I play Unranked Casual if I want to test some different strategies or become more proficient with a certain deck without risking losing some of my Competitive Rank in the process.

Yeah, I get that now, but it wasn't obvious at first.

The usage of the terms "casual" and "competitive" seem contrary or a bit misleading in this case, because I had expected the "casual" queue to be the "lite" or "noob-friendly" one, if you know what I mean, whereas it definitely isn't since you can get pitted against anyone of any skill level.

It might have been less confusing if they'd just called them "ranked" and "unranked," and left out any mention of "casual" and "competitive," since the latter terms could IMHO be misunderstood to mean something along the lines of "amateur" and "professional," respectively.

Maybe call it Random Unranked.

I will say that a lot of people are playing casually even if they may not seem like it. I think a lot of people use it to play a more relaxed game, so they aren't agonizing about whether to deck cycle or fretting over decisions as long as they would in a competitive game. However, they are still high ranked player. So the stuff they do are doing largely on instinct is gonna still be tough to beat to someone of a much lower rank. After all, it's not like they'd make mistakes on purpose to play casually. This game may have a hefty dose of chance, but it also has a good degree of skill. And you can absolutely feel the difference in even a casual game when playing against someone of really high skill.

I've had unranked games that felt just as competitive as anything I played in Rubedite. And ones where I saw people making mistakes casually and knew unless RNG favored them too strongly, I would probably win from the first couple of turns.

For a low-ranked player, "casual" is probably going to be pretty brutal, since nearly all of the matches will be against someone with a higher ranking, which is not going to seem very "casual."

For a high-ranked player, "casual" is probably going to be a cakewalk, since nearly all of the matches will be against someone with a lower ranking.

So "casual" and "competitive" are terms that seem to fit-- in terms of how difficult the matches are likely to be-- only if you're a high-ranked player, and will seem rather contrary if you're a low-ranked player.

In any case, I'm now queuing for "ranked competitive" and seem to be getting easier matches.

ToT is a luck of the draw game ZERO skill

r3play81 wrote: »

ToT is a luck of the draw game ZERO skill

There definitely is skill involved, but there definitely is luck of the draw involved, too.

Part of the skill is in knowing when to buy a card you can afford and risk having it be replaced by an even better card that your opponent will end up buying, or when to just leave the card alone and let your opponent buy it. That's also luck of the draw, as you're gambling on whether the replacement card will be better or worse than what's already there.

That also goes for using the option to replace one or more cards. I almost never use that option, except in rare cases; and if my opponent uses it, I often end up laughing because one of the cards they just removed will sometimes be replaced by the same card or an even better one (which is why I generally avoid using that option).

But aside from knowing when to play your hunches or gut instincts, there is skill in how you play your cards. You can take a powerful hand and squandor it on stupid moves, and you can take a weak hand and make canny decisions that end up paying off and winning you the match.