What makes you fold

[Tokimo]

TL;DR: What experiences have you had that made you quit or want to quit a game midway?

So I had an interesting experience today. I was playing a brutish arcbound aggro deck in Magic. I had originally built it with some Mishra's Workshops ({T}: Add {3} to your mana pool) and found that they were simply too good so I rebalanced it to be obsolete standard (that's to say it was legal standard at one point).

I was trying the tweaked version and I made a game called "Casual Magic Fun". Someone entered the room. I wasn't sure what to expect from my deck but I warned them that I had no clue where it's quality level was. They asked a question that really should have tipped me off about vintage. I joked that as long as they weren't spamming me with Moxes I didn't care. They told me they had two, but I figured maybe they just liked Moxes and and decided to let it pass. I started playing and it became apparent that they had a pretty solid deck, spanning creature types, and eons of sets and colors. Arcbound I've found has a kinda slow start since many of the critters are expensive and if you start killing your creatures before you get two in play you just lose the benefits of modular entirely while still paying for it. He had some critters that drew him cards too. Yuck. I took the damage because I needed to get at least 2 critters before I started chump blocking. That gave him a four card advantage, which didn't help me at all.

And then the counter-spells started coming. After the first one I commented "This isn't really in any way shape or form a casual deck". He replied "Yah, it's pretty good. It's built to be competitive against the current vintage metagame". Anyways, I decided to keep going (I had left myself open to that counter by using all of my available mana right off instead of saving some to pay the "pay extra" effects). Next turn I pull some more land and at this point have a full set of urza's with two towers, so I drop the 2nd tower and drop one of the larger arcbound critters. Bam, counterspell.

I type "GG", put my cards back into my deck, and close the room. I had no desire to continue playing at that point. First time I've ever just folded and walked away from a game like that. Was in the counterspells? I've played against control decks before and I've always found them unfun, but never quite to the level where I quit. Perhaps I'm getting progressively more and more sick of control decks. I keep coming back to this: getting beaten by aggro decks is fun, getting beaten by combo decks is amusing, getting beaten by control decks is boring and aggravating. I don't think it was the mox emerald in play, that never bothered me. Perhaps it was the fact that this was an obviously tuned to all hell deck being played against a deck that I'm pretty sure one could collect for less than $75 on eBay.

So: What makes you want to stop playing?

[SugimoriDesu]

I'm made fun of a lot in my multiplayer group because of my intense hatred of one-sided contro... then again, i'm a Casual-only player. If the opposing deck(s) are seemingly way to powerful, I'm usually the first one to skip out.

I'm also the first to leave if the opponent is a total jacka-- about the game. That being said, I refuse to play against most Spikes.

[Tokimo]

What is a Spike?

[SugimoriDesu]

There are 3 psychographic profiles for magic players. Timmy is the guy who likes big creatures and playing for the halibut, so to speak. It doesn't matter if he wins or loses, as long as he gets his big guy out or makes his big play.

Johnny is the Combo gamer. He likes to win a little bit, but he still knows how to have fun.

Spikes will do absolutely anything to win. This includes netdecking, being rude/obnoxious/total jerks, and (in extreme cases) Lying and cheating.

most of the guys you see winning tourneys are Spikes, though some Johnnies do break through with ingenious builds that Spikes steal days after.

[Tokimo]

I see. I guess I'm somewhere close to the middle. I always play some aesthetically themed (often tribal) deck, because I like them, but I don't play tribes that are trash (wolves and unicorns both are unusable as deck themes unfortunately). Allies, Slivers, Wurms (w/ Elves), Arcbound, Working on elf and ninja decks.

[Cyrus]

If you are going to play only casual, you should probably just not play online, especially using Lackey or Magic Workstation. PM me if you want to know of more casual methods of play, I don't feel like advertising them on Trevor's program's forum.
Anywhoo, I wouldn't lump cheating and being a jackass into the same Spike catagory, I'd just say that those things can apply to all three types of players, its just most annoying from a Spike because they beat you.
I myself am a Spike and I prefer to play on a top tier level, yes netdecking is a part of that, but you always want to look for ways to improve the netdeck for your metagame or just overall. I'm not an ass, I actually do feel bad when I play against someone who is obviously just trying to play casual, but it happens.
My whole thing with the casual only business is that I just don't get it, honestly, maybe its just because I'm a Spike, but also because its online play. If you want to play casually, find other groups of players with similar collections as yours, then you won't have to say casual, because it'll be implied because you won't have the resources to build top tier decks, most likely.
That's just my take on things though, next time just say to the player "I was really searching for just a casual game, why did you bring a powerhouse deck?" they will probably leave, allowing you to go on to your next match, with internet anonymity getting in the way of any real hurt feelings.

[SugimoriDesu]

Eh, sorry bout that Cy. I should have clarified my statement better. >.>

[Tokimo]

I've had great success playing 'casual' games in LackeyCCG. I usually stick to Standard and Legacy, but sometimes I just want to take it really easy. Today was the first time I've ever had someone interpret 'casual' as 'competitive vintage'.

[xchokeholdx]

I should say "Scoop" instead of Fold..

THE reasons I stopped plaing magic:

1. having 24 land in my deck.. first hand. 0 land, mulligan, 1 land, and 4 draws of no new land.. scoop.
2. "Fixing" the deck by adding 1 land more, to 25. first hand: 6 land. mulligan: no land. scoop

I could go on and on about the broken wheel in magic called Resource management, but I?ll leave it at that...

[xchokeholdx]

I almost forgot one.. only seeing like 10 cards from your drawdeck in ANY ccg makes me wanna Fold.. ugh..

[Tokimo]

I almost forgot one.. only seeing like 10 cards from your drawdeck in ANY ccg makes me wanna Fold.. ugh..

Could you clarify this? Do you mean 4x this, 4x that, 4x another so that a 60 card deck only has sometimes as few as 9 different cards repeated again and again?

[xchokeholdx]

I almost forgot one.. only seeing like 10 cards from your drawdeck in ANY ccg makes me wanna Fold.. ugh..

Could you clarify this? Do you mean 4x this, 4x that, 4x another so that a 60 card deck only has sometimes as few as 9 different cards repeated again and again?

no, I mean you spend hours and hours refining your deck, and during a game, you only get to play like 5 turns, thus seeing only like 10-15 cards of your deck.. 

[Tokimo]

I see. I do in my experience tend to have more fun in protracted games. I should do the math on how often you get mana screw in a simple aggro deck. I'm seriously pondering use the face down resource system.

[Cyrus]

no, I mean you spend hours and hours refining your deck, and during a game, you only get to play like 5 turns, thus seeing only like 10-15 cards of your deck.. 

To me that's the beauty of it. The goal is to craft a deck in which any 10-15 card combination can win you the game. Its a piece of art really (exaggerating, lol)

And the land thing is specifically bad online, something about the actual random shuffling just screws it all up. But yeah, mana screw is a bummer.