what do you consider casual

[Isaac85]

I have had debates and pretty intense arguments about what people consider what is casual and what isn't. I pretty much want to get peoples own opinions on the matter. My theroy is pretty much no moxes unless chrome or diamond and the type one restricted list.  Lotus petal is fine to me though. I also think your casual deck should follow some guides to the formats. If your playing 4 petals then your playing legacy so I don't want to see 4 mana drains. Combos that just out right kill your oponet are not casual. Some two or thee card combos are questionable but I always think is there any way I could have gotten out even if my deck was different. I hope to here others opinions and views.

[Matt]

A casual deck should seek to do something besides "win the game." Maybe that something is "assemble my crazy Station infinite combo" but that's okay since if all you wanted to do was win the game, you could be doing it so much easier. So you come up with something, like maybe "I want to cast Devastation three times a game!" and then build to make that happen, and if that happens to win, so much the better.

[LotusHead]

Casual is pet decks with inner synergy or a basic theme (Tribal, Burn, Land Destruction, Mill, etc)

Funny thing is, most of my decks (serious or not) have the Mill Capacity.

One of my earliest casual decks that "went there" was an Orcish Spy- Mill Stone deck (with cheap creature enchantments to keep spy alive).

It was quite the denial deck, much to the shagrin of my Hymn To Tourach/Hippy opponent.


EDIT: I just played a casual game vs someone who used cheap 3 mana cascade spells to get their only less than 3 spells into play: HyperGenesis with LOTS OF FATTIES! Is this being discussed much?  He used SSG to accelllerate (although full vintage/legacy could also use ESG).

I was torn apart by the fattiest of fatties.

[mike_bergeron]

I generally play casual magic with a small group.  mostly its cube, reject draft, common higlander or precon. my friend does break out random standard decks to play sometimes as well.  Also, we refer to casual as "non-tournament" magic, so we play a lot of casual vintage, where we play decks we are fond of instead of the ones that are dominating the scene. 

[Beralt]

My latest casual experiment is to hand out a random Vanguard card to a friend and myself.  Then draft a few packs of the latest set, building a deck around that Vanguard character's ability.

In addition as I have a young son learning to play I tend to play theme decks against him.  He read the Shadowmoor Novel that comes with the Fat Pack and decided he wanted to build a Flamekin Deck - Flamekin Harbringers, Flamekin Bladewhirl, Soulbright Flamekin, Inner-Fire Acolyte, Inner Flame Ignite, Incandescent Soulstoke, Ashling the Pilgrim, Heartlash Cinder, Spitfire Flamekin, Rage Forgers (the crux of the deck), Flame Jabs and Flame Javelins - he loves it.

[A_Outcast]

when me and my friends play casual we ban any infinite combo, and power 9 and cards worth ~100 and up.  besides from that anything is fair game to us.  4 demonic tutors?  sure thats fine. sometimes we include vanguard, sometimes we dont.  sure combos are fine as long as they dont stop the game or instantly win.  we ban the value cards so things like ichorid cant be played and whatnot.

[FAVO!!!!1]

Most of my casual experience comes from multi-player formats with 100 cards or more. I'm not talking about 5 color or EDH, although I do consider those to be casual. But huge circles or people, just playing magic. We often consider a casual deck to be something that is fun or cool to see when it finally goes off/wins.

A friend of mine has a RW redirection deck that wins by any source of misdirection topping off with an angel. It's pretty cool cause he is often the guy who does nothing until it matters. Kind of like biding your time.

I had a deck that would counter-lock you out with Hunting Grounds, Mystic Snake or Eternal Witness, Crystal Shard, and Seedborn Muse. It was pretty cool the first couple of times it won, but it eventually got really annoying and unfun. I had games where I would counter 6/7 spells at a time. Even when I was the target, I could still pull out a win. Yea, I stopped playing it cause people just hated the thing (although, don't get me wrong, I'm still tempted to pull it out for a couple runs, lol.)