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As a Legacy player who has spent three years building his Nic Fit list and still has not finished it, I find Casual to be for impulsive players who would rather spend $20 each week for several, weaker decks instead of saving up and constructing something much more potent, whether it is a netdeck or a homebrew or something in between.

Also, I should also mention that casual to the rest of my playgroup is pretty much "no restrictions other than cost", especially to my best friend. I don't feel like playing against dredge or reanimator without a solid list because, well, they aren't very interactive unless you can hate them out. A few of my playgroup do realize this, and tend to build slower combos (my favorite is my other friend's Precursor Golem with Polymorph and Shape Anew deck) or forgo combo all together.

I don't know ... maybe I'm just salty, because I don't consider myself a Spike at all (otherwise I'd build permission or combo instead of ramp-control). So, what is casual to you?

Casual, in my opinion, is a format dictated by the deck builder's idea of "fun," mitigated by one's playgroup. some people have highly competitive play groups where running vintage power decks is the norm and the player wants to keep competitive, because no one enjoys losing every game. and other groups have lower power decks typically a mash up of older players who are set in their old deck archtypes ( slide , miracle grow, sligh) and just enjoy playing them over and over again, and newer players who dont like the competitive settings like fnm or draft and just want to build decks to enjoy their corpsejack menance , or harvester of souls they pulled, and find playing with the older players often helps them learn the game better and gives them solid advice on deck building. 
then again there are those "any thing goes" play groups, who basically give a crap about restrictions or whether or not you can run four ponder and four skullclamp in a deck. typically these players aim for some goofy end with their rule breakings, like my friend who ran four tinker s just so he could consistantly t3 darksteel colossus , and they're playgroups allow it because they just want to do something equally goofy with their decks.  because seriously glare of subdual hasnt been good since ravnica the first time around, yet i still find it to be one of my favorite cards (not including my namesake of course). 
hope my point came out clearly, thanks for reading 

= Baby don't Spike me

Nov 11, 2012 -- 1:58PM, ReveillarkAbuser wrote:

Casual, in my opinion, is a format dictated by the deck builder's idea of "fun," mitigated by one's playgroup. some people have highly competitive play groups where running vintage power decks is the norm and the player wants to keep competitive, because no one enjoys losing every game. and other groups have lower power decks typically a mash up of older players who are set in their old deck archtypes ( slide , miracle grow, sligh) and just enjoy playing them over and over again, and newer players who dont like the competitive settings like fnm or draft and just want to build decks to enjoy their corpsejack menance , or harvester of souls they pulled, and find playing with the older players often helps them learn the game better and gives them solid advice on deck building. 
then again there are those "any thing goes" play groups, who basically give a crap about restrictions or whether or not you can run four ponder and four skullclamp in a deck. typically these players aim for some goofy end with their rule breakings, like my friend who ran four tinker s just so he could consistantly t3 darksteel colossus , and they're playgroups allow it because they just want to do something equally goofy with their decks.  because seriously glare of subdual hasnt been good since ravnica the first time around, yet i still find it to be one of my favorite cards (not including my namesake of course). 
hope my point came out clearly, thanks for reading 

100% in agreement with this guy^

Thanks Reveillark: that sounds like the best definition of casual I've heard. I guess what really gets me is that my best friend warps our playgroup's mitigation severely, what with dredge and reanimator (oh, and Legacy Burn). Then again, he's started making other decks, so maybe that will help curb my anxiety.