Then tough for them. Learn. I'm sick and tired of the lack of thought that goes into this game by so many people.
It's my opinion and I'm entitled to it.
I see you quoted me in your sig spoiler. Not sure how to take it. If it's my attitude that's ruining organized play, well, so be it.
Like I said, it's my opinion and I'm entitled to it.
Is it unacceptable to look at a net list and work from there?
Curious where you draw your line. I understand the mentality (there were three people at standard Monday running a card-for-card copy of the CF Tempered deck), but don't feel the same vitriol.
I understand that it is your opinion, and I respect that. I even used to share the same sentiment you do. But when you start to force your beliefs down other people's throats, and viciously attack and berate them over their preferred way to play the game that is different than your view is when I stop respecting your opinion and start treating you like an extremist.
edit: Also, you say your are entitled to your opinion. And you are. But you should remember that your opinion is not fact.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Inside this spoiler is some very critical information about myself and how I feel about this forum...
MTGS - My Favorite forum to troll ALL DAY ERRY DAY
I understand that it is your opinion, and I respect that. I even used to share the same sentiment you do. But when you start to force your beliefs down other people's throats, and viciously attack and berate them over their preferred way to play the game that is different than your view is when I stop respecting your opinion and start treating you like an extremist.
edit: Also, you say your are entitled to your opinion. And you are. But you should remember that your opinion is not fact.
When it comes to "acceptable" forms of play in this game or any game for that matter, fact doesn't come into play at all other than when defined by the rules. And the rules have nothing against net decking in them. They never will. So fact has nothing to do with the argument.
What DOES have to do with it is what's good for the game.
How good is it for the game if 75% of the people who play at FNMs hate net deckers and hate playing against them to the point where they are ready to quit because they can't win with a home brew?
I've gone 1-3 in my last FOUR FNMs and I am NOT a terrible player. I've been playing this game since the end of Revised and have enough intelligence to play this game at an above average level.
But when I get soundly trounced by a kid who has been playing this game for all of 3 months simply because he went out and bought a deck, then something is terribly wrong.
It takes no brains whatsoever to play WRR. My daughter, who hasn't played this game in 15 years, could play it and kick my butt with it.
What does that tell you about net decking?
If this game has all become about "winning at all costs" even if it means that you simply copy and paste the top deck, then like I said, it's time for me to stop playing this game.
I get no enjoyment from seeing week after week, in 50% of my matches since this meta started shaping up...
By turn 6 or 7, you're swinging with a 10/1 trampling Inkmoth for game.
Like I said, my daughter could do that in her sleep after just 5 minutes of my going through the deck with her. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to play it.
And if I did the same thing as these net deckers and brought this same deck to FNM and actually made top 8 or better, so what?
What did I actually contribute to my "victory" other than a wallet the size of Texas?
Go play your net decks. But quite honestly, the next person who plays one of these against me, I am tempted to just pick up my cards, scoop and forfeit the match.
The thing is that person running the what you assume to be "net deck" may of made that choice for a number of reasons, If for example artifact hate had fallen out of the local meta it would be a great time to bring back tempered steel, or if creature aggro was way to popular maybe you add 4 arc trails to your RDW. Small minute changes like that take more knowledge and deckbuilding prowess then all these people who dont have a good understanding of magic and get rolled over at even FNM level events.
The difference between people who hate on "netdeckers" and are just bad at magic for the most part and the pros who are excellent at construction and still end up with "tier 1" lists more or less is simple.
A PRO decides that the meta is perfect for precursor golem as a two of because O-Ring is surging in popularity in two of the most commonly played decks. A person who whines about "Netdeckers" decides to play Precursor golem because HERPDERP im playing golem tribal guys
To win something huge like worlds you need to be good at everything from construction to piloting
Day 1 they do standard where you need to know the metagame, the most popular lists and what adjustments people might be trying to make to adapt to the meta and make your own adjustments to not only that but also the adjustments to the adjustments
If it all sounds complicated that is because IT IS and its much harder to take a proven deck and make the tweaks that will get you top finishing then it is to make PILE0'(insert tribe).dec
Then another day they do sealed in these "limited" formats you can display your DECK BUILDING PROWESS if you are given a pool of cards and have to make the best you can from it and while sometimes what you open plays a big part it has just as much to do with your deckbuilding and understanding of the format and magic, The same goes for draft but its a bit more involved and takes its own skillsets but its extremely skill intensive
if you were actually the "deckbuilder" you thought you were you would be very good at these limited formats.
I LOVE to homebrew and it is the most exciting part of magic for me, but I dont just want to face homebrew all day so I drive the extra 20 minutes to go to one of the most competitive FNMs in the area instead of facing the mostly bad brew nearby. Everytime it seems like 5 out of the 50 people on the 0-x side have Werewoofs, vampires, or some other tribal deck and are complaining about netdeckers
its crazy... slapping every creature with a suptype in a pile of unsleeved cards is NOT deckbuilding
The joy of homebrewing is BEATING the people with netdecks and watching them read more then half of the cards you play.
"Oh? do you need to read it?" is about the smuggest thing you can say to a net decker as you pass him the card he was leaning over to try and read.
IF you are gonna homebrew you need to put up like 40-60 vs most the tier 1 and 1.5 lists and hope to get just a bit lucky OR you need to hate out one archetype REALLY REALLY hard that is run in your local meta
play something like green ramp with 4 GSZ and 4 of that outcast elf that wont let your creatures or you get counters if MBI infect is popular, or since Tempered steel is popular you can run a LMC artifact destruction deck
playing a sub optimal but decent list with one REALLLYYY great matchup is another great way to homebrew, and depending on the opposing player if they are playing what you were hoping to face ive gotten reactions from just a depressed look and scooping, to near table flipping, and even one person accusing me of cheating by changing my deck when I realized what I had sat down against
EDIT: I had started typing before I saw your post but there are MANY great ways to hate out WRR with homebrew, I think you could quite easily get to 70-30 in your favor. Curse of Death's Hold and things like that are great beacuse it stops inkmoth and you can usually play it the turn during or after prime time comes out and then you remove prime time but there is a HUGE list of cards that can wreck it even harder
[CARD]
Volition Reins[/CARD] md and flashfreeze as a four of in sb along with other counters could reealllllyy put the hurt on (say thanks for the first bomb they play and then flashfreeze the next one, gutshot or something for inkmoth)
Leonin Arbiter can be REALLY funny in some sort of white deck
Ive even had a homebrew G/R woof list that utilized a ton of Act of treason type effects (I think it was aggression and traitorous as 4 ofs) daybreak rangers (for the inkmoths and birds) and even fling
Black can use the one and two discard spells to hit their bomb(s) hopefully its a titan... and then [CARD]gruesome encore
[/CARD] it out giving you its come into play effect and an attack effect so basically if its prime time you get to fetch 4 lands...some or all of which could be ghost quarters caused someone to scoop with this play
IT feels REALLY good to act of treason their primetime, bring in two lands of my own swing for 6 then fling it for another 6 and removing their creature... of course this deck had ghost quarters to bring in from the stolen primetime to deal with inkmoth got the whole combo off one time and missed the fling game 2 but the ghost quarters and a flipped daybreak and shock took care of prime time letting me edge out a win when they ran out of steam
I was going to post something, but honestly, nothing can follow up dudebro's post. It is extremely well thought out and presents both sides of the arguements well. Kudos to you, sir!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Inside this spoiler is some very critical information about myself and how I feel about this forum...
MTGS - My Favorite forum to troll ALL DAY ERRY DAY
The thing is that person running the what you assume to be "net deck" may of made that choice for a number of reasons, If for example artifact hate had fallen out of the local meta it would be a great time to bring back tempered steel, or if creature aggro was way to popular maybe you add 4 arc trails to your RDW. Small minute changes like that take more knowledge and deckbuilding prowess then all these people who dont have a good understanding of magic and get rolled over at even FNM level events.
The difference between people who hate on "netdeckers" and are just bad at magic for the most part and the pros who are excellent at construction and still end up with "tier 1" lists more or less is simple.
A PRO decides that the meta is perfect for precursor golem as a two of because O-Ring is surging in popularity in two of the most commonly played decks. A person who whines about "Netdeckers" decides to play Precursor golem because HERPDERP im playing golem tribal guys
To win something huge like worlds you need to be good at everything from construction to piloting
Day 1 they do standard where you need to know the metagame, the most popular lists and what adjustments people might be trying to make to adapt to the meta and make your own adjustments to not only that but also the adjustments to the adjustments
If it all sounds complicated that is because IT IS and its much harder to take a proven deck and make the tweaks that will get you top finishing then it is to make PILE0'(insert tribe).dec
Then another day they do sealed in these "limited" formats you can display your DECK BUILDING PROWESS if you are given a pool of cards and have to make the best you can from it and while sometimes what you open plays a big part it has just as much to do with your deckbuilding and understanding of the format and magic, The same goes for draft but its a bit more involved and takes its own skillsets but its extremely skill intensive
if you were actually the "deckbuilder" you thought you were you would be very good at these limited formats.
I LOVE to homebrew and it is the most exciting part of magic for me, but I dont just want to face homebrew all day so I drive the extra 20 minutes to go to one of the most competitive FNMs in the area instead of facing the mostly bad brew nearby. Everytime it seems like 5 out of the 50 people on the 0-x side have Werewoofs, vampires, or some other tribal deck and are complaining about netdeckers
its crazy... slapping every creature with a suptype in a pile of unsleeved cards is NOT deckbuilding
The joy of homebrewing is BEATING the people with netdecks and watching them read more then half of the cards you play.
"Oh? do you need to read it?" is about the smuggest thing you can say to a net decker as you pass him the card he was leaning over to try and read.
IF you are gonna homebrew you need to put up like 40-60 vs most the tier 1 and 1.5 lists and hope to get just a bit lucky OR you need to hate out one archetype REALLY REALLY hard that is run in your local meta
play something like green ramp with 4 GSZ and 4 of that outcast elf that wont let your creatures or you get counters if MBI infect is popular, or since Tempered steel is popular you can run a LMC artifact destruction deck
playing a sub optimal but decent list with one REALLLYYY great matchup is another great way to homebrew, and depending on the opposing player if they are playing what you were hoping to face ive gotten reactions from just a depressed look and scooping, to near table flipping, and even one person accusing me of cheating by changing my deck when I realized what I had sat down against
I agree with this post 100%. That's what people SHOULD be doing, tweaking existing decks to make them their own and get an edge over the competition.
But where I am, they're not doing that. They're copying and pasting off the Internet card for card. They even admit they do it. It's not like they try to hide it or anything.
Their excuse?
"I don't have the time to build a deck."
Whatever.
Anyway, I realize I'm fighting a losing battle here. Why?
1. There is nothing in the rules against net decking.
2. It's easy to do. Just find the cash.
3. It gives you the best chance of winning.
Sure, there are exceptions to # 3. I'm going to try to prove that this Friday when I play my Michael Jackson Killer D deck. I've tested it against various net decks and it's quite effective. It's a 50-50 matchup against WRR and has a slight advantage over Solar Flare which seems to be the second most played deck where I am. It's at a slight disadvantage to RDW and W Humans because of the mana base. But I feel confident that I'll go 3-1 at least with any luck at all.
We'll see.
It would just be nice to see a little originality at an FNM.
I agree with this post 100%. That's what people SHOULD be doing, tweaking existing decks to make them their own and get an edge over the competition.
But where I am, they're not doing that. They're copying and pasting off the Internet card for card. They even admit they do it. It's not like they try to hide it or anything.
Their excuse?
"I don't have the time to build a deck."
Whatever.
Anyway, I realize I'm fighting a losing battle here. Why?
1. There is nothing in the rules against net decking.
2. It's easy to do. Just find the cash.
3. It gives you the best chance of winning.
It would just be nice to see a little originality at an FNM.
1. would be ridic and impossible, I think you should stop bringing this point up as it makes me feel like you are in that category of people who bring just bad brew instead of homebrew and then whine about the results. For some reason this is a huge pet peeve of mine as im one of the more well known brewers. I even got accused of net decking one time when I ran Genesis wave elves for fun on a sunday tournament... 0_0
2. Its pretty easy to do especially with the "BUY THIS DECK NOW!" buttons on sites like SCG but... even for the more affluent when one net deck falls out of favor they no longer feel like they are playing the best deck and are either forced to buy another by this logic, even wealthy people dont like to "throw money away" on decks of cardboard they no longer want to use, so in a way if they jump on something toooo early you get burned sometimes like many people that bought into solar flare at the high end of the craze, I know a few people still mad about jumping on solar flare at peak olivia costs that are now jumping on the grixis bandwagon at what "could" be peak cost for that deck.
3. Now this is the point I disagree with COMPLETELY if you have been to your local FNM even one time recently you have an idea of the metagame. This means that if you and someone else were to run the same list and he netdecked and you tuned yours for the meta YOU have the best chance of winning
---
I think you are looking at this the wrong way while yes its fun to see variety you should be looking at it as a chance to test and "prove" your homebrew against the best decks, not roll over kids with unsleeved piles of green vanilla fatties.
You should WANT people to play netdecks, I sure know I do, because ive known about them forever and have had a chance to tune or hate on it, If my homebrew cant beat them at least 40 percent of the time I shouldnt of brought it.
If I know exactly every card in their deck as soon as they play say mountain and stromkirk, or forest and birds, im in a great position because they will probably need to read half my cards and get nervous. I am taking them off the "railroad tracks" that they have memorized of correct plays vs other tier 1 decks and I have a plan in my head for literally every card they could play every turn.
---
for example I am playing against Solar flare on the play and turn 2 I drop Liquid metal coating he picks it up and reads it real quick and goes "intresting I guess it is a good way to get metalcraft" but in a very smug tone as he must of been confused how I was 4-0 at this point.... but doesnt assume its much of a threat so he does not leak it. On his turn he misses his land draw yet again and getting desperate he ponders and finds the U/B land that comes in tapped since he only had seachrome and plains. On my turn I draw drop a land whatever and then say Seachrome coast an artifact and this look of utter horror came up on his face that made my day. manic vandal and then next turn flashbacking a leaked ancient grudge left him on one land.
If he had known what LMC could do or had been experienced enough to know about the block LMC deck that had some success against Tempered steel then mana leak on LMC would of put me in an awful position, instead not using a net deck won me game 1 and then game 3 I rode the back of a resolved kudoltha phoenix to victory knocking a "netdecker" out of top 8 and at least 9 packs and gaining myself some sweet product prize to trade for more cards no one wants
---
the other thing we "brewers" can do is start maindecking hate in our brews. Almost everydeck ive brewed gets my playset of ratchet bombs thrown in until less then 1/3rd of my local meta will stop playing tokens, there are lots of ways to hate but maindeck hating is only really made possible by netdeckers and more then one person playing the same deck, and I thank them for it because it makes it that much easier to post some silly brew up in a top 8 out of 50+ players which is where I get my satisfaction from.
What it boils down to is we are all trying to play magic with different resources whether its time,money,knowledge, experience.AND we all have different goals especially in a casualish but still tournament setting like FNM
IF you adjust your attitude and I dont just mean you personally but if we ALL do then magic can be fun for EVERYONE hehe
1. would be ridic and impossible, I think you should stop bringing this point up as it makes me feel like you are in that category of people who bring just bad brew instead of homebrew and then whine about the results. For some reason this is a huge pet peeve of mine as im one of the more well known brewers. I even got accused of net decking one time when I ran Genesis wave elves for fun on a sunday tournament... 0_0
2. Its pretty easy to do especially with the "BUY THIS DECK NOW!" buttons on sites like SCG but... even for the more affluent when one net deck falls out of favor they no longer feel like they are playing the best deck and are either forced to buy another by this logic, even wealthy people dont like to "throw money away" on decks of cardboard they no longer want to use, so in a way if they jump on something toooo early you get burned sometimes like many people that bought into solar flare at the high end of the craze, I know a few people still mad about jumping on solar flare at peak olivia costs that are now jumping on the grixis bandwagon at what "could" be peak cost for that deck.
3. Now this is the point I disagree with COMPLETELY if you have been to your local FNM even one time recently you have an idea of the metagame. This means that if you and someone else were to run the same list and he netdecked and you tuned yours for the meta YOU have the best chance of winning
---
I think you are looking at this the wrong way while yes its fun to see variety you should be looking at it as a chance to test and "prove" your homebrew against the best decks, not roll over kids with unsleeved piles of green vanilla fatties.
You should WANT people to play netdecks, I sure know I do, because ive known about them forever and have had a chance to tune or hate on it, If my homebrew cant beat them at least 40 percent of the time I shouldnt of brought it.
If I know exactly every card in their deck as soon as they play say mountain and stromkirk, or forest and birds, im in a great position because they will probably need to read half my cards and get nervous. I am taking them off the "railroad tracks" that they have memorized of correct plays vs other tier 1 decks and I have a plan in my head for literally every card they could play every turn.
---
for example I am playing against Solar flare on the play and turn 2 I drop Liquid metal coating he picks it up and reads it real quick and goes "intresting I guess it is a good way to get metalcraft" but in a very smug tone as he must of been confused how I was 4-0 at this point.... but doesnt assume its much of a threat so he does not leak it. On his turn he misses his land draw yet again and getting desperate he ponders and finds the U/B land that comes in tapped since he only had seachrome and plains. On my turn I draw drop a land whatever and then say Seachrome coast an artifact and this look of utter horror came up on his face that made my day. manic vandal and then next turn flashbacking a leaked ancient grudge left him on one land.
If he had known what LMC could do or had been experienced enough to know about the block LMC deck that had some success against Tempered steel then mana leak on LMC would of put me in an awful position, instead not using a net deck won me game 1 and then game 3 I rode the back of a resolved kudoltha phoenix to victory knocking a "netdecker" out of top 8 and at least 9 packs and gaining myself some sweet product prize to trade for more cards no one wants
I see your points. And yes, there's a satisfaction in beating a net deck with a home brew, something I did once with my own version of TS. In fact, and I didn't know this at the time, I beat the 10th ranked player in our state. To me he was just another net decker. But yes, that was a wonderful night for me even though I lost to everybody else.
Why did I lose to everybody else?
Because my other matchups were bad for the deck. Plus it didn't help that I got bad draws at the worst times (game threes)
For what it's worth, again because I'm realizing I can't do anything about this practice, I'm starting to accept it and am looking to build the best deck I can against this meta.
I would still prefer to see something else in front of me besides the same cards night after night.
Sorry sir, but a terrible player you are and I will show you why.
It's not intended as a front ad hominem attack. I hold no grudge against you and I'm not trying to make you look miserable, but thinking you are not a bad player is the root of your flawed logic.
Good players don't get trounced by beginner kids.
Fact : Patrick Chapin has a 84% win record in standard in the last 2 years Pro Tours.
What does it mean ? It means that good players beat bad players, period. Even in an environment where everybody is supposed to play top tier deck, some people are getting a clear edge.
The question is : why can't you get an edge against a beginner, while good players can ? Even if you're no Patrick Chapin and most good players aren't either,
This is wrong and the fact you think it is shows you are not a good player.
Even playing the most silly decks of Magic's existence such as Megrim Jar required some skill. This deck was so powerful that according to the few people that got to play it before Memory Jar was banned acknowledged that they could make a lot of mistakes and still get away with it. However, they had to know exactly which hands did work and which did not and how to get the game back on track in case of hiccups.
Wolf Run Ramp on the opposite is nowhere near like it. It's a good deck but it's a fair deck. It's not dominating Standard right now. It's not broken. It's not allowing people to make a lot of mistakes and get away with it. If you do not agree, just check the results from Worlds. Dominating decks where WW Puresteel and UW Control. Where's Wolf Run ?
If you play Wolf Run Ramp, you have to
- know how to mulligan efficiently, which hands are keeps, which are not and this is not obvious
- know how to play against certain threats (land destruction, countermagic, creature removal)
- know how to play the mirror match (which is always hard, regardless of the deck you play)
Playing Magic the Gathering in tournaments is about winning, yes. That's the main difference between casual play and tournament play.
If you still don't get that, you should just not play in tournaments anymore.
This is another hint you are not a good player : you are holding yourself back with self-inflicted restrictions. By refusing any form of netdecking, you are just playing bad decks. A good player doesn't play with a bad deck, period.
Guess Why Conley woods went virtually 15-0 at Worlds (his only loss is conceding to teammate Paul Vitor Damo Da Rosa to help him reaching top 8) ? It's just because he gave up on playing rogue decks and just played the best deck he could.
Perhaps you should play something else that 60lands.dec.
Magic is an interactive game.
Gut shot his bird ? Or gut shot his Inkmoth Nexus in response of Wolf Run activation ?
O-Ring Titan ?
If Wolf Run is not dominating the global metagame, it's because people have answers to this deck. If you don't, you are not playing the right deck, you are playing a real bad deck.
Good players don't play bad decks.
Your first contribution to your victory ? Realizing the decks you used to play were complete crap and you shouldn't have played them.
Trust me, this is a very important thing to understand.
So, let's recap
- You play subpar decks
- You misjudge the required skill to operate top decks
- You play in competitive tournaments but you are limiting your deck choices
- You are complaining about people that make superior deck choices (bad excuse #1)
- You are complaining about people that play expensive decks (bad excuse #2)
These are defining characteristics of a bad tournament player. Don't be surprise you get beaten by random people, you are just bad.
The good news is : you are only bad because of a mindset, and this can change. You can change and get better. I'll post about it later.
I don't even know how to respond to this.
You know what? Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just a terrible magic player. Maybe all the guys I play with (the non net deckers) are all terrible players too because they're also going 1-3 every week against the crowd that has essentially invaded our FNM because they were thrown out of another establishment. Hmm, I wonder why that happened?
Okay, so assuming I buy your argument (which may very well be valid) then the only way to compete is to find out what decks are dominating the meta and play them. That essentially takes all creativity out of the game. And no, making one or two changes to a net deck isn't being creative in my opinion.
I like building my own decks. My friends all like building their own decks. To us, it's the most challenging and fun part of this game.
So maybe we should all just give up playing magic and take up another hobby.
This Friday, I'm bringing a home brew that I have extensively tested against WRR. It has a 50-50 chance of beating it. Not great, but better than anything I've come up with so far. We'll see if I can't beat these people using my own brains instead of my bank account.
If I can't, I will personally come back to this thread, admit you are right and then decide to either cave in and do what everybody else does or sell my cards.
Oh, and just for the record. There is a difference between a bad deck builder and a bad player. You know nothing about my skills as a pilot of a deck. So calling me a terrible player is not only rude but presumptuous. I've taken people's "good" decks (just for fun) played with them and soundly trounced people with them. It means nothing to me. I bought a victory. You may not agree, but that is how I feel about the subject. If this attitude makes me a "bad" player then so be it. I'm a bad player.
Rather that than just be another net decking clone.
Shortly put, there are probably less than hundred people in the world that are good enough to be creative and successful with their decks in tournaments (which means they are able to create new archetypes and win tournaments with them). Most of them are pros, and sometimes they just get it wrong (ex: Brian Kibler with UB Infect last season) despite good records in deck building and innovation.
The odds are you are not one of them, so your choice is very narrow : be creative OR be successful in tournaments, but you won't have both. Believing you can is delusional.
That makes perfect sense, however you must understand that you are creating your own constraints here. You can't blame other players in the tournament for not doing so.
Anybody has the right to run a marathon with flip flops, but that person couldn't blame people that perform better because they wear running shoes.
It seems to me that your mindset fits the casual side of the game, not the competitive one, and by playing competitive tournaments you are just hurting yourself.
Do you understand that making a homebrew that aims at beating WRR and has a 50-50 record against it is really bad ?
The aim of deck selection and deck building are the same : beating the metagame. If you expect at best 50-50 against the dominant deck, you are doing it wrong.
A deck that's dedicated against another one should at least beat it 75% of time to make up for the probable bad matchups against the rest of the meta.
When it appeared that Caw-Blade was better than the dominant deck, the best deck choice was Caw-Blade. When Caw-Blade dominated the metagame, people choose Caw-Blade variants that were optimized for the mirror match. When you believe there is a best deck in a metagame (which seems to be WRR in your local metagame), you have two solutions :
- build/choose a deck that crushes WRR
- play a WRR deck that is tweaked to win the mirror match
If you can't do either, you are doing it wrong and you will fail, regardless of how well you play your games.
I don't imply you are not a good pilot, but I guess I only have myself to blame because I probably didn't make my point clear enough. I seems obvious to me that, due to your long time experience, you are at the very least a decent pilot. I'm assuming you make correct plays during games, know how to mulligan correctly, etc.
I will use the word pilot when I refer to the skillset of playing a deck and player when I refer to the magic player as a whole.
The thing is it's no more "good/bad deckbuilder" vs "good/bad pilot". It may have been long ago, when information about decks and techs were no so widespread, but now this is all about deck/tech selection, not deckbuilding.
When I told you you were a bad player, it's because I believe you fail at deck selection and you fail to understand why this is part of being a successful player. Good players are good pilots AND are good at deck selection.
Fair enough. I shall return to this thread on Saturday morning with my results.
I'm not a type 2 player myself, but I imagine there are various ways to construct a WRR-hoser if that's your goal. I know this to be true of almost any other format and I assume it's true of magic generally. It's hard for me to believe that there is a type 2 deck right now called WRR that you are unable to hose. By hose I mean construct a deck that can win against it 75% of the time or more.
From my experience with the game, I think something like the following is true: "show me a deck in any format and I can show you a hoser in the same format."
Now, building a hoser is one thing. But building a good deck is another thing. A good deck is something like a metagame-hoser. That means that it should be trying to hose many different decks simultaneously. Of course, given our definition of hosing (>75% win rate), it's impossible to build a deck that can hose an entire format unless it were some extremely unhealthy format. But I still do think it's possible to build a hoser for any particular deck, though impossible to build a hoser for the entire metagame.
We can sometimes look at a format's metagame in terms of a rock-paper-scissors analogy. If deck choices corresponded to rock / papers / scissors, it would obviously be true that for any given deck choice, there exists a 100% hoser. So, if your metagame is dominated by rock, you bring paper. But obviously no real metagame would be dominated by rock.
The thing you have to realize is most of the time the people who netdeck are actually better at deckbuilding than people like you too, I can take a decent homebrew and 3-1 every FNM I play with it, or I can use far less time and just net-deck and 4-0. One thing I learned from a very early point when playing magic, you are not a unique snowflake, you will never be colney woods, save time and money and just netdeck it.
I've had this argument with a friend of mine quite a lot recently.
It simply ends up with him being all smug and just going "Why are you so bad at this game?" Every time just because I refuse to play top 8 all the time, Illusions just made top 8 but I still run a variant so I'm sort of in the clear, but I give him the same answer every time.
I play for fun, not for winning all the time. If I do win I am glad, if I lose of course I'll be disappointed but I will learn why I lost and try to fix it.
He used to be a really big homebrewer, he goes rouge a lot of the time at FNM but recently, he really wants to make to GP and win as the first Canadian to win GP (I don't know how true that is), he just runs the really big decks.
I won't say I hate net-decking, I do dislike it though for the reasons already stated, but I wish people would think outside the box more.
I mean if you really look, most Pros don't even build half their decks on their own. Either a different Pro will make it and they will just use it but tweak it or it's collaboration.
I'd like to see an event where it is like "Friday Night Homebrew" just once. No top 8 or really close variants, ex. RDW but you run goblins, goblins are part of RDW but they are not truly a varient. Just for fun, it could run on a different day or along side of standard.
Just to shake things up.
Sounds more like that was your first tournament experience and you all brought terrible decks. Losing sucks, I'm sure.
Actually no it was my third. And I was doing fairly well with my Phantom deck. Until Psychatog showed up. My deck just couldn't get past the bounce and counters. My friend's white weenie reamed Psychatog.
I didn't mind losing so much as the 3 copy for copy Psychatog decks and Birds/Oppositions that were running around. No originality.
I also faced a couple Birds/Opposition decks. Beat them both, but barely. Also got into a rules skirmish about Phantoms. I was right in the end, but nobody believed me and my 2 friends. They believe some joe-schmoe who suposedly knew the rules, what a waste of 7 minutes.
As I promised, I've returned to this thread to report my latest FNM results (win or lose) using a home brew. Since we can't post deck lists here, I'll just give a general description of the deck.
Couldn't do a thing. Just about every spell got countered each game and eventually got blown out by a Karn and Gideon. Second game when I did get some attack going, DoJ put an end to it.
0-2 (0-1)
Round 2 - Vampires
Having tried a vampire brew myself and seeing how weak they are in this meta, I was confident about this matchup. I had very little trouble winning in 2 straight.
2-0 (1-1)
Round 3 - WWRR (Werewolf Run Ramp)
This was a very unique home brew variation on WRR. I was also confident here that my Mirran would take this and it did even after voluntarily forfeiting the first game because I found a sideboard card in it. I still took the next 2.
2-1 (2-1)
Round 4 - ???
I have no idea what this person was playing as I never got to see much of anything. I know it was R/W but I overran him so quickly in both games I saw very few cards.
2-0 (3-1)
Top 8
This was my first top 8 in 2 months. I finally assembled a deck that gave players fits. My match was a mirror that I really wasn't expecting. Nobody in our group plays Destiny. But this guy did.
I took the first game easily with a turn 3 Mirran, turn 4 Destiny that he had no answers for. At this point in time, I had no idea what he was playing as all I saw was a Champion Of The Parish so I thought it was a humans deck. So I didn't sideboard anything other than BSZ.
Game 2 I should have had but a Moorland Haunt kept him in the game long enough to pull it out despite 2 Mirrans and 2 Destinys that I played. He O-ringed both of them.
Game 3 he got the combo turn 4 and I drew nothing and that was it.
The match could have gone either way. He had the luck, I didn't. He had no answers for me other than O-ring and Silverchase which he luckily drew. Last game I didn't draw a BSZ (had 4 MD) or a GQ.
But with a totally off the wall home brew (who plays B/W in this meta) I made top 8. It was my 11th top 8 since May of this year when I started playing competitively.
That's right...17 years playing this game and until now only played casual. My enjoyment came from building decks. Still does.
And don't get me wrong. I don't want to take away YOUR enjoyment of the game. If you want to net deck, net deck. I just don't have any respect for you and that's my prerogative.
I've also proven that you CAN put a deck together on your own and do well. More specifically, I can put a deck together and do well. One week I beat the 10th ranked player in our state with a home brew.
So to the person who called me a bad player, I guess I'm a bad player when I choose to be one by putting together a bad deck. When I want to put together a good deck, I can. And if I net decked I can certainly do well.
congrats on your success
I also dislike net decking because it turns games into bland and banal exercises in repetitiveness. Is this the player's fault or R&D? That would be my question I suppose.
congrats on your success
I also dislike net decking because it turns games into bland and banal exercises in repetitiveness. Is this the player's fault or R&D? That would be my question I suppose.
It's not R&Ds fault that the Internet gives real time interactions with players all over the world and almost real time information on deck lists that are winning major events. The Internet has sped up this process that was always there.
my point was not about speed of information but about the difficulties of balancing new releases amongst the basic aggro, combo, control archtypes and the question was whether or not R&D pushes one typoe over others creating a clearly supoerior design that quickly spreads to become the net deck of choice.
there's always going to be netdecking simply b/c there will always be decks that consistently win, the only thing R&D can possibly do is to release enough balance that there is no one deck to beat which is where the meta-game is currently at there are about 7-8 decks to beat and planty of tier 2 decks that can rogue out and win, if you have alot of players in your area netdecking just figure out how to beat what they play and walk over them like most ppl, personally i have "net decks" but most of my decks have been modified to fit my play style
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Unfortunately, all of my test animals have died or escaped, so i shall be the final subject. I feel no fear. This is a momentous night."
--Laboratory notes, final entry
while I avoid constructed tournament play due primarily to cost, I do enjoy limited. I think that if there are 7-8 decks all doing well and they are not variations of a single deck then that is very good design and a healthy standard environment and R&D should be commended. unlike the caw-blade fiasco
I fail to see how that tournament was fun with so many IDENTICAL decks and I'm particularly happy that none of those four uncreative players won the tournament.
So boring and uncreative...
I would rather lose with a cool deck I made from scratch than win with a deck made from an idea that's not even mine.
That said, I'm not against taking inspiration from other decks and giving a personal touch to a deck, but building the exact same deck taken from the internet?
Just no.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If there is such a thing as too much power, I have not discovered it!
hmm
I think if I was putting together a team I would have tried to touch more meta bases to give the team the best chance of overall victory but that is me. How did they all place with the mirror decks they brought out of curiosity.
Sure. But you can't blame others for playing with good, proven decks.
If your primary objective is to win the tournament and then chosing to play with bad decks makes you a bad player.
If your primary objective is to enjoy what you play with no matter the result, then you can't blame people for netdecking.
The major contradiction you came with is not understanding that it's very natural to play with something better than what you can brew yourself if you want to win.
I hope this discussion helped you to understand that point of view, and congratulation on your top 8.
You don't have any clue about the subject.
The 4 people playing the same decks were 4 teammates from team Channelfireball. Prior to the World Championship, they gathered at one's place and started brewing decks. They playtested a lot, tweaked their lists and came to the conclusion that Tempered Steel was best suited for the standard portion of the event*, so the only logical thing to do was that all (or most) players of the team played the same deck.
Boring ? This is the world championship. We you play such a tournament, you play to win it, not to be entertaining or funny.
Uncreative ? Those guys are the ones that create major archetypes for major tournaments. They are not the kind of player that takes the decklist from the Internet, they are those who POST the decklist on the Internet.
I sincerely hope you were trolling.
* the tournament was not standard only : the swiss rounds consisted in 6 rounds of standard, 2 drafts of 3 rounds each and 6 rounds of modern. The top 8 was played in standard. So yeah, there were plenty of different decks during the tournament and it was far from boring, which is something you could have noticed if you really read the coverage instead of just *****ing about the standard decklists of the top 8.
I was not trolling. While I didn't know about the details, I will stand by my statement that the tourney shopudl have been boring and that these guys are uncreative.
I would rather not participate in a big event if it is to happen with an unoriginal deck. It's much more gratifying to win if the deck used is unique and homemade.
Also, it seems that their archetype was not so good, since they were four players using it and none of them won.
And also, if people netdeck instead of building their own decks, they will never get the practice needed in building a deck that will improve their deckbuilding skills to pro level
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If there is such a thing as too much power, I have not discovered it!
I was not trolling. While I didn't know about the details, I will stand by my statement that the tourney shopudl have been boring and that these guys are uncreative.
I would rather not participate in a big event if it is to happen with an unoriginal deck. It's much more gratifying to win if the deck used is unique and homemade.
Also, it seems that their archetype was not so good, since they were four players using it and none of them won.
And also, if people netdeck instead of building their own decks, they will never get the practice needed in building a deck that will improve their deckbuilding skills to pro level
So you aren't trolling you just don't know what you are talking about. This years worlds was pretty fun to watch especially the top 8. Also their archetype must have been good if it put 4 of them into the top 8 of WORLDS.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks I Play
Legacy: UWRStoneblade UWGBant Stoneblade UWBEsper Stoneblade BUGBUG BUGTeam America BUGDark Tempo Thresh RUGTempo Thresh BGWJunk BGWThe Truffle Shuffle WBDeadGuy Ale GWMaverick GWRPunishing Maverick BGNic Fit URSneak and Show UBRWGThe Epic Storm UBRWGDoomsday UBReanimator USolidarity RGBelcher UBWGRDredge UWGBCephalid Breakfast RBurn
Their "net deck" had some innovation in it for sure, and if a team all gets together and works on something that they all agree is the best suited for a certain tournament it would be crazy NOT to all play the same thing.
Pros can tell the good cards from the bad cards, the meta appropriate cards from the lackluster for the meta ones.
Alot of the people who complain about net decking literally go and choose a creature subtype and throw them all in a crappy list. Thats not innovation or good building. Others go and make a bunch of poor choices and claim it as there own. If they were good choices they would of likely been beaten to it.
MANY of the high level players I know had been brewing up something similar to wolf run before it hit big... they dont go and all try and claim they had it first. They evaluated cards and archetypes and decided it would be a good one.
the BEST ｈｏｍｅｂｒｅｗｅｒ ｗｏｕｌｄ ｅｎｄ ｕｐ ｗｉｔｈ ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｇ ｌｏｏｋｉｎｇ ｌｉｋｅ ａ ｔｉｅｒ １ ｄｅｃｋ， ｇｕａｒｎｔｅｅｄ．
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Is it unacceptable to look at a net list and work from there?
Curious where you draw your line. I understand the mentality (there were three people at standard Monday running a card-for-card copy of the CF Tempered deck), but don't feel the same vitriol.
edit: Also, you say your are entitled to your opinion. And you are. But you should remember that your opinion is not fact.
MTGS - My Favorite forum to troll ALL DAY ERRY DAY
When it comes to "acceptable" forms of play in this game or any game for that matter, fact doesn't come into play at all other than when defined by the rules. And the rules have nothing against net decking in them. They never will. So fact has nothing to do with the argument.
What DOES have to do with it is what's good for the game.
How good is it for the game if 75% of the people who play at FNMs hate net deckers and hate playing against them to the point where they are ready to quit because they can't win with a home brew?
I've gone 1-3 in my last FOUR FNMs and I am NOT a terrible player. I've been playing this game since the end of Revised and have enough intelligence to play this game at an above average level.
But when I get soundly trounced by a kid who has been playing this game for all of 3 months simply because he went out and bought a deck, then something is terribly wrong.
It takes no brains whatsoever to play WRR. My daughter, who hasn't played this game in 15 years, could play it and kick my butt with it.
What does that tell you about net decking?
If this game has all become about "winning at all costs" even if it means that you simply copy and paste the top deck, then like I said, it's time for me to stop playing this game.
I get no enjoyment from seeing week after week, in 50% of my matches since this meta started shaping up...
Turn 1 - Forest, Birds Of Paradise
Turn 2 - Forest, Rampant Growth
Turn 3 - Forest, Solemn Simulacrum (fetch land, play tapped)
Turn 4 - Primeval Titan (fetch Kessig Wolf Run, Inkmoth Nexus
By turn 6 or 7, you're swinging with a 10/1 trampling Inkmoth for game.
Like I said, my daughter could do that in her sleep after just 5 minutes of my going through the deck with her. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to play it.
And if I did the same thing as these net deckers and brought this same deck to FNM and actually made top 8 or better, so what?
What did I actually contribute to my "victory" other than a wallet the size of Texas?
Go play your net decks. But quite honestly, the next person who plays one of these against me, I am tempted to just pick up my cards, scoop and forfeit the match.
Because that isn't my idea of fun.
The difference between people who hate on "netdeckers" and are just bad at magic for the most part and the pros who are excellent at construction and still end up with "tier 1" lists more or less is simple.
A PRO decides that the meta is perfect for precursor golem as a two of because O-Ring is surging in popularity in two of the most commonly played decks. A person who whines about "Netdeckers" decides to play Precursor golem because HERPDERP im playing golem tribal guys
To win something huge like worlds you need to be good at everything from construction to piloting
Day 1 they do standard where you need to know the metagame, the most popular lists and what adjustments people might be trying to make to adapt to the meta and make your own adjustments to not only that but also the adjustments to the adjustments
If it all sounds complicated that is because IT IS and its much harder to take a proven deck and make the tweaks that will get you top finishing then it is to make PILE0'(insert tribe).dec
Then another day they do sealed in these "limited" formats you can display your DECK BUILDING PROWESS if you are given a pool of cards and have to make the best you can from it and while sometimes what you open plays a big part it has just as much to do with your deckbuilding and understanding of the format and magic, The same goes for draft but its a bit more involved and takes its own skillsets but its extremely skill intensive
if you were actually the "deckbuilder" you thought you were you would be very good at these limited formats.
I LOVE to homebrew and it is the most exciting part of magic for me, but I dont just want to face homebrew all day so I drive the extra 20 minutes to go to one of the most competitive FNMs in the area instead of facing the mostly bad brew nearby. Everytime it seems like 5 out of the 50 people on the 0-x side have Werewoofs, vampires, or some other tribal deck and are complaining about netdeckers
its crazy... slapping every creature with a suptype in a pile of unsleeved cards is NOT deckbuilding
The joy of homebrewing is BEATING the people with netdecks and watching them read more then half of the cards you play.
"Oh? do you need to read it?" is about the smuggest thing you can say to a net decker as you pass him the card he was leaning over to try and read.
IF you are gonna homebrew you need to put up like 40-60 vs most the tier 1 and 1.5 lists and hope to get just a bit lucky OR you need to hate out one archetype REALLY REALLY hard that is run in your local meta
play something like green ramp with 4 GSZ and 4 of that outcast elf that wont let your creatures or you get counters if MBI infect is popular, or since Tempered steel is popular you can run a LMC artifact destruction deck
playing a sub optimal but decent list with one REALLLYYY great matchup is another great way to homebrew, and depending on the opposing player if they are playing what you were hoping to face ive gotten reactions from just a depressed look and scooping, to near table flipping, and even one person accusing me of cheating by changing my deck when I realized what I had sat down against
EDIT: I had started typing before I saw your post but there are MANY great ways to hate out WRR with homebrew, I think you could quite easily get to 70-30 in your favor. Curse of Death's Hold and things like that are great beacuse it stops inkmoth and you can usually play it the turn during or after prime time comes out and then you remove prime time but there is a HUGE list of cards that can wreck it even harder
[CARD]
Volition Reins[/CARD] md and flashfreeze as a four of in sb along with other counters could reealllllyy put the hurt on (say thanks for the first bomb they play and then flashfreeze the next one, gutshot or something for inkmoth)
Leonin Arbiter can be REALLY funny in some sort of white deck
Ive even had a homebrew G/R woof list that utilized a ton of Act of treason type effects (I think it was aggression and traitorous as 4 ofs) daybreak rangers (for the inkmoths and birds) and even fling
Black can use the one and two discard spells to hit their bomb(s) hopefully its a titan... and then [CARD]gruesome encore
[/CARD] it out giving you its come into play effect and an attack effect so basically if its prime time you get to fetch 4 lands...some or all of which could be ghost quarters caused someone to scoop with this play
IT feels REALLY good to act of treason their primetime, bring in two lands of my own swing for 6 then fling it for another 6 and removing their creature... of course this deck had ghost quarters to bring in from the stolen primetime to deal with inkmoth got the whole combo off one time and missed the fling game 2 but the ghost quarters and a flipped daybreak and shock took care of prime time letting me edge out a win when they ran out of steam
MTGS - My Favorite forum to troll ALL DAY ERRY DAY
I agree with this post 100%. That's what people SHOULD be doing, tweaking existing decks to make them their own and get an edge over the competition.
But where I am, they're not doing that. They're copying and pasting off the Internet card for card. They even admit they do it. It's not like they try to hide it or anything.
Their excuse?
"I don't have the time to build a deck."
Whatever.
Anyway, I realize I'm fighting a losing battle here. Why?
1. There is nothing in the rules against net decking.
2. It's easy to do. Just find the cash.
3. It gives you the best chance of winning.
Sure, there are exceptions to # 3. I'm going to try to prove that this Friday when I play my Michael Jackson Killer D deck. I've tested it against various net decks and it's quite effective. It's a 50-50 matchup against WRR and has a slight advantage over Solar Flare which seems to be the second most played deck where I am. It's at a slight disadvantage to RDW and W Humans because of the mana base. But I feel confident that I'll go 3-1 at least with any luck at all.
We'll see.
It would just be nice to see a little originality at an FNM.
1. would be ridic and impossible, I think you should stop bringing this point up as it makes me feel like you are in that category of people who bring just bad brew instead of homebrew and then whine about the results. For some reason this is a huge pet peeve of mine as im one of the more well known brewers. I even got accused of net decking one time when I ran Genesis wave elves for fun on a sunday tournament... 0_0
2. Its pretty easy to do especially with the "BUY THIS DECK NOW!" buttons on sites like SCG
3. Now this is the point I disagree with COMPLETELY if you have been to your local FNM even one time recently you have an idea of the metagame. This means that if you and someone else were to run the same list and he netdecked and you tuned yours for the meta YOU have the best chance of winning
---
I think you are looking at this the wrong way while yes its fun to see variety you should be looking at it as a chance to test and "prove" your homebrew against the best decks, not roll over kids with unsleeved piles of green vanilla fatties.
You should WANT people to play netdecks, I sure know I do, because ive known about them forever and have had a chance to tune or hate on it, If my homebrew cant beat them at least 40 percent of the time I shouldnt of brought it.
If I know exactly every card in their deck as soon as they play say mountain and stromkirk, or forest and birds, im in a great position because they will probably need to read half my cards and get nervous. I am taking them off the "railroad tracks" that they have memorized of correct plays vs other tier 1 decks and I have a plan in my head for literally every card they could play every turn.
---
for example I am playing against Solar flare on the play and turn 2 I drop Liquid metal coating he picks it up and reads it real quick and goes "intresting I guess it is a good way to get metalcraft" but in a very smug tone as he must of been confused how I was 4-0 at this point.... but doesnt assume its much of a threat so he does not leak it. On his turn he misses his land draw yet again and getting desperate he ponders and finds the U/B land that comes in tapped since he only had seachrome and plains. On my turn I draw drop a land whatever and then say Seachrome coast an artifact and this look of utter horror came up on his face that made my day. manic vandal and then next turn flashbacking a leaked ancient grudge left him on one land.
If he had known what LMC could do or had been experienced enough to know about the block LMC deck that had some success against Tempered steel then mana leak on LMC would of put me in an awful position, instead not using a net deck won me game 1 and then game 3 I rode the back of a resolved kudoltha phoenix to victory knocking a "netdecker" out of top 8 and at least 9 packs and gaining myself some sweet product prize to trade for more cards no one wants
---
the other thing we "brewers" can do is start maindecking hate in our brews. Almost everydeck ive brewed gets my playset of ratchet bombs thrown in until less then 1/3rd of my local meta will stop playing tokens, there are lots of ways to hate but maindeck hating is only really made possible by netdeckers and more then one person playing the same deck, and I thank them for it because it makes it that much easier to post some silly brew up in a top 8 out of 50+ players which is where I get my satisfaction from.
What it boils down to is we are all trying to play magic with different resources whether its time,money,knowledge, experience.AND we all have different goals especially in a casualish but still tournament setting like FNM
IF you adjust your attitude and I dont just mean you personally but if we ALL do then magic can be fun for EVERYONE hehe
I see your points. And yes, there's a satisfaction in beating a net deck with a home brew, something I did once with my own version of TS. In fact, and I didn't know this at the time, I beat the 10th ranked player in our state. To me he was just another net decker. But yes, that was a wonderful night for me even though I lost to everybody else.
Why did I lose to everybody else?
Because my other matchups were bad for the deck. Plus it didn't help that I got bad draws at the worst times (game threes)
For what it's worth, again because I'm realizing I can't do anything about this practice, I'm starting to accept it and am looking to build the best deck I can against this meta.
I would still prefer to see something else in front of me besides the same cards night after night.
I don't even know how to respond to this.
You know what? Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just a terrible magic player. Maybe all the guys I play with (the non net deckers) are all terrible players too because they're also going 1-3 every week against the crowd that has essentially invaded our FNM because they were thrown out of another establishment. Hmm, I wonder why that happened?
Okay, so assuming I buy your argument (which may very well be valid) then the only way to compete is to find out what decks are dominating the meta and play them. That essentially takes all creativity out of the game. And no, making one or two changes to a net deck isn't being creative in my opinion.
I like building my own decks. My friends all like building their own decks. To us, it's the most challenging and fun part of this game.
So maybe we should all just give up playing magic and take up another hobby.
This Friday, I'm bringing a home brew that I have extensively tested against WRR. It has a 50-50 chance of beating it. Not great, but better than anything I've come up with so far. We'll see if I can't beat these people using my own brains instead of my bank account.
If I can't, I will personally come back to this thread, admit you are right and then decide to either cave in and do what everybody else does or sell my cards.
Oh, and just for the record. There is a difference between a bad deck builder and a bad player. You know nothing about my skills as a pilot of a deck. So calling me a terrible player is not only rude but presumptuous. I've taken people's "good" decks (just for fun) played with them and soundly trounced people with them. It means nothing to me. I bought a victory. You may not agree, but that is how I feel about the subject. If this attitude makes me a "bad" player then so be it. I'm a bad player.
Rather that than just be another net decking clone.
Fair enough. I shall return to this thread on Saturday morning with my results.
From my experience with the game, I think something like the following is true: "show me a deck in any format and I can show you a hoser in the same format."
Now, building a hoser is one thing. But building a good deck is another thing. A good deck is something like a metagame-hoser. That means that it should be trying to hose many different decks simultaneously. Of course, given our definition of hosing (>75% win rate), it's impossible to build a deck that can hose an entire format unless it were some extremely unhealthy format. But I still do think it's possible to build a hoser for any particular deck, though impossible to build a hoser for the entire metagame.
We can sometimes look at a format's metagame in terms of a rock-paper-scissors analogy. If deck choices corresponded to rock / papers / scissors, it would obviously be true that for any given deck choice, there exists a 100% hoser. So, if your metagame is dominated by rock, you bring paper. But obviously no real metagame would be dominated by rock.
BRG Loam Control (Assault - Loam) BRG
W Mono White Control (Martyr - Proc) W
The thing you have to realize is most of the time the people who netdeck are actually better at deckbuilding than people like you too, I can take a decent homebrew and 3-1 every FNM I play with it, or I can use far less time and just net-deck and 4-0. One thing I learned from a very early point when playing magic, you are not a unique snowflake, you will never be colney woods, save time and money and just netdeck it.
It simply ends up with him being all smug and just going "Why are you so bad at this game?" Every time just because I refuse to play top 8 all the time, Illusions just made top 8 but I still run a variant so I'm sort of in the clear, but I give him the same answer every time.
I play for fun, not for winning all the time. If I do win I am glad, if I lose of course I'll be disappointed but I will learn why I lost and try to fix it.
He used to be a really big homebrewer, he goes rouge a lot of the time at FNM but recently, he really wants to make to GP and win as the first Canadian to win GP (I don't know how true that is), he just runs the really big decks.
I won't say I hate net-decking, I do dislike it though for the reasons already stated, but I wish people would think outside the box more.
I mean if you really look, most Pros don't even build half their decks on their own. Either a different Pro will make it and they will just use it but tweak it or it's collaboration.
I'd like to see an event where it is like "Friday Night Homebrew" just once. No top 8 or really close variants, ex. RDW but you run goblins, goblins are part of RDW but they are not truly a varient. Just for fun, it could run on a different day or along side of standard.
Just to shake things up.
Actually no it was my third. And I was doing fairly well with my Phantom deck. Until Psychatog showed up. My deck just couldn't get past the bounce and counters. My friend's white weenie reamed Psychatog.
I didn't mind losing so much as the 3 copy for copy Psychatog decks and Birds/Oppositions that were running around. No originality.
I also faced a couple Birds/Opposition decks. Beat them both, but barely. Also got into a rules skirmish about Phantoms. I was right in the end, but nobody believed me and my 2 friends. They believe some joe-schmoe who suposedly knew the rules, what a waste of 7 minutes.
It was B/W centered around Mirran Crusader, Angelic Destiny and Hero Of Bladehold. Black was mostly there for removal. My sideboard was heavy against WRR (Ghost Quarter) and weenies (BSZ). I also accounted for Solar Flare and artifacts.
There were 32 at this FNM.
Round 1 - U/W Control
Couldn't do a thing. Just about every spell got countered each game and eventually got blown out by a Karn and Gideon. Second game when I did get some attack going, DoJ put an end to it.
0-2 (0-1)
Round 2 - Vampires
Having tried a vampire brew myself and seeing how weak they are in this meta, I was confident about this matchup. I had very little trouble winning in 2 straight.
2-0 (1-1)
Round 3 - WWRR (Werewolf Run Ramp)
This was a very unique home brew variation on WRR. I was also confident here that my Mirran would take this and it did even after voluntarily forfeiting the first game because I found a sideboard card in it. I still took the next 2.
2-1 (2-1)
Round 4 - ???
I have no idea what this person was playing as I never got to see much of anything. I know it was R/W but I overran him so quickly in both games I saw very few cards.
2-0 (3-1)
Top 8
This was my first top 8 in 2 months. I finally assembled a deck that gave players fits. My match was a mirror that I really wasn't expecting. Nobody in our group plays Destiny. But this guy did.
I took the first game easily with a turn 3 Mirran, turn 4 Destiny that he had no answers for. At this point in time, I had no idea what he was playing as all I saw was a Champion Of The Parish so I thought it was a humans deck. So I didn't sideboard anything other than BSZ.
Game 2 I should have had but a Moorland Haunt kept him in the game long enough to pull it out despite 2 Mirrans and 2 Destinys that I played. He O-ringed both of them.
Game 3 he got the combo turn 4 and I drew nothing and that was it.
The match could have gone either way. He had the luck, I didn't. He had no answers for me other than O-ring and Silverchase which he luckily drew. Last game I didn't draw a BSZ (had 4 MD) or a GQ.
But with a totally off the wall home brew (who plays B/W in this meta) I made top 8. It was my 11th top 8 since May of this year when I started playing competitively.
That's right...17 years playing this game and until now only played casual. My enjoyment came from building decks. Still does.
And don't get me wrong. I don't want to take away YOUR enjoyment of the game. If you want to net deck, net deck. I just don't have any respect for you and that's my prerogative.
I've also proven that you CAN put a deck together on your own and do well. More specifically, I can put a deck together and do well. One week I beat the 10th ranked player in our state with a home brew.
So to the person who called me a bad player, I guess I'm a bad player when I choose to be one by putting together a bad deck. When I want to put together a good deck, I can. And if I net decked I can certainly do well.
I just choose not to.
And that too is my prerogative.
I also dislike net decking because it turns games into bland and banal exercises in repetitiveness. Is this the player's fault or R&D? That would be my question I suppose.
It's not R&Ds fault that the Internet gives real time interactions with players all over the world and almost real time information on deck lists that are winning major events. The Internet has sped up this process that was always there.
--Laboratory notes, final entry
I fail to see how that tournament was fun with so many IDENTICAL decks and I'm particularly happy that none of those four uncreative players won the tournament.
So boring and uncreative...
I would rather lose with a cool deck I made from scratch than win with a deck made from an idea that's not even mine.
That said, I'm not against taking inspiration from other decks and giving a personal touch to a deck, but building the exact same deck taken from the internet?
Just no.
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
I think if I was putting together a team I would have tried to touch more meta bases to give the team the best chance of overall victory but that is me. How did they all place with the mirror decks they brought out of curiosity.
I was not trolling. While I didn't know about the details, I will stand by my statement that the tourney shopudl have been boring and that these guys are uncreative.
I would rather not participate in a big event if it is to happen with an unoriginal deck. It's much more gratifying to win if the deck used is unique and homemade.
Also, it seems that their archetype was not so good, since they were four players using it and none of them won.
And also, if people netdeck instead of building their own decks, they will never get the practice needed in building a deck that will improve their deckbuilding skills to pro level
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
So you aren't trolling you just don't know what you are talking about. This years worlds was pretty fun to watch especially the top 8. Also their archetype must have been good if it put 4 of them into the top 8 of WORLDS.
Legacy:
UWRStoneblade
UWGBant Stoneblade
UWBEsper Stoneblade
BUGBUG
BUGTeam America
BUGDark Tempo Thresh
RUGTempo Thresh
BGWJunk
BGWThe Truffle Shuffle
WBDeadGuy Ale
GWMaverick
GWRPunishing Maverick
BGNic Fit
URSneak and Show
UBRWGThe Epic Storm
UBRWGDoomsday
UBReanimator
USolidarity
RGBelcher
UBWGRDredge
UWGBCephalid Breakfast
RBurn
Standard:
UWUB Control
RGRed Deck Wins
Pros can tell the good cards from the bad cards, the meta appropriate cards from the lackluster for the meta ones.
Alot of the people who complain about net decking literally go and choose a creature subtype and throw them all in a crappy list. Thats not innovation or good building. Others go and make a bunch of poor choices and claim it as there own. If they were good choices they would of likely been beaten to it.
MANY of the high level players I know had been brewing up something similar to wolf run before it hit big... they dont go and all try and claim they had it first. They evaluated cards and archetypes and decided it would be a good one.
the BEST ｈｏｍｅｂｒｅｗｅｒ ｗｏｕｌｄ ｅｎｄ ｕｐ ｗｉｔｈ ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｇ ｌｏｏｋｉｎｇ ｌｉｋｅ ａ ｔｉｅｒ １ ｄｅｃｋ， ｇｕａｒｎｔｅｅｄ．