I'll reference lists for ideas and commonalities, but I'll never be caught dead replicating one. If 50% of one of my decks mirrors someone else's, it's by coincidence—not design.
who cares if your deck is like everyone else's? that just means that you're designing it well or you realize that thoses lists are good or better than what you were trying.
i'm sorry, but if this is another one of those "i don't want to netdeck or play whatever everyone else is playing" stories, they just really get to me because they're rooted in absurdity. if you're a tournament player, then you play what wins, not because it makes you feel good as a person. and it's not to be taken as killing innovation or people thinking for themselves, because i'm somone that gets annoyed when i see exact 75 card netdecks.
sorry for the rant, but the sooner most people realize that netdecking isn't something evil or whatever, the sooner they can move on as a player.
that being said, i think starting with the basic junk reanimator shell and then expanding from there is the best way to approach it. and the reason that your list may very well look like other's is, again, because you realized it was just the best way to do it.
again, sorry if this wasn't helpful and it wasn't intended to be harsh or anything
Blue is the best color ever. How do you deal?
Team GFG - "gulf, foxtrot, gulf" Twitter: Burning_Forest
I'll reference lists for ideas and commonalities, but I'll never be caught dead replicating one. If 50% of one of my decks mirrors someone else's, it's by coincidence—not design.
who cares if your deck is like everyone else's? that just means that you're designing it well or you realize that thoses lists are good or better than what you were trying.
i'm sorry, but if this is another one of those "i don't want to netdeck or play whatever everyone else is playing" stories, they just really get to me because they're rooted in absurdity. if you're a tournament player, then you play what wins, not because it makes you feel good as a person. and it's not to be taken as killing innovation or people thinking for themselves, because i'm somone that gets annoyed when i see exact 75 card netdecks.
sorry for the rant, but the sooner most people realize that netdecking isn't something evil or whatever, the sooner they can move on as a player.
that being said, i think starting with the basic junk reanimator shell and then expanding from there is the best way to approach it. and the reason that your list may very well look like other's is, again, because you realized it was just the best way to do it.
again, sorry if this wasn't helpful and it wasn't intended to be harsh or anything
You shouldn't be sorry. And you could probably have gotten away with being more harsh. Sometimes people need a boot to the rearsection to realize how backward their thinking is.
Also, every time someone says "I don't want to netdeck because I want to be different from everyone else" I think of two things: 1) Some teenager with serious angst issues and a lack of self confidence 2) Some crappy hipster wannabe who gives us real hipsters a bad name
(at)MrEnglish22 "still a better Commander card than Emmara Tandris" -On the topic of Squire
I'm neither, for the record. I'm someone who understands the value of trial and error, and experimentation; for me, over half of the fun in Magic is deck creation and editing. The plasticity of the game is what makes it so wonderful. I'm not a tournament player and I know I'm never going to end up traveling beyond my local FNM to play the game. I play to win, but I want to discover the means.
I'm sorry if it offends you somehow that the game should be more than netdecking and imitating better players, but I never chastised anyone for doing so themselves. I'm more than entitled to the experience I enjoy most, and if we sat down to play together you'd probably win. But I'd rather lose with an original, flawed creation than win without one to call my own. That shouldn't be offensive to any of you, even if you disagree. My thinking isn't backward, and I don't need a booting. Your ignorance stands corrected, and I accept your apology.
And for the record, there are absolutely no hipsters of any kind who do not give themselves the worst name imaginable. If Osama bin Laden had spent his last days wearing horn-rimmed glasses and whining about how Rilo Kiley sounds best on vinyl, he couldn't have done any more damage to your collective image than "the real thing".
To whom it may concern: it's getting really old, being unable to see the top half of anything autocarded in the first post of each thread. Fixplz,kthx.
You shouldn't be sorry. And you could probably have gotten away with being more harsh. Sometimes people need a boot to the rearsection to realize how backward their thinking is.
Also, every time someone says "I don't want to netdeck because I want to be different from everyone else" I think of two things: 1) Some teenager with serious angst issues and a lack of self confidence 2) Some crappy hipster wannabe who gives us real hipsters a bad name
i dont net deck. im not a hipster or want to be a hipster. personally i just do not like playing a deck that was not made by me for me and how i want to play. I have however looked online for ideas and other things that may or may not be good for the deck. For instance i was building the Bant Control deck before it became a deck type in standard. When it became a deck type i compared mine to those decks already proven to be good and factored in the local meta when making my changes.
Personally i just like playing my own version of a deck instead of something else another person came up with. a lot of it is due to lack of experiance with using the deck and why certain cards were chosen for what match ups. I do not have the luxury of play testing against other decks until FNM which has lead to game losses with good decks because i do not know how to play them as intended.
either way complaining about it is just as annoying as seeing someone who can play with a different net deck each week like it were going out of style.
@Tzar the "us real hipsters" thing was a joke. And the post in general was a rant because people rarely ever have a real justification for net decking other than to try and increase their ego or whatever. I agree with you about the Bin-Laden hipster thing, but the mental image it brings up makes me laugh a little.
I'm not going to say you should 100% copy/paste a deck from whatever SCG Open, but in 90% of situations you won't be able to build that specific style of deck much better in any reasonable timeframe. Taking 1stPlaceSCGOpen.dec and playing it at your FNM is a pretty easy way to lose. I'm also all for experimentation. That's why my Esper Control deck ran Sphere of Safety and I traded for the entire Epic Experiment deck when I first heard about it. And my current G/W deck runs 4 Wolfir Avenger and 0 Rancor.
There's things to be gained from trying stuff out on your own, but simply dismissing something because you don't want to net deck is one of the most foolish and rage inducing things I hear about.
There's plenty of fun in brewing, but I avoid brewing until after I have a more competetive deck built. And even then the majority of my own brewing goes into more diverse (in terms of card availability) formats, like Modern and EDH
The bottom line is this: all your brewing from stratch while refusing to netdeck will pretty commonly lead you to the realization that your deck is going to look hella similar to stuff of the same archtype, and refusal to play the best cards possible for the archtype just to stay different is backwards thinking.
On actual topic: I agree with 13 about the Human reanimator deck being more enjoyable than the standard Junk reanimator. I haven't tested with the deck a lot, but it seems like Angel of Glory's Rise decks handle Rest in Peace better than Junk decks do. But that was only from like 4 post-board games with the deck.
(at)MrEnglish22 "still a better Commander card than Emmara Tandris" -On the topic of Squire
The bottom line is this: all your brewing from stratch while refusing to netdeck will pretty commonly lead you to the realization that your deck is going to look hella similar to stuff of the same archtype, and refusal to play the best cards possible for the archtype just to stay different is backwards thinking.
This can not be said enough, this needs to be stickied somewhere. Most people who are decent deck builders and have a decent eye for card evaluation, when tasked with creating a specific deck, are going to finish with an end product relatively similar to what is being played at the tournament level. Ask people around here to make a G/W Aggro deck, or a U/W deck......most of us will and end up posting something that looks pretty much the same, with slight changes to suit personal preference/local meta.
It is true that from time to time people make choices that mix up the meta, and I am not saying at all that experimentation isn't worth doing (who would have thought Chronic Flooding would have been part of a winning deck). More often than not though, things tend to get co-opted so to speak and it doesn't take long for new tech to catch on, so even these breakthrough ideas eventually begin to become the norm.
For these reasons I see no reason to have any problem with using "netdecks", as in most cases it's relatively similar to what you would have made anyways, and it gives you a quick jumping off point to make changes to suit your own personal preference and/or meta. Just because you take someones deck offline or from a tournament, doesnt mean there cant be a certain amount of your own brewing going on. After brewing enough, you come to find what are just generally your best options, and those are what you run.
"I have existed from the morning of the world and I shall exist until the last star falls from the night. Although I have taken the form of Gaius Caligula, I am all men as I am no man and therefore I am a God."
There's also the slight problem of cash flow for some of us. At the launch of each new set, I try to buy at least three booster boxes to kick start my card pool; this leaves me with a ton of good stuff, more often than not, but it does not net me four Angel of Serenity or Thragtusk , etc. In fact, not by a LONG shot. I make reasonable efforts to build with top-tier rares wherever I can find them, but I can't justify dropping $350 per deck if I want to copy a pro's work. There have to be limits somewhere.
To whom it may concern: it's getting really old, being unable to see the top half of anything autocarded in the first post of each thread. Fixplz,kthx.
The bottom line is this: all your brewing from stratch while refusing to netdeck will pretty commonly lead you to the realization that your deck is going to look hella similar to stuff of the same archtype, and refusal to play the best cards possible for the archtype just to stay different is backwards thinking.
This can not be said enough, this needs to be stickied somewhere. Most people who are decent deck builders and have a decent eye for card evaluation, when tasked with creating a specific deck, are going to finish with an end product relatively similar to what is being played at the tournament level. Ask people around here to make a G/W Aggro deck, or a U/W deck......most of us will and end up posting something that looks pretty much the same, with slight changes to suit personal preference/local meta.
I'm not entirely sure about that sentiment- but even as somebody who likes to configure their own decks, I find it crucial to observe the more popular decks in each format (and even the notsopopular ones) to reach a better understanding. To this end, I think complaining about netdecking is like saying "I don't want to learn about Magic's intricacies, I just want to play my cards!" which has no place in competitive Magic.
There's also the slight problem of cash flow for some of us. At the launch of each new set, I try to buy at least three booster boxes to kick start my card pool; this leaves me with a ton of good stuff, more often than not, but it does not net me four Angel of Serenity or Thragtusk , etc. In fact, not by a LONG shot. I make reasonable efforts to build with top-tier rares wherever I can find them, but I can't justify dropping $350 per deck if I want to copy a pro's work. There have to be limits somewhere.
so you spend like $300 on new cards, but can't come up with a deck? this is why buying singles will almost always trump buying packs
Blue is the best color ever. How do you deal?
Team GFG - "gulf, foxtrot, gulf" Twitter: Burning_Forest
