It's called "playing the game the right way". Magic is, at its base level, an okay game. What makes it stand out to me and what makes it fun is that there are endless ways to play, countless strategies, tons of combos, and the potential for the game to be as unique as the player.
Personally I think that at its base level Magic is an outstanding game. It's not perfect (the mana system, for all of its upsides, has been rejected by and large by subsequent CCGs in favor of different systems that allow you to use any card as a resource and therefore mitigate bad draws), but it is fantastic. A lot of that has to do with the way it's been managed over the years, and even though there have been big and small missteps I think it mostly moves consistently forward. Anything moving consistently forward over that long of a timeframe is going to end up pretty solid. So while it's not technically my favorite game ever on paper (I think that would be Upper Deck's VS System, the original as opposed to the pathetic remake from last year) it is probably my favorite in reality.
That's why I'm taking off my training wheels and want to make my own ideas from now on. There's so much variety to explore in the game and do much fun to be had with it, and a game is only worth being called good if it is fun. And if you ruin the variety and make it more than a game, and you're not having fun, you will always, always be the true loser, because you're depriving yourself and others of a good time with your boring decks and shitty unbeatable attitudes.
Preaching to the choir, but yeah, that pretty much sums up my thoughts. I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about this with a lot of people, and that's basically all I've been able to come up with after 15 years of this.
That said, I'm considering getting into commander for casual fun. I still haven't decided on who that commander should be, though. Elesh Norn seems really appealing, but it's so pricey and expensive mana-wise, too.
Obviously you can pretty much play Commander however the fuck you want, but I would heavily caution against Elesh Norn. Here are some Commander baselines that you can choose to accept or ignore, but in my experience you'll have more fun if you try to work with them:
-Try to play a multicolor deck to cover the weaknesses of your colors. Or at least, don't play monowhite, monored, white/red, or probably red/green. They have the most weaknesses in Commander and can be extremely difficult to build correctly, especially for new players.
-Avoid playing an expensive commander (for me this means anything costing more than three or four, for most it's four or five), especially if it's extremely threatening like Norn is. Unless your entire deck is built around powering it out multiple times you'll probably only have the chance to cast it twice a game or so and it will probably tend to be a removal magnet so you won't be able to do much with it. Norn at least does something the moment she enters play so you'll usually get at least some value out of her, but mostly you'll get less from her than you will from a smaller, less obviously threatening commander.
-This is more of a personal/my playgroup thing and some people would strongly disagree with me on it, but I think the format works better if you avoid infinite combos. Or at least good infinite combos, especially if they use your commander as one of the components. A good Commander game is all about tempo, and nothing breaks the flow of the game and leads to a disappointing resolution like one person going "That's a nice epic struggle all you guys got, but oops I win out of nowhere in a non-interactive fashion". I'd say infinite combos are mildly frowned upon by the community as a whole. They're certainly legal and people certainly play them, but I don't find them to be a fun way to win or lose a Commander game.
It is much more than just "not using a netdeck". It is basically the holy grail of the Spikejohnny.
Now, if people say they are "rogueing" when they just mean "not using a netdeck", that is either presumptuous or uninformed. Or both.
Fair enough, but literally every time I've ever seen it used it's been in the context of "Check out this awesome deck I rogued for FNM tomorrow :derp:". It may have a legitimate use, but I don't think that's how it's widely used at this point. And there is no way to make it not the silliest terminology ever.
The prebuilt Commander decks are actually something resembling playable and competitive (unlike every other prebuilt deck they print), plus they come with a lot of material for building future decks. There's a lot of places that still have the 2014 monocolor decks in stock, the Forged in Stone one is probably something you'd enjoy. If you want to keep going with lifegain strategies, the Call the Spirits deck from 2015 gives you a lot of room to build around that.
That's a great point that I neglected to call out because I take it as such a given at this point. Those decks are actually really solid. I would still caution against the monowhite one a little because it still has serious resource problems, but it would totally be worth the investment to pick up and try out, and if you do find that it badly needs more cardflow like most white decks you could always use it as a base to add more colors later for cheap.
I don't know what your grocery store situation looks like, but I believe you guys have at least some Meijer stores. Meijer in Michigan at least had this weird product for a while that was a repacked 2013 Commander deck with all of the superfluous stuff like the oversized cards and life die stripped out and with a shitty preconstructed deck thrown in for $20 for a while. I don't know if anyone still has those in stock, but they're like the best possible way to get into Commander if you can find them. And the full-price decks are all completely worth it too if you can't find the weird budget repacks.
