Every so often one of the major mtg website runs an article where a pro urges readers to "play the best deck." My response: don't play the best deck at a major tournament.
At FNM it's possible to netdeck the best deck. Your opponents are likely to have varied skill in both play and deck building. Playing the best deck means that you can skip learning deck builds and jump right into gaining skill at playing. At a pro-tour (something I admit others have more experience with than me) the winning decks are likely to be those that tested as, at least, 50% against the established best deck. The best deck for the tournament is not the best deck going in but the deck that performs well against the best deck . . . and the other decks designed to beat the best deck. I tend to think that whip decks are, objectively, some of the best in the format. Then somebody went and wrote an article on how to beat a whip deck. The result is the rise of deck designs that are, at least, 50% against whip. If you play the best deck, you are playing the deck everybody is gunning for.
An enduring best deck happens when a deck is build around a card that is resistant to countering. Pack Rat can clone itself, sphinx's revelation requires countermagic, and is played in a deck chock full of counters to your counters. In both cases the other cards in the deck support a hard to counter power card. Enduring best decks (in standard) mean that R&D screwed up. Unless there are cards at an R&D screwed up power level, there is probably no point in trying to pick a clear best deck. R&D errors tend to become apparent fairly quickly.
Not all good players are good deck builders and not all good deck builders are good players. Deck building requires trying out decks and getting destroyed. Many good players don't want to have their win percentage - even in Friday Night Magic - take a hit from playing a bad deck. This tends to limit deck building skill. Likewise, having your deck roll over and die isn't the best way to learn how to become a better magic player. Specializing in a certain type of deck allows a player to only need to learn a subset of deck building. If you play Goblins, you don't really need to know how to tinker with control at a competitive level. A pro-player, probably, can play any major deck competently but I doubt that they can design a tier 1 deck for everything that they play.
Players not working as part of a team (most players at SCGO, PPTQ, or GP) might be best served picking a type of deck to specialize in. It's must easier to learn how to adjust one deck to a changing meta than a constantly shifting best deck. Trying to netdeck the best deck just offers easy wins to better prepared pros.
All that said, in a pinch Siege Rhino is a very good card. If by best deck you mean some flavor of Abzan with Rhino, then the deck probably isn't going to be horrible. Just remember, a good card in colors that allow for a solid deck, means you are playing a solid deck not the best deck.
Before the rabble rolls in, you should clarify somethings:
1. Who is this directed at? You seem to imply that you're writing to the competitive/FNM level player that makes the larger regional events but doesn't travel further than 2-3 states away for an event.
An enduring best deck happens when a deck is build around a card that is resistant to countering. Pack Rat can clone itself, sphinx's revelation requires countermagic, and is played in a deck chock full of counters to your counters. In both cases the other cards in the deck support a hard to counter power card. Enduring best decks (in standard) mean that R&D screwed up.
So, are you talking about.. you should netdeck only when there is an enduring best deck? That netdecks expose you to metagaming brewers except when the power level of your cards are too high? Or just a jab at R&D?
Not all good players are good deck builders and not all good deck builders are good players. Deck building requires trying out decks and getting destroyed. Many good players don't want to have their win percentage - even in Friday Night Magic - take a hit from playing a bad deck. This tends to limit deck building skill. Likewise, having your deck roll over and die isn't the best way to learn how to become a better magic player. Specializing in a certain type of deck allows a player to only need to learn a subset of deck building. If you play Goblins, you don't really need to know how to tinker with control at a competitive level. A pro-player, probably, can play any major deck competently but I doubt that they can design a tier 1 deck for everything that they play.
So, you should stick to an archetype for a season? You should brew more often? Is it just the negative of "playing the best deck"?
Anyway, these are just some questions I have that I think will help develop your viable argument.
Matt Sperling had an article on playing the best deck over on channelfireball today. I originally meant this is a rebuttal to his article, but decided that I didn't want to call a pro out by name.
You forget that MTG'ers are very timid in nature. They would rather copy 'the best deck' or any of the Tier 1 decks rather than trying to brew anything of their own. Very few people around here play anything other than the stock list (maybe 2-3 cards different).
And they are even more timid the bigger the tournament.
The article is very well written if not a little schitzo. He says to pick the best deck because you should try to be the best.
But, not everyone can be the best. It takes a bit of delusion to think the average MTG'er is 'above average' and ALOT of delusion to think that they are headed to the PT. What that leads to is the obsessive 'must play to win', even though people just don't have the skillset to do so.
Add to that LACK of skillset is, 'play the best deck, that someone else came up with.' It's a game foremost, and people should try to play it their way. That way even if you don't 'win', you have gained some insight into it. And over time that personal insight is worth a million times more than being told (in a sense) what to play.
Basically; grow some balls, chose your own cards and if you lose you lose. But at least you might have a reason to know why. Playing the best deck and losing sucks (been there, done that).
/I use proxies to offset the cost of brewing and my friends don't mind playtesting with proxies. We 'share' cards (another evil word in MTG) so the cost is nothing to us.
Also, Gerald Fabiano (sp?) brews his own cards, and he was rewarded. This set is special and he took his chances, stuck by his deck and he got there. I wish MORE people would do that. Then people would see how special the game really is.
Learn what the best decks are, understand why they are the best decks and understand what makes them so consistent. Then, after you've gotten a feel for what best decks out there are, then you can deviate. Netdecking isn't a bad thing, but to be a good player you have to realize that not playing a deck because it's "the most popular" and putting yourself at a disadvantage like that is not the best option.
I want to point out the obvious. If you don't choose to play "the best deck" you will fail the majority of the time.
When I was younger, I was adamantly against netdecking. Then something strange happened... I got involved in large scale tournaments And my "home-brewes" became netdecks. Why? Because my play testing showed me the same thing the pros had already figured out.
The main reason I can see for not playing "the best deck" is if you are sure that an abnormally high number of people are going to be playing that deck and you have identified a somewhat lesser deck that completely hoses the best deck. This strategy requires that you are exceptionally good at reading the metagame and that you are completely familiar with the deck you're playing against, as much as if it were your own deck of choice. The era of caw-blade standard was a time when this was a viable strategy. It's not a good strategy right now. The metagame is too diverse.
The main reason I can see for not playing "the best deck" is if you are sure that an abnormally high number of people are going to be playing that deck and you have identified a somewhat lesser deck that completely hoses the best deck. This strategy requires that you are exceptionally good at reading the metagame and that you are completely familiar with the deck you're playing against, as much as if it were your own deck of choice. The era of caw-blade standard was a time when this was a viable strategy. It's not a good strategy right now. The metagame is too diverse.
I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to trump the meta in the caw blade era. It just wasn't a plan. There were decks that could beat Caw with a decent win %. The problem was that they all lost to Valakut, which was the second biggest deck in the meta. Any deck that was consistently good against 1 of the 2 lost hard to the other, and you could count on seeing both in any major event. That was the whole problem with that format. If you'd have said during the Jund Era, that would have been totally different. If you walked in playing RDW in that era, you had a pretty good chance since you played mostly against Jund and there wasn't a second most popular that just completely hosed you. That said, there are a lot of opportunities where you can trump a stale meta, but the key is that it only works when the meta goes stale. It doesn't work in a broken meta where wizards screwed up, just one where the majority of players god lazy and complacent and horde to one deck or archetype in mass, which happens more than you may think.
Right now is not one of those times though. Right now we're in a pretty healthy meta where there are a lot of viable strategies. The nice thing there is that you can pretty much play whatever you want and have just as much chance as the person next to you. All the different archetypes are about even right now and are represented pretty evenly. The only thing I don't really see a lot of is hyper-aggro. There's not really an RDW presence right now.
I played my own variation of a tier 2 deck at FNM last night, played near perfectly, and still went 1-3. It's a very "solid" deck, but still. I wasn't unhappy with this as I just went to have fun, but if you're really concerned about winning, there simply is no room for getting cute. For every 1 guy that breaks the format there are 5000 who have pet brews that seem awesome in theory but fold in reality for a number of reasons. You just need to know what you're giving up if you don't play one of the best decks. Be prepared to lose. If you're good with that though, by all means, have at it.
I tend to prefer attacking the best decks rather than playing the best decks. Admittedly, in some scenarios this is a mistake and I think I could have done way better if I had simply gone with my gut and played what I thought was the best deck at the time.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Current standard decks:
Gruul Aggro
EDH General:
Sydri, Galvanic Genius
Modern
Jeskai Control
Jeskai Midrange
Affinity
Esper Teachings
Tribal Zoo
Very few people have the skill level and deck building expertise to come out with a brew that will destroy the meta. I mean, the biggest pros try to do it all the time and it sometimes only happens by chance. There's nothing wrong with playing the 'best deck.' Just be aware that the hate will be after you. If there is a proven deck that has a good match-up against the best deck of the weekend, then that might be a good meta call.
At the end of the day, people are oging to do what they want to do based on their priorities and their own confidence level. I think it's a mistake however not to be playing a well tuned proven list unless you are incredibly experienced. I mean, how do you get that high level experience than to run some excellent lists and win a bit?
Furthermore, There are countless man hour captured in most of those top8 lists. Testing, crafting, tuning, etc. Why not learn from other's experience? Why not learn from what actually ends up working?
I think this is a pretty bad attitude to have to be perfectly honest. A similar viewpoint was expressed on the Constructed Resources podcast about brewing, where E-Fro and Marsh Hulk spent an hour strongly discouraging people from trying to brew their own decks.
Making your own deck is a skill any player can learn. Yes, it takes time, but it's very rewarding and despite what gets said, the only reason you don't see more rogue brews pulling down tournaments is because the vast majority of the field is choosing from old lists. It's just a numbers game. But right now, brewing is your most competitive move, since every new week a different deck is spiking to the top.
I would say that right now, your best bet to stay competitive is to brew up a storm and work with lists you're intimately familiar with because you made them yourself. There's nothing wrong with picking up another person's deck, but it's certainly not the only viable (or even best) strategy.
I don't think it's a bad attitude, just a pragmatic one. I think there is a misconception of how much of an edge brewing usually actually gives you. This coming from someone who does pretty much nothing but brew these days. If I was satisfied with just winning I would play Established decks more often most likely. Playing a brew is almost always worse. There are some key areas that you can leverage but just keep in mind the opportunity cost.
1. The metagame is unprepared for what you are doing. If you attack Standard from a unique angle it is possible that you are going to catch people off guard from a metagame perspective. However, why did you choose this approach? Was it because it is doing something intrinsically powerful or is it because it's contextually powerful? If it is intrinsically powerful why hasn't it already been successful? Because no else has discovered it these days is likely insufficient. Because no one has perfectly tuned the list is fair but we will get back to that in point 3. If it is contextually powerful what happens if you don't hit what you expect. This is especially important at larger events. Not everyone is as up to date so in early rounds you might be looking at the metagame from a month and a half ago. I think this sort of thing is where most brews go to die. I had a deck that was considerably favored against Caw Blade during that era. Went to a PTQ and didn't face it til round 4 when I was essentially out because I lost to mono red with awkward draws, then random brew that was uniquely well placed against me but would never beat the top decks in the first couple rounds. Sure I beat Caw Blade easily every time I faced it but it did not matter. Even then I have to consider I was playing the x-2 Cawblade players and that might not even be the best indicator.
2. The opponent is unprepared for what you are doing. You can get edges in games if the opponent doesn't know how to play against certain cards or interactions. This can be a considerable edge until they figure out what you are doing. The more experienced and skilled the player the more quickly they will learn and adapt to what you are doing. This will give you an incredible edge when you are on par or better player than your components because it's just a small push and that's all you need. However, if you find yourself in a less favorable situation if the interaction is too cute, or gimmicky you may find that while you can pull it off once your opponent may be able to play in a way that invalidates it completely. To understand that, understand for example a card like Hornet's Nest is quite easy to play around in almost every deck. It has it's role but even a strategy that involves exclusively attacking on the ground can play in a way to easily beat it. No matter how awesome or unexpected what you are doing is you will often lose that edge very quickly, and more so if the opponent is good at archetyping they might be able to infer what you are doing anyway and how you'd go about it. Meaning pretty much no gain here.
3. Play what you know. See if you are responsible for testing or tuning that list versus the whole community you are at a huge time disadvantage. Even the people we respect as good deck tuners are going instinctually. It's something that you learn to do quicker in time but it still can be way off. Most tuners are just good at seeing the difference between the card text and what it actually does and in so can apply patterns they've seen to help decks in the past by mapping unexpected cards to equivalent roles in current decks. But this is far from exact. There is no good way to empirically verify results without running it against sufficient number of games. It's more that good tuners make good guesses in their experiments more often and the results validate them (although in most cases the data is still insufficient so the validation is only in perception). Brewing is sort of a similar exercise. So how do you make up for the fact that you as one person or a small team can't hope to actually know if your brew is good enough. Gather experience in the same range for years. Brian Kibler or Craig Wescoe aren't always considered brewers because the decks they make often seem obvious, but they've set the focus to such a narrow band (and maybe they have a couple of those) that they can make up for unable to be able to sufficiently test their idea with the fact they've played these games a million times. Ie.. if you like brewing consistently and winning a strongly suggest you specialize.
Basically as someone who is a brewer, I think it's equally important to also try your tuning skills with top decks to improve your understanding of the difference between what cards do and their text. The best way to do this is play the established best decks. Especially if you want to specialize and make a habit out of it. Start with decks in styles you like etc.. I think there is a misconception between say what Patrick Chapin or Mike Flores do and brewing. Both of them are pretty broad in their ability to identify a metagame as a whole (Chapin) or the most powerful thing you can be doing in a metagame (Flores). But rarely do they ever actually build the best deck. Flores is historically a terrible tuner, and Chapin I get the impression doesn't like getting too tied up in the details. It's a good starting point but if you approach your brewing like this you will likely fall into a trap especially without the immense amount of experience.
So to summarize, I agree brewing is a good skill to learn (as is tuning). Unless you've been doing this probably for 5+ years, while you should be brewing, it is unlikely it will lead to the most competitive results. Maybe start doing experiments with some small tuning, build that experience, play with what you know or seems natural, but understand if you go off on your own it requires 100 times the work your competitors need to make so for every edge you have you have that obstacle to get over. Is it worth it when comes down to ultimately winning? Probably not yet, but keep at it. Just keep in mind there are probably other skills that you could better serve developing while you are still in your first decade that comes from playing the best established decks.
It might be useful as a player to identify what sort of things naturally appeal to you when it comes to deck building and keep that in consideration for where your weaknesses as a player maybe. I made a classification system a few years ago when I was trying to form teams. This might be worth a read to help yourself grow as a player or recognize what you see in other players. It's basically a 3 axis approach based on Meyer's Briggs for those who find that sort of self evaluation helpful. Team Building Magic Personality Types
I get a kick out of someone saying that its bad advise to tell people to play a good deck. OP doesn't want people to play the best deck at a major tournament. The implication here is that it relates to competitive magic at a high level event.
If people want to brew and play their brew, then that's all well and good. Their priority isn't to win. I'm not going to disparage the courage it takes to do that, but it generally isn't a high EV strategy. If they are choosing to play a bad deck even though they want to win, then why? Because someone thinks playing the best deck is somehow morally bad? Are you a bad person for wanting the best chance to win? Is playing a brew righteous? What does that have to do with winning?
If you want to win, best advise is to play a good deck. It doesn't necessarily have to be what the popular consensus is as the "best deck". Perhaps its a different defined and proven archetype that beats the level 0 deck. If your priority is to win, then throwing away the thousands of hours of testing and tuning that is captured in an established build is foolish at a competitive level. That's just getting caught up in emotions and ego, where your striving to gain rep or something else entirely than trying to win.
At FNM it's possible to netdeck the best deck. Your opponents are likely to have varied skill in both play and deck building. Playing the best deck means that you can skip learning deck builds and jump right into gaining skill at playing. At a pro-tour (something I admit others have more experience with than me) the winning decks are likely to be those that tested as, at least, 50% against the established best deck. The best deck for the tournament is not the best deck going in but the deck that performs well against the best deck . . . and the other decks designed to beat the best deck. I tend to think that whip decks are, objectively, some of the best in the format. Then somebody went and wrote an article on how to beat a whip deck. The result is the rise of deck designs that are, at least, 50% against whip. If you play the best deck, you are playing the deck everybody is gunning for.
An enduring best deck happens when a deck is build around a card that is resistant to countering. Pack Rat can clone itself, sphinx's revelation requires countermagic, and is played in a deck chock full of counters to your counters. In both cases the other cards in the deck support a hard to counter power card. Enduring best decks (in standard) mean that R&D screwed up. Unless there are cards at an R&D screwed up power level, there is probably no point in trying to pick a clear best deck. R&D errors tend to become apparent fairly quickly.
Not all good players are good deck builders and not all good deck builders are good players. Deck building requires trying out decks and getting destroyed. Many good players don't want to have their win percentage - even in Friday Night Magic - take a hit from playing a bad deck. This tends to limit deck building skill. Likewise, having your deck roll over and die isn't the best way to learn how to become a better magic player. Specializing in a certain type of deck allows a player to only need to learn a subset of deck building. If you play Goblins, you don't really need to know how to tinker with control at a competitive level. A pro-player, probably, can play any major deck competently but I doubt that they can design a tier 1 deck for everything that they play.
Players not working as part of a team (most players at SCGO, PPTQ, or GP) might be best served picking a type of deck to specialize in. It's must easier to learn how to adjust one deck to a changing meta than a constantly shifting best deck. Trying to netdeck the best deck just offers easy wins to better prepared pros.
All that said, in a pinch Siege Rhino is a very good card. If by best deck you mean some flavor of Abzan with Rhino, then the deck probably isn't going to be horrible. Just remember, a good card in colors that allow for a solid deck, means you are playing a solid deck not the best deck.
1. Who is this directed at? You seem to imply that you're writing to the competitive/FNM level player that makes the larger regional events but doesn't travel further than 2-3 states away for an event.
2.
So, are you talking about.. you should netdeck only when there is an enduring best deck? That netdecks expose you to metagaming brewers except when the power level of your cards are too high? Or just a jab at R&D?
3.
So, you should stick to an archetype for a season? You should brew more often? Is it just the negative of "playing the best deck"?
Anyway, these are just some questions I have that I think will help develop your viable argument.
And they are even more timid the bigger the tournament.
But, not everyone can be the best. It takes a bit of delusion to think the average MTG'er is 'above average' and ALOT of delusion to think that they are headed to the PT. What that leads to is the obsessive 'must play to win', even though people just don't have the skillset to do so.
Add to that LACK of skillset is, 'play the best deck, that someone else came up with.' It's a game foremost, and people should try to play it their way. That way even if you don't 'win', you have gained some insight into it. And over time that personal insight is worth a million times more than being told (in a sense) what to play.
Basically; grow some balls, chose your own cards and if you lose you lose. But at least you might have a reason to know why. Playing the best deck and losing sucks (been there, done that).
/I use proxies to offset the cost of brewing and my friends don't mind playtesting with proxies. We 'share' cards (another evil word in MTG) so the cost is nothing to us.
Also, Gerald Fabiano (sp?) brews his own cards, and he was rewarded. This set is special and he took his chances, stuck by his deck and he got there. I wish MORE people would do that. Then people would see how special the game really is.
When I was younger, I was adamantly against netdecking. Then something strange happened... I got involved in large scale tournaments And my "home-brewes" became netdecks. Why? Because my play testing showed me the same thing the pros had already figured out.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to trump the meta in the caw blade era. It just wasn't a plan. There were decks that could beat Caw with a decent win %. The problem was that they all lost to Valakut, which was the second biggest deck in the meta. Any deck that was consistently good against 1 of the 2 lost hard to the other, and you could count on seeing both in any major event. That was the whole problem with that format. If you'd have said during the Jund Era, that would have been totally different. If you walked in playing RDW in that era, you had a pretty good chance since you played mostly against Jund and there wasn't a second most popular that just completely hosed you. That said, there are a lot of opportunities where you can trump a stale meta, but the key is that it only works when the meta goes stale. It doesn't work in a broken meta where wizards screwed up, just one where the majority of players god lazy and complacent and horde to one deck or archetype in mass, which happens more than you may think.
Right now is not one of those times though. Right now we're in a pretty healthy meta where there are a lot of viable strategies. The nice thing there is that you can pretty much play whatever you want and have just as much chance as the person next to you. All the different archetypes are about even right now and are represented pretty evenly. The only thing I don't really see a lot of is hyper-aggro. There's not really an RDW presence right now.
If you hate the deck, I'm probably playing it!
B/W
Gruul Aggro
EDH General:
Sydri, Galvanic Genius
Modern
Jeskai Control
Jeskai Midrange
Affinity
Esper Teachings
Tribal Zoo
At the end of the day, people are oging to do what they want to do based on their priorities and their own confidence level. I think it's a mistake however not to be playing a well tuned proven list unless you are incredibly experienced. I mean, how do you get that high level experience than to run some excellent lists and win a bit?
Furthermore, There are countless man hour captured in most of those top8 lists. Testing, crafting, tuning, etc. Why not learn from other's experience? Why not learn from what actually ends up working?
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
Making your own deck is a skill any player can learn. Yes, it takes time, but it's very rewarding and despite what gets said, the only reason you don't see more rogue brews pulling down tournaments is because the vast majority of the field is choosing from old lists. It's just a numbers game. But right now, brewing is your most competitive move, since every new week a different deck is spiking to the top.
I would say that right now, your best bet to stay competitive is to brew up a storm and work with lists you're intimately familiar with because you made them yourself. There's nothing wrong with picking up another person's deck, but it's certainly not the only viable (or even best) strategy.
1. The metagame is unprepared for what you are doing. If you attack Standard from a unique angle it is possible that you are going to catch people off guard from a metagame perspective. However, why did you choose this approach? Was it because it is doing something intrinsically powerful or is it because it's contextually powerful? If it is intrinsically powerful why hasn't it already been successful? Because no else has discovered it these days is likely insufficient. Because no one has perfectly tuned the list is fair but we will get back to that in point 3. If it is contextually powerful what happens if you don't hit what you expect. This is especially important at larger events. Not everyone is as up to date so in early rounds you might be looking at the metagame from a month and a half ago. I think this sort of thing is where most brews go to die. I had a deck that was considerably favored against Caw Blade during that era. Went to a PTQ and didn't face it til round 4 when I was essentially out because I lost to mono red with awkward draws, then random brew that was uniquely well placed against me but would never beat the top decks in the first couple rounds. Sure I beat Caw Blade easily every time I faced it but it did not matter. Even then I have to consider I was playing the x-2 Cawblade players and that might not even be the best indicator.
2. The opponent is unprepared for what you are doing. You can get edges in games if the opponent doesn't know how to play against certain cards or interactions. This can be a considerable edge until they figure out what you are doing. The more experienced and skilled the player the more quickly they will learn and adapt to what you are doing. This will give you an incredible edge when you are on par or better player than your components because it's just a small push and that's all you need. However, if you find yourself in a less favorable situation if the interaction is too cute, or gimmicky you may find that while you can pull it off once your opponent may be able to play in a way that invalidates it completely. To understand that, understand for example a card like Hornet's Nest is quite easy to play around in almost every deck. It has it's role but even a strategy that involves exclusively attacking on the ground can play in a way to easily beat it. No matter how awesome or unexpected what you are doing is you will often lose that edge very quickly, and more so if the opponent is good at archetyping they might be able to infer what you are doing anyway and how you'd go about it. Meaning pretty much no gain here.
3. Play what you know. See if you are responsible for testing or tuning that list versus the whole community you are at a huge time disadvantage. Even the people we respect as good deck tuners are going instinctually. It's something that you learn to do quicker in time but it still can be way off. Most tuners are just good at seeing the difference between the card text and what it actually does and in so can apply patterns they've seen to help decks in the past by mapping unexpected cards to equivalent roles in current decks. But this is far from exact. There is no good way to empirically verify results without running it against sufficient number of games. It's more that good tuners make good guesses in their experiments more often and the results validate them (although in most cases the data is still insufficient so the validation is only in perception). Brewing is sort of a similar exercise. So how do you make up for the fact that you as one person or a small team can't hope to actually know if your brew is good enough. Gather experience in the same range for years. Brian Kibler or Craig Wescoe aren't always considered brewers because the decks they make often seem obvious, but they've set the focus to such a narrow band (and maybe they have a couple of those) that they can make up for unable to be able to sufficiently test their idea with the fact they've played these games a million times. Ie.. if you like brewing consistently and winning a strongly suggest you specialize.
Basically as someone who is a brewer, I think it's equally important to also try your tuning skills with top decks to improve your understanding of the difference between what cards do and their text. The best way to do this is play the established best decks. Especially if you want to specialize and make a habit out of it. Start with decks in styles you like etc.. I think there is a misconception between say what Patrick Chapin or Mike Flores do and brewing. Both of them are pretty broad in their ability to identify a metagame as a whole (Chapin) or the most powerful thing you can be doing in a metagame (Flores). But rarely do they ever actually build the best deck. Flores is historically a terrible tuner, and Chapin I get the impression doesn't like getting too tied up in the details. It's a good starting point but if you approach your brewing like this you will likely fall into a trap especially without the immense amount of experience.
So to summarize, I agree brewing is a good skill to learn (as is tuning). Unless you've been doing this probably for 5+ years, while you should be brewing, it is unlikely it will lead to the most competitive results. Maybe start doing experiments with some small tuning, build that experience, play with what you know or seems natural, but understand if you go off on your own it requires 100 times the work your competitors need to make so for every edge you have you have that obstacle to get over. Is it worth it when comes down to ultimately winning? Probably not yet, but keep at it. Just keep in mind there are probably other skills that you could better serve developing while you are still in your first decade that comes from playing the best established decks.
It might be useful as a player to identify what sort of things naturally appeal to you when it comes to deck building and keep that in consideration for where your weaknesses as a player maybe. I made a classification system a few years ago when I was trying to form teams. This might be worth a read to help yourself grow as a player or recognize what you see in other players. It's basically a 3 axis approach based on Meyer's Briggs for those who find that sort of self evaluation helpful.
Team Building Magic Personality Types
GWU Knightfall Modern
UW Tempo Legacy
UGR Burning Wish Cobra Vintage
If people want to brew and play their brew, then that's all well and good. Their priority isn't to win. I'm not going to disparage the courage it takes to do that, but it generally isn't a high EV strategy. If they are choosing to play a bad deck even though they want to win, then why? Because someone thinks playing the best deck is somehow morally bad? Are you a bad person for wanting the best chance to win? Is playing a brew righteous? What does that have to do with winning?
If you want to win, best advise is to play a good deck. It doesn't necessarily have to be what the popular consensus is as the "best deck". Perhaps its a different defined and proven archetype that beats the level 0 deck. If your priority is to win, then throwing away the thousands of hours of testing and tuning that is captured in an established build is foolish at a competitive level. That's just getting caught up in emotions and ego, where your striving to gain rep or something else entirely than trying to win.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)