Casual Magic, Part 2: Deck Construction

My friend and co-author Conta recently unveiled an amazing casual deck that I think fully captures the idea of what “casual” should be. It's called “The Harry Potter Deck”, and its card choices are based thematically around Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters. Endrek Sahr represents the dark lord himself, while Orzhov Guildmages represent the Death Eaters, Hypnotic Specters represent the Dementors, a series of artifacts represent the Horcruxes, and so on. Even if you don't play Magic or know what each of these cards is, I think you can appreciate that all of the card choices correspond to something from the popular wizard novels.

In my opinion, Conta's approach to deck construction with this deck is what casual is all about. Putting a limiting factor on what cards you are able to use is a good way to keep the deck's power-level low, and using a theme is one of the better ways to do this. It's hard to do this by saying you won't use certain “powerful cards” because that is really too vague. If instead you try to stick hard and fast to some sort of thematic rule, you'll end up having to play cards that aren't very good but likely have a deck that will be a lot of fun (which I think is the whole point of casual play).

Our friend and teammate Kanvaly took one look through “The Harry Potter Deck” and started to question the card choices. Why don't you run Card X instead of Card Y? It's strictly better. Basically, he was unimpressed with the power-level and wanted the deck to have better cards regardless of what this meant to the integrity of the theme (though to be fair, he has never read Harry Potter).

This is where I think casual starts to go wrong. If you begin to optimize a deck, the power-level begins to rise, and this is where the imbalances start to set in. The deck enters this area of limbo where it's more of a jank competitive deck and not really a casual deck.

Now, some of you might be asking, why should I have to limit my casual deck's power? Well personally I don't think it's a whole lot of fun to play against highly tuned decks when I'm trying to play a game for fun. I'd rather see my opponent play a bunch of bad cards, not because I want to beat him (since I'll be doing the exact same thing) but because we'll both have a good laugh about seeing them being played and trying to make our game-plans work by using them.

However, I should also note that trying to limit your deck's power-level is really a practice only competitive players would need to think about. If you don't know that much about the game, you're probably already making bad decks because you don't know any better or don't have enough cards to do any better. I know when I was starting out I sure didn't.

Anyway, the bottom line is that in my humble opinion, if you want to play casual Magic, make a deck that's fun for everyone. Make a deck that wins off some improbably hard combo to pull off, or uses only a really bad creature type for its critters, or just does stupid things that don't really win the game but are funny. If everyone can have a good laugh watching you play the deck, then I think you've created a casual gem.


Upcoming: Casual Magic, Part 3: The Internet Invasion


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