a rather sad epiphany
General forum
Posted on Jan. 22, 2016, 12:02 p.m. by grumbledore
i realized yesterday that i have damn near forgotten how to brew creatively. i used to loathe 'netdeckers' and the whole idea of meta, and just focused on trying to be creative. now I'm more focused on winning, and i almost never brew anything just to have fun running nothing but completely janky-ass bullshit cards.
has anyone else gone through this kind of change in perspective when it comes to the game?
Epochalyptik says... #3
This thread was moved to a more appropriate forum(auto-generated comment)
January 22, 2016 12:29 p.m.
I find making competitive decks in tappedout really pointless, I mean there are already thousands of clones and variations of the same decks, so, why make another variation?
The fun here lies in making a cool and cheap deck to play for fun, it doesn't really have to be competitive, a thematic deck or a wacky combo/mechanic can do.
I made a deck with 7 different win conditions: one-hit-kill direct damage, millions of gigantic creatures, force an opponent to draw his entire deck, steal his entire deck, mill your entire deck and win, win by paying 100 mana, win by having a creature with power 20.
It was not competitive, hell it was chaotic, but it was fun.
January 22, 2016 12:29 p.m. Edited.
grumbledore says... #5
well i track all my competitive decks here too because i often edit the list slightly after events. then rebuild the deck prior to the next event. also, i maintain a pile of 'staples' and just build what i want to play that evening.
January 22, 2016 12:55 p.m.
Try playing Pauper for a month. Like still play your usual stuff at tournaments and what not but any other form of play outside of tournaments on or offline just make it pauper. It will pull your mind away.
Or EDH. That works too.
January 22, 2016 12:57 p.m.
grumbledore says... #7
hey yea i was thinking about that with pauper. plan on keeping a pauper deck in my backpack at all times just for funsies. love that format
January 22, 2016 1:26 p.m.
FAMOUSWATERMELON says... #8
I think that the most challenging part of MTG is combining those two interests (winning and brewing) and getting a good result. You don't have to feel bad about taking the Tron lands and Ugin/Karn and putting them in the same deck. But with that deck, instead of going the regular all-in GR Tron strategy, you can instead play a kind of artifact stax that your mana enables for you along with sweepers like All Is Dust (and no, that's not a random example in case you were wondering XD).
Ok, not a great example, but the point is, brewing doesn't simply mean taking two obsolete cards and putting them together to make some awesome combo that wins the game 5% of time. Brewing can also mean taking a well-known deck and adding your own touch to it.
January 22, 2016 1:42 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #9
To speak to your point about not playing with janky cards, I totally agree, it can be hard to just play cards you like at the expense of Spike. That being said, there are many ways to make certain cards shine and unfortunately sometimes you have to put them in a deck with popular cards so it can ends up feeling like a netdeck.
January 22, 2016 2:07 p.m.
grumbledore says... #10
FAMOUSWATERMELON, MindAblaze - yea, i totally agree with you guys. I've been trying to do that with one of my modern decks (not to self-promote) with some success. definitely gets some 'wait wtf are you playing!' mixed with occasional wins. a lot of the time though, it kinda just feels like a netdeck. definitely a hard balance to strike.
January 22, 2016 2:17 p.m. Edited.
MindAblaze says... #11
Your old meta breaker deck was a good example for me. You played to what the format was doing and played a few format staples in the process. It's decks like that that make me like this game still. I'm in the same boat mashing Grixis Delve and Solar Flare together...
January 22, 2016 2:40 p.m.
grumbledore says... #12
hah yea. i got so frustrated with that thing though. and i kept changing it and shit to the point that it just was a completely different deck. finally deleted it... felt disingenuous to keep it in the state it was in, and i couldn't remember what the list was like when i got most of the +1's.
January 22, 2016 2:44 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #13
I've gone through this change, and I think it is due to my definition of creative has changed. I used to think of building a creative deck meant I had to use cards that aren't commonly used - take my Mindswipe deck as an example. People would recognize Lightning Strike and Magma Jet, but a burn deck couldn't exist without them. Riddle of Lightning was my favorite card to cast because nobody knew what it did. "That's in Standard?" they would ask, especially because I had the non-Standard printing of the card.
I could barely place with the deck, easily taking out other brews but losing to competitive decks. My change happened when I realized that it was perfectly fine to use the powerful cards, but I would only enjoy doing so if they weren't used in a traditional way. Dragonlord Ojutai is arguably one of the post powerful cards in Standard, and is typically found in Esper Dragons lists. I didn't want to play the typical control deck, so I built my own version - Bant Dragons - and found success. I think this deck best defines my view of creative building by using powerful cards in a deck I designed myself.
My change seems different, but maybe you haven't forgotten how to build creatively. Maybe your definition of creative building has just changed.
TMBRLZ says... #2
It's a natural slope for people who involve themselves with competitive MTG I think. The more you play for competitive means, the less you remember the casual magic of days past. I've watched of players make that slope. I think that's the big thing about Commander. It still gives them a link to days of good ol' home brews. It's really hard to write a formula for a 100 card deck at that.
I myself stopped really doing any intensive brewing of my own design - though I do enjoy trying too. I realized I'm pretty terrible at it as my non-clinical OCD can get in the way when it comes to building sometimes. That or I get lost in non-clinical ADD and my one deck idea turns into 5 after a good 15 minutes on Gatherer.
So I've stuck to netdecking, but I despise the meta, so I look for the rogue decks that are competitive at tier 1 meta and I've found some real gems that I aim to continue to use.
Building your own deck is hard, especially when it's held against and scrutinized by a community that has been hardened against and desensitized by Top 8 lists and $500 decks.
Above all you have to remember that its only a game. You started playing for fun. Not for winning. And fun doesn't have to equal winning. This isn't a place where all your money should be going (says an LGS employee) or where you should spend all your mental and psychological resources. So grab an intro deck, kick back, and just screw around. It'll be a breath of fresh air.
January 22, 2016 12:11 p.m.