Keeping it casual, what cards would you not put into your "casual" EDH Decks? Commander Discussion 

I know you didn't name it in your top 5-I just saw it in your thumbnail-but opposition agent really isn't a game breaking card in casual. In fact, you'll rarely ever get value out of its ability unless your opponents are all playing tutors or fetchlands. It does shut down ramp, but that's pretty necessary when opponents are playing huge bombs like Scion of the Ur Dragon, for example. When you're playing a deck that's 1 to 3 colors and not green, your only methods are to either slow down their plan or board wipe. Having your deck filled with boardwipes is far more toxic gameplay than playing cards that just slightly even the playing field, I'd argue.

I don't have a problem playing/against these cards in casual but I think a bigger issue is people don't pull punches at casual tables if they do have higher power cards.

here are a few thoughts 1. these are cards that are staples in their colors 2. if the card is legal to play in edh....play it 3. play interaction/responses to these cards 4. play better. 5. burgeoning isn't even a cEDH card.

Of the cards in this video the only one i wouldn't put in a casual deck is Faerie Mastermind. All the other ones i have no problems with, but mastermind in mist cases is just a vanilla 2/1 in casual, it may block some flying damage but it will very rarely actually draw a card unless you pay 4 into it.

Saying dockside is too much but Jeska’s Will is fine is wild. And that’s really the problem. Everyone measures cards differently.

for me what makes a deck not casual is basically just if its miserable to play vrs stuff like chaos and hard stax (winter orb stasis levels not like thalia blind obedience etc) or strategies like mass discard and board wipe tribal that limit how the game can be played don't feel as casual to me, basically my metric for if a deck feels casual or not is if the next payer just won would I be happy it was over or sad I didn't get to play more xD

Months of playing with fun casuals. Then suddenly an idiot with massive control. Time for “Oops, all Counterspells!”

Agree with your list Plus : 1-2 cmc tutors 0-1 cmc mana rocks Free interaction The one ring Gaeas cradle Sylvan library Demonic consultation / Thassas oracle Ad nauseam Tainted pact Cards that prevent interaction like grand abolisher , ranger captan of eos, silence I don’t believe that a single one would remove your deck from the list of casual But they indeed push the power level

It's often less about individual cards but more about card combinations. For an example from earlier today, I was playing with a mono-white guy who had wiped the board. Sure. I start to rebuild. Next turn he wipes again. With a different board wipe. Repeat for the next 2 turns. Turns out guy had 20 different board wipes in his deck. No board wipe, individually, would be that bad. But a solid third of your entire deck is just a collection of board wipes? That's just miserable. I scoop and refuse to play with these guy again. That ain't casual, that's toxic. EDIT: This is my first time on your channel, and missed that you're referring to commander specifically. This game in question was standard, but same general idea applies.

The 3w cost of smothering tithe makes it not worth it to me. By the time you have enough mana to cast it, it's almost irrelevant. Huge card draw is not a feature of every casual game, so utility goes down in casual. Every game ive ever played it, its benefit was marginal. I stopped running it in my selesnya deck bc it just didnt give enough value to justify continuing to have it. So i disagree with that one.

Just be proxy friendly and play what you want. Trying to rule Zero or be casual with it doesn’t work for commander.

I do not like the idea that you have to exclude "x" card(s) to be considered casual. Casual is really a subjective term to the types of decks in a playgroup. If everyone is playing optimized, then no one is at an advantage and it feels like a casual game of magic. It is one thing to not know something exists because you are new to the game and format. However, at a certain point just refusing to play certain cards to remain "casual" is kind of just dumb. Most people are opening up to the idea of proxies. I get not everyone has hundred to thousands of dollars to put into real copies of cards, but it isn't hard or expensive to make a functional proxy to run. I find a lot more people who move into the "competitive" side find it more fun than the "casual" side. The games have more interaction. Games don't end in a feels bad situation because people felt like they had no chance to begin with.

should have*, would have*, could have*

Esper sentinel, mana drain and gilded drake don’t strike me as cards that break casual. Two of them are just good removal and one of them is efficient non-engine card draw. The things that make Esper sentinel insane in CEDH don’t exist in casual very much, and I don’t think there’s a peice of single target removal in the game that I would ever have a problem with showing up in a casual match. Stealing an Eldrazi with a guilded drake vs a legerdemain isn’t that big of a difference, it’s just two mana less with fewer conditions to cast.

Counterpoints for some of these cards... Dockside Extortionist: if people were more reserved, instead of overextending on artifacts and enchantments without expecting repercussions for doing so, it would be little more than a moderately-powered ritual. It's a brick on the accelerator for the person who plays it, as opposed to the slowdown caused by, say, Vandalblast. Smothering tithe/Rhystic Study: drawing cards is almost as valuable as the mana provided by not paying your taxes. If you don't want to be punished for value plays, deal with the issue first. "Casual" isn't just shorthand for playing like a greedy moron, run suitsble ways to protect your gameplan, be it in the form of keeping up, or in the form of interaction with the board, and understand that we're not all here to just watch you durdle about with your cardboard. Burgeoning: this card is grossly overrated if you don't have a strong enough draw engine to support it. Also, tutors are for players that can't find interesting and/or interlocking lines of play during deckbuilding that keep their plans viable in the event that they have to pivot mid-game. Power creep has been so bananas, as of late, that you need only do a bit of searching in Gatherer for key terms to find cards doing more of what you want your deck to be doing, or things adjacent to what you're already trying to do. Also, getting the cards you want to play onto the table, and keeping them there, isn't a right, it's a privilege and a responsibility. If you can't maintain your board state, you didn't deserve to have it to begin with.