The reason why I ask this is because when it comes to building an EDH / Commander deck it requires some form of netdecking as in using the Internet to help identify what cards and strategies go with said Commander to make for more optimized builds as opposed to less optimized builds. If you didn't have Internet Access like in the old days of Paper Magic, you literally had to rely on going through books of set expansions to find the right cards you're looking for or dig through thousands of common and uncommon bulk cards at your Local Game Store (LGS).
Netdecking is what separates those who are able to brew their decks more creatively as opposed to those who struggle with being as creative as those that are without proven game data or the Internet. When I first started playing MTG we didn't have anyone netdecking as the players at my locals with the best decks were the ones who put more time and effort into crafting their decks as opposed to players like myself at the time who weren't familiar with card type ratios and having the knowledge to build decks in a way that was just as satisfying as those that didn't netdeck.
Without the Internet I can imagine it being incredibly hard for an EDH / Commander player especially a newbie trying to find functionally identical cards in playsets within less time than it is with using the Internet in some way. Imagine If EDH / Commander was invented as a format WAY before 2009 like in the mid to late 90's when our Internet wasn't where it is right now. How would players be able to access the official rules unless it was from a Wizards product or via Strategy Guide that book stores like Barnes & Noble used to sell?
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
To start, I think that there is a lot of room between 1:1 netdecking from a specific list and totally free-form deck creation (looking through your collection and various set lists to create a list with zero outside support). While I have used EDHREC can be used to form a "most average decklist" or to find decklists that others are using (which is undeniably netdecking), I have also used the site as a final pass after assembling an initial list to see if there are any high-synergy cards that I have forgotten or never heard of. The fact that the site uses usage and synergy data (what percentage of decks with the commander use other cards) rather than measuring win percentages of the decks (which is typically the statistic thought of when referring to netdecking, such as grabbing tournament-winning decks) is also a notable consideration... at least for that site.
At the end of the day, I can accept that player budgets may force creative limitations upon a player in a deck. What I have a really hard time accepting, however, is that Ignorance or simple Forgetfulness could be considered a genuine source of "creativity". In my mind, creativity originates from active decision-making and lacking the information needed to make that decision means that no creativity is going on.
Let me give an example: An informed player who knows about the 4-5 one-drop mana elves and who makes the specific choice not to use boreal druid because they feel that a random snow card disrupts their theme or because they have done the math and figure that their deck could reliably function with one fewer mana dorks and one more high-end beater is being creative in their deck design. An ignorant player who has never heard of boreal druid is not making any sort of active decision regarding its inclusion and exclusion and is thus not exercising any degree of creativity through its exclusion. Even if the final decklists of the informed and ignorant players look the same in the end, only one of them made a creative choice.
While I do feel that ignorance leads to more diversity among decklists, it is difficult for me to attribute this variety to creativity in good faith. It is true that when people have access to the information they need, decks homogenize. For any commander, there are one or two builds that best suit their needs and the most synergistic cards are rarely ambiguous (though they may be obscure to those without information). Likewise, the best "goodstuff" cards of each color are rarely ambiguous. Due to the large deck-size, singleton nature of the format, and the general assumption of casual mutliplayer games that commander often comes with, this format is actually one of the most forgiving when it comes to expressing creativity at the cost of power.
Making a "creative change" to a decklist in standard (where the format is often far more "solved") without pummeling your win rate is very nearly difficult unless your skill level is among the highest tiers. Meanwhile, players with relatively untuned commander decks can still eke out wins at quite a few game tables. At the end of the day, the problem with homogenization has not to do with the curse of "information" but with an unwillingness of players to go beyond the information to add a personal touch to their decks, even if it will mean a small handicap.
It also depends alot at what fnm place you play.
I moved 2 weeks ago and started playing at a diffrent fnm area.
Before i would win 20-30* of the time and adjust my decks to that.
Nothing to strong or oppresive.
At the new location, i havnt won yet or even come close to being the leader at the table at any given time.
They used way more expensive cards at the other fnm store, but here everything in the deck serves the purpose of making the deck work as best as possible. At the old fnm store i felt people added alot more good cards instead of going for the rough cards that make you win earlier.
Im in the proces of finding new decks/strategies, but ive been playing for 2 years only so im also searching premade decks, testing them online and seeing what works and what doesnt.
Im the ignorant player on the post above me
Generally, 'creative' and 'unique' in the context of EDH are synonyms for 'bad' so I don't really value those things. Additionally, believing that your specific card choices are somehow special is fairly pretentious. In general, everything you're doing has probably been done before. There are exceptions of course, but those exceptions eventually become the standard and the next guy sees a 'creative' choice from a year ago as 'netdecking' today. It is a never-ending cycle, one which accelerates as technology improves and the player base expands.
Since the format's inception there have been tools available to aid in deckbuilding (we just used Gatherer back in the day) and believe me, there was the same vocal minority of folks complaining about people using those tools as there are today. Its best to ignore them, they're like the anti-vaxxers of Magic.
If finding cards that you think no one else is playing turns your crank, by all means enjoy yourself, but its not something most people are hung up on.
Most decklists that are posted are bad. They almost never have enough ramp or card draw, and are almost always jam packed with expensive cards that are going to clog up in their hand and be super clunky.
Building a good deck almost requires you to avoid netdecking.
i dont' think it is. i think there are a lot of great resources out there to help with deck building that didn't exist 10 years ago.
i think a bigger problem is that card design has become heavily skewed to create cards that edh players will want. this increases ubiquity between decks. we get less creative as the volume of good cards/staples increases, especially with easier access to them than ever before. you're less likely to dig through your box of crap in the closet to find obscure synergies to fill out a deck, and more likely to say well i need a cyclonic rift here. back in the day, there wasn't really stuff specifically being designed for the format. you had to make due with whatever was laying around. it lead to some pretty creative deck building and even more creative board states.
i also don't necessarily see any problem with net decking. not every pilot is also a good builder. even then, someone can netdeck and because the format is so diverse and wild given the nature of multiplayer, they can drive that deck into a brick wall and lose horribly pretty easily.
i think if you really want to see what the average edh group/environment is like its worth it to join some gaming communities on social media. we forget that in coming here we're taking our game a step further, we're diving deeper than most believe it or not. for example; i recently joined a facebook community oriented around magic and the edh decks being posted... well, its far different from here. most don't know how to build or even want to put in the effort to research what works. most don't analyze their build after they slap it together. they don't hone it after they lose. most won't add more removal, or more answers, instead sticking to a singular insular gameplan. most will just gripe over counterspells, or label something like iroas as a cedh deck because it can poop out a gisela on turn 5 and they just have no way to deal with it. almost every day i'm seeing these things pop up in my news feed. i try to educate, explain why their deck isn't working, or what they can do instead of just *****ing... but that's still a fight. god forbid we run interaction while complaining that combo decks just masturbate.
so, i suppose all of these things come together to make the person who does take those extra steps - analyzes their builds, researches better cards and synergies, thinks about strategy, gets better cards even - all of these things come together to make the disparity between an edh player here vastly different from the average player.
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Netdecking is what separates those who are able to brew their decks more creatively as opposed to those who struggle with being as creative as those that are without proven game data or the Internet. When I first started playing MTG we didn't have anyone netdecking as the players at my locals with the best decks were the ones who put more time and effort into crafting their decks as opposed to players like myself at the time who weren't familiar with card type ratios and having the knowledge to build decks in a way that was just as satisfying as those that didn't netdeck.
Without the Internet I can imagine it being incredibly hard for an EDH / Commander player especially a newbie trying to find functionally identical cards in playsets within less time than it is with using the Internet in some way. Imagine If EDH / Commander was invented as a format WAY before 2009 like in the mid to late 90's when our Internet wasn't where it is right now. How would players be able to access the official rules unless it was from a Wizards product or via Strategy Guide that book stores like Barnes & Noble used to sell?
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
At the end of the day, I can accept that player budgets may force creative limitations upon a player in a deck. What I have a really hard time accepting, however, is that Ignorance or simple Forgetfulness could be considered a genuine source of "creativity". In my mind, creativity originates from active decision-making and lacking the information needed to make that decision means that no creativity is going on.
Let me give an example: An informed player who knows about the 4-5 one-drop mana elves and who makes the specific choice not to use boreal druid because they feel that a random snow card disrupts their theme or because they have done the math and figure that their deck could reliably function with one fewer mana dorks and one more high-end beater is being creative in their deck design. An ignorant player who has never heard of boreal druid is not making any sort of active decision regarding its inclusion and exclusion and is thus not exercising any degree of creativity through its exclusion. Even if the final decklists of the informed and ignorant players look the same in the end, only one of them made a creative choice.
While I do feel that ignorance leads to more diversity among decklists, it is difficult for me to attribute this variety to creativity in good faith. It is true that when people have access to the information they need, decks homogenize. For any commander, there are one or two builds that best suit their needs and the most synergistic cards are rarely ambiguous (though they may be obscure to those without information). Likewise, the best "goodstuff" cards of each color are rarely ambiguous. Due to the large deck-size, singleton nature of the format, and the general assumption of casual mutliplayer games that commander often comes with, this format is actually one of the most forgiving when it comes to expressing creativity at the cost of power.
Making a "creative change" to a decklist in standard (where the format is often far more "solved") without pummeling your win rate is very nearly difficult unless your skill level is among the highest tiers. Meanwhile, players with relatively untuned commander decks can still eke out wins at quite a few game tables. At the end of the day, the problem with homogenization has not to do with the curse of "information" but with an unwillingness of players to go beyond the information to add a personal touch to their decks, even if it will mean a small handicap.
I moved 2 weeks ago and started playing at a diffrent fnm area.
Before i would win 20-30* of the time and adjust my decks to that.
Nothing to strong or oppresive.
At the new location, i havnt won yet or even come close to being the leader at the table at any given time.
They used way more expensive cards at the other fnm store, but here everything in the deck serves the purpose of making the deck work as best as possible. At the old fnm store i felt people added alot more good cards instead of going for the rough cards that make you win earlier.
Im in the proces of finding new decks/strategies, but ive been playing for 2 years only so im also searching premade decks, testing them online and seeing what works and what doesnt.
Im the ignorant player on the post above me
Currently Playing:
Multiplayer EDH Lists (click italics for a link to the thread!)
[Primer] Lord of Tresserhorn - Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do[Primer] Roon of the Hidden Realm - Rhino Blink
5 Color Tribal Guide (Slivers, Atogs, Allies, Spirits)
Also Playing (most decklists can be found on my profile)
MarathGeistKamahlGrenzoBolasThassaGitrog
PiratesZurVial Smasher&ThrasiosYennettJhoira(cEDH)Strix(Pauper)
Legacy: Maverick
Modern:
Melira PodRIP 1/19/15GWHatebearsGenerally, 'creative' and 'unique' in the context of EDH are synonyms for 'bad' so I don't really value those things. Additionally, believing that your specific card choices are somehow special is fairly pretentious. In general, everything you're doing has probably been done before. There are exceptions of course, but those exceptions eventually become the standard and the next guy sees a 'creative' choice from a year ago as 'netdecking' today. It is a never-ending cycle, one which accelerates as technology improves and the player base expands.
Since the format's inception there have been tools available to aid in deckbuilding (we just used Gatherer back in the day) and believe me, there was the same vocal minority of folks complaining about people using those tools as there are today. Its best to ignore them, they're like the anti-vaxxers of Magic.
If finding cards that you think no one else is playing turns your crank, by all means enjoy yourself, but its not something most people are hung up on.
Most decklists that are posted are bad. They almost never have enough ramp or card draw, and are almost always jam packed with expensive cards that are going to clog up in their hand and be super clunky.
Building a good deck almost requires you to avoid netdecking.
The cake based on the recipe tasted delicious. The one made without the recipe tasted horrible.
Which cake was better?
i think a bigger problem is that card design has become heavily skewed to create cards that edh players will want. this increases ubiquity between decks. we get less creative as the volume of good cards/staples increases, especially with easier access to them than ever before. you're less likely to dig through your box of crap in the closet to find obscure synergies to fill out a deck, and more likely to say well i need a cyclonic rift here. back in the day, there wasn't really stuff specifically being designed for the format. you had to make due with whatever was laying around. it lead to some pretty creative deck building and even more creative board states.
i also don't necessarily see any problem with net decking. not every pilot is also a good builder. even then, someone can netdeck and because the format is so diverse and wild given the nature of multiplayer, they can drive that deck into a brick wall and lose horribly pretty easily.
i think if you really want to see what the average edh group/environment is like its worth it to join some gaming communities on social media. we forget that in coming here we're taking our game a step further, we're diving deeper than most believe it or not. for example; i recently joined a facebook community oriented around magic and the edh decks being posted... well, its far different from here. most don't know how to build or even want to put in the effort to research what works. most don't analyze their build after they slap it together. they don't hone it after they lose. most won't add more removal, or more answers, instead sticking to a singular insular gameplan. most will just gripe over counterspells, or label something like iroas as a cedh deck because it can poop out a gisela on turn 5 and they just have no way to deal with it. almost every day i'm seeing these things pop up in my news feed. i try to educate, explain why their deck isn't working, or what they can do instead of just *****ing... but that's still a fight. god forbid we run interaction while complaining that combo decks just masturbate.
so, i suppose all of these things come together to make the person who does take those extra steps - analyzes their builds, researches better cards and synergies, thinks about strategy, gets better cards even - all of these things come together to make the disparity between an edh player here vastly different from the average player.