When running my more powerful decks through the Tier 1 gauntlet in the tournament practice room gets old, I like to cool off with some Van Der Snoot Reanimator in the casual room. Being the most populated room on Magic Online, it comes as no surprise that you will run into a wild variety of decks and opponents. Think of it as the cantina on Mos Isely.
Here is a broad generalization that will offend some and disgust all: The seven distinct types of players in Magic Online Casual Room:
#1: The Eager Cadet: This poor guy runs the horrible beginner decks. Brothers Yamazaki and other debris. It's usually an extremely underpowered weenie and/or beatdown deck piloted by a really nice guy. As polite and endearing as this character may be, I can't help but feel these matches are a waste of time. It's basically a bad way to goldfish your deck.
#2: The Raging Goblin: This is the Eager Cadet with a rotten attitude. While Mr. Cadet just wants to play a nice game of Magic and seemingly doesn't mind losing, this poor bastard goes all sorts of insane when you gain the inevitable upper hand. He's landscrewed, he has one lone Courier Hawk staring you down, and anything and everything you do makes him want to kill you. While this guy is funny at first, this nonsense usually begins to wear me down and I'll end up scooping if he doesn't.
#3: The Taunting Elf: "52-0 TODAY!!! COME GET OWNED!!!" This means they are running a deck consisting of twenty-four lands and forty-six land destruction spells. They don't "win" per se, they just drive you completely bonkers until you scoop.
#4: Phage the Untouchable: "std, no jittes, no counterspells, no land-d, no hand-d, no creature kill, no creatures, no lands, no..." Ok, I understand the "no jittes" part, and I'll get into that in awhile, but come on. This is basically Mr. or Ms. Raging Goblin gone haywire. They have melted down into berserker mode, and by god they're going to win a game before they go to bed or all hell is going to break loose. These time-bombs are to be avoided at all costs. Once they get to this point all they lack is the flame to light their fuse.
#5: The Gluttonous Zombie: These guys are relatively harmless, if slightly annoying. They have collected a certain amount of foil rares and they want everyone to know! If their hobby was detailing cars, these guys would drive '93 Honda Civics with limo tint, Pirelli rims, and enough thumping bass to crack pavement. Sure, a foil Dosan (cast with a foil Unhinged Forest), foil Invasion Llanowar Wastes, and foil Temple Garden is pretty. I can appreciate your love of all things shiny. Personally, I could really care less about foils and I sell/trade them away just as fast as I can pull them, but hey, I'm not hating on the foil lovers. I'm not sure if Mr. Gluttonous wants me to say, "cool foils" or what. I normally just stomp his testicles through the back of his pants and move on.
#6: The Infantry Veteran: This is probably the bulk of the casual room. They've seen a good casual deck (Warp World, Reanimator, good Weenie/Beatdown), build it and run it. They usually possess some level of skill, may or may not chat, and are generally just in it for a good fight. Nothing wrong with these folks; this is basically the middle class. I think I fall into this category, though I enjoy building my own decks (I refuse to run Warp World in the casual rooms simply because it's hideously boring). I fully understand some people don't want to - or just plain can't - build their own decks, and that's understandable and fine. You don't have to be able to paint to appreciate the Mona Lisa. I definitely fall on the "netdeck all you want" side of the fence.
#7: The Diseased Vermin: This is the most loathsome of all players in the casual room. That's right: this is the Jitte guy. This is the schmuck that wants to test his Greater Gifts or MUC in the casual room because he lacks the playskill or wherewithal to take it to the tournament room. This is the guy you want to run through a leaf grinder. 95% of the time he has a bad attitude, probably because he's sick to death of everyone scooping on him once they realize what he's packing.
"std no quitters" means, "I demand you sit still while I rape you in the butt with my Mortivore LD deck! It's foil!"
On my first night playing Magic Online, I bought two theme decks, mashed them together and hit the Beginner's Room. All I wanted was to learn the interface and get a feel for the atmosphere. Winning was probably ranked sixteenth on my list of priorities that night. You can imagine the decks I faced. The beginner's room is filled to the brim with players and decks that make the Eager Cadet look like a hyperskilled pro. So I was just getting warmed up, and my third opponent actually had the bald audacity to run a 100% foiled-out Heartbeat-Maga deck. In the Beginner's Room. This was my introduction to the Diseased Vermin. I didn't allow the game to go past turn 3, because I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and watch this moron masturbate his Early Harvests and Drift of Phantasms for ten long minutes when all I want to do is freaking learn what the best Game Play Settings are.
Wizards of the Coast defines Casual as "anything non-sanctioned." It's a vague description that leaves too wide a berth for interpretation. It's not that they can enforce a "banned list" but common sense should apply. Sure, packing Meloku and sixteen forms of countermagic plus Boomerang is completely legal in the casual room. But I am among the bitching majority (read: 99.99%) of players that finds this cheap and loathsome. Of course you're going to win. You're going to win every single game, without effort or thought. What the hell do you think is going to happen when you put Umezawa's Jitte on a Hypnotic Specter versus a King Cheetah deck? You actually expect anything other than a one-sided bloodbath? You've figured out the "God Mode," you ass.
I definitely do not want some "Constitution of Casual Players" with a list of banned cards. If you've found some interesting way to make a Jitte work without creatures (like Energy Chamber or something), then I'd be the first to stand in line and get spanked by it, no complaints given. There's all sorts of weird things you can do with bomb rares that don't have to include Greater Good, I promise you.
/rant
So there's the seven types. Can you think of any more?
I'd now like to show you a couple Ravnica Block casual decks I've been screwing with Online (no Guildpact until Feb 27th).
Guildpact adds: a more expensive manabase. It's a Black Selesnya deck. Virtually nothing will change other than the addition of Godless Shrine, and I might replace Putrefy with Mortify.
The first one is based on my Sealed League deck, where I can use Twilight Drover, Thoughtpicker Witch and one starting token to create a hard lock (sac the token to Witch, put a +1/+1 counter of Drover, remove the best of the opponent's top two cards, activate Drover, make two 1/1 flying tokens, repeat).
The engine costs five mana per turn: 2W to activate Drover, and the remaining two pays Witch (to ensure they are topdecking only lands and signets). With enough land, Witch, and Vitu-Ghazi, you can limp along nicely, but with Drover it becomes nuts, as you're making flying chumps and several pieces of Witch food. While the Witch-Lock is the core of the deck, with the tools I've included, winning with Glare of Subdual and a token engine isn't uncommon at all.
My friend Box will disagree with the exclusion of Loxodon Hierarch, but given the room, I would rather have Seed Spark. I'm definitely going to hear about how horrible Hour of Reckoning is, but hear me out. If you are nowhere near a Witch-Lock or Glare of Subdual, then you're probably getting beaten up by opponent's creatures or squeezing your mana dry making token chumps to stay alive. This is where Hour of Reckoning comes in. It costs 4WWW, sure. But with three tokens present, you're basically casting a Wrath of God that costs 1WWW and you keep all your tokens alive. This is also a great way to set up the Witch-Lock by clearing the board of any annoying threats so you can run your engine without being bothered.
The best time to strike is obviously when the opponent has no hand. Simply puke out the combo and start Thoughtpicking. That's an easy win. But, this is rarely the case, so baiting out countermagic or removal is important. There's exactly nothing your opponent can do to break this lock other than the cards in their hand (or a Darkblast). Stall the game with Glare of Subdual, token chumps, Putrefy, Fetters and Hour of Reckoning, set up lock, win.
This deck is cold and cruel, which I like. Snoot. The lock is just a formality. If they don't scoop to inevitability, they will scoop to boredom after I have nine lands and a Drover with six counters and a safe Witch. They normally let you tighten the lock for a couple turns before they realize I won't give them anything but lands or something unusable and/or uncastable.
Fifteen minutes ago I was staring down two Grave-Shell Scarabs and three Shambling Shells, some with +1/+1 counters. I controlled one Twilight Drover and one Saproling thanks do a long-dead Evangel. I also had a Glare of Subdual. He had already cast lots of Putrefy and was going to overrun me with dredge creatures. He attacked for a bunch, and I went down to two life, blocking one guy with the Saproling and adding a counter to Drover. End of his turn I fired a surprise Congregation for three Thoughtpicker Witch (should have been Witch/Drover/Witch). He had only one card in his hand, and I knew it wasn't removal - Drover was still alive after given the critical drop of fuel. I cast Thoughtpicker, made two flying tokens, sac-ed one and followed up with Drover filling up my field with Glare sluts. Two turns later he drew his second Rot Farm and scooped. He was at twenty life, I was at two.
The match after that I faced the Moroii deck. I put him in the Witch Lock, and one of the three cards in his hand ended up being Muddle the Mixture. He transmuted for Last Gasp and broke the lock, but not after I milled four cards. His next cards were Disembowel, Disembowel, Moroii, Moroii and Clutch of the Undercity. Ridiculous. The card that slaughtered me? Undercity Shade. I Fettered the first one, and he followed up with two more. He had seven Swamps, four Islands and an Aqueduct. I got splattered against the wall.
My second deck also contains an engine, but except for Dimir Infiltrator, is creatureless.
Them kids love them Glimpse the Unthinkable.
This deck is not my idea. I was slaughtered by three different people running three different versions, using a combined total of all colors except Red. The basic skeleton is Glimpse, Recollect, and Research. Putrefy is an auto-add. The rest of the decklist is your canvas. Anything Selesnya-based or slow (like my own W/B Helldozer deck) is going to be given a hard time by this thing. The sad part is, anything dropping creatures and burn at a furious pace is going to rip your Snoot inside out (Boros and Gruul). Cutpurse and Moroii-style Aggro/Control can get a stranglehold if you're hung up playing bouncelands and casting Compulsive Research to find that absent Putrefy. Other times you get a handful of gas and outrun them with ease.
I've taken this thing through many different versions. Dark Confidant/Dimir Guildmage speed builds, shuffling in and out Last Gasp, Moonlight Bargain, and Carven Caryatid, but the build I listed above is the one I feel the most comfortable with. It's slow and easy. Eight counterspells, Eight creature removal spells. The rest is Glimpse, and ways to get Glimpse into your hand.
The reason I dropped Bob and Guildmage is because Bob normally dies rather quickly. He's one of those crazy, low-costing, efficient "kill me!" cards like Hypnotic Specter, Selesnya Guildmage, Dimir Cutpurse, etc. Whatever removal card they have in their hand is going to be used immediately. Casting cards I know are going to net me card advantage ended up being more consistent (if I'm at one life, casting Ribbons is better than throwing out a suicidal Bob).
Never casting a creature makes all the Putrefy and Glare of Subdual cards in their hands useless. The early game will be Remand and Putrefy, followed by Ribbons and Induce, and then Glimpse-Recollect-Glimpse. Next turn, do it again. Induce can be nice when nailing a large spell, and Ribbons is going to be in any deck that can comfortably pack it.
The deck is a little mechanical, and entire articles have been written about the milling strategy, but it's a fun pile.
If you think about it, you could build a similar deck that uses and re-uses Char to get the same results. A R/W/G Sunforger/Recollect/GhaziFungusChar thing that gains life and stuff. It just wouldn't be as cool as the Dimir Mill. Or as expected - though I've faced millions of Dimir Mill decks. There was an explosion of players testing mill decks soon after the release of Ravnica. Since then, it has declined. Most of them were comically bad. In the Block setting, it has shown itself to be a decent little deck.
So, there's a coupla fun block decks for that ass. I tried really, really hard on an Online block Searing Meditation deck, but it just needs Orzhov too badly. I can't see Searing Meditation being anything mind-boggling, just a side-engine for a deck that's going to probably beat you anyway. I'm sure a new Meditation-style archetype is going to be invented, beat up on, and dismissed.
Now I'm off to play some Clue, which I am horrible at.
Niv-Mizzet plus Curiosity,
Caldwell S. Van Der Snoot
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