What's your Casual Metagame like?

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Reverend Love

Guest
I was just curios to hear about other's current magic setting. Is it chalk full of "power" cards with combo and 3rd turn kills common place? Or is there a slower "Huge Battles" type of gaming going on?

Reason being is there seems to be a census amongst most writers that casual multiplayer games are slow creature laden beat fests, with plenty of time to "build" up so to speak.

While yes I do play "casual" multiplayer almost exclusively the term casual is probably misplaced. Everyone in my playgroup makes decks to win. Having fun is a given since we're talking trash from beginning to end...comments like:

What kind of clown plays a first turn FORREST...ooh your done now motheroinker!"
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are quite common..if not demanded :)

But again all our decks are pretty brutal. Double Underworld Dreams, Megrim followed up with Memory Jar 4th-5th turn is status quo. When designing now days we’ve got to take Combo, Ultra Aggressive and Uber control/lockdown..into consideration. The only definite is that a nasty deck which can beat you silly IS going to be played.

There's about 8 us, 6 of which are running with some pretty powerful junk. So wacky new painful decks showing up every week is commonplace as well.

So with this said is my play group an anomaly in the multiplayer, or just an under represented majority? To be truthful I'm going to guess the later. I've just ran in to too many dudes running juiced to underestimate the power of levels and ingenuity of casual players.

So again what’s your metagame like?
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I've described my group before, but here it is again:

I play with 3 other people. One with creature heavy with enchantments but with themes, usually along tribal lines. For instance, he has a red haste deck and an elf deck. However, he tends to build huge decks, as in > 60 cards.

Another player is focused on "interesting" theme decks, like a Rainbow Crow-type deck with Light of Day and whatever turns all creatures black, had that deck mentioned in Funniest Magic Stories thread, and has other tribal decks like Cleric and Beast.

The third player tries more to almost "tourney" decks except he can't afford the high-end cards (at least in multiples). He has his own Rift deck, for example. He also likes control decks and graveyard manipulation decks with blue, green, and black.

I tend to play control decks also that either try to disrupt the other's strategy (like anti-graveyard), steal creatures so I don't have to have big creatures, or use "surprise" cards like Sneak Attack or Living Death. I also build wacky decks like Sleeper Agent (which is more control now).

All in all, I'd say the third player is the most dangerous because he has a better handle of what cards can do. The others aren't too concerned with stuff like card drawing or extra mana type things to speed up the deck.
 
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train

Guest
We run so many different types of casual games - some are fast and some slow...

Highlander is the slowest...

and believe it or not - star goes pretty fast...
 
N

Nightstalkers

Guest
I enjoy large games, as well as other ways to play M:TG.


But alas, my casual haunt around these parts has all but booted me out, so I stick at home and create more strategies and decks, or formulate new plans to make the other, closer shop pick up T1 or 2 tourneys.
 
R

Rooser

Guest
If I were in Spidey's group, I'd be that third player. I'm an evil bastard, and I piss myself off for making things unfun. Things is, when I build "wacky" decks, I'm always very careful to make them really strong anyway. My Cleric deck especially has been hated since Odyssey first came out and I snatched up 4 Master Apothecaries.

We're combo players at heart though. We all try to break convention. (This is my policy for tournaments too, actually).
 
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Notepad

Guest
The group I play with is a more less-advantaged group, so they have barely enough rares to make a half-arse wannabe tourney deck. So, multiplayer games tend to be very drawn out and fun.
 
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Reverend Love

Guest
My group is currently in the process of playing "Big oinky rare draft night" it goes like the following.

Everyone pony's up 20 commons of each color and 4 uncommons of each color. These are placed in a community draft box and are returned at the end of the draft.

Then I sell at cost Rare Repacks containing 10 various but poopie rares. These I get at a shop in downtown Tokyo which sells them for about 1.60 American.

We open up are Repacks, build using are Rares and the community box then have it. Whomever wins get to take 2 Rares of their choice from all participants. Second place gets to yank 1 rare from everyone excluding the winner.

All in all it's a pretty good time....and never have I seen Sunwebs get sooo much use.
 
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Notepad

Guest
Ick,...sunwebs

Sounds like a great format.

Have you tried Mirror Sealed? That is definitely a lot of fun. :D
 
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Reverend Love

Guest
No, in fact I don't even know what it is. How's it work?
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I broached the idea of a experimenting with some type of draft format with my group, but the first two nixed it... I can't remember why, but I suspect "too much thinking/strategy" involved, whereas with constructed decks, they "know" what they're doing. It's too bad, as I would like to vary to format of play from time to time :(
 
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train

Guest
Actually I meant live... thought it's over a year away...

I guess you could do an online one... but that's some serious randomization there...

Anyone up for an online junk draft?...
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Of course I'll do a draft "live" when you get over here.

Apprentice does "random" drafting, I could do the packs there...
 
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train

Guest
Does apprentice use all sets when it creates random packs?...
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Yes, you have an option of adding what sets to the generator, so I could add all of them if need be...
 
T

train

Guest
That's how junk works!...

You mix them all up, and see what you can build after the draft.:D
 
N

Notepad

Guest
Originally posted by Reverend Love
No, in fact I don't even know what it is. How's it work?
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Mirror Sealed is a ton of fun! :D

They do it for the invitationals a lot, because it really challenges your metagaming skills.

Every players starts with an identical stack of cards. They build a sealed deck out of it. Making the identical piles is easy: just match the powers of the five colors and dig through your common bin.
 
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Reverend Love

Guest
So basically everyone starts with a pile of identical cards and builds from there....taking out the luck of of opening bomb rares factor out.....iiiintersting.
 
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