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Opinions on Net decking - by A. Newby

Submitted by Uncle Ho on August 31, 2008 - 03:08

First of all, for those of you who don’t know, Net-decking is a term coined by trading card game players (in this case, Magic) for when a player in a tournament of any level plays with a deck that is an exact or near-exact deck list from a large tournament. For example, at Regionals this year, I played Marijn Lybaert’s R/G Mana Ramp deck that he used at Pro Tour Hollywood. My main deck was exactly the same as his. I Net-decked a list and went to a tournament. Many players do this at local tournaments and especially for larger tournament like Pro Tour Qualifiers or Grand Prix Trials, mainly because of the guarantee that if they don’t do well, it’s not the deck’s fault, because the deck has been proven at a high level tournament already.

Net-decking is not only anticipated for, but expected of. Most of the time, from what I’ve experience at local tournaments, when someone has a rogue deck (a deck that people don’t expect to see at a tournament, not literally a deck of Rogue creatures) the other people will be confused as to what you are playing and be interested if you do well. But, this doesn’t happen very often. More often the people who Net-decked will do well at the tournament.

Now we come to the issue.

On the one hand, there are the people who support Net-decking. They believe it’s essential to the growth of the metagame (the metagame is the current decks that one is likely to encounter at tournaments), and to be honest, it’s a big part of it. By people Net-decking, and eventually putting their own twists on the deck, we get new decks. A good example would be the Reveillark combo deck with Mirror Entity. Eventually, Mirror Entity became to slow and vulnerable to combat the huge amount of Faeries decks. The answer came in Greater Gargadon. Gargadon’s suspend is uncounterable, and it’s a very cheap engine with which to infinitely combo off your Reveillark and Body Double.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who don’t think Net-decking is good for the players because it takes away the deck building element that is a crucial part of Magic strategy. They also believe that introducing rogue decks into the metagame adds challenge and in the end, more strategy then just “Well, my deck has a 50/50 matchup against everything except Reveillark decks where my matchup is 30/70”. To tell you the truth, sometime playing Constructed Magic feels like that.

The third and last hand holds a group of people who believe both are good. I am part of this group and I think It’s important to have Net-decks and rogue decks playing together. Having a healthy mix will evolve the metagame. People’s sideboards shouldn’t really have every card specifically for a certain matchup because then the rogue decks will take advantage of that weakness.

A couple of weeks ago...

I was playing at a local tournament and the format was Standard and I was playing a deck of my own creation (so a rogue deck) and it was mono-white and I ran Wilt-Leaf Liege and Cavaliers and Kitchen Finks and Shield of the Oversoul. I also ran a LOT of removal. Unmake, Oblivion Ring, Condemn and a few other cards. What actually made me want to run this deck? Besides that fact that I love the efficient G/W creatures we got in Shadowmoor, only a week earlier was U.S. Nationals and one of the best decks was Mono-Red. My deck was essentially designed to specifically beat that red deck. I had answers to Demigod of Revenge (Condemn), and instant speed answers to activating Figure of Destiny’s abilities. Wrath of God was also a good answer to Blood Knight.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, and I beat two Mono-red decks, lost another Mono-white (similar thinking going on) and lost to a Faeries deck. Also, if that deck had become really good, it could have become a real threat to most red-based decks, but not a very good deck against Faeries or a control deck. Every metagame needs Net-decks for a sense of expectedness and it needs Rogue decks to mix it up and add something fresh to tournaments.

This article is by no means comprehensive. As you play more and more games, experience will teach you many more lessons than this article can. Your local gaming scene may be different, so take that into account also.

What else do you think is essential for winning MTG games? Got a good idea? Please Share in the comments. We'd love to hear from you!

Written for Two Headed Dragon by Andrew Newby.

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