Yeah, the refine one particular thing is exactly what I wasn’t looking for. There’s certainly a place for that, but I’m interested in experimentation and the thrill is lost if you are playing against someone who has the familiarity to respond at a level that makes your experimentation just an outright handicap.
In 3 match ups I haven’t won with a non mono deck, but this is the only deck I am going to go replay against someone else in order to feel like I learned anything.
The unfortunate thing is this sours my opinion of even seeking opponents in PBF. Already most people have more experience than I do, and to think that some of them just want to leverage that continuously doesn’t inspire me to continue experimenting. And for me no experimenting kinda ruins codex altogether.
Go for it. If you’re worried, just post that your experimenting/looking to play against off meta decks. Im probably the most extreme example you’ll find on these forums of sticking to just the one codex. Most other people float around a lot more.
Im sorry that I’ve put you off, none of us are looking to exploit our knowledge (hell I just came back from a 8 month break on not playing on the forums, so I have no idea what peoples play patterns/experience is like).
Best of luck in your future games, and have fun!
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As Shadow said, just mention you’re looking for mutual experimentation in your games, I doubt anyone will mind.
Regarding experience leverage: as far as I can tell, most player experience is not deck-vs-deck specific. Whether people are experimenting or not, they’ll usually have a good idea of what the opponent’s specs are usually used for and what their weaknesses are, even if they don’t know which specific synergies the opponent has in mind.
I’m not saying that to put you off playing experimental games as well. I’m saying that most of the experience that applies, outside of top-tier decks against each other, is not because of familiarity with the specific matchup, and can be picked up more quickly than it might seem.
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An abundance of familiarity compounds on skill and experience though. It only exacerbates a skill level disadvantage. I’m not at that level and I’m currently not really trying. It’s better for me to play in matches where the opponent hasn’t worked out every kink in executing their own personal strategies.
The problem is that shadow has an incredible amount of knowledge of his decks limitations, as well as a better understanding of the overall game and options available to me/him. i’m not arguing that the individual choices don’t matter or that this was a poor matchup in any other way than purely one player pitted their best performance against someone who is experimenting and not even as knowledgeable in any matchup. It’s not conducive to the kind of loss where one learns, just feels cheated because there was basically no way to win from the get go.
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