Someone not being good doesn't equal bad. There is no need to get defensive, jump to conclusions and take the opinions of some random guy so personally.
I simply don't consider them to be good players. Sure, I guess you can say "silently judge", that is a description of what I do. I generally wait until playing someone for a fair amount of matches before judging them as magic players, I don't just label people good and bad and sort them in to boxes based on me playing them a few matches and not even knowing them. That doesn't mean I judge them as people, or anything like that lol.
But even if I did, why do you care? So what? Don't take people's opinions personal, and don't ask for outside opinions if you don't want to hear them.
I don't just throw the "good player" label on to everyone. I wait for some one to prove themselves to be a "good" player before I consider them "good". Do I consider myself a good player? No, but I consider myself to be at a semi-decent level and better than most of the people at the local FNMs I go to. I haven't played competitive or in regionals or SCGs for awhile so I think it's fair to say I am currently below the truly elite players who are playing professionally right now.
What is the polite inoffensive PC way you wish me to state my personal opinion on people who only netdeck and can't build their own decks in the future?
Weewoo the PC Police are here to arrest you! Better hide!
They can be successful, but if all their are capable of doing is netdecking pro lists, I don't consider them to be good magic players. Remember, this is just my personal opinion.
The following is just my personal opinion:
You have no idea what you're talking about. There's many, many facets that go into a good Magic player. Deckbuilding is part of that. Adjusting to your meta is part of that. Making correct mulligans is part of that. Combat math is part of that. Reading your opponent is part of that.
I could name a million other things, but you can essentially boil them down into one category: play skill. Play skill is, arguably, more important to being a good player from a competitive perspective than deckbuilding is (if we remove the silly "never ever change a single card" caveat). You can be an amazing deckbuilder, but if you throw away good hands, make terrible misplays and flunk your combat math, you are a bad player and very likely to lose many of your games.
If we take a look at the opposite, a player who is very skilled, but armed with a netdeck can come to understand that deck as well as if they built it themselves. This will give them an advantage over the good deckbuilder, as they both understand their decks extremely well, but the player who is more skilled at the act of playing the game will generally stomp the good deckbuilder in almost any scenario.
Therefore, being a "good Magic player" has infinitely more to do with how good you are at actually playing the game than it does with how well you're able to brew some sweet concoction.
Remember, that's just my opinion so you can't say that I'm wrong.
The idea that good Magic players should build their own deck is like saying Lewis Hamilton should build his own racecar and F-22 pilots should build their own aircraft. There are top-tier engineers and top-tier pilots. Travis Woo can't play his way out of a paper bag but he's a great deckbuilder.
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These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
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You're all missing a key point. In modern, you net deck or lose. The best decks have been established over a sufficiently long period of time.
In standard, the "best decks" are rarely ever found. There are only a handful of tournaments and only a handful of players that go to them, most of which are copycats anyway. So it's possible you're playing with an entirely new concept than any of the top 16 decks at a standard tournament and your deck idea is indeed superior, it just never caught on because nobody showed up to a tournament with it or if they did, they lost due to poor luck. What do you think causes shifts in the so called meta game anyway? People bringing new deck ideas that crush the previously thought to be good decks. Thus, net deckers are uncreative rich copycats looking for an easy win. New deck constructors are the true pioneers with the true skill who not only operate a deck well but can build it too. You have to be good at both or you're basically half of an MTG player.
You know why I keep winning FNM? I look at the top net decks and build whatever deck kills the majority of them. If most of them contain creatures or tokens, I build an all kill deck. If it's combos, I go heavy antimagic. If it's no creatures and planeswalker overrun delay, I rush creatures and include unblockables and flyers. If it's mill, I sideboard Cranial Archive. I have a reputation for being an inexpensive deck player that you reeeeeally don't want to play against in the first round if you're one of the perpetual winners aka net deckers.
What is the polite inoffensive PC way you wish me to state my personal opinion on people who only netdeck and can't build their own decks in the future?
You can be an amazing deckbuilder, but if you throw away good hands, make terrible misplays and flunk your combat math, you are a bad player and very likely to lose many of your games.
Yep, I agree with you here completely. Being good at deck building and bad at playing the deck does not make some one a "good" player either.
The idea that good Magic players should build their own deck is like saying Lewis Hamilton should build his own racecar and F-22 pilots should build their own aircraft.
These examples seem hyperbolic. Building a strong magic deck takes nowhere close to the expertise and skill as designing, engineering and constructing a plane or car.
This thread feels like it was caught in a timewarp along about 1996 and just popped out now. I've been playin Magic competitively for 22 years now and I have never heard anybody complain about net-decking other than the raft of complaints about listserv being used to propagate Balance lists in the old single format.
You're all missing a key point. In modern, you net deck or lose. The best decks have been established over a sufficiently long period of time.
That is not true at all though. I have done pretty well at a few large regionals and SCGs with rogue decks that weren't netdecked. There are hundreds of players a hundred times better than me who consistently do well with non-netdecked rogue decks too.
Playing pro-tested netdecks is a solid way to win, but it is not the only way to win, and it is a mistake IMO to have this close-minded mentality. In my experience, the best way to win and do well in tournaments is to analyze what you think the most netdecked decks will be and then bring rogue tech to counter those decks and hit them out of nowhere.
I am not complaining about netdecks, in fact I like them because they help me to know what I can expect every time I enter in to a tournament. I just don't consider people who only play netdecks and can't build their own competitive tech to be "good" fully rounded magic players.
What is the polite inoffensive PC way you wish me to state my personal opinion on people who only netdeck and can't build their own decks in the future?
You can be an amazing deckbuilder, but if you throw away good hands, make terrible misplays and flunk your combat math, you are a bad player and very likely to lose many of your games.
Yep, I agree with you here completely. Being good at deck building and bad at playing the deck does not make some one a "good" player either.
Fair enough. I think we can both agree that it takes many things to be a good player. In my opinion play skill > deck building, but I suppose it could be argued either way.
I guess I don't fit into either camp. Some weeks I'm a Johnny who shows up with a wacky brew just to see if I can pull it off, other weeks I'm a Spike and I'll run a list I saw online just to play it and see what it's like. I guess I'm old enough to just enjoy FNM without expecting to win every week. The fun thing is that people I play with never know if they're going to be facing a stock Abzan list or Necromancer's Stockpile reanimator brew.
Personally, I like playing against both. If my opponent is playing a brew, I like to see what it can do and where the game goes. If my opponent plays a netdeck, I can see how my list and play ability stacks up against the best the format has to offer. I have also brought brews specifically to knock down established decks I felt people were running too much. In RTR-THS, I ran a brew for a while that was pretty bad overall, but absolutely packed with hate against UWx control in an attempt to discourage people from running it. (Occupational hazard of netdecking...)
I do know of players who will literally card-for-card copy whatever list that won the most recent large tournament and you can reliably predict their entire 75 every week. That would bore me and I see where that is be frustrating for players on a budget to compete with. Still, it doesn't bother me to play against them.
Conversely, I know of people who will stick by a brew they think is good even though it has gaping holes, then complain bitterly about netdeckers.
Sometimes I'll have an established deck and a brew with me and if someone needs a deck, I'll run my brew and lend the 'good' deck.
I guess I'd encourage brewers to work harder at learning the meta they expect to play against and think their brews through to the next level. If you're a budget brewer, don't just bust packs, but think about which cards are undervalued and acquire playsets for less than the cost of a pack.
I'd challenge netdeckers to step out of their comfort zone and try a brew on occasion or at least some new tech, even if your netdecking playgroup thinks it's 'bad'. Personally, I think it's hilarious to run what looks like a stock Abzan list, then rip off a maindeck Mistcutter Hydra out of nowhere and win games on the surprise factor. Also, if you are able to build tournament lists every week, consider building a couple of decks and lending one to a budget player so they can try the archetype for themselves. Might not completely eliminate the netdeck hate, but would probably go a long way.
Before this conversation gets out of hand, I would like to clarify a few things, if they make any difference.
As someone stated earlier, roguedecking is finding ways around the meta, and homebrewing is making your own deck without much outside help. When I refer to "roguedecking" I mean both the actual definition, as well as homebrew. For sake of clarity, I will separate the two now.
On regards to "netdecking." I consider netdecking to be someone who buys a good deck right off the internet. This does NOT apply to someone who A. Uses gatherer and the forums to buy the best cards for a color choice/tribal choice (take for example a soldier tribal). B. Looks at the best decks, and then tweaks them heavily to suit his store's meta (I've taken an Abzan control deck intended to be anti-creature and made it anti-enchantment simply because of the decks going on at my LGS) nor does it apply to C. Someone who looks at popular decks online, but then just uses cards that he already owns and are close enough. For sake of clarity, we will call these guys Netbrewers.
GoblinDJ has stated that he doesn't believe netdeckers are good at magic. This is his opinion, but it is most certainly wrong on a full scale picture. However, I believe it's being blown out of proportion here. We aren't accounting for the players at his LGS. It's very well possible that the majority of players at his LGS who netdeck are unskilled, and that would certainly lead to his view on them.
However, it would also be fair for GoblinDJ to step back and realize that there are certainly fantastic players out there that happen to netdeck. Typically, as I've personally encountered, it's the people who don't have a lot of money to spend on drafts, resulting in too few cards, and don't have a lot of money to spend on experimenting with decks that netdeck. To be fair, they typically budgetize the deck, and finding a way to replace certain expensive cards certainly takes some amount of skill, which can be respectable.
Hopefully this wraps up the debate in a polite manner, haha.
This thread feels like it was caught in a timewarp along about 1996 and just popped out now. I've been playin Magic competitively for 22 years now and I have never heard anybody complain about net-decking other than the raft of complaints about listserv being used to propagate Balance lists in the old single format.
Yeah, I was surprised when I came back to the game and heard that "netdeck" was still a term. It was one thing when you had to get on dialup to see what somebody else was playing; it's a little more complicated now that there is so much information and so many subtle tweaks to established archetypes. I have trouble believing a lot of people literally print off a decklist and play it week after week, primarily because that's a bad strategy as the game tends to change.
I do remember hearing a guy in my store roll his eyes and complain when I beat him with a Goblin Rabblemaster (I think the deck in question was a Mardu Warriors brew), and then later mumble under his breath about "netdecking" when someone beat him with a Siege Rhino (the opponent in question is one of the more skilled players in our shop). I inquired about his deck, a G/W Heroic brew I didn't think was very good, as politely as I could without dissing it, ("you don't think going blue instead of green would be a little more consistent?") and I got "I don't play blue based on principle." So my impression was that netdecking wasn't really a thing, and this guy's definition of Magic was maybe a little narrow.
I don't know, I go through phases. When I first saw somebody play a Stasis into a Kismet, and explain how if you had a playset of Howling Mine you could keep paying the upkeep cost until you decked your opponent, I was so excited I had to build my own "Turbo-Stasis" deck. The deck essentially built itself and I was basically stealing someone else's work, but I was new to the game and the experience taught me how to play control.
Nowadays, it's a little more complex. When I was fishing around for a new Standard deck a few months ago, decided to switch from control to aggro because maybe mono-red could be a thing, a friend said "did you see Martin Dang's Pro Tour deck?" That night I watched the video and scrapped my own list, playing almost an identical list to Dang's winning deck (I switched out maybe two cards due to card availability and personal taste). I played the same shell for weeks, but as I adjusted the deck to my store's meta I made a lot of changes. I think whether you start from your own impulses or a pro's list, the tweaking of the deck is the most important part, and that can only be done at a local level. And maybe straight-up "netdeckers" aren't good players, but if they're paying attention while they play/make minor deck design choices, they most like become better players, because they learn why something is so successful/popular.
no problem at all if you netdeck.
but I really think that building a new deck is half of the fun.
Even if I get ideas from established archetypes, I'll always change something.
If the meta is bad to the point that if I don't netdeck and run that exact list that's winning all around, then I don't stand a chance, then I'll just skip playing for some months... lol.
still, I hardly see people being toxic about any of this, instead I get praised a lot for beating people playing tier 1 legacy decks with decks running stuff like Vinelasher Kudzu instead of Tarmogoyf
As well as the emergence of Merfolk as a T1 deck in the past months. I think net-decking and lack of brewing is the only reason it has taken this long for some of these decks to finally come to light.
Does it lead to toxicity in my area? Nah, I don't think so. Does it lead to a lack of innovation and viable strategies that are out there? Yes. 100% yes.
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The reason there is animosity against net deckers is because they legitimately are awful, ruin the game, and constantly cause problems.
This statement is taking it too far. You can certainly play a competitive deck that you didn't personally come up with and still have a healthy environment. Saying they're awful and ruining the game is shallow and ill-informed and I would argue you're doing more to cause problems in the format stirring up hate against others than your average person who sees a cool deck online and wants to play it.
There seems to be a pervading conservatism throughout the competitive aspect of Magic -- that everything has been thought of, and if your idea was any good, a pro would be doing it. If a problem arises, look to what's been done already. You can even see it in action here, in the card evaluation threads. When a pro makes a card work, you'll see more 180s than a BMX festival. The deification of the pros often seems pretty toxic to the game, in that regard.
I mean, I understand net decking happens for a reason. You have pros and semi-pros that spend a ton of time figuring out a format. The world championships were decided by an Abzan Control mirror because it's the best deck in the format. If you want to play in a competitive environment you need to consider this and at least have specific reasons not to sleeve up an established deck.
But that being said, building decks is almost all of the fun. If I could figure out how to build decks and then let other people grind away with them, I would. So even when I play an established deck, I go off and do something wacky with it. But I guess that's why I'm not on the pro tour.
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As well as the emergence of Merfolk as a T1 deck in the past months. I think net-decking and lack of brewing is the only reason it has taken this long for some of these decks to finally come to light.
Does it lead to toxicity in my area? Nah, I don't think so. Does it lead to a lack of innovation and viable strategies that are out there? Yes. 100% yes.
This is exactly what I was thinking. I was just too lazy to get the stats. :
*I didn't know that Timewalk.dec had done well in a while. It's always nice to see stats from across the ocean.
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
I remember years ago there was a player in my local area that dominated the scene with a World Champion UB Control deck. He played the deck card for card and he really understood the ins and outs of the deck. After the deck rotated he struggled to find the next best deck and, lacking any real deck building skill of his own, he became the worst player in my area. To me it wasn't that his play skill was better than the other players it was the deck itself. Right now, the standard format is wide open but when he played it wasn't.
Not all people who netdeck are bad players, but some are , Not all people who brew are bad players, but some are. Sometimes though the format dictates if we get to brew or not.
If you play Legacy the odds are excellent that you're playing a list that is within 5 or 6 cards of an established net list. If not the odds are excellent you're going 2-2 or worse on the night even at a small FNM Legacy event. The card power levels are just too high in the Legacy format to allow a pure brew to do really well unless it hits the perfect string of matchups for whatever it's trying to do.
If you play Legacy the odds are excellent that you're playing a list that is within 5 or 6 cards of an established net list. If not the odds are excellent you're going 2-2 or worse on the night even at a small FNM Legacy event. The card power levels are just too high in the Legacy format to allow a pure brew to do really well unless it hits the perfect string of matchups for whatever it's trying to do.
yeah... legacy really forces you into using powerful cards.
still, you can very well use estabilished ideas and still be far from a estabilished list and still do quite well.
I managed do to well in a legacy FNM using this same deck with Duskmantle Seer as my win condition... lol
the look in the faces of people when you cast something like this in a legacy match is priceless.
specially when you win against them with it.
I even got incredibly lucky with it against a Sneak and Show deck that just happened to reveal Emrakul during my upkeep and died just like that... lol
well, the idea stands, my list is about 85% of a traditional countertop deck just with a couple different splashes that make it unique.
I skimmed the thread because it made my heart hurt, but here's my piece:
Netdeckers aren't bad players. I enjoy brewing (not that I'm any good at it), but that has made me realize that it takes a large amount of time, a great understanding of the meta, and a great understanding of the cards available in a given format to brew well. Some people just want to play magic, not spend hours trying to craft a deck that will stand up to what the people who have spent all that time and effort have made.
I just want to nitpick that I think people are confusing roguedecking with homebrewing. Roguedecking means to use a list of cards outside of an established metagame in order to go around what the players prepared for. It does not mean to build a deck from scratch with little to no outside influence. That's called a homebrew. Say for example that a Standard season is dominated by Anti-Artifact decks. Then a player comes to a Pro Tour with an All-Enchantment deck that slips right through all the artifact hate and wins the tournament. That's a roguedeck.
The difference between a roguedeck and a homebrew is on why they are being played. All roguedecks are played to catch the player base off guard. Not all homebrews are played for that reason. You will likely get various answers from different homebrewers on why they play Magic the way they do. They're on a budget, they have pet cards, they like playing with outliers, whatever it may be.
a point well made.
Back when it was Rav and Time Spiral in standard, my local meta was just overrun with Boros Deck Wins. Seriously, about 70% of the decks being played were BDW, so I brewed up a wildfire/phyrexian totem based deck that stomped a mudhole in boros decks with frightening consistency, but was basically autolose against the dralnu decks of the time. THAT was a rogue deck built to prey upon a particular meta. I got some serious hate from quite a few players for ROFLstomping them over and over again.
A little later when Lorwyn was in standard, I played a Rouges tribal deck, that wasn't very good, but I really like piloting it, and it was so satisfying when I morsel theft'd people to death. But despite being a "rogue" deck it was just a mediocre homebrew...the irony of which still cracks me up.
in the end, I play decks that I enjoy piloting, regardless of them being netdeck, roguedeck, or homebrew. Sometimes it works out well for me, sometimes it doesn't, but I always have fun piloting my deck of choice.
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I simply don't consider them to be good players. Sure, I guess you can say "silently judge", that is a description of what I do. I generally wait until playing someone for a fair amount of matches before judging them as magic players, I don't just label people good and bad and sort them in to boxes based on me playing them a few matches and not even knowing them. That doesn't mean I judge them as people, or anything like that lol.
But even if I did, why do you care? So what? Don't take people's opinions personal, and don't ask for outside opinions if you don't want to hear them.
I don't just throw the "good player" label on to everyone. I wait for some one to prove themselves to be a "good" player before I consider them "good". Do I consider myself a good player? No, but I consider myself to be at a semi-decent level and better than most of the people at the local FNMs I go to. I haven't played competitive or in regionals or SCGs for awhile so I think it's fair to say I am currently below the truly elite players who are playing professionally right now.
Weewoo the PC Police are here to arrest you! Better hide!
The following is just my personal opinion:
You have no idea what you're talking about. There's many, many facets that go into a good Magic player. Deckbuilding is part of that. Adjusting to your meta is part of that. Making correct mulligans is part of that. Combat math is part of that. Reading your opponent is part of that.
I could name a million other things, but you can essentially boil them down into one category: play skill. Play skill is, arguably, more important to being a good player from a competitive perspective than deckbuilding is (if we remove the silly "never ever change a single card" caveat). You can be an amazing deckbuilder, but if you throw away good hands, make terrible misplays and flunk your combat math, you are a bad player and very likely to lose many of your games.
If we take a look at the opposite, a player who is very skilled, but armed with a netdeck can come to understand that deck as well as if they built it themselves. This will give them an advantage over the good deckbuilder, as they both understand their decks extremely well, but the player who is more skilled at the act of playing the game will generally stomp the good deckbuilder in almost any scenario.
Therefore, being a "good Magic player" has infinitely more to do with how good you are at actually playing the game than it does with how well you're able to brew some sweet concoction.
Remember, that's just my opinion so you can't say that I'm wrong.
URW Control
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GRW Burn
EDH
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In standard, the "best decks" are rarely ever found. There are only a handful of tournaments and only a handful of players that go to them, most of which are copycats anyway. So it's possible you're playing with an entirely new concept than any of the top 16 decks at a standard tournament and your deck idea is indeed superior, it just never caught on because nobody showed up to a tournament with it or if they did, they lost due to poor luck. What do you think causes shifts in the so called meta game anyway? People bringing new deck ideas that crush the previously thought to be good decks. Thus, net deckers are uncreative rich copycats looking for an easy win. New deck constructors are the true pioneers with the true skill who not only operate a deck well but can build it too. You have to be good at both or you're basically half of an MTG player.
You know why I keep winning FNM? I look at the top net decks and build whatever deck kills the majority of them. If most of them contain creatures or tokens, I build an all kill deck. If it's combos, I go heavy antimagic. If it's no creatures and planeswalker overrun delay, I rush creatures and include unblockables and flyers. If it's mill, I sideboard Cranial Archive. I have a reputation for being an inexpensive deck player that you reeeeeally don't want to play against in the first round if you're one of the perpetual winners aka net deckers.
Yep, I agree with you here completely. Being good at deck building and bad at playing the deck does not make some one a "good" player either.
These examples seem hyperbolic. Building a strong magic deck takes nowhere close to the expertise and skill as designing, engineering and constructing a plane or car.
That is not true at all though. I have done pretty well at a few large regionals and SCGs with rogue decks that weren't netdecked. There are hundreds of players a hundred times better than me who consistently do well with non-netdecked rogue decks too.
Playing pro-tested netdecks is a solid way to win, but it is not the only way to win, and it is a mistake IMO to have this close-minded mentality. In my experience, the best way to win and do well in tournaments is to analyze what you think the most netdecked decks will be and then bring rogue tech to counter those decks and hit them out of nowhere.
I am not complaining about netdecks, in fact I like them because they help me to know what I can expect every time I enter in to a tournament. I just don't consider people who only play netdecks and can't build their own competitive tech to be "good" fully rounded magic players.
Fair enough. I think we can both agree that it takes many things to be a good player. In my opinion play skill > deck building, but I suppose it could be argued either way.
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Personally, I like playing against both. If my opponent is playing a brew, I like to see what it can do and where the game goes. If my opponent plays a netdeck, I can see how my list and play ability stacks up against the best the format has to offer. I have also brought brews specifically to knock down established decks I felt people were running too much. In RTR-THS, I ran a brew for a while that was pretty bad overall, but absolutely packed with hate against UWx control in an attempt to discourage people from running it. (Occupational hazard of netdecking...)
I do know of players who will literally card-for-card copy whatever list that won the most recent large tournament and you can reliably predict their entire 75 every week. That would bore me and I see where that is be frustrating for players on a budget to compete with. Still, it doesn't bother me to play against them.
Conversely, I know of people who will stick by a brew they think is good even though it has gaping holes, then complain bitterly about netdeckers.
Sometimes I'll have an established deck and a brew with me and if someone needs a deck, I'll run my brew and lend the 'good' deck.
I guess I'd encourage brewers to work harder at learning the meta they expect to play against and think their brews through to the next level. If you're a budget brewer, don't just bust packs, but think about which cards are undervalued and acquire playsets for less than the cost of a pack.
I'd challenge netdeckers to step out of their comfort zone and try a brew on occasion or at least some new tech, even if your netdecking playgroup thinks it's 'bad'. Personally, I think it's hilarious to run what looks like a stock Abzan list, then rip off a maindeck Mistcutter Hydra out of nowhere and win games on the surprise factor. Also, if you are able to build tournament lists every week, consider building a couple of decks and lending one to a budget player so they can try the archetype for themselves. Might not completely eliminate the netdeck hate, but would probably go a long way.
As someone stated earlier, roguedecking is finding ways around the meta, and homebrewing is making your own deck without much outside help. When I refer to "roguedecking" I mean both the actual definition, as well as homebrew. For sake of clarity, I will separate the two now.
On regards to "netdecking." I consider netdecking to be someone who buys a good deck right off the internet. This does NOT apply to someone who A. Uses gatherer and the forums to buy the best cards for a color choice/tribal choice (take for example a soldier tribal). B. Looks at the best decks, and then tweaks them heavily to suit his store's meta (I've taken an Abzan control deck intended to be anti-creature and made it anti-enchantment simply because of the decks going on at my LGS) nor does it apply to C. Someone who looks at popular decks online, but then just uses cards that he already owns and are close enough. For sake of clarity, we will call these guys Netbrewers.
GoblinDJ has stated that he doesn't believe netdeckers are good at magic. This is his opinion, but it is most certainly wrong on a full scale picture. However, I believe it's being blown out of proportion here. We aren't accounting for the players at his LGS. It's very well possible that the majority of players at his LGS who netdeck are unskilled, and that would certainly lead to his view on them.
However, it would also be fair for GoblinDJ to step back and realize that there are certainly fantastic players out there that happen to netdeck. Typically, as I've personally encountered, it's the people who don't have a lot of money to spend on drafts, resulting in too few cards, and don't have a lot of money to spend on experimenting with decks that netdeck. To be fair, they typically budgetize the deck, and finding a way to replace certain expensive cards certainly takes some amount of skill, which can be respectable.
Hopefully this wraps up the debate in a polite manner, haha.
Yeah, I was surprised when I came back to the game and heard that "netdeck" was still a term. It was one thing when you had to get on dialup to see what somebody else was playing; it's a little more complicated now that there is so much information and so many subtle tweaks to established archetypes. I have trouble believing a lot of people literally print off a decklist and play it week after week, primarily because that's a bad strategy as the game tends to change.
I do remember hearing a guy in my store roll his eyes and complain when I beat him with a Goblin Rabblemaster (I think the deck in question was a Mardu Warriors brew), and then later mumble under his breath about "netdecking" when someone beat him with a Siege Rhino (the opponent in question is one of the more skilled players in our shop). I inquired about his deck, a G/W Heroic brew I didn't think was very good, as politely as I could without dissing it, ("you don't think going blue instead of green would be a little more consistent?") and I got "I don't play blue based on principle." So my impression was that netdecking wasn't really a thing, and this guy's definition of Magic was maybe a little narrow.
I don't know, I go through phases. When I first saw somebody play a Stasis into a Kismet, and explain how if you had a playset of Howling Mine you could keep paying the upkeep cost until you decked your opponent, I was so excited I had to build my own "Turbo-Stasis" deck. The deck essentially built itself and I was basically stealing someone else's work, but I was new to the game and the experience taught me how to play control.
Nowadays, it's a little more complex. When I was fishing around for a new Standard deck a few months ago, decided to switch from control to aggro because maybe mono-red could be a thing, a friend said "did you see Martin Dang's Pro Tour deck?" That night I watched the video and scrapped my own list, playing almost an identical list to Dang's winning deck (I switched out maybe two cards due to card availability and personal taste). I played the same shell for weeks, but as I adjusted the deck to my store's meta I made a lot of changes. I think whether you start from your own impulses or a pro's list, the tweaking of the deck is the most important part, and that can only be done at a local level. And maybe straight-up "netdeckers" aren't good players, but if they're paying attention while they play/make minor deck design choices, they most like become better players, because they learn why something is so successful/popular.
but I really think that building a new deck is half of the fun.
Even if I get ideas from established archetypes, I'll always change something.
If the meta is bad to the point that if I don't netdeck and run that exact list that's winning all around, then I don't stand a chance, then I'll just skip playing for some months... lol.
still, I hardly see people being toxic about any of this, instead I get praised a lot for beating people playing tier 1 legacy decks with decks running stuff like Vinelasher Kudzu instead of Tarmogoyf
The timing of your statement couldn't be poorer since many recent big tournaments have seen decks place in the top 8 such as:
Emeria Control (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10539&f=MO)
Allies (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10154&d=258422&f=MO)
Time Walk (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10434&d=259726&f=MO)
Lantern Control (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10481&d=259962&f=MO)
Abzan Ascendency (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10433&d=259717&f=MO)
Slivers (http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/slivers_with_adam_bowman.html)
As well as the emergence of Merfolk as a T1 deck in the past months. I think net-decking and lack of brewing is the only reason it has taken this long for some of these decks to finally come to light.
Does it lead to toxicity in my area? Nah, I don't think so. Does it lead to a lack of innovation and viable strategies that are out there? Yes. 100% yes.
Modern Warp / UR Control / UR Storm / Naya Breachshift / ElectroBalance
Solidarity / Lands / Sneak and Show / Grixis Delver / Reanimator / Belcher / Storm / Dredge
This statement is taking it too far. You can certainly play a competitive deck that you didn't personally come up with and still have a healthy environment. Saying they're awful and ruining the game is shallow and ill-informed and I would argue you're doing more to cause problems in the format stirring up hate against others than your average person who sees a cool deck online and wants to play it.
But that being said, building decks is almost all of the fun. If I could figure out how to build decks and then let other people grind away with them, I would. So even when I play an established deck, I go off and do something wacky with it. But I guess that's why I'm not on the pro tour.
Live streaming Casual Magic: the Gathering
Sundays at 7:00 PM Eastern Time / 4:00 PM Pacific Time
Follow along on Instagram (@kokoshomebrews) as I create casual tribal decks
and try to build around crazy combos, then play em on stream!
|| WBG || GW || GB || GWU ||
This is exactly what I was thinking. I was just too lazy to get the stats. :
*I didn't know that Timewalk.dec had done well in a while. It's always nice to see stats from across the ocean.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Not all people who netdeck are bad players, but some are , Not all people who brew are bad players, but some are. Sometimes though the format dictates if we get to brew or not.
yeah... legacy really forces you into using powerful cards.
still, you can very well use estabilished ideas and still be far from a estabilished list and still do quite well.
for example, I have a countertop deck that's WUB it runs a full playset of Lim-dûl's Vault along with Counterbalance, sensei's divining top and force of will. And yet, Lim-dûl's Vault happens to be one of the stars of said deck, even if normally people don't think about it.
I managed do to well in a legacy FNM using this same deck with Duskmantle Seer as my win condition... lol
the look in the faces of people when you cast something like this in a legacy match is priceless.
specially when you win against them with it.
I even got incredibly lucky with it against a Sneak and Show deck that just happened to reveal Emrakul during my upkeep and died just like that... lol
well, the idea stands, my list is about 85% of a traditional countertop deck just with a couple different splashes that make it unique.
I'm a pretty bad net decker myself so I can't say much
Netdeckers aren't bad players. I enjoy brewing (not that I'm any good at it), but that has made me realize that it takes a large amount of time, a great understanding of the meta, and a great understanding of the cards available in a given format to brew well. Some people just want to play magic, not spend hours trying to craft a deck that will stand up to what the people who have spent all that time and effort have made.
a point well made.
Back when it was Rav and Time Spiral in standard, my local meta was just overrun with Boros Deck Wins. Seriously, about 70% of the decks being played were BDW, so I brewed up a wildfire/phyrexian totem based deck that stomped a mudhole in boros decks with frightening consistency, but was basically autolose against the dralnu decks of the time. THAT was a rogue deck built to prey upon a particular meta. I got some serious hate from quite a few players for ROFLstomping them over and over again.
A little later when Lorwyn was in standard, I played a Rouges tribal deck, that wasn't very good, but I really like piloting it, and it was so satisfying when I morsel theft'd people to death. But despite being a "rogue" deck it was just a mediocre homebrew...the irony of which still cracks me up.
in the end, I play decks that I enjoy piloting, regardless of them being netdeck, roguedeck, or homebrew. Sometimes it works out well for me, sometimes it doesn't, but I always have fun piloting my deck of choice.