I by the way love to beat people with all common decks s they always think that’ll be an easy win. Funnily an all common goblin deck was already dominating at the study organization i used to go to (and not just dominating all common decks, so there “all common” was more threatening than usual). Of course I had to challenge him with the all common deck I brought.

When playing, a friend of the Goblin deck’s owner walks up, asks what the score is and the Goblin player tells him it’s 1-0. The other guy congratulates the Goblin player, but the Goblin player corrects him: it’s 1-0 in favor of me. My all common High Tide deck was simply a turn faster than the Goblin deck and could win at a leisurely pace. The Goblin player was a good sport about it though and we played a few more games with me playing different decks where it did become clear his Goblin deck was strong for an all common deck.

I’m not sure I remember a game which that the common High Tide deck lost (though of course it will go down against tournament level Legacy or Vintage decks). On one occassion it did fizzle, but not before I dropped like 2 Scriveners, 3 Cloud of Fearies, bounced his defenses with Capsize and just went for the beatdown. It’s a good deck to get out when someone is bragging about his deck ;).

Anyway, just trying to illustrate my fondness for sub-par strategies and themes.

You need a subgroup of a subgroup of a subgroup, first you need an (EDH) player who is not opposed to taking extra turns, then you need one who has a group that will not complain too much or retaliate too hard and then finally of those people you need someone who doesn’t intend to recur it (or intends to and sees the exile clause as an interesting challenge ;)).

While I do want to own a playset myself I do not envision many to want it. Not enough to really push it up anyway.

But I didn’t mean to focus on Mastery per se, it’s just a recent example brought up in the forums of a card that at first glance seems like it should move well to the casual crowd. The more important message is that “fun” means something different to each player and that when you’re used to competitive players it’s very easy to dismiss the casual view as “wrong”, “uninteresting”, “weird’, etc., likely losing you many opportunities for great trades (particularly if you’re vocal about it). These differences should be embraced rather than shunned as they are going to value cards that you don’t, making it very easy to trade to mutual advantage.

Great comments. I’m with you on the “Temporal Mastery” is NOT a great EDH card…though it has nothing to do with the fact that you get to “miracle it” and time walk people…it’s the fact that no matter when you cast it..it gets exiled. The people I know who tend to run this affect (i.e. the take 1 extra turn spells) like to recur them…thus mastery isn’t that great. The occasional miracle for 2 mana is less relevant as this sort of affect is predominantly desired mid game…when it’s miracle cost is less relevant (as you can hardcast Time warp for 3 more mana…)…Now Time Stretch is a different beast…this card will be recurred by some players, but others just use it to give themselves the turns necessary to win the game (without need to recur it).

Yep…I got my foil Gruul Ragebeast the week of release…and slotted it into my Mayael deck…that thing wrecks people in that style of deck…every creature comes with a free ETB “destroy target creature”. I still advocate picking up foils of this card every chance you get.

Its a speculator on youtube that make short videos, from time to time. There is some good pick up, some bad. His thinking is correct for a player like me that want his t2 collection to freeroll. like “dont get DGM cards right now, get RTR GTC cards!!!” Here is a link for the “criminally low” comment, sometime he does this too often in the same video 😛 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qfPy_ECo7w

I found him because he posts his stuff on the same account of a web serie called “Top Decking”, if you never saw that you should!!! They are doing a season 2 right now :
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA823318E42AA7CBA

I remember getting so excited when I learned I can Twiddle a land with multiple Psychic Venoms on them. I didn’t care for Strip Mine. How is it advantageous of me to sacrifice a land just to destroy a land, amirite?

I don’t follow tournament Magic much, but, as prices frequently lag behind in Europe I can just follow whatever gets suggested on the forums and in articles when the reasoning seems sound. (I’ve even been able to pick up 2 Mox Opals last week for $18.50 each from a store that was really far behind). I might not be able to be ahead on every price jump, but I generally do well enough.

Casual cards are my thing though and those are where I do tend to be somewhat ahead of the pack. I have built many casual decks and have seen many others in action too. It’s fairly easy for me to identify what people would like for their decks and what probably wouldn’t make the cut. I’m particularly fond of the few casual players with a higher than average budget that would buy stuff like Capture of Jingzhou as, being one of them, I really understand those.

Way too often do I see something like Temporal Mastery promoted for being a card that would be very appealing to casual players where that would not be true at all. Usually when that happens I get the impression that the poster is trying to apply a general idea of what casual is rather than personal experience and failing because of soem detail. (Admittedly the previously mentioned Capture and Mastery would fall in the same category, but here relative rarity kicks in, only 1 in 10.000 EDH players would need to want and be able to afford a Capture to drive its price up (made up number, but given the rarity of Capture I would not be surprised if it’s something like this)).

Casual is many things to different people: it has a meta game (in local groups), very different card evaluation and it will be hard to get into if you appear to be some tournament player who thinks he knows better (as casual players seem to be a bit alergic to that). Particularly that last part is seen in EDH where there’s a big divide between players who want a casual EDH game and players who are looking for a more competitive one (usually one group consists of primarily casual players and the other of primarily tournament players too). These people tend to not understand each other’s idea of fun at all and I’ve seen a casual group get highly annoyed with a competitive player who went combo on them numerous times (it’s not as annoying the other way around as the player with his casual deck will simply get crushed by the competitive players, which suits them just fine).

It’s not that casual players don’t like to win though, but they build their decks for a fun game first and to win second. Personally my main goal when playing a game is to see my strategies work. Granted, when they work they result in a win more often than not, but I can honestly say I enjoy a game where my strategy was working but thwarted in some way just as much if not more (they deifnitely tend to result in better stories). Competitive players on the other hand tend to derive their fun from winning and tend to play whatever allows them to.

When I am with a new group or playing a new format I tend to focus on building a good deck. Once I’ve successfully proven I can win a high percentage of games I tend to focus on worse strategies to see if I can still make them work. Once succesful I will go for even worse decks. Getting an even higher win percentage is pretty boring to me, winning with an inferior strategy never gets old though.

Just trying to give some insight in the casual mindset here ;).

I don\’t know who or what Alex Kessler and Mad Magic are.

Yea, I had an ex girlfriend who was obsessed with Twiddle. I tried to explain that the card did not DO anything, really, but she would point to a corner case where she tapped a blocker and it was hard explaining that Terror does the same thing in that scenario, it is also good when you are not about to win anyway, unlike Twiddle. Luckily my wife\’s first favorite card was Thragtusk and I do not have to make a case against it.

\” Casual only cards are often easy to pick out in a line up, but are just as easily misevaluated because they often require a certain type of deck to be popular.\”

That\’s perhaps the biggest thrust behind my deciding to write this- good insight. It\’s easy to look at a card and say \”Duh, EDH\” but an EDH player with decks built will know a bit better which decks this slots in, whether there\’s something better in there already and roughly what percentage of players will want the card. I resisted EDH for a long time, but I\’m finally starting to get it and am better at evaluating cards already. I love that the durdliest $1 foils are the best cards in my deck, too.

One of the hardest things with new players can be realizing why cards they love are not actually awesome. Learning card evaluation through a sealed league should be a good way to gracefully learn that.

Casuals are the key! Another thing about them, they often are willing to pay full retail price on cards. not like sharky-player/trader taht want to buy them at the store buylist price. 😛