Casual Concepts: June 25, 2008

It has been brought to my attention that I have not talked much lately about he state of casual at SciFi in some time, so please allow me to point out some things which have really developed recently. If you have not been out for Wednesday Night Casual in a while, things have really changed. Over the past few months our numbers have grown from the occasional 3-5 to over 12 consistently. Even Zac, one of our original founding fathers, has been making recent appearances. It is not unusual to see games of 6+ round table going, and the trading is as strong as ever, but i can't help but sense we need some sort of trading post. I would love to here any thoughts you guys have on organizing our trade potential.

Not only do we have more players, but there really is a lot going on. The Anti/Stamped/Pooh League has started to dwindle, but it never fails. I still see people playing it every Wednesday night. There is already a lot of discussion of resetting the card pool when Shards of Alara hits this fall, and rules revisions to address some of the issues raised with in the league. I know I had a lot of fun with league, and I think our basic idea worked well. A few fine tweaks should allow it more staying power with the majority of the players. If you have any thoughts, be sure to get them out there for consideration.

I have to thank JohnnieK for really spear-heading the EDH efforts, and keeping us organized. We now have more registered generals then ever before, but here are still a tun available. A quick search reveals that there are approximately 400 legends printed, and many done so recently. These are easy to find, and have high synergy with the Standard card pool. There is plenty of room for everyone, so start putting together a deck. Maybe we can get JohnnieK to write an article to discuss the finer points of Highlander, and suggest some inexpensive cards to add impact to your collections. That's right JK I'm calling you out! While on the topic of EDH I would also like to recognize Ben and Mike who have become the poster children for the EDH movement. They came in last week so ready to play, that they brought an extra EDH deck in case somebody wanted to play, and didn't have a deck. Great heart guys, thanks. I really wonder how long it will be before EDH needs it's own night, rather then being just another part of casual night?

Of course you don't have to build a special deck to have fun, there are always folks ready to throw down with just any old thing. Casual night is also the perfect place to test your proxied up new deck concepts. It's always good to see if something works, before you rush out and buy stuff, no matter what Justin says about it. Speaking of any old thing, I wanted to tell you all about a new casual night concept, JohnnieK has been teaching me. It's is usually called 5C of five color. The basic idea is to build a a 250 plus card deck, that contains at least 20 cards of each color. Maybe we can get JohhnieK to explain the rules to us? (yep that twice in one article JK!)Mine is a highlander version so every card is different (although I am still working on replacing some of the basic lands). The deck is awesome, if I may say so myself, and I really enjoy playing it. If you have been around a casual table with me in the last couple of weeks, you may have already seen it in action, if not come out and check it out. You never know what you might get, and with over 150 different spell cards, you could get anything. I plan to write about my Deck of Many Things next week, but I'll see you tonight if you want the sneak peek.

So to make use of an old joke, you can see for yourself tonight, or you can read about it some time! Hope to see everybody tonight. As always thank you to SciFi Genre, and their crew for giving us a place to indulge our game state!