I think our opinions on theory converge on three mechanics, and our aesthetics converge on one, regarding counterspells, discard, and land destruction. I respect all of them from a "components of the game" perspective, and I love land destruction on an aesthetic level, not coincidentally because it is a classic component of the red and green color identities.
When faced with an abundance of black blue hard control decks online, I made one of my favorite, and most ridiculously vicious, decks ever. If someone brought land destruction to the local environment (which has never happened, possibly due to horror over the aforementioned vicious deck), then I would show off my personal affinity - casting things without mana costs (pun intended).
That's a potent example, but it doesn't even need to be that extreme. Land destruction spells are a bit of a balancing act when it comes to actually winning games, and usually they're especially susceptible to several different types of opponents. And yet it seems like it's mostly new players who get upset about countermagic stopping what they want to do. After a while, people get over it and even cultivate skills and deckbuilding choices to deal with cards like Counterspell. And yet it's some experienced players who will build a color-hungry value deck on a tight curve with no resilience against mana denial, and get upset when their plans are ruined by Stone Rain as though they think they're entitled not to have their mana production interfered with. In the former case, I kind of have a response of, "Well, you're new anyway. You'll learn." In the latter, it starts to become more like, "Grow up, you big baby." I can accept that if I'm packing lots of land destruction and I go up against a deck with no lands in it, I have dead cards. But I also expect that Mister Four-Color-Goodstuff should suck it up when he doesn't have the right colors.
This is a "types of fun" issue though. For nearly every other player I interact with in person, they do not share my love of metagame theory and deck building as puzzle quest. They want to do one thing specifically at a given time, generally speaking, and if I bring a deck that says, "You dont get to play the game" to them, whether by countering all their spells or destroying their mana base or wiping out their hand, they do not take it as a challenge. They take it as me dominating the fun and wasting the limited time they are interested in investing into Magic, the game as they see it.
You know, now that I think about it, my experience in real tabletop Magic games has almost always been that if I brought a broken deck and crushed people, they were curious to see how it worked, sometimes even excited. The only protests I got, and mild at that, were many, many years ago when I got to play with the same people on a regular basis and they didn't want to see the same combo deck over and over, which I think is mostly valid. And I guess I can't be surprised that players found powerful decks they'd never seen before fascinating. I felt the same way when the shoe was on the other foot. Nearly all of the objections I've seen have been online, for whatever reason.
A curious aspect of "casual" Magic that has probably been with us from the beginning but which I mainly see in Commander is the strange notion that the things I'm trying to do to kill my opponents are fun, but that the things my opponents are doing that interfere with that are unfun and uncasual. The example I remember at one point was the guy moping about having his manabase disrupted (wasn't me who did it and I forget how it was done, but it might have been stuff like Stone Rain) and how it ruined the game, but then later comboing into a big Craterhoof Behemoth attack to try to kill everyone else at the table, which was apparently fun and casual. My thought was like, "Look, if you enjoy winning and find it fun and dislike losing and don't think it's fun, then just come out and admit it. People might call you a sore loser for that, because you are one. But at least you'll be honest about it!"
There are a few exceptions (fortunately), but for me this is a knowing my audience issue. You definitely see this division in the "Just for Fun" section of MtGO, which has needed fixing for a long time and will hopefully be addressed by Arena. Some of us want an environment that emulates our casual table brewing and power level expectations, while others take "Just for Fun" to mean "Tournament Winning Netdecks Piloted by Non-Pros." Theory side you and I agree, it is the practical application side where we may diverge due to circumstance and familiarity.
Bit of a tangent here, but I don't know where else it'd fit right now anyway. While the term "netdeck" is now virtually universal, I think that it originates in an attitude of bitterness and folly, one that doesn't really make much sense. To be clear, I don't really object to the term and actually use it myself. It's a well-understood label in the Magic community that has its uses. But there's this mentality I've noticed. People use deck construction, especially in casual formats, as an outlet for self-expression. They take pride in their creations and make a kind of artform out of it. And that's really cool. But then some people actually get mad about "netdeckers" by which they mean people who view decklists written by others. I don't think that these zealots would apply that same approach to other things in their lives. Or perhaps they do. I don't know. Like, I might come up with my own cookie recipe, but that doesn't mean I won't try someone else's!
But you used the phrase "Tournament Winning Netdecks Piloted by Non-Pros." And while I haven't seen much of that exact thing, I've seen similar. In Legacy, certain areas, especially certain tournament circuits, are known for grinders, whom I've amusingly seen referred to as "barnacles." These guys play in lots of tournaments and their decklists are pretty much always whatever won the last big tournament. Many of the more creative Legacy players like to make fun of them because they see the same signs a lot. The barnacles attend tournaments all the time and they play very strong decks (by default, since they're usually tournament-winning lists copied exactly). So they perform well to a certain extent, but they don't have the same understanding of matchups, the same skills, or even the same field of opponents as were in that tournament, so their choices might fall flat and their gameplay is likely to. They don't bother learning about less prevalent archetypes and frequently make rules mistakes because they aren't paying enough attention. There was this hilarious tournament report involving the card Suppression Field where the player's opponents couldn't be bothered to read the card. It went something like, "I'm not good at Magic, but I understand what an activated ability is. 6 out of 8 Legacy players do not."
Kind of reminds me of League of Legends. I don't play it much anymore, but I got decent at it for a while some years ago. I'd play Karthus and go mid a lot, because it was my strongest role. At the time, Karthus was not a popular mid for the pros. But I wasn't playing against the pros, I was playing against other people who were being matched against me. They were playing whatever champions the pros were playing. I was playing the champion I was actually good with. So I tended to win a lot. Turns out trying to copy what the pros are doing doesn't mean you'll beat someone who's not a pro but is merely pretty good at doing the things he's doing.
