Oct 20, 2011 -- 1:46PM, tonykart34 wrote:

I just don't understand why Wizards development thinks it is more "fun" to pre-construct decks for us rather then letting us figure stuff out on our own.

Wizards of the Coast does not build our decks for us. There may be a lot of cards that aren't playable in Constructed, because of their focus on Limited gameplay, but there are still quite a few Constructed playable cards.
The problem is that, with the internet and with pro-level tournaments occurring much more often, the millions of people who play Magic are able to figure out the best deck for the current meta much more quickly than ever before. Wizards has nothing to do with this; it's the desire people have to win which pushes them to use netdecks, rather than building their own deck, combined with the fact that net-decks are updated so often it's ridiculous, that leaves us with only a handful of deck archetypes, at best, in the meta.
If Wizards were building our decks for us, you'd see many more cards like Nissa Revane , which explicitly tells you to play Nissa's Chosen . Or things like the Illusion tribe in M12, where there are literally just enough cards to actually build the tribal deck, so there's no variety. These things are rare in the overall scheme of things.
As a budget player whose favorite part of the game is building his own deck, I assure you that you can build decks other than the top-8ers and do just fine at FNM level.

Oct 20, 2011 -- 3:54PM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Oct 20, 2011 -- 1:46PM, tonykart34 wrote:

And, until we start upping their inbox with complaints... nothing will change.

Actually, nothing will change until sales go down. A vocal minority might up an inbox, but if the majority is upping sales that won't work.

Number of times the "vocal minority" cliche has been slung around by 1 person in this thread: 4

Number of times the "majority" has chimed in to agree: 0?

Number of people who find this ironic?

:-)

Oct 21, 2011 -- 12:28AM, Qmark wrote:

What?

...Assuming you meant, me?  (Or maybe just the awesome NERD spam post, in which case, nevermind!)

I was just poking fun at how many times this turn of phrase has been used by a single user in this thread when replying to various people disagreeing with how they like WotC's definitions of what archetypes/strategies are "fun".

Oct 17, 2011 -- 1:57AM, TobyornotToby wrote:

That's the problem. Some people like that, but they're just a vocal minority.

Oct 17, 2011 -- 5:27AM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Problem is, those players are a minority.

Oct 17, 2011 -- 4:48PM, TobyornotToby wrote:

EDIT: Listening to the majority, not some vocal minority.

Oct 20, 2011 -- 3:54PM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Actually,  nothing will change until sales go down. A vocal minority might up an  inbox, but if the majority is upping sales that won't work.

...Carry on.

(And no offense meant either, it's just one of those terms that gets thrown around so often and poorly when people are having these kinds of discussions I couldn't help but point it out here.)

Oct 21, 2011 -- 1:06AM, The_Fringer wrote:

(And no offense meant either, it's just one of those terms that gets thrown around so often and poorly when people are having these kinds of discussions I couldn't help but point it out here.)

Well, people that are invested enough in a game to routinely read and post on forums do tend to be a minority.  Most people play casually, they have some vague awareness, and they might chime up occasionally to say "my friend's deck does this, how can I handle it?" or "infect is overpowered!" (basically the same as the previous, but focused on a mechanic) but that's about it.  They go gaga for jank cards.  And they aren't facing 4 ofs of power cards, but typically only one or two.

The reality is just that, forum posters are the minority.

But, as the article stated, things broken by the more hardcore can trickle down to others.  Especially if a given strategy is pretty obvious, supported by plenty of non-rare/mythics in the last block or two, resulting in a deck that practically builds itself.

Anyway, I found it an interesting article, though I do wonder how things slip through.  Saying they don't want to discourage draw-go, for example, right after they release a set with Snapcaster Mage, Think Twice, and Forbidden Alchemy.  Essentially, more counterspells and instant speed draw to make it easy to keep counter mana up.  I'm tired of seeing the Snapcaster package already, as most every deck with blue is running it.

My buddy got me into magic a couple months ago.  He played the first 5 or 6 years it came out, then sold everything and stopped.  When he told me about how different colors worked he told it to me like this... Blue is best for draw and counters, Red is good for quick creatures and burn, Green is good for powerful creatures, Black is "mess with your opponent" and punish them, white is the glorious jack of all trades, master of none, and artifacts are good gimmicks.

Simplifying it obviously so I could figure out how I wanted to play, but it made sense.  Playing two colors would be more difficult than one because it increases your reliance on luck, but allows you to be more versatile.  Playing one color made you one dimensional, but focused.
 
Although it is still kind of like this, why don't developers stay to this theory?  Why are they making decks for us?   Ever play one of these Innistrad Token decks?  Insta-Win that is no fun to play.  Every card does EXACTLY what you want and that isn't because we are so smart and  built the deck right, it is because Wizards built it for us.  Please, someone, make them stop.  Get back to simplicity.