Magic, at its core, is a game of resources. A game of chess, if you can imagine, where you pay mana to put your pieces onto the board... But which of the thousands of possible pieces you bring to the chess board is up to you.

So which pieces do you bring: the ones you like or the ones that win?

If you like to win, that's an easy question. But if you like the game purely for the play experience without confining yourself solely to winning, it can become a difficult question indeed. And what happens if you can't even decide which question to answer in the first place?

You've arrived at The Big Dilemma. The Great Debate.

This is The Tournament Player vs. The Casual Player. Fun vs. Profit. Spike vs. everyone else who sucks. Winning vs. losing with style.

Most players are a mix of the casual and tournament player. At times we want to play with the cards we love (those cards that only you will play), and at other times we want to play with the cards that win.

When there isn't enough time for both casual gaming and tournament playtesting, something's gotta give.

Today, I'll describe some differences between these rival player types. In particular, I'll delve deep into the casual player's morbid fascination with creature types. The story will be told from the casual side of Magic, since I am a fierce casual player at heart.

The Casual Player's Approach to Casual Magic
Most Magic players begin as pure casual players. Many a judge can be seen staring and shaking their heads as these fledgling casters of magical spells summon Force of Nature and attack before their draw step. Sengir Vampire attacks Elf after Elf, and he grows to mythic proportions. Giant Growth enables Goblin Chariot to crash for five each turn until victory.

And it couldn't possibly be any more fun.

Then time fast-forwards where the rules are grasped and crazy jargon like “card advantage,” “the mana curve,” and “tempo” start to make sense. Next come advanced deckbuilding and the realization that, in Magic, there are winners and losers. A desire arises and a line is crossed for the First Tournament, where even more vocabulary words like “matchups,” “sideboarding,” and “metagaming” await comprehension.

At this point, players either backpedal fiercely, or charge forward and settle on the side of pure winning, or a find happy medium.

I can relate to the casual side of the table. The demands are insatiable. There are always cards to obtain, decks to build, foils to collect, trades to make, and games to socialize in, and not enough hours in the day for it all.

A casual player must make good use of his time and money when it comes to Magic's infinite demands. A casual player's disposable income over time correlates to the Raredness, Uniqueness, Foiledness, and sheer Quantity of his decks, like so:

Interference
While the two player types often cooperate, the demands for casual play frequently interfere with the demands for tournaments play.

You have a particular format's good cards spread out, sleeved, and shuffled into different decks in your collection. You might have to frequently rip your Kokushos out of your multiplayer deck or yank your playset of Wooded Foothills from your casual Threshold deck just to reassemble those cards into a netdeck whenever a tournament takes place. If you do this often enough, it can severely disorganize your casual deck collection. You might be better off without those casual decks in the first place.

Casual players enjoy foils. They are sparkly and pretty. They make your decks look cool to the delight of you and those you play with. Casual players strive to collect particular foils. They increase the joy of playing Magic.

Tournament players stand opposite to this. Tournament players despise foils. Foils have no conceivable use in a tournament environment. They are more expensive to acquire. Foils in your tournament deck can only contribute to potential game losses and the inconvenience of replacing them mid-tournament should your deck be considered marked. Tournament players quickly trade foils away for profit. Foils are nothing more than a disaster waiting to happen.

Quantity of Decks
Tournament players typically work on one Constructed format at a time. That's frequently translates to maybe three decks, but typically they quickly put one deck together and begin building/acquiring another deck slowly.

However, these are they only decks they have.

A telltale sign of a tournament player is the answer "I only have my for/from the upcoming/previous ," when prompted to join a casual game. In fact, from my experience, some tournament-centric players do not even own decks. A few don't even own cards.

Randy Buehler once asked Brian Kibler during a Web cast how he acquires cards, possibly fishing for a nice promotional ad for the Booster Draft format. Instead, Kibler basically gave Buehler the finger and told him doesn't buy Magic cards; he borrows Magic cards. Win the victory with borrowed steel, collect the reward, then return the steel. This is the inexpensive way to play Magic.

The demands of the once-every-month big Constructed tournament do not include "have a complete deck ready at all times." Through the power of spoilers, netdecking, online playtesting, and proxies, the fiercest tournament players can do without physical Magic cards until the day of the event. Since possession of the cards need only be temporary, the entire deck can be borrowed (or bought and resold) after the event.

Casual players have a myriad of decks built, shuffled, and ready to play to quickly satisfy the fluctuating demands of a night's worth of magical fun. These decks can run the gamut of colors, strategies, and power levels. A casual player's lifespan with the game translates to how "across the Blocks" his decks span. I have met Magic players with more than a hundred decks, complete and ready to play. This is, of course, the expensive way to play Magic.

From my experience, the biggest factor keeping the casualest players in the world from building the maximum amount of decks possible is neither time nor gumption nor trunk space: It's quality lands. Even mono-colored decks are more optimal employing utility nonbasics like Wasteland, Rishadan Port, and cycling lands.

You don't feel the strain of the necessity for good land until after you've made dozens of decks, yet still possess a hundred ambitions. The most important part of a deck is its mana base. Any deck can be conceptualized and even built, but it won't work unless the underlying mana base can support it.

It's obvious every time you win a game with a card like Rude Awakening. It's not-so-obvious the games you win through your impeccable mana base that keeps your deck humming over hundreds of games. A rock-solid mana base starts you on the path to winning on turn 1 and before, saving you countless mulligans.

What's keeping every deck you own from playing a removal package of four Lightning Helixes and four Putrefies? Colored mana, that's what. Why were the Urza's Block Constructed and Mercadian Masques Block Constructed formats overrun by mono-colored decks? Weak multicolor lands, that's why.

But even weak multicolor nonbasics can find homes in casual decks. That's why there are casual decks in the first place — the line between fun and winning is blurred. It's a place for the underpowered to have their day in the sun.

So when a nonbasic land gets a tournament-worthy upgrade, don't just toss those Scablands and Salt Marshes into the garbage can like so many a Remote Farm and Slippery Karst. Use them! Your casual Dimir Mill deck could probably use some nonbasic color-fixing lands, even if you can't offer it Underground Sea-caliber lands.

To better illustrate how a casual player can approach nonbasic lands, I've drawn up a power level listing of the tournament-besmirched W/G nonbasic lands (to show them some love):

The W/G Nonbasic Land Power Gradient
Savannah
Windswept Heath
Temple Garden
Brushland
Krosan Verge
Sungrass Prairie
Selesnya Sanctuary
Elfhame Palace
Grasslands
Tranquil Garden
Vec Townships
Veldt
Riftstone Portal

Casual players know to:

• Pull from the top of the list for power.
• Pull from the middle of the list for budget.
• Pull from the bottom of the list at your own risk, and only if you've statistically proven that a configuration of all basic lands isn't better.

Keep in mind, all the comes-into-play-tapped and freeze lands are worse in beatdown and combo, while the fetchers are more powerful when paired with the duals or assisting a graveyard-centered strategy like Hunting Grounds or Life from the Loam. The card advantage lands like Krosan Verge and Selesnya Sanctuary are exceptional in big spell formats like Two-Headed Giant, where building card advantage into your lands can potentially free up spell slots.

Don't start with four Loxodon Hierarchs and work your way down. Begin with the mana base and work up. It all starts with the lands. Take those obsolete Elfhame Palaces and Grasslands and build a casual Selesnya deck. It won't have the most killer color fixing in the world nor an optimum curve, but it should be enough to give you another unique working pile of sixty in your casual deck box.

The point I'm trying to make here is that casual players can find uses or even generate demand for seemingly obsolete cards like these nonbasic lands. Tournament players, by stark contrast, have no use for cards that get dethroned by the game when the winter expansion comes, instead feeding them to the crows.

(Guess which book he's referencing and win a no-prize — The Ferrett)

Uniqueness
For some strange reason, casual players love creature types. They'll burst MaRo's Inbox with rants about Dwarves getting the shaft or demand more blue Oozes. But why are casual players so passionate about creature types in the first place?

This game by its very nature subsets decks into the five-plus-one colors through the fundamentals of colored mana costs. In my mind, creature types have a way of further subsetting the creature card type (an admittedly sexy subset in of itself). When you focus on a subset the cards, you create deckbuilding rules for yourself to follow. It's a challenge.

Here are some examples of cards that create subsets of cards, and thusly fuel a self-indulging deck challenge:

Grozoth
Sunforger
Thief of Hope
Auriok Salvagers
Power Conduit
Astral Slide
Skullclamp
Holistic Wisdom

...and for an iconic twist on subsetting cards:

Richard Garfield, Ph.D.

Playing with a subset of cards makes your deck unique amongst all your other decks. This way, each of your decks plays remarkably different from the next, generating new experiences that increase the overall fun across thousands of games of Magic.

A tournament player can play almost the same deck for years in both Standard and Extended and have fun, as long as he is winning. There is no incentive at all for subsetting, deckbuilding constraints, uniqueness, or challenges that creature types impose because the goal is to win (with the sole exception of Onslaught Block).

But for the casual player, the creature types of Dwarves, Cats, Hounds, and Fungi each make for a different deckbuilding challenge and play experience in unique ways. For example:

A Dragon isn't a Jellyfish. To put it another way, I mean a Dragon deck is different from a Jellyfish deck because creatures are never both a Dragon and a Jellyfish. As poetic injustice, the Jellyfish deck beats the Dragon deck.

Slivers are lethal when numerous and diversified.

Wizards are annoying and love to fondle libraries and spells.

Antelopes frolic on grass. After a graceful frolic, they poop on the ground, and grass grows there.

Adding in some strategic depth, you can often capitalize on a known casual metagame with proper tribe selection. Like a silver bullet, only a silver tribe. Like VS, only Magic.

Is your opponent a little too fond of big spells like Tooth and Nail? Bring in the disruptive Wizards.

Up against a control deck? Rats.

U/G Madness? Elves.

Sleight-Knight? Slivers.

Sligh?

Walls Featured by Kenneth Nagle on 2005-12-11 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10935.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 2 Viridian Longbow Creatures 4 Carven Caryatid 4 Jungle Patrol 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 4 Tinder Wall 4 Vine Trellis 4 Wall of Blossoms 4 Wall of Mulch 4 Wall of Roots Enchantments 3 Kyren Negotiations	Sorceries 1 Flame Fusillade Basic Lands 15 Forest 2 Mountain Lands 4 Shivan Oasis Legendary Lands 1 Miren, the Moaning Well	Stats: Average mana: 1.50 Average creature mana cost: 2.25 Average creature power: 0.75 Average creature toughness: 3.50 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 28.33% Creatures: 53.33% Lands: 6.67% Enchantments: 5.00% Artifacts: 3.33% Sorceries: 1.67% Legendary Lands: 1.67%
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I built a deck to beg the question, “What is the best Wall?” I've found my answer. You see, I developed a theory some years ago that R&D couldn't possibly make a Wall better than Wall of Blossoms. You simply can't do it. Walls of Blossoms does everything a Wall is supposed to do.

Wall of Blossoms:

• Is cheap to cast.
• Blocks stuff.
• Gives you back a card.

Wall of Blossoms is so good a being a Wall, R&D refused to reprint it in the Core Set (8th Edition) out of concerns over its power level. An overpowered wall? In Green? Unthinkable.

But I was recently proven wrong. To my surprise, R&D did make a Wall better than Wall of Blossoms. Do you know what it is? It's in my Wall deck. In fact, it's high on the list of best creatures ever.

It's Sakura-Tribe Elder. The Best Wall Ever.

Not kidding. Sakura-Tribe Elder:

• Is cheap to cast.
• Blocks something (once).
• Gives you back a (basic land) card.
• Accelerates mana.
• Fixes colors.
• Fizzles ill effects of targeted spells, targeted abilities, and combat damage.
• Attacks.
• Wields broken equipment.

I'm sure everyone has seen what happens to one-toughness attackers when they see a Sakura-Tribe Elder. Either a perfectly good removal spell gets aimed at the Elder or the attacker doesn't swing, waiting instead for the beatdown mage to move up the mana curve to a creature that can survive a run-in with the Elder. Then you untap and play another Sakura-Tribe Elder.

Best. Wall. Ever.

Compared to everything Sakura-Tribe Elder can do, Wall of Blossoms doesn't look so overpowered, now does it?

Let's return to the deck at hand. While the Wall tribe itself is not suffering in the power level department, it is plagued by confusion and dis-synergy. Even though Wall of Mulch is the Tribal Lord of Walls, new Walls like Carven Caryatid aren't Walls at all. Carven Caryatid is a Spirit. You'd think Wall of Mulch would let you sacrifice "creatures with Defender,” the new templating of Walls. What gives?

Instead, Wall of Mulch still references creature type, the errataed part of the Wall tribe.

C'mon, Gottlieb. If you're going to errata an entire tribe out of existence because of rules baggage and a new design philosophy, couldn't you at least let them keep their Tribal Lord?

Another problem with green Walls is that they steal some of the thunder from Spiders — the thematic flyer-hating Green Walls. While reprinting Silklash Spider in 9th Edition is a great nod to the Spider tribe, I feel it was more or less a requirement from R&D since everything in Standard flies.

But why should we casual players care? Tournament players don't care. Let R&D butcher yet another Tribe. No one cried for Druids or Spiders. Why should we shed tears for Walls?

If it seems like I rag on creature types too much, it's because I feel that creature types need to be ragged on.

To be perfectly frank, R&D does lots of things right. They print Green creatures and Green cards that make your Green creatures better. They print Green instants, Green sorceries, Green enchantments, and even a new Forest (Temple Garden) or two (Overgrown Tomb). But one thing R&D doesn't do right is creature types.

They insist on repeatedly screwing them up. First R&D announced sweeping changes to creature types, then they went and reprinted Savannah Lions in 8th Edition without making it a Cat. One Core Set later, and it is a Cat. What kind of presto-chango policy is that?

I made a Cat deck once, during Fifth Dawn...

Cats Featured by Kenneth Nagle on 2005-12-11 (Kamigawa Block) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10935.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 1 Lightning Greaves 1 Loxodon Warhammer 4 Mask of Memory 1 Sword of Fire and Ice 1 Sword of Light and Shadow Creatures 3 Blistering Firecat 2 Chartooth Cougar 4 Leonin Skyhunter 4 Pardic Firecat 4 Skyhunter Cub 4 Skyhunter Skirmisher Instants 4 Flame Burst	Legendary Creatures 1 Jareth, Leonine Titan 1 Raksha Golden Cub Sorceries 1 Firecat Blitz 4 Steelshaper's Gift Basic Lands 5 Mountain 12 Plains Lands 4 Battlefield Forge	Stats: Average mana: 1.93 Average creature mana cost: 3.70 Average creature power: 2.78 Average creature toughness: 2.35 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 27.87% Lands: 6.56% Artifacts: 13.11% Sorceries: 8.20% Creatures: 34.43% Legendary Creatures: 3.28% Instants: 6.56%
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Bad mana. Bad curve. Being a Green mage, I'm usually not victim to such appalling deckbuilding atrocities. All that, and I couldn't fix my problems with Savannah Lions because of the tiny detail that Lions weren't Cats.

Now with R&D pushing White Weenie until it wins a Pro Tour where Blue cards are legal, there's bound to be Savannah Lions seeing Constructed play. Constructed is a place where tiny details matter. At some event, that tiny detail will come to surface, like at Pro Tour: Los Angeles. For this particular incident, nothing major happened. Raphael Levy wanted to Engineered Plague for Savannah Lions, and needed some clarification from Tsuyoshi Fujita that the Lions were Cats. No biggie, right?

Pardon me, but I do believe it is something major.

There is an ever so small strain on every judge and player's mind that Savannah Lions is indeed a Cat, not a Lion, as all pre-9th Edition Savannah Lions would communicate.

Likewise, there is a tiny strategic difference between pre- and post-9th Edition Savannah Lions if you believe your opponent may read your cards directly for information or play decisions.

An aspiring player thinking of playing in a tournament may read an old tournament report of White Weenie and the game won't make sense because Savannah Lions is now a functionally different card. This could end up being a few seconds of confusion, a full minute of Internet research, or just the frustration required to dissuade him from building the deck at all.

These are non-trivial costs here. Every tiny detail counts.

This isn't card conceptualization, evaluating power levels, avoiding infinite rules loopholes, templating mechanics properly, or writing flavor text.

One thing that R&D could and should always get correct is creature type.

The Grand Scheme
The grand scheme proposed by R&D for new creature types is a Race/Class paradigm, which borrows heavily from Wizards' fantasy Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.

Race/Classes. You know, like Elf Shaman. Goblin Wizard. Ape Berserker. Beast Warrior.

See the problem? "Beast" somehow doesn't work here. Beasts are just Beasts. They're stupid and animalistic, killing for food, fighting for mates, and evading predators. Why can't they have classes?

The trick is, you need a semi-intelligent social race before you can start assigning classes. That's because only advanced races will have evolved far enough intellectually to embrace Division of Labor. When you divide the labor, you end up with Warriors, Shamans, Clerics, Cooks, Hunters, and Shadow-spec'd Priests.

Another instance where the Race/Class works is with very social yet non-intelligent races, like Insects. Insects are not truly intelligent, but they are social. Wouldn't Insect Drone, Insect Warrior, and Insect Lord work in the Race/Class paradigm?

Not according to R&D. Apparently, the only class fit for an Insect is Druid. Now that the Nantuko race of intelligent Insects past away with the Odyssey Block, R&D must think Insects de-evolved past normalcy to pre-socialism.

Additionally, R&D continues to print artifact creatures with no creature type, I suspect mostly as a slap in the face for Magic judges, ensuring that they always have to answer the question, "Is 'Artifact Creature' a creature type?" until they die. Frogmite is not a Frog; Frogmite is nothing. Sundering Titan is not a Titan, nor is it a Giant, nor is it even the catch-all of “Golem.”

Darksteel Colossus isn't a Colossus, nor is it a Giant, nor is it even a Darksteel-Colossus. What gives? Is it for power level reasons? Darksteel Colossus is The Best Fattie Ever Printed. Is it really going to matter if a Riptide Shapeshifter can fetch him into play?

Darksteel Colossus is iconic. It's a creature so big, so powerful, and so cool, that anyone who has summoned it or seen it turn sideways against them will never forget the experience.

My favorite creature type happens to be Lhurgoyf. Cracking my first Lhurgoyf in an Ice Age booster pack gave me crazy ideas about variable stats. Unbounded power? Unbounded toughness, plus one? I play tons of creatures in my green decks, and so does my opponent. How could a creature so big cost only four mana?

It took me only one game with Lhurgoyf to figure out why. Summoning Lhurgoyf on turn 4 is not an impressive play by the Green mage. Neither is summoning Lhurgoyf on turn 3. In fact, I remember thinking that Lhurgoyf was the first card I ever owned that didn't combo with Black Lotus.

Back during the Ice Age (and for years afterward), creature types weren't even given a second thought, so Lhurgoyf was given the Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore treatment just like everything else. Giant Mantis? A Mantis. Giant Tortoise? A Tortoise. Giant Turtle? A Turtle. Repeat ad nauseam.

R&D, please quit screwing up creature types. The casual market feels every nuance and every errata, past and present. If you're going to change something, change it now. Not later. In fifty years, the number of “Cat” Savannah Lions will far outnumber the “Lion” Savannah Lions. Lands can be Forests. Enchantments can be Shrines. Instants can be Arcane. But don't forget about the creatures!

When a deserving creature is denied a proper Class, it loses a tribe, some pizzazz, and a chance to be loved.

It's important. We casual players love our creature types. Every one of them.

From the Caribou to the Ouphe,
And the Penguin to the Dervish.
Because Antelopes frolic and poop,
And a Dragon isn't a Jellyfish.

Kenneth Nagle
NorrYtt
Casual Green Mage Extraordinaire
NorrYtt@gmail.com
2005.12.2
Relevant Format: Casual
Choppery by Yawgatog