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"Casual" is more of a state of mind than an objective designator so it's difficult to pin down. It's not precisely "anything that isn't competative"

"Competative" is easier to classify. Competative decks are optimized to win without consideration for anything else. They are intended to be the most effective permutation of a given strategy for a given meta.

Competative strategies are the same. What works best as determined by playtesting and tournement performance (note that local tournements are not usually valid results owing to the low standard of most local metagames).



Casual and competative play are different things with different standards and requirements and should be treated as such. However, casual decks will lose to competative decks in the same format in the majority of cases. Decks that have not been exhaustively tested and tuned will almost never be optimal and casual play does not usually provide valid testing results. This is not to say that a casual deck has no value but pretending that "all decks are created equal" is ignorant.

The decks you describe are, for better or worse, casual decks. From what I know of their respective formats they don't represent optimal builds or strategies. There's nothing wrong with that but it is the case.



You seem to be confusing the idea of "rare" and "powerful". Competative deck building does not involve shoving chase rares into a deck and calling it a day. Cards are evaluated based on their effectiveness within the deck and the metagame. Not their price tag or rarity. Players who go on about rarity and how many sports cars their deck represents are not competative players.



They give you infinitely more flexability in your manabase. When you're building a deck you expect to perform in a 10+ round tournement any extra bit of reliability is important. The multiple types also let you abuse land type search engines.

For example, a Korlash control deck T8ed at a recent large tournement. It ran R/U/B and used Korlash's grandeur ability to tutor for swamps of all colours which then let it use the mana advantage to suspend big aeon chroniclers and detritvores. Without the mana sinks that R and U provide the advantage generated by Korlash wouldn't have been anywhere near as powerful.

On "playing kamikaze for mana": It's worth it. 2 damage weighed against a colour screw that costs you the game is very little and there's nothing stopping you from running bounce lands as well.



I'm not familiar with the Vintage metagame but LNL seems like a valid card choice for Oath. You need certain cards in your library and LNL is a good way to put them there. Used during your opponent's end step (as most instant speed drawing will be) it compares well with other drawing instants in the format like Ancestral Knowledge. If LNL was legal in standard I could definitely see Dragonstorm running it and the shuffle effect seems like it would synergy well with the Sensei's Divining Top engine that many extended decks run off.

None of what I'm saying is absolute or black and white. Testing and tuning is the key and that testing and tuning must be focused and careful.

In general this will not happen in local metas because most decks played in those metas have not undergone anything like that process.

The testing doesn't happen in major tournements either. It generally happens between circles of friends/ teammates or, more recently, online. It usually involves lots of games against a wide variety of decks (many players have a "gauntlet" of popular decks that they only use for testing purposes).

The major tournement issue is that it's the surest way of demonstrating that a deck is competative. If it performs in that situation there must be somthing good about it.

None of this necessarily means that any deck will or won't win in a given situation, it's all generalized, and it doesn't take player skill into account (though, most good technical players will also make sure to test carefully). However, it is accurate as far as it goes. You won't be able to throw a deck together and win a pro tour or even a regionals.



The only criteria I'm judging based on is performance and the care and attention that it takes to get that performance. That judging based on this works is well documented. Look at what the players who consistently win do to prepare. Read Frank Karsten's "Preparing for Regionals" article on magicthegathering.com. That's for a tournement he knew he wasn't going to.

I'm not sure what the decktype analogy has to do with anything. I'm not judging based on decktype.



A 67 card deck is, by definition, sub optimal. It has been tested exhaustively and definitively proven that 60 or 61 cards is the optimal deck size. I've seen the list for the artifact deck and it looks very random and doesn't include must have cards for the format.



Remand is rare? Castigate is rare? Sudden death is rare?

Repeal, Rewind, Compulsive Research, Mystical Teachings, Tendrils of Couruption, Spell Snare, Rift Bolt, Seal of Fire.

That's by no means an exhaustive list and those are all defining utility cards that each are valid plays in a number of different archetypes.



Neither do I. I care how effective they are.



Do you even know what Korlash is? He's a creature. A board defining creature. Very big and difficult to remove. He also happens to have an ability that allows you to discard extra copies of him to search for 2 swamps and put them into play so, not only can you run 4 of him for redundancy without worrying about the fact that he's a legend, each extra copy essentially becomes 2 land that don't count towards your per turn limit. Oh, and he's 4 CMC so he's searchable by Dimir House Guard which also searches detritivore and damnation and tendrils of couruption and persecute. So essentially, he's a win condition that also fixes your mana. Definitely a complete waste of cards.



I have respect for your opinions and arguements but this is pushing it. You clearly have no understanding of how the deck works and you're randomly attacking it.



You haven't built competative 5 color decks without rare multi lands because 5 color decks are always better with the multis than without them. It's probability if nothing else.

This is the point I was making. I'm not discounting anything. Calling a deck "casual" is not an insult, it's a descriptor. Nothing more.

As far as not being optimally built... there are hard and fast building rules. I didn't make them up, they have been consistently proven.

There are also cards in certain formats which ought to go in every deck. Some of them stupidly expensive. There's nothing wrong with not owning the power 9 and the true duals but if you aren't running the right ones in the right vintage deck, it's not optimally built. That's why I don't play vintage competatively.



Win ratios mean little unless they are in games against good decks and players. In vintage that will usually mean decks with stupid amounts of money sunk into them and players with a large amount of experience in the format.

And, honestly, it's absurdly unlikely that any deck and any player could maintain that sort of ratio against valid opposition.



I'm really not trying to attack you here but think about this. Show me how these decks are built so that they would not be improved by the addition of multi lands. There may be some card I've never seen that makes that work, if so, show me the list.

However, you cannot say that a straight, multicoloured, manabase would not be more reliable with multi lands than without, because it would. Perhaps not much more but any tiny sliver of reliability can be the difference between making the T8 cut and not making it.

That's what I'm talking about when I say that competative decks are those that have been tested exhaustively. Those fractions of percentage points of effectiveness matter at top levels.



Then what is a necessary card if not one that is run x4 by nearly all permutations of multiple archetypes?



I'm sorry if I'm coming across as didactic and close minded. I'm not trying to be and I think our positions aren't as far apart as they seem to be.



I hope you do, at least, see this message. I am in no way implying that you are sub optimal or using that as an insult. It's a term of description that may mean nothing other than "has not been run several hundred times against proven decklists of the expected format piloted by reliable players with the results analyzed and considered".

I don't put in the time and effort necessary to produce optimal decklists, I certainly don't think that anyone who doesn't is somehow inferior.

It's just that there is a difference between the levels of commitment and effectiveness of casual and competative decks and players that needs to be recognized. But the difference is not one of quality. It's one of attitude and focus.