Let's take an alternate reality scenario where WOTC does one of 2 things. Would you take the scenario where WOTC bans the sale of single cards, or would you take the one where WOTC bans the publishing of decklists?
In one scenario, you have access to any card and you can buy any card, but you have to make your own deck. In the other scenario, you have access to the decklists, but in order to build that deck, you have to buy boosters until you pull the card you want.
My husband just laughs at people who netdeck and therefore get their beloved cards banned in Modern or whatever because everyone is doing the same thing and no one has the brains to make his own deck build. He says they deserve what they get -- all those wasted dollars on cards that can no longer be played. How about you all just make your own decks and stop breaking the format over and over again? No respect.
From my competitive/Spike/long time player point of view, you need to find a balance between netdecking and going rogue. Looking at decklist is really valuable, you get to know what most people (the netdeckers) are going to bring to a tournament and you can either have a starting point for your deck (netdeck it, then tune it to your own taste) or you can see other people's ideas and use them in your own brews ("oh, look! Phyrexian Unlife is a nice tech against Burn in Modern!"). You should read the metagame (and yourself!) and decide if netdecking or bringing your brew is better, assuming you want to win
I personally enjoy going rogue if the format allowes it, just because you get an edge over other players: there is a chance they don't know what your deck does, and outplaying them can be easier. Don't you love when your opponent has to read your cards?
There's nothing wrong with any of them, as long you are having fun
I believe WoTC's new policy is to make sure that every color can enjoy the exciting gameplay mechanic of making undercosted dudes and then turning them sideways. Clearly the future of magic.
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haha i have seen that attitude before. when you show up with something rogue and people get all upset cause their perfectly tuned deck shouldn't face scrub piles of jank.
I had one guy have the audacity to try to get me to say that i lost after i 2-0'd him cause "my brew would just lose out" and that "you just got lucky beating me." he was a nice guy and offered to throw me a pack or two at the end of the night even.
sadly i declined his generous offer and ended up undefeated that day. I still wonder what was in that one pack he woulda given me...
I definitely dont hate on Netdeckers at all. In fact i take my brews online to get ideas and sometimes end up with the same sorts of decks. I played a version of aristocrats before it was a thing, and its funny cause people kept trying to tell me how bad blood artist was on the forums until a week or two later when the first aristocrats list posted a good result.
I love deckbuilding. thats why i play this game. but just because some people arent good builders doesnt mean they cant play. and some of the best brewers play the net decks because they are simply the best deck. they may want to play something else but most people dont want to show up with a less than optimal list.
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You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it put an evasive creature in its deck over a narrow hate card.
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If a card isn't worth your opponent removing, it's not worth putting in your deck.
Neither one really bothers me. If I have the cards, I'll sometimes play an established deck, but I've been known to try making something weird from time to time. Either way, I guess I don't mind what other players do. I mean, if they bring a brew, I get to see someone's cool brew go off or if it doesn't play well and they aren't salty, I might be able to offer them some advice (or trade them some cards they didn't have) on how to get it to work better. If they play an established deck, I get to see how my deck and play ability stacks up against the best in the format.
I will say that I LOVE the new FNM formats as our store is now running standard pauper at least once a month. This nearly forces the so-called netdeckers to brew if they want to play and it's cool to see what they bring. I think one of the disappointments about running an established deck is when you show up with basically a tournament build of something like RW Tokens, Abzan mid, or whatever, and you get an opponent who is either brand new or just lacks a collection and doesn't realize they can usually borrow decks, etc. Nothing fun about playing Thoughtseize and seeing a hand full of random cards generally considered unplayable and knowing you'll probably end the round in 10 minutes or less. I don't especially want to be someone who discourages newer players. Standard pauper is great for leveling the playing field--awesome format!
I'll admit I have some issues with the term "netdecker". Some of the established archetypes now have tons of different builds and I only know of a few players who run tournament lists card for card (many people are within 5 cards or so though), so I'm not sure at what point a deck is a netdeck. I've seen it used as an insult against anyone who plays a set of Siege Rhinos. Is any abzan build with 4 Rhinos in it essentially a netdeck now? If I throw in a couple of Reaper of the Wild is it still a netdeck? ?
Neither one really bothers me. If I have the cards, I'll sometimes play an established deck, but I've been known to try making something weird from time to time. Either way, I guess I don't mind what other players do. I mean, if they bring a brew, I get to see someone's cool brew go off or if it doesn't play well and they aren't salty, I might be able to offer them some advice (or trade them some cards they didn't have) on how to get it to work better. If they play an established deck, I get to see how my deck and play ability stacks up against the best in the format.
I will say that I LOVE the new FNM formats as our store is now running standard pauper at least once a month. This nearly forces the so-called netdeckers to brew if they want to play and it's cool to see what they bring. I think one of the disappointments about running an established deck is when you show up with basically a tournament build of something like RW Tokens, Abzan mid, or whatever, and you get an opponent who is either brand new or just lacks a collection and doesn't realize they can usually borrow decks, etc. Nothing fun about playing Thoughtseize and seeing a hand full of random cards generally considered unplayable and knowing you'll probably end the round in 10 minutes or less. I don't especially want to be someone who discourages newer players. Standard pauper is great for leveling the playing field--awesome format!
I'll admit I have some issues with the term "netdecker". Some of the established archetypes now have tons of different builds and I only know of a few players who run tournament lists card for card (many people are within 5 cards or so though), so I'm not sure at what point a deck is a netdeck. I've seen it used as an insult against anyone who plays a set of Siege Rhinos. Is any abzan build with 4 Rhinos in it essentially a netdeck now? If I throw in a couple of Reaper of the Wild is it still a netdeck? ?
i think this is actually a good point as well. there is a difference between being a brewer with something rogue and having a pile. playing something like minotaurs in standard right now is rogue/a brew. Playing octopus tribal is a pile. Its hard to draw a line between the two but as long as you are playing a few reasonably decent close to competitive cards with a reason to play them. (this is apart from budget reasons) budget is separate from brewing.
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You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it put an evasive creature in its deck over a narrow hate card.
Quote from DARCYKUN »
If a card isn't worth your opponent removing, it's not worth putting in your deck.
There are only so many good cards and good strategies in a game. Netdecking is targeted as an excuse for losing by players who do not want to invest the time and money to become better at the game.
During our next game a third player was introduced. She stripped that card out of my hand with disruption, and suddenly my deck was hobbled, because apart from Wealth the only other wincons were some planeswalkers I hadn't drawn yet.
In other words, learn to play Magic, learn what the cards do and what you should have ready in case things happen.
I've known people to complain about net decks for a few reasons. One is that they don't have the money/want to spend the money to get the cards that will allow them to make the best decks in any format. So they say (anyone who is good) is only good because they play internet decks/have the money to buy the best cards.
Another reason I found is that some people who complain are just casual players who enjoy making their own brews for any format/tabletop play. Many of these people I find just play just for the fun and don't really go to big events. I understand this point of view, as Magic is a game and there a multiple ways to enjoy the game since not all Magic players enjoy attending big events.
I've accepted that net decking is a part of the game and I do it myself as I feel that I'm not a good enough player to build a deck to the format's weaknesses.
I stand in the middle, since I realize that netdecking will ALWAYS be a part of TCGs, and in some aspects, that kinda sucks, but who am I to discredit someone for winning even if they weren't original in doing so?
I like to look up lists and then spend a bunch of time tweaking the list till it's something I like. Then I make the purchase and over the next month or two continue to tweak the deck to my own playstyle/preferences, till it starts to perform where I want it.
So I netdeck, but I almost never keep a stock list. I always tweak my decks.
I should say that I don't always net deck either. I've had some great success just letting decks kinda build themselves (such a a g/b birthing pod deck I was running, or my current Nahiri commander deck).
There was a couple of people I was playing with when I got back into the game 6 or 7 months ago who looked down on anyone who net decked...as if they were dirty people.
Of course, they looked down on anyone who played anything outside of kitchen table casual too...the second you played anything tourny worthy, they'd shun you.
Yeah...their opinions didn't mean much to me, and it didn't take me long to figure out they're never gonna be the kinds of players I'll be able to have an enjoyable game with.
Netdecking will never go away, it is unrealistic. With that said, One argument I haven't heard against is essentially by copying a deck,you aren't participating in 50% of the game. Strategizing, constructing, and testing a creation that can compete is a huge part of this game. To copy a deck, play it, and win takes skill. I recognize this fact, but misses the bigger picture of the game and all it entails. I pesonally would not feel accomplished or fully satisfied winning with a deck that I did not design.
Netdecking will never go away, it is unrealistic. With that said, One argument I haven't heard against is essentially by copying a deck,you aren't participating in 50% of the game. Strategizing, constructing, and testing a creation that can compete is a huge part of this game. To copy a deck, play it, and win takes skill. I recognize this fact, but misses the bigger picture of the game and all it entails. I pesonally would not feel accomplished or fully satisfied winning with a deck that I did not design.
The goal should be to netdeck and then adjust to the meta you expect.
To take a pros deck straight from the Web and change nothing is a good way to lose.
The way that the secondary market works is that the "best cards" have very high demand while the second best cards have very low demand. This is because everyone wants to play with the best decks. However, the second best cards may actually be viable, not much lower in power than the best cards. If you brew, you can develop a deck that you are intimately familiar with, and which your opponent may not be. So purely from a spike perspective you have to weigh the informational advantage against the power disadvantage. Sometimes you actually do gain more by having the information disparity in your favor. Of course, you have to be really good at designing decks to metagame this way. The problem is many people aren't good at brewing and what they think might be good enough really is garbage. They think they have a rogue tier 2 deck but they really have a pile. My basic philosophy is to netdeck but if I don't find something I like then I brew. If I've tested the best decks and haven't found something that clicks that's evidence to me at least that the format is ripe for brewing. What I will not do is bring a deck I know is worse than a similar version of a netdeck.
I really don't understand why this is even still a contested topic. It doesn't matter where your opponent's deck came from, your job is to beat it. Having the attitude of "oh, you only won because of your netdeck" is not a legitimate excuse with legitimate players. Guess what? It's not against the rules to netdeck, and as a player your job is to beat anyone playing within the rules. If anything, netdecking should be a boon to homebrewers, being able to test against the best decks the minds of pros and players can put together in turn makes you a better brewer. To those of you complaining about losing to a netdeck, it sounds to me like you're really just complaining about losing and need an excuse that doesn't put the blame on you or your deck. As long as you continue to do this, your brews won't get better, your decks won't get better, and you won't get better. It's not going away unless the internet goes away, and if that happens, I think we'll have bigger problems on our hands than what MtG decks to build.
To those of you who think I'm strictly defending netdecking, you're also wrong. It's one thing to copy and paste a pro list into a shopping cart, but it's another entirely to understand why the cards were chosen, why they were chosen over other, similar cards, and how they all interact. It is often that people fail to realize pro decks are put together with other pro players and their decks in mind, and being unable to make a judgement on how to deviate from that because you don't understand what constitutes the core of the deck and what's flexible, means your deck is going to be ready for GP London or whatever, but not Sunday Standard in Everytown, USA, and you, as a player unable to understand this, aren't ready for either. You will beat all the local scrubs and casual players, but will lose miserably to everyone else who takes the game seriously enough to read and understand the deck they're playing, its ins and outs, and have tuned their decks to represent what's actually getting played locally, and then wonder why you can't ever do better than 3-2 and 2-3, despite your tier 1 deck.
The best players and builders in the game need to be able to take a good list, and then brew with it and improve it and tweak it for their local meta. 90% of complete homebrews end up being trash that doesn't compete. I've tested probably 6 or 7 homebrews over the last 6 years, and 1 was good enough that it was competitive (Master Biomancer and Geist of Saint Traft was really good together). Did I have fun with the others? Sure. Did I expect to win against competitive decks? Not really, but I learned a lot.
It's ok to want to homebrew, but don't expect to be able build a deck that can consistently beat proven competitive formulas. If you can make a deck that can even beat half the competitive field, you're doing good. But if you learn from these failed decks (and you'll only do that by looking at why proven decks are beating you), eventually, if you keep trying, you'll come up with something that actually works on some level. All proven decks at one point were homebrews. Maybe they were homebrewed by a bunch of pros in a hotel room, or cooked up in the mind of a prominent MTG article writer, or maybe even inspired by the list some schmuck posted on MTGS, but in the end, they all had to come from somewhere before they turned into everyone's favorite netdeck. Regardless, your decks are going to have to go up against them, get used to it. If you want to become a good brewer, you'll actively seek them out. They are all beatable. Well, except for Caw-Blade, nothing beat that deck except Caw-Blade.
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I have been playing this game a very long time (since Unlimited) and I don't understand how it is possible to be a solid player but not a solid brewer and vice versa. I have always thought brewing was just as much a part of Magic as playing the game; 2 primary aspects of the game. More on topic, I do whatever the heck I want but I do like to win. I play 90% competitive kitchen table (some net decking, mostly brews) and when I do show up to a tourney I am certainly going to play a net deck if it puts up better results than my brew against the expected field. Best chance of winning with a deck I can run well is the wise choice. I often netdeck just to try out great decks which in turn improves my brewing skills by opening my eyes to something I may have missed when putting together a similar build. Other times I come up with a brew, compare it to a top deck in the archetype, and end up merging the two or scrapping my own if it ends up a failure.
All that being said, I have always wanted to (and still intend to) bring one of my brews to a major event and do well. It's the greatest thing in Magic aside from "crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women".
Oh, it's totally possible. I've been playing since IA/Revised, and am a pretty good player, but I'm not so great at brewing. Brewing requires more than an understanding of the game and what makes a card "good", it also requires an understanding of the meta and what makes all the decks you don't play "good" and some people just don't have the time to keep up with it like they need to in order to prepare a good brew. A good player can probably throw something together that isn't a steaming pile of crap, but they may not have the card inventory in their minds of all the cards that they could use in their brew that might be more optimal. Brewing a deck is obviously more than taking some green cards and forests and mashing them together, it's knowing a wealth of information about the cards that are out there you can use, which is huge in modern, and almost overwhelming in Legacy. Some people just can't process a picture THAT large, at least not without substantial research and development via lots of time spent searching things and terms in Gatherer. It's a little easier for you and I, being older players. When we build a new EDH deck, we know that dumb cards like Land Equilibrium exist. When we brew for standard, we've been there and experienced the evolution of mana curves and seen countless strategies deployed that we can draw upon for inspiration. We can see a new card and recognize its potential immediately when we start comparing it to old cards we remember being broken. A good example is that as soon as I saw Nykthos spoiled, I thought "man, that reeks of Gaea's Cradle, someone's gonna build a deck around that." and for a while, that's ALL anyone built around. Gitrog Monster right now reminds me of Spiritmonger, except with abilities that are more powerful, but more niche. And brewers love this card right now, and I suspect that before he rotates, there will be some deck that manages to abuse him successfully.
These kinds of resources and comparisons are almost second nature to us now, but there's a ton of players who are new, but skilled enough that might be great players on a technical level, but don't know why they should be truly afraid of a card that says on it somewhere "pay 1 life to draw a card." I mean, I don't consider myself to be a great brewer by ANY means, but I've got a huge wealth of experience in card evaluation to draw upon that lots of players these days simply don't have unless they want to spend hours on end on gatherer.
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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'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.
To the original thread; if those who complain about netdecking got their way then it would be illegal to play a deck that has been played before, and that is an impossible situation.
At least it is an impossible situation until wotc makes a deck approval centre that is up to date, and can give its' information to all fnm points around the world precisely 2 mts before deck registration at those points. And etc for GPs/Qs/PTs/etc.
Imagine some PT team locking themselves up to brew a deck only to find that some kid made and played that deck the day before at Otaha-Gaming-shop Wednesday before the PT in Brasilia/Brasil.
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.
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The last few years if you show up with your own list, people think you're wasting their time.
The tables have turned greatly over time.
In one scenario, you have access to any card and you can buy any card, but you have to make your own deck. In the other scenario, you have access to the decklists, but in order to build that deck, you have to buy boosters until you pull the card you want.
I personally enjoy going rogue if the format allowes it, just because you get an edge over other players: there is a chance they don't know what your deck does, and outplaying them can be easier. Don't you love when your opponent has to read your cards?
There's nothing wrong with any of them, as long you are having fun
I had one guy have the audacity to try to get me to say that i lost after i 2-0'd him cause "my brew would just lose out" and that "you just got lucky beating me." he was a nice guy and offered to throw me a pack or two at the end of the night even.
sadly i declined his generous offer and ended up undefeated that day. I still wonder what was in that one pack he woulda given me...
I definitely dont hate on Netdeckers at all. In fact i take my brews online to get ideas and sometimes end up with the same sorts of decks. I played a version of aristocrats before it was a thing, and its funny cause people kept trying to tell me how bad blood artist was on the forums until a week or two later when the first aristocrats list posted a good result.
I love deckbuilding. thats why i play this game. but just because some people arent good builders doesnt mean they cant play. and some of the best brewers play the net decks because they are simply the best deck. they may want to play something else but most people dont want to show up with a less than optimal list.
I will say that I LOVE the new FNM formats as our store is now running standard pauper at least once a month. This nearly forces the so-called netdeckers to brew if they want to play and it's cool to see what they bring. I think one of the disappointments about running an established deck is when you show up with basically a tournament build of something like RW Tokens, Abzan mid, or whatever, and you get an opponent who is either brand new or just lacks a collection and doesn't realize they can usually borrow decks, etc. Nothing fun about playing Thoughtseize and seeing a hand full of random cards generally considered unplayable and knowing you'll probably end the round in 10 minutes or less. I don't especially want to be someone who discourages newer players. Standard pauper is great for leveling the playing field--awesome format!
I'll admit I have some issues with the term "netdecker". Some of the established archetypes now have tons of different builds and I only know of a few players who run tournament lists card for card (many people are within 5 cards or so though), so I'm not sure at what point a deck is a netdeck. I've seen it used as an insult against anyone who plays a set of Siege Rhinos. Is any abzan build with 4 Rhinos in it essentially a netdeck now? If I throw in a couple of Reaper of the Wild is it still a netdeck? ?
i think this is actually a good point as well. there is a difference between being a brewer with something rogue and having a pile. playing something like minotaurs in standard right now is rogue/a brew. Playing octopus tribal is a pile. Its hard to draw a line between the two but as long as you are playing a few reasonably decent close to competitive cards with a reason to play them. (this is apart from budget reasons) budget is separate from brewing.
there are reasons why there's a so called established metagame.
That being said, I was recently accused of net decking by someone who was just sore after losing to Villainous Wealth.
Villainous Wealth.
During our next game a third player was introduced. She stripped that card out of my hand with disruption, and suddenly my deck was hobbled, because apart from Wealth the only other wincons were some planeswalkers I hadn't drawn yet.
In other words, learn to play Magic, learn what the cards do and what you should have ready in case things happen.
Another reason I found is that some people who complain are just casual players who enjoy making their own brews for any format/tabletop play. Many of these people I find just play just for the fun and don't really go to big events. I understand this point of view, as Magic is a game and there a multiple ways to enjoy the game since not all Magic players enjoy attending big events.
I've accepted that net decking is a part of the game and I do it myself as I feel that I'm not a good enough player to build a deck to the format's weaknesses.
I like to look up lists and then spend a bunch of time tweaking the list till it's something I like. Then I make the purchase and over the next month or two continue to tweak the deck to my own playstyle/preferences, till it starts to perform where I want it.
So I netdeck, but I almost never keep a stock list. I always tweak my decks.
I should say that I don't always net deck either. I've had some great success just letting decks kinda build themselves (such a a g/b birthing pod deck I was running, or my current Nahiri commander deck).
There was a couple of people I was playing with when I got back into the game 6 or 7 months ago who looked down on anyone who net decked...as if they were dirty people.
Of course, they looked down on anyone who played anything outside of kitchen table casual too...the second you played anything tourny worthy, they'd shun you.
Yeah...their opinions didn't mean much to me, and it didn't take me long to figure out they're never gonna be the kinds of players I'll be able to have an enjoyable game with.
The goal should be to netdeck and then adjust to the meta you expect.
To take a pros deck straight from the Web and change nothing is a good way to lose.
To those of you who think I'm strictly defending netdecking, you're also wrong. It's one thing to copy and paste a pro list into a shopping cart, but it's another entirely to understand why the cards were chosen, why they were chosen over other, similar cards, and how they all interact. It is often that people fail to realize pro decks are put together with other pro players and their decks in mind, and being unable to make a judgement on how to deviate from that because you don't understand what constitutes the core of the deck and what's flexible, means your deck is going to be ready for GP London or whatever, but not Sunday Standard in Everytown, USA, and you, as a player unable to understand this, aren't ready for either. You will beat all the local scrubs and casual players, but will lose miserably to everyone else who takes the game seriously enough to read and understand the deck they're playing, its ins and outs, and have tuned their decks to represent what's actually getting played locally, and then wonder why you can't ever do better than 3-2 and 2-3, despite your tier 1 deck.
The best players and builders in the game need to be able to take a good list, and then brew with it and improve it and tweak it for their local meta. 90% of complete homebrews end up being trash that doesn't compete. I've tested probably 6 or 7 homebrews over the last 6 years, and 1 was good enough that it was competitive (Master Biomancer and Geist of Saint Traft was really good together). Did I have fun with the others? Sure. Did I expect to win against competitive decks? Not really, but I learned a lot.
It's ok to want to homebrew, but don't expect to be able build a deck that can consistently beat proven competitive formulas. If you can make a deck that can even beat half the competitive field, you're doing good. But if you learn from these failed decks (and you'll only do that by looking at why proven decks are beating you), eventually, if you keep trying, you'll come up with something that actually works on some level. All proven decks at one point were homebrews. Maybe they were homebrewed by a bunch of pros in a hotel room, or cooked up in the mind of a prominent MTG article writer, or maybe even inspired by the list some schmuck posted on MTGS, but in the end, they all had to come from somewhere before they turned into everyone's favorite netdeck. Regardless, your decks are going to have to go up against them, get used to it. If you want to become a good brewer, you'll actively seek them out. They are all beatable. Well, except for Caw-Blade, nothing beat that deck except Caw-Blade.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
All that being said, I have always wanted to (and still intend to) bring one of my brews to a major event and do well. It's the greatest thing in Magic aside from "crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women".
These kinds of resources and comparisons are almost second nature to us now, but there's a ton of players who are new, but skilled enough that might be great players on a technical level, but don't know why they should be truly afraid of a card that says on it somewhere "pay 1 life to draw a card." I mean, I don't consider myself to be a great brewer by ANY means, but I've got a huge wealth of experience in card evaluation to draw upon that lots of players these days simply don't have unless they want to spend hours on end on gatherer.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I find that there are some people who get so salty when they bring some random deck and lose to net decks all day
I find that some people just enjoy brewing their own decks just because they find it fun finding weird interactions or new combos
To the original thread; if those who complain about netdecking got their way then it would be illegal to play a deck that has been played before, and that is an impossible situation.
At least it is an impossible situation until wotc makes a deck approval centre that is up to date, and can give its' information to all fnm points around the world precisely 2 mts before deck registration at those points. And etc for GPs/Qs/PTs/etc.
Imagine some PT team locking themselves up to brew a deck only to find that some kid made and played that deck the day before at Otaha-Gaming-shop Wednesday before the PT in Brasilia/Brasil.
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.