Pattern Recognition #172 - Moving from Competitive to Casual

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

22 October 2020

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Hello everyone! This is Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series as written by myself, berryjon. I am something of an Old Fogey who has been around the block quite a few times where Magic is concerned, as as such, I use this series to talk about the various aspects of this game, be it deck design, card construction, mechanics chat, in-universe characters and history. Or whatever happens to cross my mind this week. Please, feel free to dissent in the comments below the article, add suggestions or just plain correct me! I am something of a Smart Ass, so I can take it.

So, a word of explanation first. Or several words as the case may be. This article was supposed to have been written months ago in response to one of my co-workers, a Spike and hardcore Competitive Commander Player, asked for my advice. He wanted to get back into the Casual Commander side of things, and as I was the only real Casual player he knew, he wanted my advice.

I told him that I would gladly do that as long as I could take notes and write an article about it. He agreed. We tried to get into the same place at the same time, but he took a job in another city, and now we can't do that. We did do some conversations at work, but nothing much came of that. I then shelved the project for a while to let it simmer in the back of my mind and now I think it's ready.

So, what you're going to read today is my solo take on the subject. There are, from my observation, a lot of guides, suggestions and helpful hints for the casual player to want to get into the cEDH format, but not so many that deal with players who want to go the other direction. So, here I am, and here it is!

There are already many voices and many opinions about what the difference between Competitive and Casual EDH is, and for the most part, I am not going to touch that discussion as it is a rabbit hole I don't need to go down for this piece.

After looking over my scant few notes as well as thinking things over, I have come to a couple of conclusions - points to help the Competitive Player build a more casual deck.

And so here is the first, and probably the most important part of my help.

You Are Not Building a Bad Deck, There Are No Bad Cards

One thing I have observes with cEDH decks is the concept of optimization. That each card has to be the best option for what it does as every little piece of help. There is nothing wrong with that, and in Tier 1/Tier 0 decks, that sort of deck building ethos is the correct one as you can't afford to hold back when no one else is either.

This leads into the idea that in all your decks, you have to use the best card for the job, and anything else isn't worth it. Design becomes an iterative process where you look at your options as they become available to you and you compare to your existing choices, weighting the pros and cons of changing out one option for another.

But is a card bad because you cut it for whatever reason? No! Not at all. It was definitely good enough to be in your deck before it was replaced. This does not lower the value of the deck at all. Your deck's value has gone up, not down.

So step back for a moment and look at those cards you are cutting for being a fraction of a point short of being what you have replaced them with. There is nothing wrong with them, and they too may have replaced another card at some time in the past. If you repeat this process, of looking at a card that is just slightly worse than your best choice, but still good enough for the job, then what are you really looking at?

You are looking at a move away from Competitive Commander and toward Casual Commander. Think of the steps that takes you from say... Kodama's Reach and toward Rampant Growth. Neither of these cards are bad, and I see Kodama's Reach more often than the Rampant Growth. But think for a moment of the cards that would, in your mind, lay between these two.

What if you used those cards instead? What if you used Sky Diamond instead of Arcane Signet in a mono- deck? You have to understand that these are not bad cards. They are less capable than the ones you would choose to use, but they are not bad at all.

And when you build a deck out of the cards that you would consider to be second-tier, would you not be building a second-tier deck? Something more... I don't know... casual?

Casual decks are not Bad Decks. They are the same decks that you are building as a Competitive player, just lacking in the same iterative refinement and effort that you have put into the decks that you are rightly proud of. And that leads me into my next point;

Consider a Budget, for Money isn't Cheap

Competitive decks are filled with high power cards, this much is true. I've seen decks run ABUR Duals without any reason to, except that the player had them and they fit in the colours of the deck. But those cards are expensive, and not every player can play with them because they can't afford to pay for them from the many reputable sources of cards either in person at their Friendly Local Game Store or online.

So when you're looking to tune a Competitive deck into a Casual one, or just trying to build a casual deck and you aren't sure if you've done it well enough, here's an idea for you to look into. Import your deck into a deck building toolkit - I highly recommend TappedOut.Net for that purpose as it's where I put all my decks. I trust the site for some strange reason. A good site like this one will give you a rough idea of the cost of your deck, be it in MTGO Tix or via an online retailer. From there, look at the prices of the individual cards, and start to ask yourself - what can I replace this card with this card that does almost the same thing, but costs less?

Can I replace my Tundra with a Hallowed Fountain or an Adarkar Wastes? Or perhaps a Temple of Enlightenment or even Coastal Tower or Boreal Shelf? Or Sejiri Refuge or Tranquil Cove? There are plenty of cards that do the same job in 90% of the cases, so why not go for them instead?

Budget isn't a universal thing. Even the most casual of players can luck into good cards through the process of opening packs or dedicate the money to buy a powerful card that they are proud of, and you too can keep these non-budget options in the deck as long as you recognize that when you're trying to build casually, you're not going all in on the 'non-budget' options.

When I was talking with my Spike friend about this, it dawned on him that even a casual deck can have a Gaea's Cradle in it, rather than being forced to down- or side-grade into Growing Rites of Itlimoc  ^Flip instead. These cards might indeed break the budget of casual players, but even casuals can get cards that were cheap - costing only the cost of a pack when they bought them. Even me! My friendly spike was quite surprised when I was discussing my Teferi, Temporal Archmage deck with The Chain Veil, that yes, I did have Mystical Tutor and Whir of Invention available to use. He thought that because I was casual, that I didn't have those good cards. Which I do. Which Casual Players can have too.

So if you're looking at building a casual deck, consider choosing budget options as a means to tone down the power level of your deck. You're not making a cheap deck, full of penny-cards, but rather look at the monetary value and ask yourself if it's worth it. Or can a slightly less powerful, more casual option do the same job for a fraction of the price?

Competitors Win, Casuals Interact

I've noticed, and commented about this in person at my FLGS in the past, and that is the fact that when people sit down to play cEDH, they play to win. When people sit down to play casually, they play to interact.

This is not, in any way, a discussion of the power levels of the relative decks, but rather a finer point of understanding when it comes to the directives and the ethos of the two styles of play. A Competitive deck plays to win the game, and will spend their resources to do that. Resources spend not winning the game, and more importantly for interaction, resources spent on preventing someone else from winning are well spent.

So, casting Counterspell on a Torment of Hailfire that will end the game is viable to any player, but casting a Boomerang on someone's Arcane Signet on Turn 2 is just not a very well thought out play.

But it is something that you will see more likely at a Casual table, as players, in my observations, are more willing to interact with the opponent's board state in more arbitrary manners that may defy the common sense of a competitive player who can see further afield and know what is a vital threat and what isn't.

As a competitive player, you come to recognize what cards need to be removed or interacted with in order to defeat the opponent or let you win, and which can be safely ignored - for now - and dealt with later. When you switch to a more casual format, you find that your opponents are thinking more about what's in front of them and how to deal with things now rather than later or if at all.

This is something you're going to have to be more aware of, moving to a more casual style of Commander. There are still three other people at your table, and they will be more willing to throw spells around for slight gains that to you, might not make much - or any - sense at all. And you should be prepared to do that as well. Sure, bring your Cyclonic Rift, but also consider bringing Aether Gale and River's Rebuke. Bring Boomerang and Unsummon. Not because they are good or bad cards, but rather because they interact more proactively with your opponents, rather than reactively when your back is to the wall and you have to win.

Interactivity is part of the social aspect of the game, and one that draws players in. If all you're doing is sitting in your quarter of the table and ignoring everyone else except to say "I Win", then you're not being casual at all.

One Last Suggestion, to Deal with Multiple Problems At Once

And after all this, there is one last avenue of thought that I want to give to you, you Competitive player.

Consider that when you go to Commander games at your local store, there may be players who are new to the game, might still be running one of those preconstructed decks that Wizards prints each year. Or might not even know how to play the Commander variant. So you, in your infinite kindness and wisdom decide to help them out.

How do you do that? You can build a deck that is designed to teach new players how to play Commander. And in doing so, build a deck that is by practical definition, casual.

A teaching deck isn't complicated. It has interactions that work, but not complicated multi-layered, Stack-breaking, mind-boggling pieces of amazing skill, but rather simple ones that can be read and understood on the cards themselves. You can hand this sort of deck over to a relative newbie and be able to explain the format to them.

And you just built a Casual deck, one that you can break out when you want to take a break from the high-power of your usual Competitiveness and at the same time, loan to a person so they can learn the ropes without being overwhelmed.

Moving from cEDH to Casual isn't hard, and it isn't wrong. It can allow you to experiment with tactics or techniques that you may be more hesitant to try at the more hard-playing table. The differences in style of play, in seeing cards that you might not see at your usual fare can also allow you to be more prepared should someone bring a counter-meta deck, or a rogue one to your table.

And you'll meet new people too! Maybe convince them to upscale to a cEDH deck and try their hand at the Tier 1 table.

There's nothing wrong with the effort, so I can only hope you'll make it. And to that end, I hope I have given you competitive players some idea or inkling of what it would take to go to the casual table and succeed or have fun there.

So, join me next week when I talk about something else. What, I don't know yet. But until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!