[Question 32] Favorite Casual Formats

[Peter_Rotten]

Here is a light heartered question just that can possibly expose members to other fun variants of Magic.

What is you favorite casual format? Why do you like it - or - what does it have that other formats don't? How often do you play it?

To preemptively strike against the smart-alecs, for the purpose of this question, Legacy is NOT a casual format :tongue: .

[Zach Tartell]

I'll take this one. And, since I'm pretty sure I'm the only one responding now, forgive me if somebody beats me in, and my format explanations are superfluous.

The first casual format I got into was just straight up "casual." Mike "man sex" Herbig introduced me to playing terrible decks with more... casual players who don't have the depth of collections that either he or I have. It's wicked tough to judge power level, though, and the decision of casuality (didn't spell "casualty" wrong, that's like the gauge of how casual your deck is) lies in the hands of your lesser-equipped friends. Most of my decks were along the lines of something Mike had done in the past - Reap (http://magiccards.info/tp/en/141.html) / Lace (http://magiccards.info/4e/en/15.html) combo (until Virg, the portly ringleader of the group said that Reap was way too broken because it could target another card named Reap), WR Tron to set up big Earthquakes (http://magiccards.info/4e/en/207.html) to either Hallow (http://magiccards.info/ds/en/4.html) in order to gain like 300 life or just straight up quake bitches out while protecting my own ass with COP:R (http://magiccards.info/4e/en/267.html). That one was fun. I've spent time examining the interaction between Thawing Glaciers (http://magiccards.info/ai/en/189.html) and Stone Seeder Heirophant (http://magiccards.info/rav/en/184.html). I reckon it's too slow, but that might be fun.

Straight up casual is really a format for red-less decks. You play big ol' four or five or six or seven or eight player chaos games, and I can't think of a single red card that I'd like to play in a format like that. Casual is, perhaps even more than Mental Magic even, a format where you need to get at least two- or three-for-one every non-land card you play. I usually just start with a solid, all-basic manabase (with the necessary exception of Terramorphic Expanse (http://magiccards.info/10e/en/360.html)and the possible exception of pain lands (and now, perhaps, filter lands, but I haven't gotten my casual on recently enough to tell you), 'cause if you drop actual duals and fetches and shit people will go apeshit), a full playset of Coalition Relic (absolute tits as far as mana fixing and storing goes), some sweet Intuition piles (I regularly include LFTL/Crucible/Ruins/Eternal Witness (best card ever)/Volrath's Stronghold), and then an engine you can defend without much effort. Oh, and maybe a couple copies of Cunning Wish (that I use to dig out Research//Development (http://magiccards.info/di/en/187.html) for anti-Extirpate tech), 'cause that may be the best Wish.

The next casual format I was introduced to is called "skittles." Bryant "loser face" Cook and Adam "zero baskets" Barnello brought it to 'Cuse some time ago, although the rules were slightly different back then. Let me give you an overview, list style:

First, and prolly most difficult, is your deck has to be equal parts of each color, and artifacts.
Yup. Mull that around in a snifter with some congac. It works like this:

Don't be an idiot. Start with like 24 land. You can run more, but, like, 6/6/6/6/6/6/24 or so is pretty standard. There isn't a "Your deck must be exactly 60 cards" rule, but it does have to be at least 60 (which is just business as usual for constructed).
Then, with the remaining 36 cards of your deck, six must be blue, another six must be red, et cetera.
Hybrids count as half (or a third, or a seventh) of a card of their colors.
So, like, if I were to play a Darkhart Sliver, I'd have to play a Harmonic Sliver, and a Necrotic Sliver, in order to have a card of each color. That'd be 3 cards.

Next, your entire deck cannot ever have been printed as a rare. That one is pretty tough too. So, no Pyroclasm (printed as a rare in Portal, I think. Or Ice Age. Fuck you, I'm not gonna go dig through Magiccards.info for fucking Pyroclasm), or other shit that has been printed as a rare. Purple cards (from Time Spiral) don't count as rares, unless they were one before.
Oh, it's highlander, too. No doubles of any cards. I feel like this extends to basic land (you can run Snow Lands if you want, but you can't say "let's pretend these are Snow" - go drop $2.50 on a playset of snow lands (one of each type, you dolt) if you want to break the Gentleman's Agreement), but some of my contemporaries disagree.
Fourth, and this is prolly the most important, you can't blow up lands that only produce mana. This is crucial in making this format stay fun. As you might guess, the manabases are extremely fragile. Most people feel that playing more than one or two basics of each type is dirty, so you can see how blowing up my Mirrodion's Core or Shimmering Grotto would make me frown. No Dwarven Miner, no Army Ants, no Shivan Harvest (http://magiccards.info/in/en/167.html). You want to blow up my Vitu-Ghazi? Sure thing, broseph. You just Wasteland'd my turn one Vivid land and dropped a Nimble Mongoose? Eat shit and die.


Skittles is an excellent format, 'cause you can play it with just stuff sitting around on your desk ('specially after Shadowmoor. G-d, that set let me play like straight-up white weenie), and you can coerce casual folks into building it, 'cause you don't need good cards.

EDH, or Elder Dragon Highlander, is the most recent casual format that I've been introduced to. It's pretty freaking sweet. The rules, since I'm wicked tired of typing, even in the super awesome list format, are found here (http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~geduggan/EDH_rules.php). We play with a couple important exceptions:

If your general would go to a zone that is not in play, under your control, he is removed from the game with another counter (read the rules page).
There's really only one difference.


Jury is still out on whether or not Memnarch or Bosh can be generals (since you'd think they would be mono-brown, but they have those mana symbols in their text boxes), but I'll let you know. Oh! And the Galepowder Mage interaction. My casual friends (not EPIC bros) have decreed that you can target a General with yon Mage, but that said General is returned to play, as per the ability. Generals that have been shottied (since, as per the rules, you can't have the same General as another player, and your deck can't contain somebody else's General):

Trevor "GetSickandDie" Brown
Sol'Kanar, the Swamp King

Matt "Bigbear102" Abold
Radah, Heir to Keld

Zach "Two Baskets" Tartell
Gaddock Teeg
Rubina Soulsinger
Jacques le Vert
Jaya Ballard, Task Mage (maybe - still feeling it out, but she's Russian foil, and that's ultra nice)

Adam "Zero Baskets" Barnello
Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (shottied, but I'm not sure whether or not he's actually started construction) Yes, I have ~ Nightmare

Bryant "Loser Face" Cook
Dralnu, Lich Lord

Nat "Brushwagg" Howland
Doran, the Siege Tower
Jhoria of the Ghitu

Jim "Jim" Lampman
Teneb, the Harvester

Colin "Di/1 1/2 Baskets/Zach is a dick and forgot to put me in here so I edit it myself" Chilbert
Karn, Silver Golem
Stupid Locals and people not on The Source
Arcanis the Omnipotent
Azuza, Lost but Seeking
Tolsmir Wolfblood
Ismaru, Hound of Konda
Oona, Queen of the Fae



EDH is ridiculous fun, until you get assholes who build combo decks, but then you just have to build a Gaddock Teeg deck and rape their sweet, pink mouths (about 45% of the time one-on-one). Enjoy, folks.


Man, this question is way more fun than ones like "WHY IS THRESHOLD SO GOOD!?!?!"

[Nightmare]

Zach pretty much said everything I wanted to say, but I'll elaborate a bit on a couple other formats.

First, Type 4.

Type 4 (or Limited Infinity) is a casual format where all the garbage rares you have that you think "Man, this spell would rule if it weren't so expensive," can be played. The best introduction for the format was co-written by Steve Menendian and Paul Mastriano (credited with creation of the format as it's known today), and can be found here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/feature/198).

I built a Type 4 stack a while ago, and we had a lot of fun with it until we decided it had run its course, and we moved on to bigger and better things - Namely, Cube Drafting.

Cube Drafting is insane fun. It's about 400 of the most powerful cards in the history of the game, sorted into randomized 15 card packs, and drafted like any other booster draft. Add lands, create 40 card decks, and play. We try to do this about once per week, and it's always a blast. I've gotten pretty good at it, which is nice. Evaluating cards, strategies, and even first picks is sooo hard. We've been using an updated version of the Cube from last year's Invitational, list can be found here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgevent/mi07/cubelist).

[Eldariel]

Make Your Own Standard. I think it's the best thing to happen to this game since the inception of Legacy. Much of the same things draw me to it that cause me to play Legacy, except the format's powerlevel is much lower, so the realistic cardpool is way bigger.

It has a completely unique deck design feature in choosing your blocks and core set - the same archetype can be built in two totally different ways by just picking a different Block. This also means cards like Tarmogoyf and company pretty much solve themselves. By playing them, you have to give up another Block worth of stuff, so by picking Goyf your other creatures/support spells will probably be worse.

Really, the only reason I haven't been working on Legacy practically at all lately (beyond playing some tournaments) is because I've been too damn busy making MYOS decks. So yea, MYOS is the most awesome casual format, the most awesome constructed format and the most awesome Magic format ever concieved. With the sole potential exception of Cube. Kinda like Legacy, except with 100x more playable cards and tons more interesting choices in deck construciton.

[freakish777]

Chaos Multiplayer, preferably with exaclty 5 players, no spell range. I play once a week usually.



Straight up casual is really a format for red-less decks. You play big ol' four or five or six or seven or eight player chaos games, and I can't think of a single red card that I'd like to play in a format like that.


Here's a list of good red cards in chaos multiplayer formats:

Word of Seizing (I'll take your Mindslaver and use it on you, I'll steal one of your attackers, and block the other with it, and have them kill each other)
Thieves' Auction
Shivan Gorge (not technically red...)
Fanning the Flames/Rolling Thunder (assuming you're playing 4 Vesuvas and 4 Cloudposts)
Pyroclasm
Zirilan of the Claw
Repercussion (with the aforementioned Pyroclasm, Flamebreak, Rolling Earthquake)
Magnivore
Insurrection (combine with Greater Gargadon, Claw of Gix, Goblin Bombardment, Ashnod's Altar into Rolling Thunder, etc)
Wildfire (it's not recommended you actually play this though, as some people will probably jump over the table and beat you down)
Thunder Dragon
Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
Goblin Welder



some sweet Intuition piles (I regularly include LFTL/Crucible/Ruins/Eternal Witness (best card ever)/Volrath's Stronghold), and then an engine you can defend without much effort.

Gifts is probably stronger than Intuition, you should have the extra time to set up in a multiplayer format. Either way though, this ties into my next point:

If you're getting into multiplayer, I recommend you go get some Phyrexian Furnaces, or Creakwood Ghouls (or something along those lines), that's reusable and if people aren't playing a graveyard strategy do something else for you (Furnace cycles, Ghoul swings for 3, or chumps). Eternal Witness, Genesis, Crucible, Volrath's Stronghold, Academy Ruins, Recurring Nightmare, Living Death, Patriarch's Bidding, off the top of my head are all extremely strong cards in multiplayer (if the thing you're bringing back is Kokusho, it's basically game over).

Additionally, Enchantments and Artifacts get out of hand, by virtue of the fact that people usually don't play Disenchant effects (creatures are what usually win you the game, so people focus on removing the things that will actually kill them):

To a lesser extent, board sweepers such as:
Nev's Disk
Deed
OStone

If you find yourself playing beatdown and can't get past these, try running some Krosan Grips.

To a larger extend (and where any Hull Breach will do):
Greater Good
Gravepact
Bloodbond March
Oversold Cemetary
Portcullis
Panoptic Mirror



Cunning Wish ... may be the best Wish.

I have to disagree here, Burning Wish grabs a lot of powerful cards and costs less mana. It doesn't allow you to play the blue control role, but it does grab things like Damnation, Wildfire, Rough/Tumble, Akroma's Vengeance, Decree of Pain, Replenish, Upheaval, Balancing Act, Choice of Damnations, Molten Disaster, Firespout, Death Cloud, Brush with Death, Profane Command, Corrupt (with Urborg Tomb of Yawg out), etc.

Don't get me wrong, they're both very good.


Next, green is about the best color you can play in multiplayer (there's the aforementioned Eternal Witness), in large part due to two Champions of Kamigawa commons. Sakura Tribe Elder and Kodama's Reach. Being able to play a turn 3 Greater Good, and then a turn 6 or so Symbiotic Wurm (oh, and let's have black be the other color we're playing for Nantuko Husk to eat the tokens, and Gravepact to clear the way for the 18/18 Husk, or maybe it's Kokusho instead of the Wurm, whatever) get's absolutely out of hand.

The deal is, your spells need to be able to kill 4 other players. So they're probably going to have to cost a lot of mana if you want to actually overpower people. Playing 8 acceleration and mana fixing spells allows you to play with a higher curve, getting those rediculous spells online earlier.

Next, chaos multiplayer is so staggeringly different than duels. Threat analysis is absolutely key. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen a player in a near dominating position at the table, and other players decide they'll attack someone else instead because they just don't realize either how to properly analyze who's the biggest threat or realize that once they've established who that threat is, that the naturally correct thing to do is gun for that player, provided it doesn't lose them the game on the spot (this is a little over simplified, but you get the idea).


If anyone wants some multiplayer lists (PM for them), I'd be more than happy to share, I have about 20 multiplayer decks put together, mostly built from commons, uncommons, and crap rares.

[kirdape3]

None.

I don't play nearly as much as I used to, and when I do I want to have the highest potential enemy skill level.

[Sims]

I'd probably play EDH or Type 4 if there were people that played it around.

Vanguard Pile sometimes (pile is similar to type4) and the occasional Mental Magic stack.

My friend and I also occasionally participate in what we call "Bad Rare Drafts." In other words, get on MWS, pick a set, open a pack and build a deck around whatever the rare is then play a best of 5 match.

Uhmm... and like tier 5-legacy-tribal-5-color-deck-with-no-fetches-or-duals.badec format which is hilariously fun sometimes.

[Peter_Rotten]

Vanguard Pile was a ton of fun in Albany.

IBA introduced MTS to the pile (I can't find the original thread now). It's essestially mulitplayer game with a very large deck (3 colors) for all players to play from. Put in all the cool cards that seem rather unplayable - like Orcish Librarian and this guy (http://sales.starcitygames.com//carddisplay.php?product=30874). Include NO search cards but plenty of creature kill and graveyard nonsense. The twist that we added was that each player randomly chooses a Vanguard card before the beginning of the game. Those cards really add an interesting spin to the game.

MMM - Mental Magic Mystery was killer fun but it was easy to get burnt out on that. What I liked best about that format was that it could be played over the net by simply posting on this board, AND that it really made you search for cards you didn't know existed.

I just played some EDH with a few Cuse guys, but I'm not sure I really have the cards to make a coherent EDH deck.

[herbig]

I agree with Zach. Holy frack casual multiplayer in Oswego was so much fun. I haven't been able to play EDH but I'm sure it's amazing.

I used to like playing Standard Highlander back in my home town of Auburn.

Lately I've been casually wrecking Baguio locals with my nonproxy Oath deck for fun. My current list:

3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Island
4 Forbidden Orchard
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Diamond
1 Chrome Mox
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Life From the Loam
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
1 Echoing Truth
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Duress
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Regrowth
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Oath of Druids
2 Simic Sky Swallower


I like to keep it casual.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Make Your Own Standard. I think it's the best thing to happen to this game since the inception of Legacy. Much of the same things draw me to it that cause me to play Legacy, except the format's powerlevel is much lower, so the realistic cardpool is way bigger.

It has a completely unique deck design feature in choosing your blocks and core set - the same archetype can be built in two totally different ways by just picking a different Block. This also means cards like Tarmogoyf and company pretty much solve themselves. By playing them, you have to give up another Block worth of stuff, so by picking Goyf your other creatures/support spells will probably be worse.

Really, the only reason I haven't been working on Legacy practically at all lately (beyond playing some tournaments) is because I've been too damn busy making MYOS decks. So yea, MYOS is the most awesome casual format, the most awesome constructed format and the most awesome Magic format ever concieved. With the sole potential exception of Cube. Kinda like Legacy, except with 100x more playable cards and tons more interesting choices in deck construciton.

I have to admit, that sounds really tempting. It definitely seems to offer a new tension in deck design. I think if they threw in a "Make your own Extended" with a 5 block/2 core limit, it'd just completely obsolete Legacy. But where do the old sets fall under blocks? (I still hold out hope that eventually they'll "complete" Fallen Empires block. It had a shit ton of awesome and flavor for a small set, and was actually really well balanced mechanically; it only suffered from being overprinted and not having a rare card slot).

Also, I assume there's a banned list somewhere?


For myself, I like Cube-drafting and Pile, both as already mentioned above. MMM was fun for a while, but after a run of punk'ing people, it gets to be too easy. Essence Warden ftw.


Edit: OMG! Tempest/Onslaught/10th Wombat!


18x Plains
4x Secluded Steppe

4x Eternal Dragon
4x Decree of Justice
3x Humility
3x Wrath
4x Condemn
3x Wing Shards
4x Abeyance
4x Renewed Faith
4x Bandage!!!
2x Akroma's Vengeance
3x Phyrexian Furnace

SB:
2x Disenchant
3x Aura of Silence
1x Phyrexian Furnace
3x Story Circle
4x Exalted Angel
2x Grindstone

This is my new favorite format.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

That seems grossly unfair to Fallen Empires. No one needs Maze of Ith that badly.

[Sims]

Iceage block becomes MVP

Ice Age = Brainstorm and Swords and COUNTERSPELL, and Portent, and... ~ Nightmare
Alliances = Force of Will
Coldsnap = Counterbalance.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

So, it turns out that Weatherlight isn't part of Tempest block. Shit. That's going to make it a bit tougher. Od block is actually interesting. I think it's too late to revive Wombat in Legacy anyway, but I really like the synergy between DoJ and Equal Treatment.

It's too bad Thawing Glaciers is banned.

I guess it'd be completely silly to allow Unlimited/Revised, huh? Man, crazy to think that the core set used to have the best packs in the game.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Pffft. Way to dismiss Contagion. Ice Age seems busted for combo, anyway- Diabolic Vision, Brainstorm, Lim-Dul's Vault and Portent are all pretty good at digging. Also, depending on the deck, StP along might be worth splashing for. Especially with Jotun Grunts in the board.

[freakish777]

Ice Age seems busted for combo, anyway- Diabolic Vision, Brainstorm, Lim-Dul's Vault and Portent are all pretty good at digging.

The problem is it doesn't have the combos themselves (so your combo cards would have to be in one block and one base set). Where as Tempest, Saga, and to a lesser extent Mirrodin block have a bunch combos.

[MattH]

Limited w/ random sets (stronghold/mirage/judgement or other mashups), then play on apprentice with Wackyland options turned on. Haven't done that in years but wow was it fun!