Gleemax/Mox was an attempt at viral advertising and was very poorly done imho. I do think some parts of Wizard's staff are interested very much in social media and their uses. But I think mostly wizards operates day to day on the inertia premise. If it's moving keep it moving, if it's not, leave it. IE: issues like interface fixing and making the play experience nicer for users is not as important as making sure the servers stay stable and the collection servers are safe and not bogged down.
I do not think anything shows their competence one way or the other as much as their interest is apparent. IE: The powers that be at that company have different priorities than you or I. You might argue that that betrays some competence issues in terms of customer management and cultivation but to me it just seems like the way business is done. I have faith that some day 3.5 or 4.0 will come along and change some of the user interface issues we have.
No, no, no. That is my whole point. I am only hearing that from *one* side. Most pauper, and virtually all singleton players have all been fine with it. Pauper was simply my example of a format where the "I want to play unhindered" casual players butt heads with "I want to play cards that aren't playable in 'normal' formats" players.
I guess :) What I hated with BoW was that after a few minutes thinking about it, the build was easy and obvious with tons of search and recursion to make sure the combo got off. And always it came up when I was running a deck that had no immediate answers. In other words it was a pestilence on casual play. (Which is a funny thing since that is a hot topic at the moment.
But you're going and searching for browser games that by and large suck and not enjoying them when you have a good game right here. I mean, it's like if you have a wife and after she has a baby, her body has changed... "no, I'm not going to make love to her in that state! I want her in all her glory and won't settle for second best." =/ There is still pleasure to be had.
I'm not mocking you, I just think it's sad that you can't enjoy the game except on the hunt for a Pro Tour victory. From an outsider's perspective, it really looks like that love of the game has a very finite limit.
I agree that the Friend's list needs comments just like the block list. You'd think that producing something like Gleemax demonstrated WotC's interest in social media, but I guess it also shows their level of competence in the field...
Thanks for the article. I love draft articles.
I agree with everyone on taking Baloth P1P1. I love green in this format, not because it's the best, but because everyone thinks it's garbage and so you can often get quality cards late in a pack. But maybe that's just my FNM metagame.
After Baloth, I would have considered taking the elves over juggernaut to cut green. But that might be silly.
True that Harbor Serpent at P1P5 being there doesn't scream blue is open. But Clone at P1P4 is not too bad. Cancel at Pick 8 is good value too. After taking Clone, Cancel, and opening Mind Control P2P1, I would have had my mind made up to play Blue/Green, looking for solid creatures, draw, an ice cage or two, and tricks. Mind Control, Cultivate, Scroll Thief, Foresee, Ice Cage, Harbor Serpent, Augury Owl would have been playable from Pack 2. Pack 3 would have seen Cudgel Troll, Mana Leak, Water Servant, Garruk's Companion, Spined Worm, Sylvan Ranger, Plummet, another worm, a couple of bears and a Negate. This deck would have been light on removal, but have some high quality creatures, card draw, counters, and acceleration into a few high casting cost creatures.
Of course, finding enough playable black cards to go monoblack in limited is pretty sweet too. 4 Quag Sickness in monoblack is evil.
You did mention them, so props for that. But I don't think you really shined a spotlight on what those formats mean in the context of "casual". I think that a lot of the strife in the casual room is generated by collisions between these populations.
For example: I mainly play 100cs/STD singleton in the casual room. In both of these counterspells, discard and LD are not only fair game but a huge part of the format. This meant that I feel like it wasn't going too far to play a mono-green land D deck or a counter heavy faerie deck in *pauper* in the casual room even when I wouldn't have played those kinds of decks in a "casual extended" single game match.
Yet several players blasted me for playing LD and counterspells in a casual deck. I realized that this was because they were coming to pauper from the other side of casual and they assumed "their" rules would apply across the board.
This is why I think communication is still the key.
Although most would agree that Mass LD is not fun, for that particular person, it may be fun. Even that one person who is griefing everyone and trying to make everyone elses day hell, its fun for them. To actually put a defenition of whats casual and fun is like trying to figure out what came first, the chicken or the egg.
I believe Wizards needs to put more money into the friends list. In paper magic we as players have "Play groups". They ussually consist of players with like mind goals of playing Magic. I myself have 3 and each ones idea of casual and fun is different from the next. Although we have this in the form of clans, they first off need to fix clan chat. This will encourage people to join clans of simular goals of playing. Another option that would be great, is a more extensive "looking for opponent" table creater. Starwars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, and even Everquest had a very extensive "Looking for Group" option that allowed people to be very specific in what players they wanted to play with. I think a very extensive filtering system would be great for MTGO. Being able to set up a table where you can check off what you allow would be helpful. If I want to play a game with no counterspells, I could create a filter that denied anyone joining my game with a card that says "Counter target spell" or "Destroy target land". Maybe just allowing us to type more into the destription line would be helpful. With the current box limitations, you could type "READ ME 1ST", and then when someone moves the cursor over the description, a yellow box pops up with a lot more details similar to when you hold your cursor over a card in the game. Making the add buddy list could be more interactive as well. If we could create groups and add messages next to names, that would be great. I could create a friends group, a competative deck testers group, a bot group, and clan group, and then seek out to play with just those people. As it is I have a ton of people on my friends list and only about 5 I seek out for games. Others are Bots, or people I played with long time ago and forget who they are, or maybe they are article writers that I contact in game to get deck suggestions on a deck they posted. I don't always remember who they are.
One of my more memorable online games was recently within a classic game. My opponent was playing a token deck with doubling season, token generators, and soul wardens and soul attendants. I myself was playing a rite of replication deck with Pyromancer's ascension, having 2 of them in play activated. It started with me Rite of Replication kicked and copied twice for three copies on his soul warden, putting 14 triggers on the stack for each soul warden I controled, and the 5 life gainers he controlled, for a total of 280 triggered effects. And it only started there. Once he started putting mass tokens into play, it got worse. I was at 583 life and he was a 285 life and there were so many triggers on the stack the game just crashed. Then when I logged back in, it took me right to that game and would lock the client up. Needless to say I could not log in for 2 days as we broke the game, litterally.
My best memorable multiplayer game with the most life without an infinite combo, was a 10 man game when I was playing an Oath of druids deck and four Sera avatar with spiritlink on them. I kept attacking the guy making tons of elves, and could not find my trample card. He kept blocking. Eventually my life was 27000 and my avatar was a 27000/27000 avatar. He would attack me for about 500 a turn and I would just gain it back and then some on my turn. We finally had to concede because the shop wanted to close. I told him eventually I would get a rancor in play and that would be the end of him, and he conceded to me.
I addressed the "casual formats" in the article. Pauper has a nice community in the Tournament Practice room because there are tournaments to practice for, queues, lots of PREs, etc. 100CS really doesn't have a pressence in the TP room, but people looking for serious games of 100CS in the Casual Room usually make note of this in the comments. Which is perfect.
I agree that opinions of what's "fun" is subjective, but I think it's possible to find common ground on what's not fun. For example, I personally think almost all discard and some counterspells are okay, but LD isn't since it prevents you from playing the game.
I would think Mystic Snake is one of the worst counters to play against since creatures are easy to Blink or return from the graveyard.
Leviathan, I got him out twice. In the first game the opponent destroyed my artifact in cold blood and got rid of my lich (how cruel!). Then I got him out in another game but lost to an aggro swarm.
Thanks again for the comments and stop by this Sunday if you have time. We'll be battling in the Anything Goes Room and the tournament will begin around 1PM EST.
Your definitions of fun and casual are *not* shared by everyone, you are not "more right" than the person who loves their burn deck, or even the person who love watching you digitally writhe as you are forced to discard one card a turn because you have no land.
I've played against people who wrote "no counterspells" and then played Mystic Snake against me: "Its not a 'spell' - Its a creature!". Apparently without any sense of irony. I've seen "no LD" players use spreading seas and boomerangs to stifle mana development without compunction.
I've seen people rage quite from a brand new player who was playing a deck made up from his first two sealed events and happened to curve out t2 Putrid Leech, T3 Thrinax with a "Netdecks suck" comment on the way out.
I was playing with a very casual UG tempo deck for awhile that used Cryptic Command, but never to counter (which shows how overpowered that card is) and still have plenty of people quit on me when I played it as a repluse.
The casual room's problem is that people defining "casual" is impossible. What we should be focusing on is trying to set up a more standardized way for individuals to tell people what they are looking for in a game.
After reading the title of this article I have to admit to having high hopes for this article. Unfortunately the title belies the tack the author actually takes. He seems to have a pretty narrow definition of what should be considered casual, and doesn't seem to be willing to bend his personal definition much.
I personally enjoy casual matches and creature heavy boards but I simply *abhor* game states that end up like the ones pictured above (leaving aside the Aura Gnarlid one). I would rather play against strip mines and sink holes than end up in a board with 60 tokens on it. Yet, I am able to accept that what I see as fun and casual does not mean everyone has to agree with me.
In order to actually begin (continue?) a reasonable conversation this conversation we have to acknowledge certain truisms 1) nobody uses the "anything goes room for anything" so there is no reason to bring that up, 2) that the "casual" room functions in at least three (and in reality, numerous shades of these) roles:
1) Home to people getting their feet wet. Those building their first decks, or first decks for a new format etc. These people play the cards they have and can often at least enjoy some interaction vs. other casual decks even if their chances of beating infinitetokens.dec is probably no greater than beating Jund.dec or Mythic.dec in the tourney practice room.
2) Home to the varying levels of "casual" players, largely those who want to resolve splashy spells and get into bizarre game states without the interference of "resource denial" effects though what people actually feel is appropriate varies greatly. I think this group actually also contains the "casual griefer" who like to prey on his fellow's unpreparedness for disruption and take pleasure in their pain.
3) Home to the casual/competitive *formats*. These included the singletons, pauper, as well as some more esotertic formats. It is almost impossible to find a game for these formats outside the casual room, so even those interested testing their decks for the weekend challenge events are more or less forced to try and find games in the casual room.
Assuming we can agree that the casual room is the place for all these types of players then trying for a "universal" definition of casual is useless. Instead what the casual community as a whole needs to do is figure out how to best use *and read* the signage options and game types that we have available to us and then spread the word.
For instance: "No LD/CS/D" (no land destruction, counterspells, discard) fits in the comments box and is mostly visible to people no matter what size their client window is set to. We have to accept that casual means different things to different people and we need to be vocal about what we don't want to face. Typing "no counters" is faster than quitting every time your opponent leads out with an island.
Also, anyone who sets up a match rather than a single game should be prepared to face a more tuned deck. This is especially true in the weekend challenge formats.
Setting out guidelines that ackowledge the entire population of the casual room and then doing our best to propagate them as widely as possible is the best path to a less acrimonious casual room.
I'm being perfectly serious, if you're spoiling my fun of dealing 20 damage with creatures by destroying my creatures, then how is that any holier than me destroying your lands or your cards in hand? My point is that every single interaction has the potential of being "unfun" for the opponent, but we pick ourselves up and deal with it by interacting right back. No-one has the positive right of not being offended, so learn to ignore those delicate sensibilities and fight fire with fire.
grats on making the w and posting the nice article, however i tsk tsk u for playing merfolk in the first place, gawd i cant wait for mishras workshop to push that abomination out of the format.
ok debbie downer lol, I'm not saying the BoW deck was killer just that it's cool that the format allows for something as creative and off the wall to be successful
4.) I almost gave some drafting background as my first intro. I have no idea what my rating is or how to find it. With paper I have finished about six events, so I don't think I get a rating for that few. My typical finish has been 2-1 and in my last two events came within a game of winning my final match. I have just started MTGO. My first draft was 0-3. I didn't even win a game. Every other draft I finished 2-1, and have lost the last three of those to the tournament winners in round one or two. I didn't win my first draft until just recently. So, I would say that I am new, a student of the game, and not too bad. All of these drafts have been Swiss, by the way. I am more interested in playing three games with a pack on the line than possibly getting knocked out early.
Details matter. The turn 2~3 Stone Rain might just keep you out of the game, while a turn 5 Stone Rain most likely won't if you've made your land drops.
Gleemax/Mox was an attempt at viral advertising and was very poorly done imho. I do think some parts of Wizard's staff are interested very much in social media and their uses. But I think mostly wizards operates day to day on the inertia premise. If it's moving keep it moving, if it's not, leave it. IE: issues like interface fixing and making the play experience nicer for users is not as important as making sure the servers stay stable and the collection servers are safe and not bogged down.
I do not think anything shows their competence one way or the other as much as their interest is apparent. IE: The powers that be at that company have different priorities than you or I. You might argue that that betrays some competence issues in terms of customer management and cultivation but to me it just seems like the way business is done. I have faith that some day 3.5 or 4.0 will come along and change some of the user interface issues we have.
Glad you liked it Copperfield.
No, no, no. That is my whole point. I am only hearing that from *one* side. Most pauper, and virtually all singleton players have all been fine with it. Pauper was simply my example of a format where the "I want to play unhindered" casual players butt heads with "I want to play cards that aren't playable in 'normal' formats" players.
I guess :) What I hated with BoW was that after a few minutes thinking about it, the build was easy and obvious with tons of search and recursion to make sure the combo got off. And always it came up when I was running a deck that had no immediate answers. In other words it was a pestilence on casual play. (Which is a funny thing since that is a hot topic at the moment.
But you're going and searching for browser games that by and large suck and not enjoying them when you have a good game right here. I mean, it's like if you have a wife and after she has a baby, her body has changed... "no, I'm not going to make love to her in that state! I want her in all her glory and won't settle for second best." =/ There is still pleasure to be had.
I'm not mocking you, I just think it's sad that you can't enjoy the game except on the hunt for a Pro Tour victory. From an outsider's perspective, it really looks like that love of the game has a very finite limit.
I agree that the Friend's list needs comments just like the block list. You'd think that producing something like Gleemax demonstrated WotC's interest in social media, but I guess it also shows their level of competence in the field...
Sounds like you're hearing from all sides that some things like LD aren't considered kosher.
Thanks for the article. I love draft articles.
I agree with everyone on taking Baloth P1P1. I love green in this format, not because it's the best, but because everyone thinks it's garbage and so you can often get quality cards late in a pack. But maybe that's just my FNM metagame.
After Baloth, I would have considered taking the elves over juggernaut to cut green. But that might be silly.
True that Harbor Serpent at P1P5 being there doesn't scream blue is open. But Clone at P1P4 is not too bad. Cancel at Pick 8 is good value too. After taking Clone, Cancel, and opening Mind Control P2P1, I would have had my mind made up to play Blue/Green, looking for solid creatures, draw, an ice cage or two, and tricks. Mind Control, Cultivate, Scroll Thief, Foresee, Ice Cage, Harbor Serpent, Augury Owl would have been playable from Pack 2. Pack 3 would have seen Cudgel Troll, Mana Leak, Water Servant, Garruk's Companion, Spined Worm, Sylvan Ranger, Plummet, another worm, a couple of bears and a Negate. This deck would have been light on removal, but have some high quality creatures, card draw, counters, and acceleration into a few high casting cost creatures.
Of course, finding enough playable black cards to go monoblack in limited is pretty sweet too. 4 Quag Sickness in monoblack is evil.
You did mention them, so props for that. But I don't think you really shined a spotlight on what those formats mean in the context of "casual". I think that a lot of the strife in the casual room is generated by collisions between these populations.
For example: I mainly play 100cs/STD singleton in the casual room. In both of these counterspells, discard and LD are not only fair game but a huge part of the format. This meant that I feel like it wasn't going too far to play a mono-green land D deck or a counter heavy faerie deck in *pauper* in the casual room even when I wouldn't have played those kinds of decks in a "casual extended" single game match.
Yet several players blasted me for playing LD and counterspells in a casual deck. I realized that this was because they were coming to pauper from the other side of casual and they assumed "their" rules would apply across the board.
This is why I think communication is still the key.
Some things to point out.
Although most would agree that Mass LD is not fun, for that particular person, it may be fun. Even that one person who is griefing everyone and trying to make everyone elses day hell, its fun for them. To actually put a defenition of whats casual and fun is like trying to figure out what came first, the chicken or the egg.
I believe Wizards needs to put more money into the friends list. In paper magic we as players have "Play groups". They ussually consist of players with like mind goals of playing Magic. I myself have 3 and each ones idea of casual and fun is different from the next. Although we have this in the form of clans, they first off need to fix clan chat. This will encourage people to join clans of simular goals of playing. Another option that would be great, is a more extensive "looking for opponent" table creater. Starwars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, and even Everquest had a very extensive "Looking for Group" option that allowed people to be very specific in what players they wanted to play with. I think a very extensive filtering system would be great for MTGO. Being able to set up a table where you can check off what you allow would be helpful. If I want to play a game with no counterspells, I could create a filter that denied anyone joining my game with a card that says "Counter target spell" or "Destroy target land". Maybe just allowing us to type more into the destription line would be helpful. With the current box limitations, you could type "READ ME 1ST", and then when someone moves the cursor over the description, a yellow box pops up with a lot more details similar to when you hold your cursor over a card in the game. Making the add buddy list could be more interactive as well. If we could create groups and add messages next to names, that would be great. I could create a friends group, a competative deck testers group, a bot group, and clan group, and then seek out to play with just those people. As it is I have a ton of people on my friends list and only about 5 I seek out for games. Others are Bots, or people I played with long time ago and forget who they are, or maybe they are article writers that I contact in game to get deck suggestions on a deck they posted. I don't always remember who they are.
One of my more memorable online games was recently within a classic game. My opponent was playing a token deck with doubling season, token generators, and soul wardens and soul attendants. I myself was playing a rite of replication deck with Pyromancer's ascension, having 2 of them in play activated. It started with me Rite of Replication kicked and copied twice for three copies on his soul warden, putting 14 triggers on the stack for each soul warden I controled, and the 5 life gainers he controlled, for a total of 280 triggered effects. And it only started there. Once he started putting mass tokens into play, it got worse. I was at 583 life and he was a 285 life and there were so many triggers on the stack the game just crashed. Then when I logged back in, it took me right to that game and would lock the client up. Needless to say I could not log in for 2 days as we broke the game, litterally.
My best memorable multiplayer game with the most life without an infinite combo, was a 10 man game when I was playing an Oath of druids deck and four Sera avatar with spiritlink on them. I kept attacking the guy making tons of elves, and could not find my trample card. He kept blocking. Eventually my life was 27000 and my avatar was a 27000/27000 avatar. He would attack me for about 500 a turn and I would just gain it back and then some on my turn. We finally had to concede because the shop wanted to close. I told him eventually I would get a rancor in play and that would be the end of him, and he conceded to me.
The comments so far are pretty great, so I'm going to offer at least three sets of the Pauper Commanders instead of one.
I addressed the "casual formats" in the article. Pauper has a nice community in the Tournament Practice room because there are tournaments to practice for, queues, lots of PREs, etc. 100CS really doesn't have a pressence in the TP room, but people looking for serious games of 100CS in the Casual Room usually make note of this in the comments. Which is perfect.
I agree that opinions of what's "fun" is subjective, but I think it's possible to find common ground on what's not fun. For example, I personally think almost all discard and some counterspells are okay, but LD isn't since it prevents you from playing the game.
I would think Mystic Snake is one of the worst counters to play against since creatures are easy to Blink or return from the graveyard.
Thanks guys for the comments.
Leviathan, I got him out twice. In the first game the opponent destroyed my artifact in cold blood and got rid of my lich (how cruel!). Then I got him out in another game but lost to an aggro swarm.
Thanks again for the comments and stop by this Sunday if you have time. We'll be battling in the Anything Goes Room and the tournament will begin around 1PM EST.
LE
Great article LE some really nice decks there.
Your definitions of fun and casual are *not* shared by everyone, you are not "more right" than the person who loves their burn deck, or even the person who love watching you digitally writhe as you are forced to discard one card a turn because you have no land.
I've played against people who wrote "no counterspells" and then played Mystic Snake against me: "Its not a 'spell' - Its a creature!". Apparently without any sense of irony. I've seen "no LD" players use spreading seas and boomerangs to stifle mana development without compunction.
I've seen people rage quite from a brand new player who was playing a deck made up from his first two sealed events and happened to curve out t2 Putrid Leech, T3 Thrinax with a "Netdecks suck" comment on the way out.
I was playing with a very casual UG tempo deck for awhile that used Cryptic Command, but never to counter (which shows how overpowered that card is) and still have plenty of people quit on me when I played it as a repluse.
The casual room's problem is that people defining "casual" is impossible. What we should be focusing on is trying to set up a more standardized way for individuals to tell people what they are looking for in a game.
See my comment below for more...
After reading the title of this article I have to admit to having high hopes for this article. Unfortunately the title belies the tack the author actually takes. He seems to have a pretty narrow definition of what should be considered casual, and doesn't seem to be willing to bend his personal definition much.
I personally enjoy casual matches and creature heavy boards but I simply *abhor* game states that end up like the ones pictured above (leaving aside the Aura Gnarlid one). I would rather play against strip mines and sink holes than end up in a board with 60 tokens on it. Yet, I am able to accept that what I see as fun and casual does not mean everyone has to agree with me.
In order to actually begin (continue?) a reasonable conversation this conversation we have to acknowledge certain truisms 1) nobody uses the "anything goes room for anything" so there is no reason to bring that up, 2) that the "casual" room functions in at least three (and in reality, numerous shades of these) roles:
1) Home to people getting their feet wet. Those building their first decks, or first decks for a new format etc. These people play the cards they have and can often at least enjoy some interaction vs. other casual decks even if their chances of beating infinitetokens.dec is probably no greater than beating Jund.dec or Mythic.dec in the tourney practice room.
2) Home to the varying levels of "casual" players, largely those who want to resolve splashy spells and get into bizarre game states without the interference of "resource denial" effects though what people actually feel is appropriate varies greatly. I think this group actually also contains the "casual griefer" who like to prey on his fellow's unpreparedness for disruption and take pleasure in their pain.
3) Home to the casual/competitive *formats*. These included the singletons, pauper, as well as some more esotertic formats. It is almost impossible to find a game for these formats outside the casual room, so even those interested testing their decks for the weekend challenge events are more or less forced to try and find games in the casual room.
Assuming we can agree that the casual room is the place for all these types of players then trying for a "universal" definition of casual is useless. Instead what the casual community as a whole needs to do is figure out how to best use *and read* the signage options and game types that we have available to us and then spread the word.
For instance: "No LD/CS/D" (no land destruction, counterspells, discard) fits in the comments box and is mostly visible to people no matter what size their client window is set to. We have to accept that casual means different things to different people and we need to be vocal about what we don't want to face. Typing "no counters" is faster than quitting every time your opponent leads out with an island.
Also, anyone who sets up a match rather than a single game should be prepared to face a more tuned deck. This is especially true in the weekend challenge formats.
Setting out guidelines that ackowledge the entire population of the casual room and then doing our best to propagate them as widely as possible is the best path to a less acrimonious casual room.
rwildernessr on MTGO
That Mishra deck looks like a ton of fun, even if it didn't get get best results. Did you ever get Phylactery Lich into play? How did it do?
mmmmm.... staaaaxxxxx.....
I just wish I could get some power and go back to playing "real" combo decks XD Ah, Oath notwithstanding...
You don't even get to cast those creatures if your lands are all destroyed.
I'm being perfectly serious, if you're spoiling my fun of dealing 20 damage with creatures by destroying my creatures, then how is that any holier than me destroying your lands or your cards in hand? My point is that every single interaction has the potential of being "unfun" for the opponent, but we pick ourselves up and deal with it by interacting right back. No-one has the positive right of not being offended, so learn to ignore those delicate sensibilities and fight fire with fire.
grats on making the w and posting the nice article, however i tsk tsk u for playing merfolk in the first place, gawd i cant wait for mishras workshop to push that abomination out of the format.
ok debbie downer lol, I'm not saying the BoW deck was killer just that it's cool that the format allows for something as creative and off the wall to be successful
4.) I almost gave some drafting background as my first intro. I have no idea what my rating is or how to find it. With paper I have finished about six events, so I don't think I get a rating for that few. My typical finish has been 2-1 and in my last two events came within a game of winning my final match. I have just started MTGO. My first draft was 0-3. I didn't even win a game. Every other draft I finished 2-1, and have lost the last three of those to the tournament winners in round one or two. I didn't win my first draft until just recently. So, I would say that I am new, a student of the game, and not too bad. All of these drafts have been Swiss, by the way. I am more interested in playing three games with a pack on the line than possibly getting knocked out early.
Thanks for the comments.
Details matter. The turn 2~3 Stone Rain might just keep you out of the game, while a turn 5 Stone Rain most likely won't if you've made your land drops.