Meta-Rage and You

I want you to, for a moment, think of the metagame of your favorite format. Now, what are those decks that fill you with dread at the thought of facing them? They don't even have to be bad matchups for you, but you just despise playing against them. Today, why don't we consider how to identify why we hate these decks and what to do about it?

Before we can address what to do about a deck you despise, you have to identify the source of that dislike. Such reasons can vary wildly, be it a bad experience, how your favorite deck plays against it, or, and this might be hard to hear, how YOU play against the deck. Yes, a bitter pill to swallow, but sometimes we are the source of our own frustrations. To give examples of these different 'roots' to disliking a deck, I shall give examples from my own experiences.

When Experience Sours the Well

A source that is far too commonly undiagnosed. What this refers to is that at some point, you played against a deck that was at least a little close to how the deck you hate plays and something about that match soured you for a long time. The best example of this that comes to mind for me is Legacy Eldrazi. I survived Eldrazi Winter and even sojourned out to my LGS to still play every modern event despite the fact that over half of the people that still bothered showing up were playing nearly identical lists. For two months that went on with me running my Storm deck, loosing to Chalice of the Void on one and two almost every single game. It was infuriating beyond belief. Thankfully, winter ended and I was able to enjoy my deck once again. Not before I grew a hatred for Eldrazi as a creature type and Chalice of the Void as a card. I held onto this anger as I got involved with Legacy on MTGO and every time I saw an Eldrazi deck or a prison deck, I just internally groaned at the oncoming 'unfun' match.

Eventually, I decided to play a deck based solely on its name. That deck was Dragon Stompy. For those of you unfamiliar, that was the old school name of what is now red prison, or at least its spiritual predecessor. I saw that it ran four mainboard Chalices, but I decided to just go through with it anyway. That's how I discovered that I actually loved not letting my opponents play the game. It was a bit embarrassing to realize that what I thought was a stupid card was actually a really fun card to build around and that it wasn't as unbeatable as I'd always thought of it. It was actually quite beatable, judging by my occasional 0-5 losses. That's more or less how I learned to try a deck out if I hate it, if nothing else so I can see how other people beat it. That way I can beat it myself.

Not Every Matchup is Great

This is a trial almost every one of us will have to face at some point. Deck X hoses my deck. To most veteran players, this is a simple fact of life. This can be expanded even further though when one remembers the 'deck type flow chart' that many of us might have once heard of. Aggro beats control, control beats mid-range, and mid-range beats aggro while combo is the weird cousin just goes off and does their own thing. Obviously, this isn't set in stone, but for the most part, in a healthy meta, this is how the matchups go. All you can really do in this kind of situation is just remind yourself that no matter what deck you run, you will have bad matchups and so does the deck that you are getting frustrated with. For a while, my store had almost nothing but control decks. That isn't an exaggeration either, of the twelve regulars, nine of them had some variant of UW control with occasional splashes, one guy ran burn, one guy ran hate bears, and I ran my little big mana Tooth and Nail deck. I lost almost every week, which shouldn't be surprising because I was never allowed to have a board state against the combo players or resolve my Tooth and Nail. It was the worst! It wasn't until the fad of running the control deck phased out that I really started having fun at the store again, but that is just how metagames are sometimes. Thankfully, with online play, it usually isn't quite so lopsided if one deck is currently in though. The solution to this one, if you missed it, was accepting the situation for what it was, temporary. A lesson that can always be taken to heart. Either your deck will get a new card that helps, the other deck will have something banned, or maybe it just phases out because of another deck. So, instead of getting frustrated over it ruining your fun right now, why not try out other ideas while you wait?

Maybe I'm the Problem

The root cause that nobody wants to hear. The fact that the deck isn't broken, your deck doesn't suck, but you, the player, have made mistakes. This is an issue that largely happens when a card, match up, mechanic, or one of a hundred other possible details get missed repeatedly and it adds up over time. It isn't that you didn't know that Leyline of the Void doesn't stop Gyruda from going off, clearly, Gyruda is broken, right? This is the kind of mindset that is the most damaging to any player that wishes to better themselves. When their own hubris stops them from being able to see how to improve.

My big experience with this was honestly when the age of net decking first came to be. I was running some weird combo deck that needed like four cards on the field to win and only had a few ways to stay alive. Yeah, it occasionally won, but by and large, the competitive 'meta' decks easily trounced me. Did I consider how to make my deck better? No, for months I just griped about how busted or broken some card was. That was until I actually started realizing that having a fun deck wasn't the same as having a competitive deck. Sure, a competitive deck could be fun and vice versa, but being one is no guarantee of being the other. It was honestly my least favorite time in Magic, even more than Oko, more than Eldrazi Winter, and more than when all I was playing against was the same deck. I hated it because what I considered the part of Magic that I loved, brewing weird and unique decks, was over. I know for a lot of people, that is exactly what the dawn of net decking felt like with many of my own friends quitting and selling their collections because they didn't like what the game had become.

Now though? I see net decking not as a negative thing, but an inevitable change that needn't be bad. Sure, people tend to make the same handful of decks because they're in, but if one guy on another continent finds a cool interaction? You can find out about it too in a fraction of the time it might have taken your playgroup! Yes, you might not be able to play it 'competitively,' but if all you want to do is play cards with the express purpose of winning, ignoring your ability to have fun, why not just play poker? Nobody can complain about balance there.

Find the Root

This is all a long-winded way of saying, don't get inside your own head. Think about what is getting you annoyed or angry and confront that issue instead of taking it out on a deck type. No one person can be blamed for a deck, regardless of what we as players might want to believe. At a minimum, the R&D team at Wizards had to have come up with the cards in it, and then some players had to figure out to put them all in the same deck together. 

I hope this helps you out with your own Meta-Anger in the future, because we all get a little angry from time to time. If you ever want to see me get angry at a card game, why not stop by and see me playing at my stream? Until next time, dismissed!