree for decklists in the description.
They have a section for their casual decks to find the lists. (Been 2 months but should be the same mostly)
I absolutely love all of your casual podcasts and gameplay, keep it up!
The problem with a lot of the land destruction cards in my opinion is that players don't know when to play them 90% of the time and the just drag the game out for like hours longer than it needs.
I don't mind mld if I'm in a fair matchup. If people can't play through it, answer it, or do something equally strong... it's probably an unfair fight which will create salt
Agreed. I just built a Thalia and the Gitrog Monster deck with landfall and land destruction. The first game I nuked the lands and lost so fast. I’ve learned to save it for the round when I can get 5-6 lands back and win right after the land wipe.
Hey Dylan, I have taken out all my ramp from my Wilhelt zombies deck. I think you are right, I want more zombies and stuff that revolves around the theme rather than having ramp with no zombies in play. I think some decks do not need ramp and my build is one of them. Wilhelt wants sac fodder and zombies so I can create more zombies, draw cards, kill stuff, drain life, reanimate them, etc. You should definitely try it out!!
I really value your opinions on casual, you bring a unique perspective to this discussion! I've also been trying to take inspiration from 60 card formats into my edh deckbuilding.
Big fan of your casual content. It's fun watching very competitive people play a deck to it's peak even if it was made as a strictly casual deck.
I have loved your casual stuff. Seeing the lens you view the casual format through is super interesting.
My favorite part is Dylan wearing the Blue-Eyes Baby Dragon shirt.
As a casual Commander player who does not play cEDH, I really appreciate your perspective on casual play. While I personally think Thoracle and infinite loops should be out of bounds for casual decks, I can see your point in evaluating case by case how well they may fit a deck's theme and power level. One thing I was surprised to see was the absence of Rhystic Study from the top ten salty list. It's public enemy number one in my book, and I think the cavalier way it gets auto-included in Blue decks fully justifies responding with Notion Thief in self defense.
I think for non cedh, anything is fair game as long as the game is matched. Mindset and deck-wise. If I'm sitting down for a social durdle and one person is cutthroating the table or my frog tribal is against thoracle control, it's gonna suck!
It’s ligit gets annoying do u pay the one every single up keep but it’s good with smoothing tide
Love the casual content! I dont play CEDH actually, but i love your channel so it nice to hear your take on casual EDH.
This was a really great conversation! Would love to hear more of your thoughts on casual/casual gameplay as cEDH players.
Love hearing you guys talk about casual Commander, you both have a really solid philosophy for playing at casual levels which no doubt comes from having the separation of mindset in cEDH - I think 2024 is the year I put together a cEDH list myself but there's not many players at that level at my LGS so I haven't taken the leap yet!
ABSOLUTELY LOVE how hyped are you two talking about your casual commanders deck... Is very uplifting. Thanks!
P.S: Yeah, all basic lands should be full art lands.... We are not in 1998 anymore.
22:11 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight is my favorite commander I use.
Love the podcast! Thanks for putting these out!
Also: I am once again asking for a banlist review podcast. I'd love to hear yall's thoughts on what on the banlist you'd like to see be unbanned and thoughts on if anything should be banned that isn't (especially from the CEDH perspective).
Nice vid. Seeing a casual commander game on the channel every once in awhile would be fun!
Oooo that’s a hot take on the lands 😮💨 I love a good Mirrodin foil land and other older foil lands!
This episode really jived with how I’ve felt about casual lately, I’ve got a casual taiyam deck that was getting a little too competitive with tutors and stuff that I’ve decided to take out in place of just fun synergistic cards, but also just have a combo that takes 3 cards to assemble in case the game goes way too long, because that’s a thing my playgroup has established is okay
In regards to the basics, I agree - either I try to use a bunch of different basics that i just enjoy, or match them to the deck
I'm building a sultai Skeletons deck and all the basics are the Midnight Hunt bundle non-fullart basics, because they all have skulls in them. Unfortunately this means I need thr borderless shocks from ravnica remastered, because overgrown tomb has skeletons in its art as well and i do want those to match
Casual decks are most fun when you've built around a very specific aesthetic theme - the most fun I've had building a deck was my Athreos Shroud-Veiled Elden Ring themed deck.
I think your guys’ opinion on casual is extremely valuable. Operating at the top a lot of the time can give you insights on the more casual formats that other people tend to not realize when they jam stuff like thoracle or food chain lines in a deck, and having such a good and healthy position in both the local communities alongside other big online content communities shows a sincerity to your opinions that I don’t often see with other content creators
tl;dr, your vibes are great and any format you discuss would be healthy as a result
Only playing edh once in a blue moon or playing brawl at home i find myself in the same boat with wanting to win but keeping it casual. Love your guys' content, i aspire to make a cedh deck and join the scene when i get the pieces. In the meantime i love brainstorming my dice rolling theme deck, making it as powerful as it can be without all the tutors, fetch lands, and infinite loops.
Would love to see the decklists for this episode, esp interested in the gruul storm deck
I have an esper land destruction deck with Alela, Artful Provocateur with the idea being that I get rewarded for playing mana rocks in the form of faeries that produce a real boardstate and a real clock, and blowing people's lands is a wincon/tempo play that doesn't reset me. But I can basically never play it, and it has been shelved for a long time now.
Which brings me up to my point and a point that I believe PleasantKenobi brought at some point; if these cards (arma, RoW, land destruction period) are "soft banned" and frowned upon but 100% legal according to the rule book, what are we doing? Either ban them completely or play them the way they're supposed to be played and accept that in the correct circumstances, it's the way some decks win. But having an "official" banlist and an imaginary one that requires 4 hours of rule 0 conversation is just poor game design in my mind.
I think you make a great point about casting Armageddon when you have Avacyn out and are using it as a finisher while you're smacking people with big angels. A lot of these salty cards come down to pertaining to the same, and the biggest, problem in casual EDH: They make the game go longer.
I urge all casual players to build their decks to prioritize progressing the game rather than stopping people from doing stuff. I'm not saying you shouldn't run removal or symmetrical board wipes, but certainly consider going down on the latter. Sometimes you really should just let the person with the sickest board win and go to the next game.
As an example, you could replace Ghostly Prison-effects with goad cards. They accomplish the same thing: Your opponents will have a harder time swinging at you - but one makes life totals drop and the other hinders people from attacking, which also means they will have more blockers up so other players can't attack them effectively either.
Ehat are your thoughts on Thassas Oracle being used as a value card in a noncedh version of Azami wizards deck? Yes the deck runs mind over matter combo but the main wincons are lab man and jace. Deck runs 34 total wizards and only mana rocks being sol ring, arcane signet, sapphire diamond and thought vessel.
hehe, Avacyn/Armageddon is one of my favourite MtG memories. I was on 5C spell slinger with OG Narset in play and bounced Avacyn in response to the Armageddon.
You guys are by far the best mtg youtube channel/content creators out there right now. I have an imoti deck that people get salty to, but every time i cast an expropriate or a vorinclex i rather promptly win the game. Im also a jund cedh player so i might be a bit biased towards you guys but whatever jund is awesome.
My pet deck is a newer Commander pair from the Dr. Who set, Sixth Doctor and Romana II. The theme is Historic Permanents, just cards that you would love to have multiples of.
It's not a popular pairing, but it does some strong stuff. Elesh Norns, Grand Arbiters and the like.
If your doing like a casual wort tokens deck you can play cards like massive raid (I think there's a 1 mana version). There's a ritual that let's you add a red for each creature you control also.
Just a little thing about what you said, gruul storm IS actually a pretty competitive deck in Historic on MTGA and partly in Modern/Timeless as well! Abusing Goblin Anarchomancer and Birgi as a sort of Legacy Ruby Storm to make all your Reckless Impulses 0 mana draw 2 and eventually winning with Underworld Breach. The gruul is still mostly a splash for Anarchomancer, Questing Druid, and Abundant Harvest, but it's an important one!
Hell yeah, casual can be so much fun and some of those decks sound like a hell of a good time!
Happy to see some love for casual, since I'm not playing cedh currently even though watching you for over a year really makes me want to.
is Cam planning on posting his Wort, the Raidmother deck to moxfield? It looks really cool, and i'd love to try it!
I legit have a story where my friend cast a copied Expropriate with the one on the stack and we all thought we were dead and were interested in what he was going to do to kill us so we all gave him 8 extra turns. After his 8th extra turn, he passed and we all got another rotation and then he killed us on his 9th turn. He was playing Krark/Thrasios and couldn't find his out turn after turn.
Papa Edgar my very first proper edh deck and still play it, much love
I took all of my tutors out of my primary casual commander deck (Marchesa, tBR) to help power it down for more chill games, but I chose to leave in the Mikaeus + Triskelion combo, because sometimes a game just has to end. 😂 Without tutors, if I get both cards in hand, it’s time to pack it up.
Your Rooftop Storm chat made me feel validated in this choice.
With my edgar deck, I did the Vampire go wide smash I found using alot of effects like Impact Tremors or Purphoros to hit life totals. Also Throne of God pharaoh works well to kill off life totals. My group hates it when I pull eddie out to play
Would love to hear your guys' take on Sam Black's methodology for building casual commander; less rocks and more lands. Basically the idea is more about consistency with hitting your land drops rather than ramping ahead and getting blown out first. I've taken some decks and started running 43 lands and few to no rocks and it just feels so good to always be hitting my land drops and never get blown out by a wayward vandalblast or rec sage
I think it depends greatly, in my pod we avoid board wipes to the games don't drag on, so ramp is safe. I'm aiming for a value engine over wincon anyway so I'll hit my 36 lands too
Yay casual decks! Your points about ramp are really interesting, I’ll have to think about that for my decks.
You touched on voltron a little bit when talking about Aragorn - what are your thoughts on it in casual EDH? It doesn’t really show up in cEDH besides some Jeska/Ishai lists, so curious if you enjoy that playstyle from your own decks or your opponents.
Acererak the Archlich and rooftop storms is a 2 card zombie combo I know you werent looking for combos that small, but it does exist. You could complete his dungeon and get the attack triggers.
My playgroup has a cool rule 0 for randoms joining our pod in the shop, generally its a replacement rule we have for cards we dont allow, lets say for winter orb, instead of letting the owner of it switch it out from their deck, we just say that its a grim monolith instead and have a paper for them to remember on the side, same things apply for other cards as well, at least those players dont have to switch decks or find a different pod instead
I have Thasa's Oracle in a deck with hermit druid, but all the lands are nonbasic tapped lands so its a slow build and my causal group is okay with it. so thats also an option. I'm a combo player and I'm always looking for fun combo and seeing how I can make it causal. Funniest one was turning all lands into 2/2s and wiping with massacre wurm basically winning the game.
Any decklist on the wort deck ? :)
Dylan, re your G&G deck - I know it's a casual deck, but it's worth noting that Phyrexian Altar + Repository Skaab + Zombie Apocalypse is a game ending death loop. Obviously it's a casual deck, and you don't wanna necessarily build around combo, but you can make use of all of those pieces, so it might well be worth baking it in there. It's one I built into Varina at the suggestion of a fellow brewer and it's been very worth it.
isnt casual commander CEDH Casual Elder Dragon Highlander 🤔
Obliterate is in my Lord Windgrace Deck, most people just scoop but it is part of how I win the game, as I can rebuild my land state quickly. But we're talking high-power level as well.
As a casual player, I like your perspective on casual. I also agree with most of what you guys say. I'm on year 11 of playing EDH and I think a lot of the issues your talked about self correcting/policing make sense and I agree with.
I love the casual content. I'd go as far to say as I rather watch u guys talk about casual than other casual youtubers
Cam, if you're not playing Storm King's Thunder in your Wort deck, you HAVE to try it 😂
Also I disagree on the Obliterate bit just a little- as long as an opponent is presenting an overwhelming boardstate prior to Obliterating (as they *should* do), then I'm totally cool with scooping it up. It's when some ding-dong without a snowball's chance in hell of winning decides to Obliterate into a board where everyone has dumped all of their resources into play and thus stalls the entire game by another hour that I get particularly pissed off in a casual game. At some point, you should know not to play a card if you don't understand how to play it or when the most opportune time is to play it. Just hold the damn thing unless the whole table is okay with an enormous disruption in the game OR you are holding up Boros Charm or Avacyn is in play or something.
Also, 100% of all the issues with banned cards would be totally fixed if the banlist *were not* considered as guidelines, but in fact, were designed for the purpose of a balanced format instead of a "fun experience" because "fun" is an entirely subjective metric, but "balanced" is equitably fair to all players.
This Wort deck sounds awesome, I like janky strategies like this. funny enough, mono green storm with that Ooze commander is quite powerful in casual commander. I would love to see some sort of deck list.
15:50 rooftop storm + Acerak the arch lich = infinite enter the dungeon triggers so long as you don't choose toom of annihilation, luckily, lost mine of Phandelver kills the table as one of the rooms says "each opponent loses 1 life". but I can see why a casual table is not ok with a 2 card infinite combo. I have this is my Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver zombie deck, but I always tell people it's in there and if they aren't ok with it, I'll play something else. another fun combo with my commander is this: Willhelt the Rotcleaver + Poppet factory (the back side of poppet stitcher) + Grave crawler + phyrexian altar, so like, 4 card combo that makes infinite 3/3 zombies
On the topic of the banlist, I think it works for people with regular healthy playgroups as y’all described, but there’s so many people out there with large LGS’s, or friends that are dicks in their playgroup, or almost anyone at a convention, and the banlist fails to provide in those situations. Doesn’t always mean that it won’t work out anyways, but it often does, and we often don’t hear those stories because the players it failed might just stop playing.
Battle Hymn is sick with Wort, like ritual equal to creatures, tap two red dudes double it up. Incredible
Hey Dylan, you should use the Swamp from Seb McKinnon's Secret Lair, its more of a Knight/Zombie, but it would fitt the theme and would match the border/frame of the Island you chose for Gisa&Geralf!
Rem karolus stalwart slayer is really good with earthquake and red sweepers dill. Don't know if it fits your theme but definitely worth looking at I think.
I get the sentiment with the basic lands, but I will never give up my foil onslaught basics. They are my favorite
If a deck features a crapton of ramp, and doesn't care especially about hitting land drops you can run way more ramp effects and just stay mid 30s for land count, my Gruul Eldrazi deck sits at 36, including a Temple of the False God (it runs lots of land ramp effects), keep in mind stuff like Kessig Wolf Run are lands that can just take over games.
Are you on Crescendo of War in Jeskai Aragorn? It's a pretty neat-o effect if you think you'll be hard to block, if it goes around a few times the game goes absolutely nuts.
I for one enjoy a good Static Orb deck, I have two of them myself, Boros Weenies/Wipes and Dimir Discard/Rack. I don't play them without discussion obviously, but neither is a cEDH deck (I use Stasis in cEDH, which is way more fun). I think a variety of decks can include some 'anti-social' options for when people want to play a 'dirty' game. To me if a person can set up a Stax/Discard/Rack engine deck that just wastes people's time taking forever to finish an inevitable win during which the opponent struggles to do anything while losing life, then they've earned it just like the guy who floods the board. Rack is worse than Edgar Vampires, but Edgar tends to warp metas until everyone runs +5 wipes to 'handle' him.
38:00 I love that someone that's respected in the the space says this. I feel like too many players think that an experience that is "not competitive" is necessarily "collaborative" and that is just not true. My decks may not be built for 100% efficiency and winrate, but once the 7 cards have been drawn, I'm gonna try to win. Yes, sometimes I'll do a suboptimal play because I think it'll be cool or fun, but by and large I'm trying to win.
And a lot of people are under the impression that "Trying to win" and "Having fun" are somehow mutually exclusive, but MtG is an inherently adversarial game, the whole point is trying to beat your opponent while stopping them from beating you. In my perspective, playing MtG but "Not trying to win" is kind of like playing basketball but not dribbling. You can do it, sure, but why play basketball then? Why not play something else?
I've had bad experiences while playing decks with quite a bit of removal/control (Particularly a Yorion blink deck with lots of ways to control the board) of people literally yelling at me and calling me names for it, because I'm "Not letting the others play". Not to mention when Agent of Treachery/Lavinia of the Tenth hit the board. In one particular instance I'll never forget, a 5c Slivers player who Mana Crypted on 1(!) got ultra pissed at me for playing Lavinia, saying that I just shut down their whole deck and I was an asshole for even putting in the card. These days I don't play that deck a lot even though it's my first one and one of my favourites because of that.
In a less complaining vein, I love the way Dylan talks about "solving the puzzle" and his deckbuilding philosophy. It's exactly the way I've been building my decks. In CEDH you would absolutely play a deck that wins 50% of games and does literally nothing the other 50%, but in casual I'd much rather win 10% of games but impact the game one way or another in 95% of games. That's why I like to make my deck streamlined, lots of card draw, especially if I can get it incidentally, and not building decks that are too reliant on commanders.
For example when I built Yorion I was considering Brago instead, but building Brago would mean less flicker spell, more payoffs and protections to take full advantage, and would've gotten blown out if Brago got removed a couple of times. I've won games with Yorion without ever casting my commander.
When I built a Simic Stompy deck, instead of putting a value piece or a haymaker in the command zone, I put Troyan, Gutsy Explorer. This makes my ramp extremely reliable and I can play one of the tens of haymakers in my 99, with lots of incidental and/or big card draw in the mix.
I agree it's dumb for a mana crypt 5 colour sliver deck to complain you're doing strong things. But I also feel that playing to win, using a competitive mindset in a non cedh game, is a particular experience. I have a lot of well made and interactive decks but I put the social aspect above winning. If everyone can have fun and get running I've achieved my goals for that game, which is another particular experience. The issues arise either when games feel unfair (eg. obliterate or combo against decks that aren't matched for it) or when player mindsets clash mid game (eg. taking out the player who's struggling because they're an easy attack).
@@seanedgar164 But you see, you're doing it too. Why is "Trying to win" anthithetical to "everyone having fun" for you?
To me, trying to not lose when someone else is in a commanding position is as fun if not more than me winning or even "Doing my thing", and I'd feel slighted if people just gave me resources for free or just didn't win because it "Wouldn't be fun". A very big part of MtG is the battle of wits, if I just wanted to see cool combos we could just take turns goldfishing our decks.
One of the worst games I've ever had was again someone playing some commander that allowed them to constantly reshuffle and draw their hand and they managed to land a Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim and keep it defended for enough that it became unfeasible to remove it. With the tokens constantly growing, he refused to ult Teferi because "Then it's mass land removal and that's bad because you don't get to play" and just basically kept durdling until they stumbled, rather forcibly it felt, onto a win. That game could've been over 10 turns earlier, but the "Everyone's got to do their thing or it wasn't a good game" mentality kept it going far beyond the expiration date.
Me personally, I've seen far more games turned unfun by durdling and "Collaborative" behaviour than by overly cutthroat behavior, by a rate of 20 to 1 at least.
As Dylan says, at the end of the day it's not my responsibility to make you do your thing, part of the game is deckbuilding, and if the deck you built is bad and so the game is a nongame, that happens, get back on moxfield and fix it for the next round
And yes, sometimes you get a shit draw. Sometimes you miss land drops for 4 turns in a row. Sometimes you draw 6 lands in a row. That's the game. You shuffle up and go next. And sometimes you instead pull a win out of your ass. But those memorable moments don't happen if the players just help eachother and kumbaya it. The best win I've ever had was a game where I was basically out for like 7 turns and then managed to Mnemonic Deluge a Windfall and mill out all 3 oppos at the same time.
To put it another way, when I play Poker with my buddies for fun, we're not sweating it, counting cards, running through the probabilities and stuff. We mess around, we go hard on mediocre hands for the meme, and generally don't take it too seriously. But what we DON'T do, is playing with the cards revealed or give other players our chips or just bet without looking at the cards; because, while we might not be taking it too serious, we still want to, y'know, actually play POKER.
MtG is at the end of the day an adversarial game, why go so hard against the design? If you want to have a collaborative experience, why not play something that's built for it?
Re: targeting the struggling player, even if you're playing very cutthroat you don't target a player that's clearly much weaker than the rest of the pod. Why waste resources fighting someone who's not a threat? On the reverse, if I have a beneficial effect that must target an opponent, I'm going to send it to the player who will do the least with it aka: the weakest. That already tends to smooth out a lot of variance in my experience.
But with that said, I'm also not going to go TOO out of my way to leave them alone. After all, I'm gonna have to get your hp to 0 at some point, might as well get started if it's not too expensive for me. Just the other day someone got a bit miffed that I kept attacking with some tokens that couldn't block while they were behind and wide open. But hey, I'm not gonna waste those attacks!
SLEEPY PUPPY SIGHTING! Already was enjoying the cEDH perspective on casual, but then puppy time. Best podcast, 10/10, no notes
Casual is a huge wild jungle island , if you venture outside your regular group - you never know what you might run into. Prob a Rhystic Study in a Wizard tribal deck tho
Wort is SICK! Also, love the Goad commander Dylan
I have that zombie secret lair land it's the only non full art in my CEDH ayara ,(mono black) deck but it's also the artist proof I got signed at a pre release I went to by the artist. Maybe someday I'll see you guys at an event and play some with it.
Personally as a high powered casual player all of your points are funny to me because EDH is all about having a good time with friends imo, and learning to build and play a deck in a way that has both a solid path to victory and doesn't prevent your opponents from doing their thing has always been the goal to me. It's a hard balance but with the right mindset you can almost always guarantee that the whole table will have a good time regardless of winning or losing. Also it's important to remember that even in casual, there has to be a winner and 3 losers so it's best to make sure everybody understands this before sitting down
100%, my thing is that if both the decks and the playstyles are matched, you'll be ok. My frog tribal vs thoracle or a social durdle vs fast cutthroat are going to suck because it's an unbalanced experience.
i feel like for normal edh i dont see why you still cant play to win. your each even if it has a theme should still have a few win cons. of course talk with your table or if you are playing with a group of friends make your own rules for what can be in a deck or if you allow like otk's but as long as eveyone is having fun and is able to play reg edh is hell fun. i love my lotr watcher of the water draw on other peoples turns. but i have one combo that wins me the gaem if i pull it off but also takes 20 mana and 5 cards and has to be on someone else turn. technically its an otk but i need all the pieces on board. i love reg edh more the cedh just for friend groups for the most part but playing fast and a lot of games is alwasy more fun imo
I played armageddon and cataclysm in my bruna deck. If I can get my 6 mana beater loaded up with enchantments and essentially unanswerable, I can play those cards to fully end the game. I may need to swing 2-3 times per person, but nobody is climbing back after getting their lands removed. It's a card to say "you can pick your cards up and we can move on to the next game."
It's not a game extender, it is an ender.
I love wort! Building for warp world and great aurora loops
I'm such a fan of $50 casual decks. It's the only way I wanna brew and play casual now. The price limit really incentivizes playing cards you don't usually see-and helps you stick to a theme while you design your deck. Can't recommend it enough! (And that Tivit brew is now dismantled, lol.)
Haven't seen the Wort list, but just in case thought I'd mention Battle Hymn and Burn at the Stake. 2 slightly unconventional storm cards that are just dumb fun.
I'd be interested to see the Wort list - I built her ages ago and she's pretty fun but I need to update the list as I haven't touched the deck in probably 12 months.
I watch for the cedh content but your take on casual is refreshing
Cam, I agree with the putting full art basics in every pack but I do not think they will ever do it since having plain frame basics creates a "chase" or "scarcity" for the full arts which keeps them special and provides a secondary market.
Great video guys. Very informative. What are you're thoughts on using demonic consultation as a tutor?
Everflowing well sounds great in the zombie deck, to get mill, draw and ramp
I used to play Wort back when green sucked in EDH, it's such a fun deck
Ngl, I'd totally run Obliterate in a Planeswalker deck. My problem with land destruction and staxy cards is when people just throw them in a deck and don't have a way to win through it/break parity.
I happily play thoracle in casual. HOWEVER, I don't pair it with cards like consultation. I have a sultai self mill deck. Lab man/thoracle/jace are my backup win cons if I haven't reanimated enough. I am milling myself the hard way and I can do it very fast at times (mesmeric orb for example, or traumatize). I'm not winning on like turn 3, it's closer to turn 12 after a long game.
I love wort. Conspiring Boundless Realms is my favourite
My absolute favorite casual deck is Arwen weaver of hope. The deck is around $100 bucks, but it is SOOOOOO fun, because you can play like 5 pump spells into legolas’ quick reflexes and make like 20 20/20s. Is it slightly jank? Maybe. Is it good? Definitely. Is it fun? YES
Always wanted to build a Wort The Raidmother deck, but never got around to it. Eventually i will.
I think it’s still fun to play to win in casual. Yes, I like using my theme to win but I also like using the best cards to do that. Personally, I also don’t use these salty cards or cedh staples because i don’t think it’s fun. This doesn’t mean I would stop anyone either. I would expect them to run the best cards of their theme deck as well interaction for their opponents. If you run salty cards I think it just needs to be mentioned for everyone’s sanity.
As a huge fan of Edgar, similarly getting back into commander with him as my first commander, can you drop your full list?
I like Cam’s point on full art lands
Would love an episode about the best tech cards for metas.
Thoughts on stax effects in casual?? For example i run Mists of Stagnation in my Taigam Sidisi's Hand deck because it fits the theme of me exiling my opponents graveyards but people still dont think its casual no matter how much work needs to go into making that card do its thing
I run thassas oracle in my Queza Augur of agonies deck. The main goal is to ping people down with life gain and drain abilities and using litches mastery to kill the table with Queza out. Thassa let's me have a chance at winning for decks that gain so much life I can't kill them by drawing my deck. Played three games of EDH yesterday and two people gained infinite life in the first game and one person gained infinite life in the third game. I could replace thassa with a package to loop my graveyard to keep drawing my deck or just cast Thassa Oracle and then shuffle up for the next game. Not the main wincon just a backup in case others are comboing to the point where I can't win.
I’m curious as to what you think about the thran vigil combo and shambling ghast liliana u touched by death combo for casual zombies
Ive gotten to where i grab the full art basic from whatever plane my commander is from. Almost have all of them printed. Just waiting for lorwyn full arts
Cameron speak those FACTS about full art basics🔥🔥🔥
Exactly right, I'm fine with whatever I feel I'm able to match, unfair fights suck. You'll cultivate a better experience as a group than the list, but for pickup and lgs games there has to be a reasonable baseline.
@playtowin
Hey Dillon, if you like boros blink, try feather the redeemed. It's great boros control deck and uses blink to create advantage and interaction. I'll post a link to my list if you wanna take a look
Gruul storm is actually a deck in modern too, but yeah not super popular colors for storm...
Most of my decks only run like 33-35 lands. Any more than that and I start to worry about having enough cards to do what my deck wants to do, while also having enough interaction. My only decks with more than that have lands matter cards/themes.
Also I agree with Cam on full art lands. NO reason to not have full arts with them. They arent chased like they used to be, it just feels bad when they aren't full arts
I'm only a casual player and I agree pretty heavily with the philosophy on casual decks. You should always work towards a theme and not just play the best stuff in the game. Sometimes high quality cards are in that theme, and that's okay and should be the case. I've built decks that are ridiculously powerful because every individual card stays on theme as much as possible, at least in comparison to what some other people were doing
I play a shorikai alt win cons deck, and I’ve gone back and forth about putting thassa’s oracle in the deck. It tries to win with things like halo fountain and triskaidekaphile, there’s no infinites or ways to automatically clear my whole deck, but that deck draws a ton of cards and I’ve definitely decked myself before. Does that feel like an acceptable place for a casual thassa’s oracle?