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Back in the day I was a massive scrub. I ran a terrible little fiend deck.
After watching someone use a Fire Princess burn deck in some chat room I was inspired. I traded off the fiend deck and built Fire Princess. I realized that Messenger of Peace stops 1500 and up and Fire Princess is 1500 DEF. Cure Mermaid is 1500 attack. Marie the Fallen One is good fodder for Magic Jammer, etc. Gravity Bind let lvl 3s and lower get under so I ran Possessed Dark Soul. Jinzo? Offerings to the Doomed.
That deck won me more duels in that time frame than anything else.
After that, Warriors became the big thing. Marauding had just come out. I jumped on the band wagon but wish I hadn't. I built a terrible warrior deck.
Regardless my education grew because I was reading the old Metagame SJC coverage. I read articles, I listened to players on the old forums I was attached to, etc. Basically, I took a decklist, a competitive decklist, and played it. I understood why it worked, what strengths it had, what weaknesses it had, from playing WITH it. After that I would play the next deck and the next, continuously learning how the skeleton strategy of the decks worked.
Eventually I started editting the decks for general weaknesses or to refocus them slightly in a different direction. I understood that a sidedeck was for specific match ups, not in general.
This practice of netdecking, understanding, and then editting is something I still do today. I am not the best at deck construction unless I have a base, I can admit this. If a new deck comes out, like when Quickdraw did, I build it, play it, then edit it.
A good example of me editting is the Gravekeeper deck. The YCS champion didn't run Upstarts, I do. Digging for Royal Tribute first turn is amazing. So is running a 37 card deck.
Then there are little things, like adjusting my playstyle and looking at mathematical probability.
Again, GKs are a good example. When I have an Upstart and a Pot of Duality in hand and I want to dig for one of my two Royal Tributes, which should I use first? Well, I'm pretty good with math and understanding probability without doing the calculations so I knew it should be Upstart first then Pot of Duality. Three people have been flabbergasted by this so I've done the math to show you what I mean.
30 cards remaining in deck, 2 Tributes
Duality First: 18.62% chance of hitting a Tribute
Upstart Second: 6.9% chance of hitting a Tribute
Upstart First: 6.67% chance of hitting a Tribute
Duality Second: 19.21% chance of hitting a Tribute
When using Duality first, Duality has a 0.6% chance less of digging up a Royal Tribute while Upstart has a 0.3% chance higher of it.
But I digress.
My biggest amount of advice is to read, listen and ask questions. Why did player do this instead of this, why is this better than this. If you have an idea, present it as an inquiry of opinion, not as solid fact.
That's about it.
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