Originally posted by Spiderman
But here's the thing - most often you're NOT going to face a "finely tuned tournament deck with five Moxes".
What makes you so certain? I mean, what's the difference between your casual that follows the Vintage restricted list and anything else that might be casual? Mind's Desire decks or the like could be built without Vintage rules, I suppose (they also wouldn't be as good without Moxes). I mean, I haven't faced fully powered decks in casual play, but I've face partially powered decks a few times. And I've faced Mana Drains a lot. Mana Drains are REALLY annoying, and Vintage rules let you pack four of them, if you can get them (and some players around here certainly can).
Building a deck to conform with the Vintage rules seems to me to be a waste if it would get blown out of the water by even a partially powered deck. If I want to build a casual High Tide deck or something, Frantic Search would be a great card there and should probably be included. It's restricted in Vintage. In Vintage, the decks that use it might draw Ancestral Recall and Black Lotus. And they might be untapping a Tolarian Academy as one of the lands. It's a different situation...
I do not think that the continuity provided by using the rules for a given format is always bad. Casually, it isn't usually necessary, in my experience, but using the Vintage rules would work well, as far as I can tell, with a few minor issues...
-Players will call their inferior decks "casual" decks. This will make "casual" synonymous with "bad." I dislike that myself, but I'm sure most players have no qualms with that.
-The Vintage restricted list was made and is maintained for a format that has the most broken cards in the game. Many of these are restricted, but their presences are felt even at that level (Black Lotus is a great example). And there are others that aren't restricted at all, but are massively broken and largely unavailable (Mishra's Workshop is a great example).
-No Chaos Orb or Falling Star. It's not big, but still, they're cool cards...
I think that Raisin is a better deal for casual players in that aspect. It's not perfect, but neither is Vintage. Cards like Fact or Fiction and Mox Diamond can be used as four ofs. There's not need to restrict them when the presence of power cards like Time Walk is absent. But it still allows all sets back to Alpha and makes for cool casual decks...