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@@jackalvonstone250 Business Casual Commander is exactly where Casual Commander sits. There is a right balance to dress the deck well and present it without being too formal unlike the pretentious slobs in tuxedo playing cEDH.
i really like the editing at 7:11 and 9:14, where one content creator states that they think something isnt represented in casual edh, and the other instantly says that they think it could be represented. great flow!
16:58 this sea monster idea is funny to me because my brother did something almost identical with beasts recently. For every Herald of Ilhaarg or Manglehorn, the deck has a Scragnoth or a Darba. It’s all about balance!
It's interesting listening to all these differing opinions because they agree on some common things (fast mana, broken mechanics/combo ...) but ultimately I think what makes commander really casual is the _intention_ behind the deck/game, which is highly subjective and changes a lot from group to group. Which, if I may say so, is one of the most beautiful things about commander: it brings out a lot the person behind the deck
I adore that you noted about not being able to truly police out salt. From bad days to harsh games it is impossible to say whose attitude will be where and when.
Casual commander is whatever you agree to with your friends. If your group wants power level 11, no ban list and any card can be your commander that’s still casual.
What a STACKED cast and a great range of content creators. I mean, ThatMillGuy, Trinket Mage, Snail, Rebell, Attack on Cardboard, Tomer, wow. Incredible video, amazing work Elk! Excited for next week's podcast🎉
I think the best thing you can do to make sure you’re staying casual in commander is have an outlet for your spiky behaviour. For me that’s Canlander and Standard, for others it’s gonna be Modern or cEDH. It’s really fun to play with stupid, busted cards and just try to win… but it’s also fun to play creative casual decks with silly or novel themes that have telegraphed win-conditions. I believe the problems come from trying to do both at once.
I have heard/seen someone even suggest competitive activities outside Magic like Olympic wrestling, spelling bee or competitive rubics cube as outlets for your innate competitive edge.
For me, and most people at my stor, casual commander is Moreso the mindset when playing. We played in a pod for 6 hours on Saturday night, rotating decks sometimes, and having a blast. We had turn one sol ring Signet, cyclonic rift, turn 2 dranith etc. But we kept good spirits and had lots of laughs.
I think one of things about casual Commander is it's relative, yeah? Casual compared to what? If a cedh player makes a casual deck for when they're not at a tournament, its casual for that player. If someone who plays "high power" at their lgs makes a casual deck for when there's a precon sitting across from them, it's casual for that player. But we're starting from different heights. They might line up, but they're likely not.
I don't know if it's because I am newer to Commander and have mainly spent my time playing other card games that are often much faster, but I feel like I am very lenient overall. There are only really 3 things I don't want to see in Commander: The big 2 are someone winning very quickly and anything that puts extreme limits on what you can do. If I wanted to play a game where I am going to lose quickly or not be able to play, I would just play Yugioh, lol. I am cool with infinite combos regardless of how many cards are needed if they happen turn 6 or later, and if I can still potentially stop the combo with interaction. Tutors are also kinda whatever. If you want to play your deck the same way every time, that's your right to do so. A lot of people I know who play Tutors in casual come from other card games that have a lot of consistency such as Pokemon TCG or Yugioh. I myself only play Tutors for very specific reasons. My Beamtown Bullies deck plays Grim Tutor mainly because I pulled it from a pack, and because I need increased access to Graveyard setup cards like Buried Alive (could also technically be considered a Tutor) or else I simply can't play the game. I also have a self imposed rule that I won't just send things that end the game for someone immediately like Leveler unless someone has gotten off to a very fast start. I also play Beseech The Mirror in my Sharuum deck mainly because I can sacrifice an Artifact that I want to bring back with Sharuum. The one other thing I don't want to see in casual is that I don't want someone to lose to a deck because they didn't know what it did. Either because the person playing it did not disclose something in rule 0, or because the deck relies entirely on you not knowing what it does because it's some gimmick deck. I have a real world example for each. A friend of mine was playing a Vadrik deck, the Izzet day/night guy. He did not disclose in the rule 0 that the entire point of the deck was to go infinite. The other example is I played in a pod that had a friend of a friend in it. I don't remember the name of the Commander, but it's a mono red guy that gets a +1/+1 counter for each card you exile from your deck. The deck only had like 3 or 4 no land cards in it and it was just cards with Cascade. And the deck literally folds if you know what it does. It made me more irritated because the other 2 players at the table knew and I guess I was supposed to just get one shot as some sort of rite of passage I guess lol. Anyways, sorry for the whole damned novel I wrote.
I do agree with your point on tutor use, I play a spellslinger deck that has some great X spells with some spells like Aminatou's Augury that grabs stuff for free from your deck. I play the tutor Solve the equation just to prevent at least 1 X spell from getting lost to Aminatou's Augury and other free casting effects. My other deck plays 2 non-traditional tutors that requires me to jump through many hoops to get there - Rushed rebirth, Analyze the pollen and Pillage the Bog.
I wanna have the opportunity to meaningfully participate. That means please don't pubstomp or combo kill the table by turn 5, please don't lock us out and please don't farewell or mass goad.
15:01 this is the best thing to do. Choose a commander or an idea and make all your cards fit around that. I try to have all my cards in firesong & sunspeaker deal damage or gain life or be based on the fact that i will be doing so. Generically good cards are too boring to bother using or allow myself to use, they have to fit the deck I'm building.
This, I just stopped brewing for casual because that side of the format finds anything to complain about. I stick to using unedited precons at casual tables and most of the players are so bad that I've ended up going 5-0 or 6-0 and I get accused of lying about my precon.
@@TLWHDXExit from Exile and Revenant Recon are the most straightforward and easy to play. The best one is probably Jumpscare, it has an infinite combo. The only thing I don't like about Jumpscare is that you can sometimes just hit lands or nothing relevant off manifest dread.
My friends and I all just started making decks with a budget of 1$ per card except for the commander. Fixes the whole format. The format NEEDS a long and through ban list.
@@vennin7781Agreed, but that violates the philosophy of the commander banlist. Which is a genuine headass take on their part. Do not do signpost bans.
A lot of great opinions in this video. The deeper I dive in to EDH the more I am glad to have a regular playgroup that all seems to float around each other's power.
Casual comes down to "The circle of trust" (I don't know if that's a real term but im using it anyway. With close friends, anything from red-hair tribal to "high power" is casual. You all know what decks you each like to play, generally how they operate, and emphasize enjoyment. Someone can play a blow out commander, get shit talked on, and then laugh and shuffle up for the next game with relative ease. The next circle is the extended playgroup/LGS. Here there's a mix of "hangout and do what ever feels fun for everyone" people and douches. If your community is active and open, you can play a wide range of decks with out hassle. You may get the occasional complaint but overall fun is and "rule zero" conversations tend to be completely informal. However there tend to be strangers and people you don't know well so negative experiences can be more common. Generally, trust is lower than the friend group but not untrust worthy. From there you gave in person commander at events with strangers. Trust is lower than the extended playground so negative experiences can be higher frequency. Especially as communication will be less open. Miscommunication is more likely as the trust is lower. But it is still in person so social norms and being s general "good hang" will result in a lot of fun games. The lowest level of trust is online. Either on spell table, reddit, here, or elsewhere. Trust is low and even statments that seem innocuous can be taken as controversial. People are more defensive and more likely confront or interpret statements as negatively as possible. For the health of the game and casual commander, look to the small circles of trust than the larger ones to see if we're having fun. Overall, Im lucky that the people I play with in my friend group and LGS have a broad sense of casual. And even when we disagree, we still find ways for us all to enjoy the game and each other's company
Imo the only true casual “format” is Cards I Own. I don’t consider it casual play if there are formal, preset rules for deck building beyond the base expectation of at least 60 cards (40 if it’s draft), no more than 4 copies (if constructed).
As I am watching the video, I think it would would be great to have the question available on screen as you say/ask it and keep it on screen, perhaps above or to the side, while they're responding. Sometimes it can be difficult to remember exactly what they're responding to and we only had you stating the question outloud in the beginning.
After getting the vibe at my LGS, I have found that I like to brew an "anything goes" $50 budget deck. Usually, I like to also add in a no single card over $5.
Yea, seems about right, My deckbuilding restrictions I stick to for making a casual deck are: No fastmana (any cards that on their own or with minimal setup produce more mana then they cost the turn they come into play, I personally don't run sol ring for this reason, however this also includes most red rituals) No Tutors (Personally I really love the variance and creativity a lot, and tutors undermine the 100 card singleton nature of the format. If you build a hidden commander, or have partners with cards in the 99 that search for 1 specific named card, its fine, Somewhere in between, evaluated by powerlevel and how much it homogenizes games, I draw the line, in my own decks, I am to run 0) Personally, I am fine with staxx, as none of them are actually good, and if amongst 3 opponents, nobody has interaction, thats a skill issue. I do expect people playing staxx to present a win condition at some point though. When it concerns Armageddon for example, if you have a full board that takes 3 or so turns to win, but needs safety, casting Armageddon to essentially win makes sense, casting it after a farewell is brutal though, and might not even help you. I don't expect mass land destruction in commander the same way I don't expect anybody to be running manaless dredge in commander, it just does not work very well. When it considers classic staxx, as in, smokestack and friends, thats my definition of a good time (: Also, I have a strong disgust for "generically strong cards" (sol ring, rhystic study, the one ring) that are not on theme. If you have a tax themed deck, playing rhystic study makes sense, if not, why is it there?
I'm curious how you feel about mass land destruction. You mention it's a problem, but if I build my deck entirely focused on land destruction and being able to mitigate that drawback, is that any different than locking the table out with stax pieces?
@@kyllanburt994 I would say that stax in general as a strat to limit everyone suggests a control aspect, as is land destruction approach. The difference is if you remove mana, then interactions is fairly scarce, for obvious reasons, but stax just means you have to play with more attention to your resources, but you still have access to your mana. Hopes this perspective helps. Most people do not enjoy either since you are essentially telling the 3 other players, no you cannot play your cards.
@@kyllanburt994 Id say land destruction is a fine strategy, as long as there is a plan to win. For example, I saw someone play planeswalkers in combination with the boardwhipes that hit lands and creatures, as long as there is a win conditon, its fine. If the goal is just to blow up lands and wait for people to scoop, its miserable, just like staxx. For this reason, if someone randomly armageddons in the middle of a game with no plan or reason, its quite destructive, however, if they use it similarly to a rift, where it is to confirm a win, its a good move.
@@jaceg810I agree with that. I think anything is viable as long as the goal is to win. But I do think the speed at which you do the thing is really the discussion of power level. I don't get salty about edh. I shuffle up and play again. And I have a range of decks, so if I was misled or someone really just doesn't know how good they or their deck is, I can adjust my level to match them.
@@kyllanburt994 Yea, thats why I think casual is no tutors or fastmana (and by proxy, no 2 card combo's or early wins). When it concerns power level, my favorite deck is a control deck that tries to remove value engines while staying alive, and wins when everybody ran out of gas, thus, it scales quite well to different power levels.
"What is casual Commander" "What is a social game" ive been asking that question for months since we got that banlist for dockside. Since Most people had a dockside and questioned why it went away. only to be told "Well its not for casual commander"... only for noone to agree about what is casual commander. and still. noone has an answer that's agreed upon. Even in this video. Nobody really agrees. its pretty nebulous. Whats worse is that theres secondary issues like the banlist that add to this problem. Smothering tithe, Rystic Study and sol Ring are things some of these people dont play cause they know how powerful and consistent they are. Yet they aren't banned... creating this weird space where you have to accept them if they are played... meanwhile you know they conflict with commander. All in all. I feel like unless you actually cant define it cause the lines people use are just too generic to support. Saying "we play to have fun." or even "you pick a theme and stick to it" to me just arent valid answers. Hopefully i can make my own video on this. Cause honestly this is still just the surface of the discussion
Ah, this topic is a tired one indeed. I have no good answer to it myself either. One of my play groups seems to view "casual" as simply avoiding infinite combos and the typical free spells and fast mana stuff. Their problem however is that they also view play styles and player attitude as a key variable of casual. Aggro and voltron decks that rush down a player are not casual in their eyes. My other play group however, views things a little differently. To this group, the use of the word 'casual' is the problem inherently. To them, casual is precon decks only. Anything outside of precon decks is high power. It's an on or off switch to them. You're either playing precon casual, or you're playing high power. And from there, the deciding variable that jumps you from high power to cEDH is having a $3000 dollar mana base. So while that first group has me struggling to nerf myself to avoid their salt, my other group has me struggling to keep up because they are all running infinite combos in their decks. As far as my two play groups are concerned, I don't think either has the correct answer to the question though.
Maybe I’m wrong but it seems to me power has more to do with strategy and the commander than the 99. If you have a weak commander or a janky strategy then stuffing a bunch of good stuff is only going to get you so far. I just build the deck the way it wants to be to support the lines. Went to win with and let the power fall where it falls. Throw a few flavor cards in if it feels to efficient.
In my opinion Commander is casual unless you are playing in a tournament. I see decks as being high powered (focused) or low powered. I have a white and blue spirit tribal deck with no counter spells that turned out to be high powered.
I dont want to see free counterspells. Or wincons/locks that can only be stopped by countermagic. Or anything that removes all or most of my ability to make substantial decisions while the came continues. Locks that don't very quickly win the game after the lock comes down, qhich includes multiple extra turns and mindslver locks.
Without having watched the video yet, my answer to this question has three points. 1. The primary objective is not "to win [at any cost]." [The objective is to win "my way."] 2. Instead the primary objective is to craft some kind of experience for your friends. 3. You may self-impose some sort of list of limitations on yourself or the table as a whole.
I think i pretty strongly disagree with point one, you can watch my slogfest video to see why. A deck can want to win but still be casual. Also like mald said, a casual game needs to end eventually.
@33elk My bad, let me rephrase and see if you like my first point better: the second objective, not the first, is to win. What I meant to say is that casual EDH does not seek to win at any cost. It seeks to win in a particular way, according to the theme or goal of the deck.
For me casual refers to my play group, I know what they would like to play against and with. I could make a non-casual deck if I wanted to metagame with my group knowing what they play. In any case I always choose to build around flavour and focus 100% on the theme, to the point I remove better cards and cards with art that doesn’t fit. Also card price comes into play when talking about casual games. Casual games means no pay to win. Overall great video, one criticism I would have is to interview more women.
I found one example. In office, one guy started to advocate for "Commander League". Some ppl were interested, but were also new / not too invested into MTG yet. They wanted "Casual" play, since it would be just some extra activity after-hours and to get into the game. One thing they asked for is to not include infinite combos. The guy that advocated initially nuked initiative in response
Casual Commander is anything that took the usefulness out of Magic as an avenue for me, with autism and severe social anxiety, to socialize with strangers doing a thing I love with any feeling of safety. Replacing a game that had previously had a strictly defined and consistent framework of what was valid and what isn't, a game that you couldn't make a faux-pas in because both players at the table definitionally consented to all game play allowed by the rules without exception, with a game that demands negotiation and often expects pulled punches, but can't codify that in the rules. It's the thing that removed my ability to play with strangers, and, once I moved out of my hometown, removed my ability to form a playgroup. It's the thing that splintered the Magic community's ability to speak the same language now that cards tend to be evaluated as multiplayer pieces first, then later as the formats that make up the game's original core. It's the format where Lightning Bolt sucks but Sol Ring is considered too iconic to ban, and it was the catalyst for the worsening or outright disintegration of some of my favorite parts of Magic. It is the format, in part, that UB is being made for, now that you can center your decks around all your favorite Blorbos as meanwhile even the "good" Magic sets need to be worlds of hats (I don't care how good Valgavoth is when his setting also included clean clothed and showered teenage ghostbusters/'member berry references on a good fraction of everything.) It's not ableist, nor are the people who play it ableist. I'm actually entirely sure that the older hobby shop culture before Commander took over was infinitely more ableist considering the kinda shit people felt comfortable saying, but, in a way that may only apply to my lived experience, Commander being the biggest and most supported format made in person paper play more or less impossible for me due to the way it interacts with my neurodivergence. This is a particular shame when nerd-dom was, for so long, a gathering place for the neurodivergent, albeit having inherited many of the worst prejudices from the common culture uncritically.
You said it better than I ever could. When I sit down for a game of magic my focus is on the game of magic. When I’m building a magic deck my focus is on optimizing that deck to execute its plan as efficiently and effectively as possible, whether it entails endless countermagic, land destruction, or long turns with complicated loops. I play the game for the game, the people happen to be there. Commander puts the people before the game, fundamentally changing the rules without actually changing the rules, therefore making it not magic, but a different game that happens to use magic cards. If you change how and when you can move pieces in chess you’re no longer playing chess, just something else that uses the same basic pieces
@@mrjollyweeper6316 I sometimes flip flop on whether or not commander is Magic, which is a separate matter than whether or not commander is good, which is further separate from whether or not I like it. I just don't think it's good to have lost what was lost in making Commander so central. Despite the fact that people will call it its own format, it's not for nothing that Wizards calls it a variant in the rules, if I recall correctly. Like, every game's name exists both as the game itself and as a word for things in its culture, in a sense. Not that the game IS the culture, though certainly an evolving game is deeply effected by its culture, but that, for example, the word chess will also be applied to things that aren't the game as it is most often thought of. Fairy chess being called chess makes sense, but it's not Chess chess. But you may be able to argue it's still chess. The same applies for the likes of chess960. This is not terribly useful to argue about, because the human brain isn't an objective observer anyways, and language reflects that. All that said, a version of chess with a modified board seating 4 players with double the number of pieces including two kings that both need to be captured to beat someone, but if a king captures a singular king from another player then that player is out of the game as if both were captured, and a player base expectation that you don't move the queen all the way across the board, but no rule changes to keep that from being an option, and a similar debacle with knights jumping pawns too early in the game, that game would not be called chess probably. It's deeply indebted to chess, but it's something new with clear issues caused by a mismatch of player expectations and the rule set. And Magic's not chess. I get that. I also get that, at its conception, Magic was a 40 card game with no play set limits and no concept of the stack, or batches. The turn player resolved spells in the order that was most useful to them, which is why interrupts existed. They DID have to be resolved in order, because otherwise you'd always just fizzle your opponent's counterspell. And you can find old posts from the Dojo that decry the 6ed rules changes as simplifying the gratifying gameplay of pre-6ed timing maze, and you can find posts on tons of forums about the m10 changes oversimplifying the strategic depths of purposeful mana burn and combat damage on the stack. The original game changed quickly, with the concept of batches but not the name coming, I believe, by Revised. The 6ed and m10 changes were caused by a desire to either make the game more self consistent or to remove rules cruft that only became relevant infrequently or to get one over on ignorant players, albeit in cool ways. Commander was made to appeal to a different crowd, and that crowd just decimated the ways of the people who got them there in the first place, changing decades of precedent on what Magic gameplay looks like, and not for reasons that led to smoother gameplay, in fact, people argue more than ever, and fewer people proportionally have actually read the rules. Getting back into Magic after a break used to feel like playing a new edition of D&D after missing one. You could've played AD&D 1e and understood the shape of 3rd. You could've played 2e and still recognized things from 4th, even if you may or may not like the changes (2e and 4e are my favorite editions to flip through, but that's neither here nor there.) If you played during Odyssey-Onslaught standard or whatever, and come back now, it's like going from 3.5e to a really unruly Blades in the Dark hack that the GM is wrestling with actively. That shit might be dope, but if that was genuinely the path of D&D going forwards, it'd be obviously a strange choice. I dunno. I may be yelling out clouds at the ripe old age of... my mid 20s, but it's startling. I'd say the lasting similarity is the brand, but obviously that's up in the air too.
I find most lgs edh nights are high powered with very little social aspect, or straight up cedh. I don't put much stock in playing casually with strangers besides precons. I start actually trying to be what I consider casual with a proper playgroup because you can then accurately define a desired experience over time
Honestly, 0 cost rocks and no 1 mana tutors (imperial seal, worldy tutor etc). Everything else is fair game. Casual games still need to end eventually so having combos, or high powered cards for value or whatever else is all open IMO
In my personal point of view, for me casual commander is a play style that doesnt want to win as fast as they can and want to do its stuff and see others ppl stuffs. I build every single deck with, in my knowladge, at least one 2 to 3 cards infinite combo, but never put tutors or wayt to bring the pieces back from GY, bc game shave to finish at some point and if i get to use the combo by drawing it, nice, if i cant its nice to.
Its just gameplay intent guys. It always has been. Are we here to hang out and play 6+ turns of battlecruiser style magic or are we trying to grind out a quick game in between rounds with no held punches? Asking this question *should* help most players understand what kind of game to expect and minimize salt.
an unregulated game with no defining lines on power acceptance of decks creates an unhealthy game environment when you have power creep and no relevant bans, especially when you have to play a deck around peoples feelings kind of stupid in my opinion when people just want to have fun and play different styles of decks. when i think of casual i think this is not for prize money, i want to have fun but also want others to have fun because there decks wants to go off like mine and i want to see it pop off just as much as i want mine to pop off. Its all about respect, empathy, and not getting butt hurt from cardboard.
Something I felt missing from this conversation (great video btw) is how commander product has warped people's understanding of commander and building of their decks. Cards are powerful now, creep only goes up, but when all you say is build "casual" and everyone's buying staples then you're closer to competitive than you think. Like a player in my regular pod tried to make a "jank fun" coin flip deck, but had free counters that upped the power level quite a bit to where it was a shutout whenever he played it till those were taken out. I think yes be restrictive with yourself and let others have fun the way they want, but I do think, at least in regular pods, you should all build within a balance if you wanna keep it "casual" anyway, play canlander lol (but really pls so it gets more popular). really really dug this video. play what you want, how you want, this is just my opinion that I feel would help my pod and my own mental.
To the question: Types of cards that ruin your casual table credibility: Fast mana, infinite combos, efficient tutors, mass land destruction, stax, zero commitment to flavour. Reflections on EDH in general: So, most of my decks are probably at least an 8/10 by default, right. I typically think of casual as like 5-7. I think most precons these days are probably at least a 5, maybe some of the really old ones are 4s for the amount of useless cards without synergy in them. I reckon you gotta really try to build any lower than that, though. I just use a pauper Commander deck when I go to ACTUAL casual pods. I don't typically play in casual pods. I'm good with rule 0 conversations tho, if I only have decks stronger than everyone else, I'll just encourage playing it as almost archenemy from turn 0, but yeah, cycling into exile usually works for the types of cards above, too. I eventually want to come up with extra side boards to power down each deck, to turn any deck down in power level. Most of the games I play are against pretty good players with vast collections, not really LGS pods with strangers. I'm more of an Uber-Johnny-style player, with Spike elements where it fits a Vorthos theme, or meme challenge. Definitely not full Spike builds. But yeah, I proxy A LOT, generally around 7-10. I have only one real EDH deck, and it's a fairly tuned Slicer, Hired Muscle. Because I like the idea of playing mono red aggro voltron in cEDH pods without using combo like Godo or Magda. Just plain old attacking opponents. I think power creep and volume of card releases in recent years has basically removed that challenge that boros, mono red or mono white are even hard to pull off these days, though. Even Myojin of Blooming Dawn as a commander that doesn't give itself an divinity counter, has a lot more competitive potential than people think. Obviously it's not gonna consistently beat pods of 3 decks on RogSi Thoracle spike, but it'll beat pods where there are 1 or 2, more often than people think. But yeah, the changes to accommodate casual pods are are so format warping, and is reflective of the prevalence of proxy stigma, imo. When people finally get past proxy stigma, accessibility to cards stops being an issue, and it starts being a bit more valid representations of what people come up with in their minds, rather than what's available to them to play. My Taniwha deck plays a bunch of stax and Mass Land removal, but it's a Taniwha deck lol. It's not getting past 8.5 while having Vorthos tones and not just going to mono blue Oracle combo without flavour; which I don't do. It's probably a little higher than casual, though. I think the best place to be in magic is a cEDH social contract, but everyone trying rogue cEDH decks, powered up. I reckon 8.5-9/10 is where you want to be, but with no sense of entitlement to other people not using 9.5 or even 10. The decks are always interesting, reasonably competitive, and always spicy, in multiplayer, with politics. The sweet spot. Pre-game power imbalances in the pod are just assessed by knowing the commander and playing against the same players regularly. Stronger commanders expect to get focused with removal more often. Really minimizes the amount of rule 0 conversations necessary. Sometimes commanders are changed so as to not be hard counters to other decks in the pod.
In my opinion, the only 2 things that have no place in a casual deck are fast mana and 2 card combos. This has to do with the eternal arms race between removal and targets. In cEDH decks need to run Force of Will, Deflecting Swat, and other free or extremely cheap interaction due to how strong and fast the cards people are using to win are. However in a casual list I can get away with running absolute garbage interaction like Forceful Denial. Fast mana allows people to accelerate into t4/5/6 plays on t1/2, putting them so far ahead of everyone else that casual interaction packages simply cannot keep up. Under normal circumstances I know whether or not I am safe to tap out based on life totals and board presence. 2 card combos completely upend that math by allowing players to win on the spot often without any aparent warning, which again casual interaction packages are generally not equipped to handle.
It's funny because I have a Braids, Cabal Minion deck (we rule zeroed it) and it's full of stax garbage, but it works well within my playgroup: the other players are rather aggressive and win-focussed, while I restricted myself to have a budget of 50,00 € and no combos, so I think it could be considered casual And yeah, it kind of works and nobody has shot me in the back yet 😂
In my honest opinion the reason there's such a nebulous way to describe casual commander is because it's not about the decks being built, it's about the players behind the decks. Two players could be playing the exact same netdecked "CEDH," build and the one that's playing casual is gonna run their lines in such a way the others at a pod can play their decks and the group can enjoy an experience, the other is there to win with the seeking of similarly competitive players vs. the seeking of just any random pod often being what marks the difference between a CEDH only player and a pubstomper.
15:56 - As an Oathbreaker fanatic, I cannot think of a card that is "scarier" than a Turn 2 communal brewing which is hilarious as the "fun to play against" example
My group has like sub types for decks like “silly”- chasing your gimmick at all costs, “focused”- trying to use everything you can to make whatever mechanic/idea work, “strong”-you built it thinking about how your gonna curb stomp your opponent, maybe a inf combo, then of course cedh and precon/modified precon. Even with this we often have the weird games with a cedh deck, a focused deck, a modified precon, and someone playing mono red chaos 😂
came for Bosh. nowadays I just decline to play the game of commander. I'd rather play legacy or modern. I still have a great time, laugh my ass, and don't feel guilty for waste locking the beautiful person in front of me.
He surely is a player with a wide range of expertise. That’s why I wanted to listen to his input despite me being a non commander player. I tried it. But i couldn’t help notice that actions I normally had little to no impact in legacy or modern can have a big emotional effect in commander. So, now I just decline the offer.
It is really disheartening to see just so many versions of 'If it's casual, I just cut cards people complain about' There should be no issue on running engines like Smothering Tithe or Esper Sentinel if the colors really call for that i.e. Monowhite really needs both the ramp and the card draw engine so why not run them? In fact you should also always run Enlightened Tutor to grab them early as well. People confuse being salty about their own jank vs actually being able to consistently win the game turn 3-4 by whatever means which is 3+ turns what your average casual player is ready for. That's a good measure: it's not about a player being salty is about actually transforming that into a quick win otherwise, it's just sore losers and that tells me the only way to play casual commander is to intentionally throw the game so the player who complains the most and most consistently wins and you don't get a tantrum.
the problem isn't really that Tithe/Study are powerful, it's that they have noxious play patterns. being constantly asked if you're going to pay the tax makes for miserable gameplay
Bro, White has multiple really efficient draw engines for many deck archetypes, it has reasonably efficient land ramp AND colorless artifact ramp. You can play any amount of abnoxious cards you want, but the other players will either play with equally abnoxious cards, or not play with you at all. If that's okay for you, great. But don't act like you NEED Tithe/Sentinel + Tutors for your decks to function.
Bruh I have 4 mono white decks and only one runs esper sentinel, no tithes or trouble in pairs. You really don't need them and I ABSOLUTELY find smothering tithe oppressively good in casual games.
I really like the video idea. What I am kinda opposed was the mana vault picture every time someone talked about fast mana. Yes it is, but in casual, sol ring is the more powerful card. So you could have used that spot for stuff like dark ritual, or the other moxes so more veriety maybe 😅 or just the jab at sol ring would have fit here too maybe 😂
For ME (I don't mind if other people at the table do it) Fast Mana + Tutors + 2card Combo + MLD + hard stax and mana denial. Pushing it "too hard to win" is the same of "not casual" for me. Free Spells are a weird middle ground for me.
When you were talking about weak decks that are unfun to play against... There's a guy who comes into my LGS maybe once every couple of months. He plays VERY slow AND often plays super-durdle decks. Like the timey-wimey suspend counters precon. He kept recurring some board wipes but had no way of winning the game and was taking 20 minutes per turn+.
scoop and dont play vs those kinds of guys. I lose more in ranked on arena do to ropers and slow players or do nothing durdles than I do to actually losing by death. Its not fun to be unable to play
We've been having a discussion about this at my LGS. Most people were in agreement on what belongs in casual vs high power, and by "most", I mean the people who haven't been playing infinite combos, turn 4/5 wins, etc. The term "farming for money" has been thrown around, which really shows how big the problem has become. I also recently saw someone describe their $2.5k, single card + commander infinite combo deck, a "high 7 or an 8", but still casual. First off, what the hell is a "high 7"? How about we _actually_ use a 1 to 10 scale instead of the 7 to 7 scale. Second, in my opinion, any infinite combo is not casual. It should also be a rule that anyone who pulls the "it's not infinite, I only did it 3 million times" excuse should be slapped. "Infinite" is a concept, not a number. Just because it can be done an infinite amount of times, but you _only_ do it enough to win the game, doesn't mean that it isn't infinite.
There are some bad infinite combos made up of several generic and mediocre cards that can only really be played in casual pods. The best example in my mind is insidious roots, tortured existence, and any haste enabler. As long as you have a creature in your graveyard and a creature in your hand you get infinite infinitely big plants. Both of these fit into just about any graveyard focused deck in golgari colors, and most people are running some kind of haste enabler, whether that is just swiftfoot boots or any of the green enchantment based enablers. I don’t actually mind the more Rube Goldberg-esque low power infinites unless you are tutoring for them and basing your deck around playing to find them every game.
I'm not sure how I feel about casual at this point. I don't go to an lgs, I don't have a regular play group, but I brew a lot, I spend a ton of time looking at magic stuff, and most of my decks are right on the edge of being scary. I will say that I don't want to proxy, so that basically puts me in a weird spot lol
For me my main point are windows of interaction. I think as the deck becomes more and more competitive the window of interaction where you *could* have done something about it gets narrower and narrower. Casual commander to me is a game where all the windows of interaction are wide enough that you feel in some way like you could have seen it coming or could have done something about it, and so everyone has a chance to impact the game. Note: could have not did, sometimes you know you have a boardwipe in the deck for the squirrel deck who's been generating 200 tokens over 4 turns, but you don't draw it, but that doesn't mean the deck isn't casual Technically cEDH decks fall in that definition when they're up against each other, but also the timing isn't wide enough that you feel you can play a wide variety of cards and still have an impact. The window on thoracle is quite narrow, but cEDH decks are built with that in mind, whereas if you play thoracle against most decks 8/10 of them are not going to have a single way that they could have interacted with that at the right time. That's kind of the source of most frustrations in my experience people feeling like for one reason or another their deck did not have an impact on this game, and as you get more and more powerful that window gets more and more tight. Also really wanted to say this, but with casual commander being mostly a vibes based thing people have to be more accepting particularly with random pick up games that sometimes the vibes are just going to be off, but that doesn't always mean the other person was trying to pull one over on you. The vibes will be imperfect, and that's something people on average need to be better at recognizing, and not jump to "you did X thing it's not casual anymore."
I have a deck that I feel is solidly mid power and thats the level I play it at when against close friends who agree, but I typically describe it as high power casual when playing againsst strangers because it contains a few generically good cards and can cheat some staxy or hatebear type effects into play, people dont usually have a problem with this if the expectation is high power, which I also disclose that the deck contains those effects before playing, I havent had any problems so far doing this and it lets me play some of my favorite cards that are often hated out of casual spaces.
I believe there are 4* types of decks in Commander: - cEDH (self explanatory) - Optimized decks. Not competitive but definitely have filtered out the jank, the pet cards, better mana base, etc. - Kitchen Table Magic & Precons. These 2 should go together as they should be the bare minimum to play the game. - "Casual" Commander. *Casual is a myth and a label that will be thrown around forever, it doesn't actually exist. (as a level) It's a subjective label we use that, i think, we want to say "i want to do my thing w/o being immediatly stomped" (aka a slow-ish pace game) I agree with some points that could help "curate" the "label" - No MLD, No 2 card infinite combos
I think the things MyHandsAreBlank and Rebell said during the bonus round resonates with me the most when it comes to this discussion. I know I've always been difficult with this topic in particular, because my mentality towards the idea of "Casual Commander" differs quite heavily from what it's typically referring to. To me, casual commander is not about a set of expected ground-rules, it's about an attitude of play. It's about sitting down to just play Magic for Magic's sake with no pre-conceived notions of what kind of game we wanna play. It's a free-for-all, because we aren't letting silly things like "An even playing field" or "Fairness" get in the way of playing whatever the hell we feel like. You know a casual game is going well, when the losers are having more fun than they'd have winning, because they're too busy laughing their asses off. In my opinion, a casual game of Commander has nothing to do with power level. In fact, bring power level into it very specifically makes it less casual to me. The whole point is to have no stakes, no investment, take things, y'know, casually. The minute you start doing the "No this and that" or "This doesn't belong here", you're immediately becoming invested in shaping the experience in a way too dedicatedly to be truly casual for me. It's akin to trying to set a dress-code at a bar and avoiding it is perhaps the one rule I would set for casual Commander. The only way to truly achieve a casual game of Commander is to remove yourself of all expectations, all stakes and just allow the games to happen as they do. Whether you're slapping big booties on the board, getting burnt for half your life every turn or locked out of playing for half the game, it's all the same to you, because what it is is the same. It's Magic. It's fun. Might not be your favourite fun, but in good company and a receptive attitude, even the staxiest stax can become fun.
It's not a dig on you personally but it's fascinating to see that an entire UA-camr decided to call themselves 3/3 Elk - a meme that was created before my very eyes, considering I'm not following MtG all that closely =O
My solution is to just run a wide variety of decks of various power levels (around 30) so I always have something to match the vibe of the group. I have one cEDH deck as the ceiling, reserved for one particular player that likes to use the group as the testing grounds for his cEDH decks. A pauper EDH deck serves as the floor for those players not as invested in deck building. With that being said, I've still had players running upgraded precons complain that my pauper deck is too strong and needs to be nerfed. At some point you just need to accept people will still find ways to be salty.
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Casual commander is when you and your commander like spending time with each other but don't really wanna put a label on it
😂😂😂
"Are we cEDH?"
"I think we should see other formats..."
Wow I can’t believe snail said all those crazy things! Everyone needs to watch the whole video to hear it!!
What's up, Mr. Mage?
I really went off in this one, my b guys
@@salubrioussnail What's up, Snail? Love your content and the podcast!
time stamp?
@@salubrioussnailapology video when?
Casual commander is when you kiss the next player on the lips to pass the turn.
That's Casu-'Cule Commander.
Sounds like Intimate commander to me.
I thought casual commander referred to the dress code? As opposed to formal commander?
Yeah. I don't know about these scrubs, but I play Business Casual commander.
You guys put clothes on? We're full-on pyjama party.
@@jackalvonstone250 Business Casual Commander is exactly where Casual Commander sits. There is a right balance to dress the deck well and present it without being too formal unlike the pretentious slobs in tuxedo playing cEDH.
@FretboardToAsh thought that was going in a different direction for a moment
I attend Black Tie commander events
I love when elk is talking their arm is just like “✨yasss✨✨”
i really like the editing at 7:11 and 9:14, where one content creator states that they think something isnt represented in casual edh, and the other instantly says that they think it could be represented. great flow!
16:58 this sea monster idea is funny to me because my brother did something almost identical with beasts recently. For every Herald of Ilhaarg or Manglehorn, the deck has a Scragnoth or a Darba. It’s all about balance!
So excited to have this one come out 💯💯
What's up, Mill Guy? Love your content and it's super cool to see you on other channels.
It's interesting listening to all these differing opinions because they agree on some common things (fast mana, broken mechanics/combo ...) but ultimately I think what makes commander really casual is the _intention_ behind the deck/game, which is highly subjective and changes a lot from group to group. Which, if I may say so, is one of the most beautiful things about commander: it brings out a lot the person behind the deck
I swear you literally have gathered all my fav commander content creators here, like the YT MTG avengers.
I adore that you noted about not being able to truly police out salt.
From bad days to harsh games it is impossible to say whose attitude will be where and when.
I definitely agree, and there will always be players who love things like niv mizzet and dredge decks, and those who hate playing against those decks
Great video. Some of the card choices you flashed to match descriptions like Bloody Feud and Pariah were really funny
Really cool to see you get so many creators thoughts!
Casual commander is whatever you agree to with your friends. If your group wants power level 11, no ban list and any card can be your commander that’s still casual.
That's arguably the most casual.
It’s that thing you play at your LGS Thursday night, where some people play precons, and others play their old CEDH decks that don’t keep up.
in love with the name of this channel
i could not have thought of something better than "3/3 Elk"
incredible work on that one
(i am dead serious)
Damn that casting is amazing, didn't expect to see so many of my favorite mtg content creators to appear in the same video, it's a great day!
What a STACKED cast and a great range of content creators. I mean, ThatMillGuy, Trinket Mage, Snail, Rebell, Attack on Cardboard, Tomer, wow. Incredible video, amazing work Elk! Excited for next week's podcast🎉
I think the best thing you can do to make sure you’re staying casual in commander is have an outlet for your spiky behaviour. For me that’s Canlander and Standard, for others it’s gonna be Modern or cEDH. It’s really fun to play with stupid, busted cards and just try to win… but it’s also fun to play creative casual decks with silly or novel themes that have telegraphed win-conditions. I believe the problems come from trying to do both at once.
I have heard/seen someone even suggest competitive activities outside Magic like Olympic wrestling, spelling bee or competitive rubics cube as outlets for your innate competitive edge.
Casual is just not cedh. From there, it's a balance that is hard to find from group to group
That seems like the easy and obvious answer!
For me, and most people at my stor, casual commander is Moreso the mindset when playing. We played in a pod for 6 hours on Saturday night, rotating decks sometimes, and having a blast. We had turn one sol ring Signet, cyclonic rift, turn 2 dranith etc. But we kept good spirits and had lots of laughs.
Some of these restrictions are wild and i can understand why there's so much discourse on land counts in casual edh now.
Great job pulling cards up relevant to the conversation. I really appreciate that.
Sportsmanship & communication is what makes the format casual.
Sportsmanship & communication are vital for every format. Maybe even moreso in competitive formats where there are prizes on the line.
I think one of things about casual Commander is it's relative, yeah? Casual compared to what? If a cedh player makes a casual deck for when they're not at a tournament, its casual for that player. If someone who plays "high power" at their lgs makes a casual deck for when there's a precon sitting across from them, it's casual for that player. But we're starting from different heights. They might line up, but they're likely not.
That Trinket Mage is one angry chibi, i love it.
I don't know if it's because I am newer to Commander and have mainly spent my time playing other card games that are often much faster, but I feel like I am very lenient overall. There are only really 3 things I don't want to see in Commander:
The big 2 are someone winning very quickly and anything that puts extreme limits on what you can do. If I wanted to play a game where I am going to lose quickly or not be able to play, I would just play Yugioh, lol. I am cool with infinite combos regardless of how many cards are needed if they happen turn 6 or later, and if I can still potentially stop the combo with interaction.
Tutors are also kinda whatever. If you want to play your deck the same way every time, that's your right to do so. A lot of people I know who play Tutors in casual come from other card games that have a lot of consistency such as Pokemon TCG or Yugioh. I myself only play Tutors for very specific reasons. My Beamtown Bullies deck plays Grim Tutor mainly because I pulled it from a pack, and because I need increased access to Graveyard setup cards like Buried Alive (could also technically be considered a Tutor) or else I simply can't play the game. I also have a self imposed rule that I won't just send things that end the game for someone immediately like Leveler unless someone has gotten off to a very fast start. I also play Beseech The Mirror in my Sharuum deck mainly because I can sacrifice an Artifact that I want to bring back with Sharuum.
The one other thing I don't want to see in casual is that I don't want someone to lose to a deck because they didn't know what it did. Either because the person playing it did not disclose something in rule 0, or because the deck relies entirely on you not knowing what it does because it's some gimmick deck. I have a real world example for each. A friend of mine was playing a Vadrik deck, the Izzet day/night guy. He did not disclose in the rule 0 that the entire point of the deck was to go infinite. The other example is I played in a pod that had a friend of a friend in it. I don't remember the name of the Commander, but it's a mono red guy that gets a +1/+1 counter for each card you exile from your deck. The deck only had like 3 or 4 no land cards in it and it was just cards with Cascade. And the deck literally folds if you know what it does. It made me more irritated because the other 2 players at the table knew and I guess I was supposed to just get one shot as some sort of rite of passage I guess lol.
Anyways, sorry for the whole damned novel I wrote.
I do agree with your point on tutor use, I play a spellslinger deck that has some great X spells with some spells like Aminatou's Augury that grabs stuff for free from your deck. I play the tutor Solve the equation just to prevent at least 1 X spell from getting lost to Aminatou's Augury and other free casting effects. My other deck plays 2 non-traditional tutors that requires me to jump through many hoops to get there - Rushed rebirth, Analyze the pollen and Pillage the Bog.
I wanna have the opportunity to meaningfully participate. That means please don't pubstomp or combo kill the table by turn 5, please don't lock us out and please don't farewell or mass goad.
15:01 this is the best thing to do. Choose a commander or an idea and make all your cards fit around that. I try to have all my cards in firesong & sunspeaker deal damage or gain life or be based on the fact that i will be doing so. Generically good cards are too boring to bother using or allow myself to use, they have to fit the deck I'm building.
god making decks for this format is such a headache of balancing expectations at the table. so glad I play pauper these days instead
This, I just stopped brewing for casual because that side of the format finds anything to complain about.
I stick to using unedited precons at casual tables and most of the players are so bad that I've ended up going 5-0 or 6-0 and I get accused of lying about my precon.
@@JoolenplusEffective precon recomendations?
@@TLWHDXExit from Exile and Revenant Recon are the most straightforward and easy to play.
The best one is probably Jumpscare, it has an infinite combo. The only thing I don't like about Jumpscare is that you can sometimes just hit lands or nothing relevant off manifest dread.
My friends and I all just started making decks with a budget of 1$ per card except for the commander. Fixes the whole format. The format NEEDS a long and through ban list.
@@vennin7781Agreed, but that violates the philosophy of the commander banlist. Which is a genuine headass take on their part. Do not do signpost bans.
Very well edited!
A lot of great opinions in this video. The deeper I dive in to EDH the more I am glad to have a regular playgroup that all seems to float around each other's power.
3/3 Elk is a banger name! I like the thumbnail text vs the 13 content creators all saying incredibly similar things, hahaha
To me casual EDH is about embracing restrictions.
And cEDH is about unhinged power.
Casual comes down to "The circle of trust" (I don't know if that's a real term but im using it anyway.
With close friends, anything from red-hair tribal to "high power" is casual. You all know what decks you each like to play, generally how they operate, and emphasize enjoyment. Someone can play a blow out commander, get shit talked on, and then laugh and shuffle up for the next game with relative ease.
The next circle is the extended playgroup/LGS. Here there's a mix of "hangout and do what ever feels fun for everyone" people and douches. If your community is active and open, you can play a wide range of decks with out hassle. You may get the occasional complaint but overall fun is and "rule zero" conversations tend to be completely informal. However there tend to be strangers and people you don't know well so negative experiences can be more common. Generally, trust is lower than the friend group but not untrust worthy.
From there you gave in person commander at events with strangers. Trust is lower than the extended playground so negative experiences can be higher frequency. Especially as communication will be less open. Miscommunication is more likely as the trust is lower. But it is still in person so social norms and being s general "good hang" will result in a lot of fun games.
The lowest level of trust is online. Either on spell table, reddit, here, or elsewhere. Trust is low and even statments that seem innocuous can be taken as controversial. People are more defensive and more likely confront or interpret statements as negatively as possible.
For the health of the game and casual commander, look to the small circles of trust than the larger ones to see if we're having fun.
Overall, Im lucky that the people I play with in my friend group and LGS have a broad sense of casual. And even when we disagree, we still find ways for us all to enjoy the game and each other's company
Imo the only true casual “format” is Cards I Own. I don’t consider it casual play if there are formal, preset rules for deck building beyond the base expectation of at least 60 cards (40 if it’s draft), no more than 4 copies (if constructed).
As I am watching the video, I think it would would be great to have the question available on screen as you say/ask it and keep it on screen, perhaps above or to the side, while they're responding. Sometimes it can be difficult to remember exactly what they're responding to and we only had you stating the question outloud in the beginning.
I really like how Elk goes out and asks plenty of people for ideas. Hearing all these voices is great!
After getting the vibe at my LGS, I have found that I like to brew an "anything goes" $50 budget deck. Usually, I like to also add in a no single card over $5.
Yea, seems about right,
My deckbuilding restrictions I stick to for making a casual deck are:
No fastmana (any cards that on their own or with minimal setup produce more mana then they cost the turn they come into play, I personally don't run sol ring for this reason, however this also includes most red rituals)
No Tutors (Personally I really love the variance and creativity a lot, and tutors undermine the 100 card singleton nature of the format. If you build a hidden commander, or have partners with cards in the 99 that search for 1 specific named card, its fine, Somewhere in between, evaluated by powerlevel and how much it homogenizes games, I draw the line, in my own decks, I am to run 0)
Personally, I am fine with staxx, as none of them are actually good, and if amongst 3 opponents, nobody has interaction, thats a skill issue. I do expect people playing staxx to present a win condition at some point though. When it concerns Armageddon for example, if you have a full board that takes 3 or so turns to win, but needs safety, casting Armageddon to essentially win makes sense, casting it after a farewell is brutal though, and might not even help you.
I don't expect mass land destruction in commander the same way I don't expect anybody to be running manaless dredge in commander, it just does not work very well. When it considers classic staxx, as in, smokestack and friends, thats my definition of a good time (:
Also, I have a strong disgust for "generically strong cards" (sol ring, rhystic study, the one ring) that are not on theme. If you have a tax themed deck, playing rhystic study makes sense, if not, why is it there?
I'm curious how you feel about mass land destruction. You mention it's a problem, but if I build my deck entirely focused on land destruction and being able to mitigate that drawback, is that any different than locking the table out with stax pieces?
@@kyllanburt994 I would say that stax in general as a strat to limit everyone suggests a control aspect, as is land destruction approach. The difference is if you remove mana, then interactions is fairly scarce, for obvious reasons, but stax just means you have to play with more attention to your resources, but you still have access to your mana. Hopes this perspective helps. Most people do not enjoy either since you are essentially telling the 3 other players, no you cannot play your cards.
@@kyllanburt994 Id say land destruction is a fine strategy, as long as there is a plan to win.
For example, I saw someone play planeswalkers in combination with the boardwhipes that hit lands and creatures, as long as there is a win conditon, its fine.
If the goal is just to blow up lands and wait for people to scoop, its miserable, just like staxx.
For this reason, if someone randomly armageddons in the middle of a game with no plan or reason, its quite destructive, however, if they use it similarly to a rift, where it is to confirm a win, its a good move.
@@jaceg810I agree with that. I think anything is viable as long as the goal is to win. But I do think the speed at which you do the thing is really the discussion of power level. I don't get salty about edh. I shuffle up and play again. And I have a range of decks, so if I was misled or someone really just doesn't know how good they or their deck is, I can adjust my level to match them.
@@kyllanburt994 Yea, thats why I think casual is no tutors or fastmana (and by proxy, no 2 card combo's or early wins).
When it concerns power level, my favorite deck is a control deck that tries to remove value engines while staying alive, and wins when everybody ran out of gas, thus, it scales quite well to different power levels.
Any game of commander is casual Commander except if it is cEDH. As simple as that if you ask me
To me there is 2 types of commander decks, casual and cedh. If you're not going for a win by turn 5, its casual to me
Fantastic video and great journalism
"What is casual Commander"
"What is a social game"
ive been asking that question for months since we got that banlist for dockside. Since Most people had a dockside and questioned why it went away. only to be told "Well its not for casual commander"... only for noone to agree about what is casual commander.
and still. noone has an answer that's agreed upon.
Even in this video. Nobody really agrees. its pretty nebulous.
Whats worse is that theres secondary issues like the banlist that add to this problem. Smothering tithe, Rystic Study and sol Ring are things some of these people dont play cause they know how powerful and consistent they are. Yet they aren't banned... creating this weird space where you have to accept them if they are played... meanwhile you know they conflict with commander.
All in all. I feel like unless you actually cant define it cause the lines people use are just too generic to support.
Saying "we play to have fun." or even "you pick a theme and stick to it" to me just arent valid answers.
Hopefully i can make my own video on this. Cause honestly this is still just the surface of the discussion
Ah, this topic is a tired one indeed. I have no good answer to it myself either. One of my play groups seems to view "casual" as simply avoiding infinite combos and the typical free spells and fast mana stuff. Their problem however is that they also view play styles and player attitude as a key variable of casual. Aggro and voltron decks that rush down a player are not casual in their eyes.
My other play group however, views things a little differently. To this group, the use of the word 'casual' is the problem inherently. To them, casual is precon decks only. Anything outside of precon decks is high power. It's an on or off switch to them. You're either playing precon casual, or you're playing high power. And from there, the deciding variable that jumps you from high power to cEDH is having a $3000 dollar mana base.
So while that first group has me struggling to nerf myself to avoid their salt, my other group has me struggling to keep up because they are all running infinite combos in their decks.
As far as my two play groups are concerned, I don't think either has the correct answer to the question though.
Maybe I’m wrong but it seems to me power has more to do with strategy and the commander than the 99. If you have a weak commander or a janky strategy then stuffing a bunch of good stuff is only going to get you so far. I just build the deck the way it wants to be to support the lines. Went to win with and let the power fall where it falls. Throw a few flavor cards in if it feels to efficient.
In my opinion Commander is casual unless you are playing in a tournament. I see decks as being high powered (focused) or low powered. I have a white and blue spirit tribal deck with no counter spells that turned out to be high powered.
Rhystic Study is totally fine for casual. No fast mana, no 2 cards combos, no tutors. Most ANYTHING else is fair game!
I dont want to see free counterspells. Or wincons/locks that can only be stopped by countermagic. Or anything that removes all or most of my ability to make substantial decisions while the came continues. Locks that don't very quickly win the game after the lock comes down, qhich includes multiple extra turns and mindslver locks.
Without having watched the video yet, my answer to this question has three points.
1. The primary objective is not "to win [at any cost]." [The objective is to win "my way."]
2. Instead the primary objective is to craft some kind of experience for your friends.
3. You may self-impose some sort of list of limitations on yourself or the table as a whole.
I think i pretty strongly disagree with point one, you can watch my slogfest video to see why. A deck can want to win but still be casual. Also like mald said, a casual game needs to end eventually.
@33elk My bad, let me rephrase and see if you like my first point better: the second objective, not the first, is to win.
What I meant to say is that casual EDH does not seek to win at any cost. It seeks to win in a particular way, according to the theme or goal of the deck.
For me, casual commander is drinking beers with the boyes, and seeing cool stuff.
this is my second time watching because I fall asleep the first time I listen to this video.
For me casual refers to my play group, I know what they would like to play against and with. I could make a non-casual deck if I wanted to metagame with my group knowing what they play. In any case I always choose to build around flavour and focus 100% on the theme, to the point I remove better cards and cards with art that doesn’t fit. Also card price comes into play when talking about casual games. Casual games means no pay to win.
Overall great video, one criticism I would have is to interview more women.
I found one example.
In office, one guy started to advocate for "Commander League". Some ppl were interested, but were also new / not too invested into MTG yet. They wanted "Casual" play, since it would be just some extra activity after-hours and to get into the game. One thing they asked for is to not include infinite combos. The guy that advocated initially nuked initiative in response
Casual Commander is anything that took the usefulness out of Magic as an avenue for me, with autism and severe social anxiety, to socialize with strangers doing a thing I love with any feeling of safety. Replacing a game that had previously had a strictly defined and consistent framework of what was valid and what isn't, a game that you couldn't make a faux-pas in because both players at the table definitionally consented to all game play allowed by the rules without exception, with a game that demands negotiation and often expects pulled punches, but can't codify that in the rules. It's the thing that removed my ability to play with strangers, and, once I moved out of my hometown, removed my ability to form a playgroup. It's the thing that splintered the Magic community's ability to speak the same language now that cards tend to be evaluated as multiplayer pieces first, then later as the formats that make up the game's original core. It's the format where Lightning Bolt sucks but Sol Ring is considered too iconic to ban, and it was the catalyst for the worsening or outright disintegration of some of my favorite parts of Magic. It is the format, in part, that UB is being made for, now that you can center your decks around all your favorite Blorbos as meanwhile even the "good" Magic sets need to be worlds of hats (I don't care how good Valgavoth is when his setting also included clean clothed and showered teenage ghostbusters/'member berry references on a good fraction of everything.)
It's not ableist, nor are the people who play it ableist. I'm actually entirely sure that the older hobby shop culture before Commander took over was infinitely more ableist considering the kinda shit people felt comfortable saying, but, in a way that may only apply to my lived experience, Commander being the biggest and most supported format made in person paper play more or less impossible for me due to the way it interacts with my neurodivergence. This is a particular shame when nerd-dom was, for so long, a gathering place for the neurodivergent, albeit having inherited many of the worst prejudices from the common culture uncritically.
You said it better than I ever could. When I sit down for a game of magic my focus is on the game of magic. When I’m building a magic deck my focus is on optimizing that deck to execute its plan as efficiently and effectively as possible, whether it entails endless countermagic, land destruction, or long turns with complicated loops. I play the game for the game, the people happen to be there. Commander puts the people before the game, fundamentally changing the rules without actually changing the rules, therefore making it not magic, but a different game that happens to use magic cards. If you change how and when you can move pieces in chess you’re no longer playing chess, just something else that uses the same basic pieces
@@mrjollyweeper6316 I sometimes flip flop on whether or not commander is Magic, which is a separate matter than whether or not commander is good, which is further separate from whether or not I like it. I just don't think it's good to have lost what was lost in making Commander so central. Despite the fact that people will call it its own format, it's not for nothing that Wizards calls it a variant in the rules, if I recall correctly.
Like, every game's name exists both as the game itself and as a word for things in its culture, in a sense. Not that the game IS the culture, though certainly an evolving game is deeply effected by its culture, but that, for example, the word chess will also be applied to things that aren't the game as it is most often thought of. Fairy chess being called chess makes sense, but it's not Chess chess. But you may be able to argue it's still chess. The same applies for the likes of chess960. This is not terribly useful to argue about, because the human brain isn't an objective observer anyways, and language reflects that.
All that said, a version of chess with a modified board seating 4 players with double the number of pieces including two kings that both need to be captured to beat someone, but if a king captures a singular king from another player then that player is out of the game as if both were captured, and a player base expectation that you don't move the queen all the way across the board, but no rule changes to keep that from being an option, and a similar debacle with knights jumping pawns too early in the game, that game would not be called chess probably. It's deeply indebted to chess, but it's something new with clear issues caused by a mismatch of player expectations and the rule set.
And Magic's not chess. I get that. I also get that, at its conception, Magic was a 40 card game with no play set limits and no concept of the stack, or batches. The turn player resolved spells in the order that was most useful to them, which is why interrupts existed. They DID have to be resolved in order, because otherwise you'd always just fizzle your opponent's counterspell. And you can find old posts from the Dojo that decry the 6ed rules changes as simplifying the gratifying gameplay of pre-6ed timing maze, and you can find posts on tons of forums about the m10 changes oversimplifying the strategic depths of purposeful mana burn and combat damage on the stack.
The original game changed quickly, with the concept of batches but not the name coming, I believe, by Revised. The 6ed and m10 changes were caused by a desire to either make the game more self consistent or to remove rules cruft that only became relevant infrequently or to get one over on ignorant players, albeit in cool ways. Commander was made to appeal to a different crowd, and that crowd just decimated the ways of the people who got them there in the first place, changing decades of precedent on what Magic gameplay looks like, and not for reasons that led to smoother gameplay, in fact, people argue more than ever, and fewer people proportionally have actually read the rules.
Getting back into Magic after a break used to feel like playing a new edition of D&D after missing one. You could've played AD&D 1e and understood the shape of 3rd. You could've played 2e and still recognized things from 4th, even if you may or may not like the changes (2e and 4e are my favorite editions to flip through, but that's neither here nor there.) If you played during Odyssey-Onslaught standard or whatever, and come back now, it's like going from 3.5e to a really unruly Blades in the Dark hack that the GM is wrestling with actively. That shit might be dope, but if that was genuinely the path of D&D going forwards, it'd be obviously a strange choice.
I dunno. I may be yelling out clouds at the ripe old age of... my mid 20s, but it's startling. I'd say the lasting similarity is the brand, but obviously that's up in the air too.
I find most lgs edh nights are high powered with very little social aspect, or straight up cedh. I don't put much stock in playing casually with strangers besides precons. I start actually trying to be what I consider casual with a proper playgroup because you can then accurately define a desired experience over time
Honestly, 0 cost rocks and no 1 mana tutors (imperial seal, worldy tutor etc). Everything else is fair game. Casual games still need to end eventually so having combos, or high powered cards for value or whatever else is all open IMO
In my personal point of view, for me casual commander is a play style that doesnt want to win as fast as they can and want to do its stuff and see others ppl stuffs. I build every single deck with, in my knowladge, at least one 2 to 3 cards infinite combo, but never put tutors or wayt to bring the pieces back from GY, bc game shave to finish at some point and if i get to use the combo by drawing it, nice, if i cant its nice to.
Its just gameplay intent guys. It always has been.
Are we here to hang out and play 6+ turns of battlecruiser style magic or are we trying to grind out a quick game in between rounds with no held punches?
Asking this question *should* help most players understand what kind of game to expect and minimize salt.
an unregulated game with no defining lines on power acceptance of decks creates an unhealthy game environment when you have power creep and no relevant bans, especially when you have to play a deck around peoples feelings kind of stupid in my opinion when people just want to have fun and play different styles of decks. when i think of casual i think this is not for prize money, i want to have fun but also want others to have fun because there decks wants to go off like mine and i want to see it pop off just as much as i want mine to pop off. Its all about respect, empathy, and not getting butt hurt from cardboard.
Knee deep in the pods 4th seat,
And your STAXing me out.
Is it Casual now?
Something I felt missing from this conversation (great video btw) is how commander product has warped people's understanding of commander and building of their decks. Cards are powerful now, creep only goes up, but when all you say is build "casual" and everyone's buying staples then you're closer to competitive than you think.
Like a player in my regular pod tried to make a "jank fun" coin flip deck, but had free counters that upped the power level quite a bit to where it was a shutout whenever he played it till those were taken out. I think yes be restrictive with yourself and let others have fun the way they want, but I do think, at least in regular pods, you should all build within a balance if you wanna keep it "casual"
anyway, play canlander lol (but really pls so it gets more popular).
really really dug this video. play what you want, how you want, this is just my opinion that I feel would help my pod and my own mental.
To the question:
Types of cards that ruin your casual table credibility: Fast mana, infinite combos, efficient tutors, mass land destruction, stax, zero commitment to flavour.
Reflections on EDH in general:
So, most of my decks are probably at least an 8/10 by default, right. I typically think of casual as like 5-7. I think most precons these days are probably at least a 5, maybe some of the really old ones are 4s for the amount of useless cards without synergy in them. I reckon you gotta really try to build any lower than that, though.
I just use a pauper Commander deck when I go to ACTUAL casual pods.
I don't typically play in casual pods. I'm good with rule 0 conversations tho, if I only have decks stronger than everyone else, I'll just encourage playing it as almost archenemy from turn 0, but yeah, cycling into exile usually works for the types of cards above, too. I eventually want to come up with extra side boards to power down each deck, to turn any deck down in power level.
Most of the games I play are against pretty good players with vast collections, not really LGS pods with strangers.
I'm more of an Uber-Johnny-style player, with Spike elements where it fits a Vorthos theme, or meme challenge.
Definitely not full Spike builds. But yeah, I proxy A LOT, generally around 7-10.
I have only one real EDH deck, and it's a fairly tuned Slicer, Hired Muscle.
Because I like the idea of playing mono red aggro voltron in cEDH pods without using combo like Godo or Magda. Just plain old attacking opponents.
I think power creep and volume of card releases in recent years has basically removed that challenge that boros, mono red or mono white are even hard to pull off these days, though. Even Myojin of Blooming Dawn as a commander that doesn't give itself an divinity counter, has a lot more competitive potential than people think. Obviously it's not gonna consistently beat pods of 3 decks on RogSi Thoracle spike, but it'll beat pods where there are 1 or 2, more often than people think.
But yeah, the changes to accommodate casual pods are are so format warping, and is reflective of the prevalence of proxy stigma, imo. When people finally get past proxy stigma, accessibility to cards stops being an issue, and it starts being a bit more valid representations of what people come up with in their minds, rather than what's available to them to play.
My Taniwha deck plays a bunch of stax and Mass Land removal, but it's a Taniwha deck lol.
It's not getting past 8.5 while having Vorthos tones and not just going to mono blue Oracle combo without flavour; which I don't do. It's probably a little higher than casual, though.
I think the best place to be in magic is a cEDH social contract, but everyone trying rogue cEDH decks, powered up. I reckon 8.5-9/10 is where you want to be, but with no sense of entitlement to other people not using 9.5 or even 10.
The decks are always interesting, reasonably competitive, and always spicy, in multiplayer, with politics. The sweet spot.
Pre-game power imbalances in the pod are just assessed by knowing the commander and playing against the same players regularly. Stronger commanders expect to get focused with removal more often. Really minimizes the amount of rule 0 conversations necessary. Sometimes commanders are changed so as to not be hard counters to other decks in the pod.
In my opinion, the only 2 things that have no place in a casual deck are fast mana and 2 card combos. This has to do with the eternal arms race between removal and targets. In cEDH decks need to run Force of Will, Deflecting Swat, and other free or extremely cheap interaction due to how strong and fast the cards people are using to win are. However in a casual list I can get away with running absolute garbage interaction like Forceful Denial.
Fast mana allows people to accelerate into t4/5/6 plays on t1/2, putting them so far ahead of everyone else that casual interaction packages simply cannot keep up.
Under normal circumstances I know whether or not I am safe to tap out based on life totals and board presence. 2 card combos completely upend that math by allowing players to win on the spot often without any aparent warning, which again casual interaction packages are generally not equipped to handle.
Elkatron you should get play to win on the channel
Casual Commander implies the existence of Formal Follower
Casual commander is showing up to the LGS in your Pjs with an [insert favorite MTG character here] plushie.
It's funny because I have a Braids, Cabal Minion deck (we rule zeroed it) and it's full of stax garbage, but it works well within my playgroup: the other players are rather aggressive and win-focussed, while I restricted myself to have a budget of 50,00 € and no combos, so I think it could be considered casual
And yeah, it kind of works and nobody has shot me in the back yet 😂
In my honest opinion the reason there's such a nebulous way to describe casual commander is because it's not about the decks being built, it's about the players behind the decks. Two players could be playing the exact same netdecked "CEDH," build and the one that's playing casual is gonna run their lines in such a way the others at a pod can play their decks and the group can enjoy an experience, the other is there to win with the seeking of similarly competitive players vs. the seeking of just any random pod often being what marks the difference between a CEDH only player and a pubstomper.
15:56 - As an Oathbreaker fanatic, I cannot think of a card that is "scarier" than a Turn 2 communal brewing which is hilarious as the "fun to play against" example
My group has like sub types for decks like “silly”- chasing your gimmick at all costs, “focused”- trying to use everything you can to make whatever mechanic/idea work, “strong”-you built it thinking about how your gonna curb stomp your opponent, maybe a inf combo, then of course cedh and precon/modified precon. Even with this we often have the weird games with a cedh deck, a focused deck, a modified precon, and someone playing mono red chaos 😂
Casual Commander is Collaborative Commander. It's a problem to be an isolationist, where it doesn't matter what your opponents do.
came for Bosh. nowadays I just decline to play the game of commander. I'd rather play legacy or modern. I still have a great time, laugh my ass, and don't feel guilty for waste locking the beautiful person in front of me.
Mr. NRoll was one of the people i was really excited to talk to for this video. I tried to get a wide range of experiences for this video :)
He surely is a player with a wide range of expertise. That’s why I wanted to listen to his input despite me being a non commander player. I tried it. But i couldn’t help notice that actions I normally had little to no impact in legacy or modern can have a big emotional effect in commander. So, now I just decline the offer.
It is really disheartening to see just so many versions of 'If it's casual, I just cut cards people complain about'
There should be no issue on running engines like Smothering Tithe or Esper Sentinel if the colors really call for that i.e. Monowhite really needs both the ramp and the card draw engine so why not run them? In fact you should also always run Enlightened Tutor to grab them early as well.
People confuse being salty about their own jank vs actually being able to consistently win the game turn 3-4 by whatever means which is 3+ turns what your average casual player is ready for. That's a good measure: it's not about a player being salty is about actually transforming that into a quick win otherwise, it's just sore losers and that tells me the only way to play casual commander is to intentionally throw the game so the player who complains the most and most consistently wins and you don't get a tantrum.
the problem isn't really that Tithe/Study are powerful, it's that they have noxious play patterns. being constantly asked if you're going to pay the tax makes for miserable gameplay
Bro, White has multiple really efficient draw engines for many deck archetypes, it has reasonably efficient land ramp AND colorless artifact ramp.
You can play any amount of abnoxious cards you want, but the other players will either play with equally abnoxious cards, or not play with you at all. If that's okay for you, great. But don't act like you NEED Tithe/Sentinel + Tutors for your decks to function.
Bruh I have 4 mono white decks and only one runs esper sentinel, no tithes or trouble in pairs. You really don't need them and I ABSOLUTELY find smothering tithe oppressively good in casual games.
I think Rebell was right on the money with her final remarks. Hopefully that is the overarching vibe at the CFP
My main problem with tutors was that the black deck I had them in usually used them to tutor for mana sources because I didn’t include enough lands.
I really like the video idea. What I am kinda opposed was the mana vault picture every time someone talked about fast mana. Yes it is, but in casual, sol ring is the more powerful card. So you could have used that spot for stuff like dark ritual, or the other moxes so more veriety maybe 😅 or just the jab at sol ring would have fit here too maybe 😂
For ME (I don't mind if other people at the table do it) Fast Mana + Tutors + 2card Combo + MLD + hard stax and mana denial. Pushing it "too hard to win" is the same of "not casual" for me. Free Spells are a weird middle ground for me.
Yeah Bosh n Roll commander opinions let’s go
I play bofa commander
When you were talking about weak decks that are unfun to play against... There's a guy who comes into my LGS maybe once every couple of months. He plays VERY slow AND often plays super-durdle decks. Like the timey-wimey suspend counters precon. He kept recurring some board wipes but had no way of winning the game and was taking 20 minutes per turn+.
scoop and dont play vs those kinds of guys. I lose more in ranked on arena do to ropers and slow players or do nothing durdles than I do to actually losing by death. Its not fun to be unable to play
It’s the “don’t hurt my feelings” format.
We've been having a discussion about this at my LGS. Most people were in agreement on what belongs in casual vs high power, and by "most", I mean the people who haven't been playing infinite combos, turn 4/5 wins, etc. The term "farming for money" has been thrown around, which really shows how big the problem has become.
I also recently saw someone describe their $2.5k, single card + commander infinite combo deck, a "high 7 or an 8", but still casual. First off, what the hell is a "high 7"? How about we _actually_ use a 1 to 10 scale instead of the 7 to 7 scale. Second, in my opinion, any infinite combo is not casual. It should also be a rule that anyone who pulls the "it's not infinite, I only did it 3 million times" excuse should be slapped. "Infinite" is a concept, not a number. Just because it can be done an infinite amount of times, but you _only_ do it enough to win the game, doesn't mean that it isn't infinite.
There are some bad infinite combos made up of several generic and mediocre cards that can only really be played in casual pods. The best example in my mind is insidious roots, tortured existence, and any haste enabler. As long as you have a creature in your graveyard and a creature in your hand you get infinite infinitely big plants. Both of these fit into just about any graveyard focused deck in golgari colors, and most people are running some kind of haste enabler, whether that is just swiftfoot boots or any of the green enchantment based enablers. I don’t actually mind the more Rube Goldberg-esque low power infinites unless you are tutoring for them and basing your deck around playing to find them every game.
31:00 sounds like he needs to be on the podcast.
Elk lookin like they got some terrible news for the new monarch
Love seeing distraction makers here!
I'm not sure how I feel about casual at this point. I don't go to an lgs, I don't have a regular play group, but I brew a lot, I spend a ton of time looking at magic stuff, and most of my decks are right on the edge of being scary. I will say that I don't want to proxy, so that basically puts me in a weird spot lol
Thatmillguy having the most recognizible voice in the roaster
I thought casual commander was when you just play one game with a group and it doesn't become a consistent thing yk
For me my main point are windows of interaction. I think as the deck becomes more and more competitive the window of interaction where you *could* have done something about it gets narrower and narrower. Casual commander to me is a game where all the windows of interaction are wide enough that you feel in some way like you could have seen it coming or could have done something about it, and so everyone has a chance to impact the game. Note: could have not did, sometimes you know you have a boardwipe in the deck for the squirrel deck who's been generating 200 tokens over 4 turns, but you don't draw it, but that doesn't mean the deck isn't casual
Technically cEDH decks fall in that definition when they're up against each other, but also the timing isn't wide enough that you feel you can play a wide variety of cards and still have an impact. The window on thoracle is quite narrow, but cEDH decks are built with that in mind, whereas if you play thoracle against most decks 8/10 of them are not going to have a single way that they could have interacted with that at the right time. That's kind of the source of most frustrations in my experience people feeling like for one reason or another their deck did not have an impact on this game, and as you get more and more powerful that window gets more and more tight.
Also really wanted to say this, but with casual commander being mostly a vibes based thing people have to be more accepting particularly with random pick up games that sometimes the vibes are just going to be off, but that doesn't always mean the other person was trying to pull one over on you. The vibes will be imperfect, and that's something people on average need to be better at recognizing, and not jump to "you did X thing it's not casual anymore."
to me cedh is just shorthand for a predetermined rule 0 and the rest is just 'casual' commander.
I have a deck that I feel is solidly mid power and thats the level I play it at when against close friends who agree, but I typically describe it as high power casual when playing againsst strangers because it contains a few generically good cards and can cheat some staxy or hatebear type effects into play, people dont usually have a problem with this if the expectation is high power, which I also disclose that the deck contains those effects before playing, I havent had any problems so far doing this and it lets me play some of my favorite cards that are often hated out of casual spaces.
I believe there are 4* types of decks in Commander:
- cEDH (self explanatory)
- Optimized decks. Not competitive but definitely have filtered out the jank, the pet cards, better mana base, etc.
- Kitchen Table Magic & Precons. These 2 should go together as they should be the bare minimum to play the game.
- "Casual" Commander. *Casual is a myth and a label that will be thrown around forever, it doesn't actually exist. (as a level)
It's a subjective label we use that, i think, we want to say "i want to do my thing w/o being immediatly stomped" (aka a slow-ish pace game)
I agree with some points that could help "curate" the "label" - No MLD, No 2 card infinite combos
In my pod, we got a guy who doesn’t know the definition of casual. He’ll come to the table and promise us, this time, it’s casual.
Never is.
Same comander but different win conditions for all four players
Creative use of cards to highlight the context, the person is talking about!
I think the things MyHandsAreBlank and Rebell said during the bonus round resonates with me the most when it comes to this discussion. I know I've always been difficult with this topic in particular, because my mentality towards the idea of "Casual Commander" differs quite heavily from what it's typically referring to. To me, casual commander is not about a set of expected ground-rules, it's about an attitude of play. It's about sitting down to just play Magic for Magic's sake with no pre-conceived notions of what kind of game we wanna play. It's a free-for-all, because we aren't letting silly things like "An even playing field" or "Fairness" get in the way of playing whatever the hell we feel like. You know a casual game is going well, when the losers are having more fun than they'd have winning, because they're too busy laughing their asses off.
In my opinion, a casual game of Commander has nothing to do with power level. In fact, bring power level into it very specifically makes it less casual to me. The whole point is to have no stakes, no investment, take things, y'know, casually. The minute you start doing the "No this and that" or "This doesn't belong here", you're immediately becoming invested in shaping the experience in a way too dedicatedly to be truly casual for me. It's akin to trying to set a dress-code at a bar and avoiding it is perhaps the one rule I would set for casual Commander.
The only way to truly achieve a casual game of Commander is to remove yourself of all expectations, all stakes and just allow the games to happen as they do. Whether you're slapping big booties on the board, getting burnt for half your life every turn or locked out of playing for half the game, it's all the same to you, because what it is is the same. It's Magic. It's fun. Might not be your favourite fun, but in good company and a receptive attitude, even the staxiest stax can become fun.
Asking "what is casual commander?" is like asking "what is wet water?" 😂
I started my early edh career playing Azami and Tajic/world slayer. I still feel like mld is rather casual
It's not a dig on you personally but it's fascinating to see that an entire UA-camr decided to call themselves 3/3 Elk - a meme that was created before my very eyes, considering I'm not following MtG all that closely =O
My solution is to just run a wide variety of decks of various power levels (around 30) so I always have something to match the vibe of the group. I have one cEDH deck as the ceiling, reserved for one particular player that likes to use the group as the testing grounds for his cEDH decks. A pauper EDH deck serves as the floor for those players not as invested in deck building.
With that being said, I've still had players running upgraded precons complain that my pauper deck is too strong and needs to be nerfed. At some point you just need to accept people will still find ways to be salty.