Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lorcania podcast.
My name's Max.
And I'm Sam.
And we are back at you with a brand new episode, Warning.
This might be the most controversial topic and this is definitely a topic that people
are passionate about that we have covered during our now 18 episodes of this podcast.
Pretty impressive stuff.
Every other week, Sam and I are at you with a brand new episode.
So that's pretty exciting stuff.
This topic, the controversial topic that I alluded to, is that of net decking.
It is a term that is often used with a negative connotation.
This term has really been around since card games were popularized on the internet in
chat forums and discussion groups.
People started to be able to ideate over concepts, ideas, and deck lists in a large think tank
style capacity, more so than in the small little area or local clusters that they used
to do it in previous because they weren't connected the way the internet connected all
of us.
Have you heard this term thrown around a whole lot in your shorter lifespan of playing card
games?
Yes, mostly through you.
You haven't heard it thrown around in the tournament scene too, too much for Lurkana?
No, thankfully I haven't had to deal with that.
I think that's fair.
So net decking, the idea is that you're taking a deck list directly from the internet and
you are just using that list.
Usually it is one of the quote best decks at the particular time in the meta.
So it typically can be frowned upon and the reason it gets frowned upon is because the
perceived idea is you're unoriginal and that you just kind of used an idea that other people
came up with.
I want to dive into that concept and I'm going to try to do it in the most constructive manner
that I can because I do think there are benefits to being original in the TCG space with concern
to deck building and I think there are benefits to following in the footsteps of what other
people have done.
I think blazing new trails or following an established path both have their merits and
both have their drawbacks.
My goal here is to just kind of drop maybe some hard truths and start to kind of clear
the air a little bit and share what I think is at least my perspective and I imagine probably
pretty close to your perspective as well over our discussions over time talking about net
decking.
Yes, I would agree.
I mean to be honest with me being a newer player that's kind of all I've really known was I
take an internet-based deck and I make it and then if I want to make a couple tweaks
I do.
The first outing you had with Constructed Lurkana there was no net decks.
That's true.
When we were playing in the first chapter we were both just building stuff.
I was playing purple steel.
You were playing blue red.
So it was definitely different times.
Not that both of those decks aren't decks now.
The amethyst steel decks have become pretty popular now known as the repeat decks in the
current meta.
Of course the popsicle style ruby sapphire decks have just been dominant since Rise of
the Floodborne.
I think that it's fair to say that there is no right or wrong and the longer the game
evolves the less right and wrong there is.
We're starting to see color pairs come out of the woodwork that have never had the chance
to see the light of a game table.
Yeah, I was just talking about that.
It's really nice to be able to see these new color combos popping up.
Absolutely.
I've been playing a lot of blurple lately.
If you haven't checked it out on stream, check us out on our stream.
We don't often plug it on the podcast.
Somebody's twitch.tv slash supraliminalfilms.
That's all one word.
Supraliminalfilms.
If you can spell it, you can find us.
That of course is part of the group.
We are a supraliminal entertainment group.
Sam and I in the illumination podcast are a part of that.
I've been with the group for a long, long time.
Let's not talk about it.
And Sam has been contributing for quite some time despite not wanting to do that when we
first started dating.
That's a lot for me.
That is quite a bit for you.
So back onto topic here, we're also seeing the surf and turf decks, the blue green decks,
as they're known if they're playing the Tamatoas and the Clarabelles.
We're seeing those come into light.
We're just seeing a lot of cool stuff get popularized.
And that is through people who are brewing, cooking as they're calling it these days.
They're cooking.
Okay.
They're cooking over there.
But I don't love that term because people have applied cooking to somebody who's taking
a long turn and maybe like call their way back into a game like, oh, they're cooking
or like comboing off.
They're cooking off.
But also if somebody's playing a deck that is new or like something no one's seen before,
they're cooking like, oh, they're over there cooking up something.
I haven't heard that one.
It's pretty new.
Okay.
Yeah.
The new turn of phrase brewing is the old standby for it.
You're brewing up a new deck.
Go into why there is a bad rap in terms of pointing in that deck.
I think a lot of this is false.
The bad rap is given to people who play an established deck for a lot of bad reasons.
Sam just pointed out a great reason why somebody might use internet-based deck lists as a resource
because they're a new player and they want to try to level their game up.
That is extremely common.
It could also be that the person doesn't have access to all of the cards yet.
So they're trying to build on a budget.
However, they're using their hobby to help fuel the cost of their hobby.
So being able to go to a local game store for a set championship or even a more competitive
locals with maybe a better prize payout is a fantastic way to take store credit, turn
it into yet more store credit, and then on top of that store credit, build up a bigger
pool so that you can buy your product.
So something like a Ruby Amethyst deck or something that is on the lower end of cost
is very, very attractive to some players who simply can't afford to go out and buy all
of the cards they need to play every or any deck they so choose.
So I think it's a little bit ableist, a little bit kind of look downy for less reasons than
it should, that being one of them.
Another thing to think about is don't use the idea of pointing at somebody and saying,
oh, well, I just lost to somebody who has no originality or has no ability to build
a deck and if they just weren't net decking, I might've won.
Might be true, might be false, but really in that instance, all you're really doing
is shifting blame.
You're not owning up to the fact that you lost because maybe you didn't put in the same
amount of work.
And that's another thing to call out on the opposite side of the people who are playing
these established deck archetypes.
You're just, you yourself are never going to be able to put in the work time that all
of these people on the internet have playing the same decks, talking on Discord, practicing
over webcam, practicing in person, playing at their local scene.
Hundreds of hours, thousands of hours, millions of games collectively.
Think about all the games of Ruby Amethyst that have been played since the first chapter
came out, right?
There's tons of data at any given moment for these established decks.
There's not for the cool new brew, for the new spice you're trying to bring in to a
format.
And that's okay.
There's benefit and drawback to both.
What I hear a lot when it comes to net decking, and I've sadly seen this in person in Lurkana
already, is people kind of being talked downy and saying, well, you know, you didn't have
to net deck.
You didn't have to counter your point with, you also didn't have to brew.
You do not get extra points if you're playing the two game format.
You do not get an extra free win.
You don't get extra prize support for winning with a brew.
You get the same prize I do if I walk in with a very established deck list.
It does not matter which one of us wins.
We're getting the same thing.
We have to overcome the same exact hurdles.
And that's every person who sits down across from us round after round.
And I feel like, especially in store champs, for example, that's more of a competitive
atmosphere.
So, of course, you want to bring the best deck to that atmosphere.
Right.
You want to maximize your chances of winning.
I think a lot of people who tend to brew, it gives you a reason to go, oh, well, I mean,
I could have done better if I had played the best deck right now.
Would you say that those people are typically more casual players?
I don't think that's fair to say.
I think more casual players tend to go and play in more casual formats at this point.
And I know that Ravensburger is doing a very close job of making sure that there is support
for the casual player as well as the competitive grinder, because set champs, we have seen
a very disparate crowd start to appear where there are people who want to collect the cards,
but they're in a competitive atmosphere.
So it's really hard for them to compete.
I think that the people who do it are the people who maybe want to be better and don't
have the time to necessarily put in to level up.
So they're going, you know what?
I could show up with the best deck in the format right now.
They probably still wouldn't do as good because they just don't have the time to spend.
And that's okay.
And it's not their fault.
It's not anyone's fault.
Certainly not the person who's playing the best deck.
Win or lose, you know what I mean?
You can't really kind of point your finger at somebody and say, you shouldn't be doing
that when it's the best, quote unquote, best thing to be doing in terms of the data.
So it's not really fair to point that finger and say that that's the case, because you
don't have to build the deck from scratch and play it.
You don't have to build a half-baked deck or an under-tested deck and bring it to something
like a set championships or a more competitive local 1K, whatever it may be.
You don't have to do that, but you're choosing to do it.
The same reason they are choosing to do it, because as you said, Sam, you're trying to
maximize your chances to get that prize.
And there's nothing wrong with either school of thought.
And that's kind of what I want to make a point of.
And I want to call out if you boil away all of the rest of the fluff around what I'm saying,
there's no right or wrong way to do this.
There's no right or wrong way to approach the game.
I would say make sure you have realistic expectations no matter which side of the coin you are on.
You are not going to do better than a bunch of people who are testing.
Baseline, you're just not.
There's too much data.
There's too many small refinements, tweaks.
They're changing one card when you're changing out, you know, potentially large percentages
of your deck, making sure you're overhauling them.
Oh, I could put this package into my deck of eight cards or 10 cards or whatever it may
be.
But it's huge versus them changing out two cards to make sure they are ready for some
of the more recent developments to the meta.
There also wouldn't be a meta game if people weren't practicing the same decks over and
over again.
Right.
Like that's literally the network and the foundation that a meta game is built on.
But that can be one of the advantages to brewing is we get used to playing these meta or net
decks.
Absolutely.
And then one can throw us off guard.
You nailed it.
Is it a good option to brew a deck?
Yes, it is a good option to brew.
And I don't want anybody to think I'm talking down on people who brew.
I'm talking down on the people who talk down on the people who don't.
And I think that's the main thing.
And it'd be the same in reverse.
I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss somebody who has an idea.
And you go, well, the idea when the deck worked, it worked really well.
Or you might get miffed and go, oh, I dropped a game to this terrible deck because their
deck did the thing.
Maybe it's not a terrible deck.
Maybe it's actually pretty good.
And they just they found 20 of the 60 cards.
They found 30 of the 60 cards and they just need to keep building and refining.
I can say to that end, I was playing the Lemon Lime Sing Together decks way before Zach Bivens
took it to the Challenger event and had a pretty deep run with it.
I was playing it a little bit differently.
So I was trying to play it with a lot of the same cards, but using Flynn Rider and Murfolk
in the early game to help me get ahead on lore and then maintain the lore advantage
through with the discard package where Bivens was taking the concept of these very mid-ranged
cards like Diablos and putting them in the deck, increasing the number of the Muses,
really taking advantage of cards like that in order to make sure that the deck could
not only get to the point where it can eke out an advantage with this card, but it could
maintain it through insane card advantage.
So just because I had some of the deck right didn't mean I had all the deck right.
And I didn't blame anybody who beat me that they were just net decking.
So my deck didn't do well.
It's on me to make sure I put in the time and the effort to go, what cards should I
be changing?
What card should I be tweaking in order to make the deck the best possible choice in
the metagame at any moment?
And again, just me alone, it's a lot different than thousands of people.
And I mean, it was lots and lots more than that even when Pixelborn was around.
So with Pixelborn slowing things down, it's definitely giving Brewers a chance to take
a step up.
We're coming up at time of recording on the Challenger event for Las Vegas.
It's the Wild West right now to be perfectly candid with everybody out there.
Yeah, we have a couple tournaments that we've seen, the Charlize Collectibles.
Yeah.
Is that really it?
For the most part, inside events at Toronto.
And that's been the majority of the data we're pulling.
But again, we're seeing red green decks, we're seeing blue green decks, we are seeing blue
purple decks, just an absolute swath of decks that never were even considered or would have
been left out of the tournament before now.
It would have been dismissed and I again, like Sam pointed out, the reason these Brews
have an advantage is because you do not know what's coming.
If I put down a Robin Hood sharpshooter and you go, what in the world is happening here?
And I proceed to quest with it and then win the game with a pirate's life, you're going
to be like, wait, what?
What just happened?
Yeah.
When you have your opening hand and you see something completely new, you're like, what
do I do?
Right.
You have no idea how to approach that particular deck.
I had the same, a similar event happen where I didn't know how best to leverage my cards
with Ruby Amethyst and ended up dropping a game that rightfully I shouldn't and you know,
wasn't a problem moving forward, but I definitely misused or mis-evaluated the strength of a
card in the matchup because I didn't understand exactly what my opponent was up to, the power
of brewing.
So it's really a good idea to think about brewing and to take the time to have fun with
the game.
And part of the fun of the game is to come up with a cool idea and see it come to fruition.
But for other people, they don't have the time to sit at home with piles of cards or
with Dreamborn up and they're just digging through cards that do one specific effect
to see if their deck has enough synergies to make it work.
They just want to go, I want to get good at the game baseline with whatever the best deck
is right now.
And again, generalists, if you go back to our other episode about the way you like to
play, Zansai is a great example.
Zansai is very good at learning and honing his skills with whatever he feels is the best
deck in the format at the time.
He wants to have the best chance with his very strong abilities as a deck pilot, not
necessarily a deck builder.
And he wants to take those archetypes, maybe refine them slightly, but largely play the
best version of the deck, which has largely been established already with his skill at
the helm.
That's the difference, right?
So again, we don't want to look down on somebody whose enjoyment of the game comes from upping
their play skills specifically, not necessarily upping their cred in the deck building space.
So remember, everybody's going to draw enjoyment for different reasons from this game, right?
When I sit down across from somebody, they may be enjoying it, they may have gotten drugged
to the event, they may not.
You don't know anybody's particular situation, so you should never look down on anybody for
any reason why they approach the game.
Whether it's somebody who this is their first event, it just happens to be a store champs.
If they paid the $40 entry fee or $20 entry fee, they have just as much reason to be there.
They have a legal 60 card deck.
They have just as much right to sit across from the table as you do.
That's it.
Plain and simple.
I think that the more we play the game, the more we should start to embrace what other
people are doing.
There's nothing wrong with when a game gets done asking somebody questions about their
cool, interesting deck.
What gave you that idea?
Or where did you start with the concept?
What sparked your inspiration?
Or vice versa.
Hey, are you playing this new card that got added to this very established deck?
Or I didn't see any of this card that's usually a very popular choice in your deck.
What were you playing instead of that?
Yeah.
I'll ask people that kind of stuff all the time or I'll ask them how many they're playing.
Just to see how people's take on the game is different.
Yeah.
And that's how you learn and get better.
Whether you're brewing or whether you're just trying to up your personal play skill as a
pilot, both are totally valid takes.
Whether you're playing an established archetype, whether you're playing a total brew, it doesn't
matter whether you're playing a fun casual deck that maybe does a little bit too well
at the casual scene and you want to see if it has any kind of merit in a competitive
atmosphere.
There's no reason to talk down to anybody.
Right now this game is still in its infancy, just a little over a year in, and it's very
important that we embrace everybody's enjoyment of the game.
Ravensburger's making a very solid effort to make sure everybody can ingest and enjoy
this game the way they want to.
And I think we should follow suit with that because the only way this game is going to
continue to grow and continue to draw in players is if we as a community do our best to champion
everybody who wants to come to the game for whatever reason they may want to come to the
game.
There's some people who have started to play the game who have gone, you know what, it
backed away because the community felt a little bit too toxic or entitled or whatever the
case may be.
And I just don't want to see that no matter what the reason for somebody coming to the
table is.
So my bottom line, I guess when you strip everything out of it, the too long didn't read here at
the very end of the podcast is be original, play something if you want.
Just keep in mind that your expectations should be that you may not do as well because you
are making the situation a little bit tougher on yourself coming with a complete and total
brew versus somebody who's coming with an established deck.
So I would never try to look down on somebody for doing either one of those things because
they both have a lot of merit.
Both are very valid ways to approach a tournament.
No matter if you're building an original deck, no matter if you're coming with a very established
deck, there is one thing that they have in common.
You have to keep questing.