It's the difference between left brain and right brain. Some people are amazing rules lawyers but are poor at card evaluation and couldn't brew a competitive deck if their life depended on it. I'm an excellent brewer but a mediocre player which is why I prefer limited/cube. It's also why I play online versus live. Being online just makes it so much easier to play because the interface handles the various steps.
It is not the difference between the left and right brain, and those who are good brewers are also good players and vice versa (almost always, more than 90 percent). It is easy to understand why it is so.
Not really but it depends on what you mean by "good". Even among pros there are brewers and players. Conley Woods and Patrick Chapin are known as excellent brewers but they haven't won as much as some other players because their play isn't quite as tight. Reid Duke is not known as a brewer but is a very tight player. So yeah the good brewers are good players and vice-versa. Pros are known to be either limited experts or standard experts. The limited experts tend to be left brain thinkers who can look at the big picture, think creatively, and come up with a great deck at the spur of the moment. The standard experts are players who put in the work, fine tuning and tweaking their 75, with very tight play come tournament time. I.e. left brain thinkers.
Explaining differences between pros skills with left and right brain, and who are brewers and who are not, is .... humorous.
So someone brews a unique deck, then wins a Grand Prix, and everyone and their dog copies it the weeks that follow... if that person continues to play that deck, are they now playing a net deck or would it still be considered a brew? How would that person feel if others then ridiculed them for not being original and playing, not only the flavor of the month, but an exact "replica" of the tourney winning deck?
Given that they know where the deck came from (they built it)and won a GP with it (and the recognition that comes with it), I'd probably say they don't really care about what anyone else would say to them. After all, how many GPs has alleged ***** talker won? That's right, zero.
If it were me, I really wouldn't care, I won a frikking GP.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
So here is my story. When I was young, I thought net-decking was the worst thing ever. I refused to do it.
I had some sweet brews. My favorite was Goblin Aggro (back in Oddesy) with Skirk Firemarshall and spirit link combo.
It was fun, but no where near competitive.
During Shards // Zendikar block I started playing "semi-competitively". I'd attend any PTQ near me within driving distance.
I started building a GW ramp deck. Noble into Garruk into coupe into 20 damage. It was fun. But back then Jund (and pyroclasm) was BIG. Which means you were lucky if your tokens stuck around for very long. In order to be competitve... I started cutting marginal cards and adding better ones.
Forward 6 months... my Deck was a net-deck, nearly card for card, of Mythic Bant.
Never again.
So someone brews a unique deck, then wins a Grand Prix, and everyone and their dog copies it the weeks that follow... if that person continues to play that deck, are they now playing a net deck or would it still be considered a brew? How would that person feel if others then ridiculed them for not being original and playing, not only the flavor of the month, but an exact "replica" of the tourney winning deck?
Only good players win Grand Prixes. Why would a good player keep playing the deck if they knew everyone and their brother would be playing it or have hate for it the next week? That said netdecking is coping a deck and not tweaking it or knowing how to play it. It's a scourge on magic because bad players drive up prices by buying a bunch of copies of Porphyry Nodes or other cards like it, not knowing it's a meta card for a met that will no longer exist. These are the people who have infinite obliteration in the sideboard and bring it in in every match. Nothing wrong with choosing a known deck to learn and play. Net deckers are usually always salty, because they spend a bunch of money to lose with an expensive deck. Only thing worse than net decking is flavor of the month. Whether you jam 4x coco in midrange, 4x jace in aggro, or 4x Seasons Past into every deck in standard, you are a bad players who probably originally net decked and then "tuned" their deck by jamming it with the latest card that looked good on camera. Usually with literally zero deck building considerations.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Check out my Sales 50% OFF everything for the next 48 hours.
I netdeck and have gotten minor backlash for it locally, but I'll tell you why.
I'm fairly new to magic. Maybe about a year now. My first deck was an edh deck, daretti, which my friend recommended I get. And I learned how to play with it.
And that's it. I only knew daretti. Lost a lot because 1. I was/am a scrub and 2. Preset decks are only so good. I had No other cards, no KNOWLEDGE of other cards, sets, combos, whatnot.
So I looked it up. Found tappedout. Found the best scored daretti deck. Found out WHY it was the best, it's combos, ect. Like metalworker and staff of dom, how the hell was I ever supposed to discover that gem? It's not like I'll ever pull those out of a pack now or find them at my shop.
So anyways, read up on a few decks. Originally copied it to the best of a reasonable budget (didn't buy the crazy expensive cards) and went from there. I did a lot better locally. I understood things better. Hell won a bit.
Then I got more interested and bought the more expensive cards on the list online. Did better, got better, understood these combos better.
Then I started looking at other deck lists, got new combo ideas. Mix and matched the combos. Made my own deck. Did really well.
Now when new cards come out I either try em out for the deck and see what other daretti decks do with them. Maybe there was something I was missing.
Then time went by, I got more cards through trading, prereleases, a box of two. Now I can start doing what those who scoff at netdeckers do instead.
But that took time. I still netdeck ideas and discover cards I probably never would have if I didn't. Occasionally someone will play something or a combo I've never seen and learn from there, and I will admit that feeling is cool. However it's too rare I think to count on fairly over a reasonable amount of time.
To me, the gap between newer and older players is insane, and to me netdecking is a way to catch up, if even a little. Even netdecking (smartly anyway) isn't exactly easy to beginners. I don't see anything wrong with it. Magic has been around far too long to expect players who are new to know about all the older card options, and what combos or effects even are possible.
There are few things like an original deck these days, no matter if new cards are printed. Most decks are a copy of something; either something you already brewed up or something someone else brewed up. Original ideas are fairly scarce these days, in general. You may tweak something here or there, but in my own experience each deck is simply an evolution of another - even if they play and win completely differently.
I think there is a difference between "netdecking" and netdecking. One of them I have some issues with, the other I don't. "Netdecking" to me is just finding a deck off youtube or tapped out and thinking, that looks cool I want to try it. This isn't usually a tournament deck, its just a deck some guy built and you want to try it because it looks fun and possibly make improvements to it. I think this is great, this is actually helping th development of a deck which is what I think Magic should be about, bouncing ideas off of other people and improving upon them. Netdecking is where you take a tournament deck and play it. Sure you may have modified it, but you're not contributing to its development. You're not helping optimize it or improve the strategy, you may tune it but thats only tuning it to your local meta.
I'm actually not against this depending on the setting. If I was playing a tournament, unless I knew I built something really bomb I'd do this. I play a lot of Magic on Xmage and I like building a lot of deck on there because why the hell not, its free. In Xmage you can list the play skill: Beginner, Casual, Serious. I usually play in the Casual tier because I know the decks I'm building are janky, all rogue decks begin as jank. I don't like it when someone decides to play the Casual tier with one of the top tournament decks. To me thats like going to your friend's kitchen table magic session where everyone is just kicking back, drinking beers, and throwing weird decks together, and you decide to show up with Infect or Affinity or that banned Eldrazi deck and then no one is having fun anymore. Thats not cool. So thats a pet peeve of mine but there isn't a lot I can do about it. If you're trying to play serious magic play serious magic. I don't see any problem with that but I have an issue when netdeckers try to encroach in places where I think people are just trying to make interesting decks and are trying to play them against other home made decks.
Ok, so what I believe about netdecking is when people do it, there are only a few reasons for doing so.
1.You want to win
2.You are too lazy to make your own deck
3.You don't know how to make your own deck
Net decking in my opinion can only cause bad because it harms the diversity of certain formats like modern and such, but even worse is when everyone is copying each others deck, the prices for the cards shoot up and if someone wants to use a card that's used in one of those net decks in one of their brews, guess what. They're paying out the butt just because it happens to be a powerful card and people are sheep that just follow the pros and their strategies because of the 3 reasons I've stated. Now I do understand if someone doesn't know how to build a deck and think that using someone else's deck will help them better understand deck building. Well you know what's a better way to do it, show it to some people who know how to deck build and they can tell you a lot more than playing with a net deck will. I'm seriously sick of people who just think that netdecking is the only way to win because they tend to win, well guess what. The guy who made the eldrazi deck that broke modern had to brew it, everyone else just leeched off his work to win tournaments which in my opinion is lazy and selfish. That's my opinion on netdecking, goodnight
Ok, so what I believe about netdecking is when people do it, there are only a few reasons for doing so.
1.You want to win
2.You are too lazy to make your own deck
3.You don't know how to make your own deck
Net decking in my opinion can only cause bad because it harms the diversity of certain formats like modern and such, but even worse is when everyone is copying each others deck, the prices for the cards shoot up and if someone wants to use a card that's used in one of those net decks in one of their brews, guess what. They're paying out the butt just because it happens to be a powerful card and people are sheep that just follow the pros and their strategies because of the 3 reasons I've stated. Now I do understand if someone doesn't know how to build a deck and think that using someone else's deck will help them better understand deck building. Well you know what's a better way to do it, show it to some people who know how to deck build and they can tell you a lot more than playing with a net deck will. I'm seriously sick of people who just think that netdecking is the only way to win because they tend to win, well guess what. The guy who made the eldrazi deck that broke modern had to brew it, everyone else just leeched off his work to win tournaments which in my opinion is lazy and selfish. That's my opinion on netdecking, goodnight
I have no idea how many people play Magic, but I do know it's a helluva lot. A helluva lot. This means that whatever you brew.....someone has probably already brewed it, tested it, tweaked it, and tried it. I might have come up with the idea on my own, but it's almost a guaranteed thing that I was not the only person playing Enchantress in Theros block. Diversity only exists to those who are willfully ignorant. Your idea has been done before. Maybe not by anyone in your area, but I promise that if its' remotely competitive, it's already been brewed by someeone. All decks have to get brewed by someone at some point, but it's not building Eldrazi.dec is a really original plan. At some point, theorycrafting, developing, testing, and tweaking a deck gets to a point where it can't really get any better and you basically wind up with a finalized list. So you can either accept this concept and then do all the tweaking, correcting, and playtesting yourself, or you can scour other people's versions of your idea, see what's worked the best, and use that as your foundation to work from, instead of having to start from the ground and work all the way up, rehashing and discovering things that have already been discovered. Then, when you get to the point that you could have already started at, the person who decided to start at that level has been playtesting and tweaking the list you've worked so hard to get to....and has improved on it farther. Eventually you reach a point where everyone agrees "yes, this is the best version of the deck".
So what can you do if you want to be original? Find a way to take the deck farther, and make it better than the "best" list that's out. Find its weaknesses and figure out how to address them without compromising its meta-relevant strengths. Or set your sights on the top deck and capitalize on its weaknesses- if you can't join them, beat them. A good example of this was when Jace 2.0 was running amok everywhere and was $100. What did players who wanted to win but not drop $100 on JTMS do? They started playing Jace 1.0, knowing that all they had to do was run him out before Jace 2.0 got there and it would blank those cards.
Netdecking is a necessary thing to be competitive, whether you're tweaking an existing proven build, or you want to build a list that beats the proven build- whatever you're building needs to be able to put up a fight against the established decks you're likely to face. If you can't beat them, why are you brewing it?
People who know how to build a good deck know what cards they want to use because they understand the nuances of the game and they understand what their deck needs to do to beat other proven performers. They understand why a good card is good, or why a card only looks good on the surface but is actually bad. The people who are good at brewing embrace, study, and understand the netdecks because this is what they need to brew to beat. If you can't beat what's being played, you've brewed a bad deck. In a way, brewers are very fortunate that netdecking is a thing. Without it, they'd have no idea what to prepare for.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
For some people. Myself included. Others derive their definition of fun by winning in a competitive environment. Still, to do so requires some level of deckbuilding skills to decide if the deck you've chosen to netdeck needs any tweaks to suit your local meta.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I've been playing this game for more than 20 yrs, and at 33 I haven't done much for more than 20 yrs lol. I've never been a netdecker, and at this point, I never really will be. If it isn't a silly way to win, I'm less interested than I would've been otherwise lol.
I used to be the kind of person who was against netdeckers. I wanted to pit my wit against my opponent's, not against the pro list they stole borrowed. It used to eat at me. I'd lose and chalk it up to being the better player but playing against the better deck. How long can you lean on that excuse though? Moral victories don't feel nearly as good as actual victories. The hard realization was I was lacking, not them. They were using tuned decks and I wasn't. It meant I needed to work much much harder on getting my tuning my decks, so I could take them to a competitive situation. Playing against netdecking opponents made me a much better builder and a much better player.
Who cares if others are net decking? In what way does that affect you? Net decks are available to everyone, including the brewers. If you want to take your deck to a competitive setting and you want to win, you know exactly what kind of decks your brew has to beat. If you think you're a better player but they're using the better deck, then you need to bridge the gap. The internet isn't going anywhere.
I'm flabbergasted about how bashing people just for using the internet as a resource is still a thing. Even I don't plan to copy whole decklists, I always do research on Tappedout or TCGplayer before I make my purchases because I learned, when I first started buying singles, that buying cards based solely on freestyle brewing is a great way to waste a lot of money. Originality is, for the most part, a measure of perception. If I dig up an extremely obscure decklist that someone else designed, played against one of the anti-netdeck people on this thread, and asked them afterwards if they thought I got my deck off the internet, I doubt that many of them would guess correctly. There's a great deal of pride involved in going off the beaten track, and much of the anti-netdeck sentiment is based in the joy of winning with something different.
So "cheating" is good as long as it's not visible to others that you cheated?
What? No, you completely misunderstood my point. I was trying to say that many players who make a big stink about netdecking pay more attention to the uniqueness of a given deck rather than the amount of time spent deckbuilding. In fact, it's impossible to tell how much time any player put into deckbuilding just from looking at a decklist. Skill is a more valid measure of time spent, but skill is blind to concerns of where the decklist came from.
I used to boo netdecking and embrace making and perfecting your own brew. I'd refuse to play netdecks. However, I don't have that much time to brew nowadays and test new idea. Going to even a fnm with a untested rogue deck and get schooled while testing it isn't fun anymore. Before I wouldn't mind it because eventually I could refine my own brew, but now, I can't go play that many FNMs, so the most important aspect of deck creation, testing, can't be done properly. Losing all the time also isn't fun when you have limited time to both brewing and testing.
If I have to dedicate 3 to 5 hours to a fnm, might as well have a chance to win sometimes. Netdecking advantage is all decks are already tested, so you just need to adjust it a bit. No need to waste time brewing something that may or may not work. It's not something that you can say you own, but still you need to dedicate yourself to understand the deck nuances, plays, and matchups. Even for rogue deckbuilders, netdecking help them to narrow down most ideas before sleeving and testing. This is a time saver. For people who wanna play wacky decks, they should know the card pool doesn't help them enough to beat any T1/T2 deck, so personally I'd not care much about winning.
I usually leave brewing new decks to commander realm. This is (sometimes) the true casual format. I don't need to win, just have fun.
I don't think you need to be divided by both ideas. They're not in odd with each other. If you have time to really test new ideas, go for it. If you just wanna win, netdeck and test the hell of it.
I guess the only way to make a competitive format for brewers would be something like choose sets/blocks at random and players have 1 week or so to build decks (or any other weird limitation like in they used in community cup). It shouldn't last for the long term thou.
Well, I don't think most people say "just play protour/scg/whatever" decks in a mean or narrow way. Most are probably not expressing it right for brevity. I guess most people mean is the format is already reaching the point that most ideas are already tested, so just play any of the proved decks because you can work on just adapting it to your liking and not waste much time and effort in testing. Still I'd say there is still some room for new ideas to flourish, but not many people can put that much time and effort into new decks ideas like pros. That's what most of the good people mean (excluding the tryhards, **** them lol).
I admire people who can brew and win at FNM's, and sometimes I encounter people with a homebrew deck that is actually very good for the meta inthe store that they play in. Tried building my owen decks too, espescially during the time that I was a new player.. however, I don't really have much time to do that thing now. To be honest, all the Modern format decks in my sig are netdecked. However, I've changed a few of the cards in main to suit my playstyle... and their sideboard I've changed a lot to be properly adjusted to face decks in my area.
I usually try to come up with own ideas which combos/mechanisms could work. For example i first just filter out all rares and mythics and put everything that looks like it could either A: synergies well with a lot of other cards or B: looks outright like an own wincondition on it's own. Then i try to build something around those scrapbook cards without any outside influence, most of those decks end up like crap though, btw ^^. sometimes i have created decks which were so anti meta (without wanting them to be), that i essentially had fun and easy wins against otherwise hard metadecks...
BUT, if i come across a netdeck that looks like it's the type of deckstyle then i usually want to try it out and i am not hesitating to copy/paste those decks into my library, without any bad feelings.
Usually i have to compromise on the cards anyway, because i play more on the budget side of the cardpool, so there will be gaps i have to fill with inferior cards, which shifts the dynamic of that netdeck a bit towards self brewn decks. I don't blame ppl for netdecking. Hell, all those tournament players certainly won't ALL have come up with the exact same "best" meta deck on their own and at the same time (remember the whopping 40% bant-golos deck disaster at that recent tournament).
As the thread is 3 years old, I will assume the OP got their answer. If people would like to renew this conversation in a modern context, feel free to start a new thread.
If it were me, I really wouldn't care, I won a frikking GP.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I had some sweet brews. My favorite was Goblin Aggro (back in Oddesy) with Skirk Firemarshall and spirit link combo.
It was fun, but no where near competitive.
During Shards // Zendikar block I started playing "semi-competitively". I'd attend any PTQ near me within driving distance.
I started building a GW ramp deck. Noble into Garruk into coupe into 20 damage. It was fun. But back then Jund (and pyroclasm) was BIG. Which means you were lucky if your tokens stuck around for very long. In order to be competitve... I started cutting marginal cards and adding better ones.
Forward 6 months... my Deck was a net-deck, nearly card for card, of Mythic Bant.
Never again.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
Only good players win Grand Prixes. Why would a good player keep playing the deck if they knew everyone and their brother would be playing it or have hate for it the next week? That said netdecking is coping a deck and not tweaking it or knowing how to play it. It's a scourge on magic because bad players drive up prices by buying a bunch of copies of Porphyry Nodes or other cards like it, not knowing it's a meta card for a met that will no longer exist. These are the people who have infinite obliteration in the sideboard and bring it in in every match. Nothing wrong with choosing a known deck to learn and play. Net deckers are usually always salty, because they spend a bunch of money to lose with an expensive deck. Only thing worse than net decking is flavor of the month. Whether you jam 4x coco in midrange, 4x jace in aggro, or 4x Seasons Past into every deck in standard, you are a bad players who probably originally net decked and then "tuned" their deck by jamming it with the latest card that looked good on camera. Usually with literally zero deck building considerations.
I'm fairly new to magic. Maybe about a year now. My first deck was an edh deck, daretti, which my friend recommended I get. And I learned how to play with it.
And that's it. I only knew daretti. Lost a lot because 1. I was/am a scrub and 2. Preset decks are only so good. I had No other cards, no KNOWLEDGE of other cards, sets, combos, whatnot.
So I looked it up. Found tappedout. Found the best scored daretti deck. Found out WHY it was the best, it's combos, ect. Like metalworker and staff of dom, how the hell was I ever supposed to discover that gem? It's not like I'll ever pull those out of a pack now or find them at my shop.
So anyways, read up on a few decks. Originally copied it to the best of a reasonable budget (didn't buy the crazy expensive cards) and went from there. I did a lot better locally. I understood things better. Hell won a bit.
Then I got more interested and bought the more expensive cards on the list online. Did better, got better, understood these combos better.
Then I started looking at other deck lists, got new combo ideas. Mix and matched the combos. Made my own deck. Did really well.
Now when new cards come out I either try em out for the deck and see what other daretti decks do with them. Maybe there was something I was missing.
Then time went by, I got more cards through trading, prereleases, a box of two. Now I can start doing what those who scoff at netdeckers do instead.
But that took time. I still netdeck ideas and discover cards I probably never would have if I didn't. Occasionally someone will play something or a combo I've never seen and learn from there, and I will admit that feeling is cool. However it's too rare I think to count on fairly over a reasonable amount of time.
To me, the gap between newer and older players is insane, and to me netdecking is a way to catch up, if even a little. Even netdecking (smartly anyway) isn't exactly easy to beginners. I don't see anything wrong with it. Magic has been around far too long to expect players who are new to know about all the older card options, and what combos or effects even are possible.
Just my opinion anyway...
There are few things like an original deck these days, no matter if new cards are printed. Most decks are a copy of something; either something you already brewed up or something someone else brewed up. Original ideas are fairly scarce these days, in general. You may tweak something here or there, but in my own experience each deck is simply an evolution of another - even if they play and win completely differently.
I'm actually not against this depending on the setting. If I was playing a tournament, unless I knew I built something really bomb I'd do this. I play a lot of Magic on Xmage and I like building a lot of deck on there because why the hell not, its free. In Xmage you can list the play skill: Beginner, Casual, Serious. I usually play in the Casual tier because I know the decks I'm building are janky, all rogue decks begin as jank. I don't like it when someone decides to play the Casual tier with one of the top tournament decks. To me thats like going to your friend's kitchen table magic session where everyone is just kicking back, drinking beers, and throwing weird decks together, and you decide to show up with Infect or Affinity or that banned Eldrazi deck and then no one is having fun anymore. Thats not cool. So thats a pet peeve of mine but there isn't a lot I can do about it. If you're trying to play serious magic play serious magic. I don't see any problem with that but I have an issue when netdeckers try to encroach in places where I think people are just trying to make interesting decks and are trying to play them against other home made decks.
GWUEnduring EgoGWU
GWUBant TempoGWU
EDH:
WUNoyan DarWU
1.You want to win
2.You are too lazy to make your own deck
3.You don't know how to make your own deck
Net decking in my opinion can only cause bad because it harms the diversity of certain formats like modern and such, but even worse is when everyone is copying each others deck, the prices for the cards shoot up and if someone wants to use a card that's used in one of those net decks in one of their brews, guess what. They're paying out the butt just because it happens to be a powerful card and people are sheep that just follow the pros and their strategies because of the 3 reasons I've stated. Now I do understand if someone doesn't know how to build a deck and think that using someone else's deck will help them better understand deck building. Well you know what's a better way to do it, show it to some people who know how to deck build and they can tell you a lot more than playing with a net deck will. I'm seriously sick of people who just think that netdecking is the only way to win because they tend to win, well guess what. The guy who made the eldrazi deck that broke modern had to brew it, everyone else just leeched off his work to win tournaments which in my opinion is lazy and selfish. That's my opinion on netdecking, goodnight
I have no idea how many people play Magic, but I do know it's a helluva lot. A helluva lot. This means that whatever you brew.....someone has probably already brewed it, tested it, tweaked it, and tried it. I might have come up with the idea on my own, but it's almost a guaranteed thing that I was not the only person playing Enchantress in Theros block. Diversity only exists to those who are willfully ignorant. Your idea has been done before. Maybe not by anyone in your area, but I promise that if its' remotely competitive, it's already been brewed by someeone. All decks have to get brewed by someone at some point, but it's not building Eldrazi.dec is a really original plan. At some point, theorycrafting, developing, testing, and tweaking a deck gets to a point where it can't really get any better and you basically wind up with a finalized list. So you can either accept this concept and then do all the tweaking, correcting, and playtesting yourself, or you can scour other people's versions of your idea, see what's worked the best, and use that as your foundation to work from, instead of having to start from the ground and work all the way up, rehashing and discovering things that have already been discovered. Then, when you get to the point that you could have already started at, the person who decided to start at that level has been playtesting and tweaking the list you've worked so hard to get to....and has improved on it farther. Eventually you reach a point where everyone agrees "yes, this is the best version of the deck".
So what can you do if you want to be original? Find a way to take the deck farther, and make it better than the "best" list that's out. Find its weaknesses and figure out how to address them without compromising its meta-relevant strengths. Or set your sights on the top deck and capitalize on its weaknesses- if you can't join them, beat them. A good example of this was when Jace 2.0 was running amok everywhere and was $100. What did players who wanted to win but not drop $100 on JTMS do? They started playing Jace 1.0, knowing that all they had to do was run him out before Jace 2.0 got there and it would blank those cards.
Netdecking is a necessary thing to be competitive, whether you're tweaking an existing proven build, or you want to build a list that beats the proven build- whatever you're building needs to be able to put up a fight against the established decks you're likely to face. If you can't beat them, why are you brewing it?
People who know how to build a good deck know what cards they want to use because they understand the nuances of the game and they understand what their deck needs to do to beat other proven performers. They understand why a good card is good, or why a card only looks good on the surface but is actually bad. The people who are good at brewing embrace, study, and understand the netdecks because this is what they need to brew to beat. If you can't beat what's being played, you've brewed a bad deck. In a way, brewers are very fortunate that netdecking is a thing. Without it, they'd have no idea what to prepare for.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Kind of like copyright.
For some people. Myself included. Others derive their definition of fun by winning in a competitive environment. Still, to do so requires some level of deckbuilding skills to decide if the deck you've chosen to netdeck needs any tweaks to suit your local meta.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I used to be the kind of person who was against netdeckers. I wanted to pit my wit against my opponent's, not against the pro list they
stoleborrowed. It used to eat at me. I'd lose and chalk it up to being the better player but playing against the better deck. How long can you lean on that excuse though? Moral victories don't feel nearly as good as actual victories. The hard realization was I was lacking, not them. They were using tuned decks and I wasn't. It meant I needed to work much much harder on getting my tuning my decks, so I could take them to a competitive situation. Playing against netdecking opponents made me a much better builder and a much better player.Who cares if others are net decking? In what way does that affect you? Net decks are available to everyone, including the brewers. If you want to take your deck to a competitive setting and you want to win, you know exactly what kind of decks your brew has to beat. If you think you're a better player but they're using the better deck, then you need to bridge the gap. The internet isn't going anywhere.
What? No, you completely misunderstood my point. I was trying to say that many players who make a big stink about netdecking pay more attention to the uniqueness of a given deck rather than the amount of time spent deckbuilding. In fact, it's impossible to tell how much time any player put into deckbuilding just from looking at a decklist. Skill is a more valid measure of time spent, but skill is blind to concerns of where the decklist came from.
If I have to dedicate 3 to 5 hours to a fnm, might as well have a chance to win sometimes. Netdecking advantage is all decks are already tested, so you just need to adjust it a bit. No need to waste time brewing something that may or may not work. It's not something that you can say you own, but still you need to dedicate yourself to understand the deck nuances, plays, and matchups. Even for rogue deckbuilders, netdecking help them to narrow down most ideas before sleeving and testing. This is a time saver. For people who wanna play wacky decks, they should know the card pool doesn't help them enough to beat any T1/T2 deck, so personally I'd not care much about winning.
I usually leave brewing new decks to commander realm. This is (sometimes) the true casual format. I don't need to win, just have fun.
I don't think you need to be divided by both ideas. They're not in odd with each other. If you have time to really test new ideas, go for it. If you just wanna win, netdeck and test the hell of it.
I guess the only way to make a competitive format for brewers would be something like choose sets/blocks at random and players have 1 week or so to build decks (or any other weird limitation like in they used in community cup). It shouldn't last for the long term thou.
Well, I don't think most people say "just play protour/scg/whatever" decks in a mean or narrow way. Most are probably not expressing it right for brevity. I guess most people mean is the format is already reaching the point that most ideas are already tested, so just play any of the proved decks because you can work on just adapting it to your liking and not waste much time and effort in testing. Still I'd say there is still some room for new ideas to flourish, but not many people can put that much time and effort into new decks ideas like pros. That's what most of the good people mean (excluding the tryhards, **** them lol).
Nexus MTG News // Nexus - Magic Art Gallery // MTG Dual Land Color Ratios Analyzer // MTG Card Drawing Odds Calculator
Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
BUT, if i come across a netdeck that looks like it's the type of deckstyle then i usually want to try it out and i am not hesitating to copy/paste those decks into my library, without any bad feelings.
Usually i have to compromise on the cards anyway, because i play more on the budget side of the cardpool, so there will be gaps i have to fill with inferior cards, which shifts the dynamic of that netdeck a bit towards self brewn decks. I don't blame ppl for netdecking. Hell, all those tournament players certainly won't ALL have come up with the exact same "best" meta deck on their own and at the same time (remember the whopping 40% bant-golos deck disaster at that recent tournament).
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek