Do you think Custom decks beat Meta decks?

Multiplayer Discussion
1

I have a theory that many people tend to copy each other’s decks, which can be a disadvantage. When they use a popular deck, they have the advantage of it being considered “good,” but they also face the disadvantage of opponents expecting that deck. What if they create a custom deck that is equally “good,” but without the disadvantage of predictability?

I made a deck that’s super fast and customized, and it totally surprises people. Each card isn’t crazy powerful on its own, but they all work together in a really cool way. But hey, maybe it’s just luck, or maybe most people are expecting a longer game.

2

Yes you can do it, I did it a few times, but it has to be something people overlooked entirely. And that means it’s probably not as good as the true netdecks, but you bet on people being unable to predict whats going on.

I never play pure netdecks, but often netdecks with a twist so to say, the strong structure remains intact, but you change the focus of the decks.

I believe to be the originator of odd elemental rogue back in Witchwood, and Wild Patron back in BRM days. Thats entire different focus, mostly I often add some cards and remove some. For example Galakrond rogue I let go of the stunners and the entire secret package, though more ppl did this.

Often you would see ‘deck doctors’ back in the day on twich, when this game was more popular. Often it was a matter of adding patches plus a few pirates, or take those out and add something else back in. That’s cheating, it doesnt matter, and subjective to meeting a slightly lighter or heavier meta at that moment. Couldn’t call that deck doctoring.

All in all I made some unique decks, suitable for countering pivotal metas, with above average results, I believe.

Back in ONIK, when everybody played tempo shaman, made an anti-tempo shaman deck, got like 74% winrate out of it. This was also an unique deck and not a variation of something, I would guess my biggest achievement.

Made a strict anti aggro priest at some point where everyone was agressive, maybe Mean Streets, 72%.

Got a few 60% decks in the original classic and lately in twist that were strictly off meta.

But the game is now so ‘locked’ into having to take certain packages that it has become clear to me its probably not possible to build something good that is different from what is intended by Blizzard.
My last own deck was a greedy rogue that focussed on the omnipresent hunter with their OP spells that created the 3/1 rusher, 2/5 taunt and so on, forgot the name. That greedy rogue deck sucked and I only got 51% out of it or so. Haven’t tried since, though did get a very good deck in Twist.

Only mentioning legend decks.

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3

Yeah the truth is most probably in the middle; you can’t avoid having guaranteed advantages on meta decks; but also you can’t just use “the deck” every popular website shows if you want to have an extra edge.

It definitely needs that extra inventive intelligence; it can get hard since most classes have at least 3 good decks so the cards that remain unplayed are few; maybe you can find at least 1 card that is overlooked.

In practice the most you can hope for is probably a “middle ground that is a net benefit”; e.g. you do get a card that is not the greatest ever; but because it’s too surprising: it gives an edge over the meta.

4

There are basically 3 types of decks. Control, aggro and decks that are somewhere in between.

So basically, yes.

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5

I suspect that’s a limiting categorization. E.g. I was thinking yesterday of creating a “annoy the opponent by draining them” deck: it would be filled with “increase the mana cost of the opponent” cards or “draw a minion of the opponent” or “swap a card with the opponent” lol…

OK I didn’t find something that works fluently but maybe it needs the right class (and my account is too “small” to try all classes).

6

Yes, I think people that pure netdeck are putting themselves at a disadvantage, because they aren’t adjusting to their local metas.

Also, as you note, you can fly under the radar with something that would be easily counterable if it were ever meta, but which people aren’t expecting and thus can be surprisingly strong.

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7

The simple answer is no. That is to say, if you are capable of maintaining a decent win rate with a custom deck, you would of very likely had a better win rate if you played a high tier Meta Deck instead. Meta decks are what they are because of refinement. The kind of refinement you aren’t capable of on your own.

If your question is basically “Is it possible to climb to legend with a custom deck?”, the answer is yes. Happens every day.

On a personal note, I absolutely love to play the perceived dead class or even pick a class with a single good deck/archetype and then play something different. The less information your opponents have the more likely they are to make game losing mistakes.

8

In my opinion, the net/meta decks in the top tier are just too strong to beat consistently and rank up. If you make a custom deck, you can make it to counter a couple of the popular decks, but then you probably just auto lose to other decks. An example of this would be when I tried to make a mage deck earlier to counter rogue/treant druid. It did just that, and got smoked by everything else. Your best bet is teching a card or 2, unfortunately.

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9

Yes I do it all the time. You can predict the play pattern of someone piloting a meta deck and outplay them with an off meta deck. The problem is that meta decks are more consistent and efficient than most off Meta decks and that’s why they are the Meta decks. A well built off Meta deck might place around tier 3 or 4 at best if it was analyzed as thoroughly as the Meta decks for example while most of your opponents would be running tier 1 or 2 Meta decks.

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10

just add chogall to all of your decks, 50% of your games are gonna be weird

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11

chogall stan, just do it

12

Exactly this, another thing, is that the meta is always behind on the current situation, always. People will pick the best deck often, if the result is that is the meta becomes aggro, you can make a control deck lighter to beat aggro consistently and still have good matchup in true control matchups, this is also further assisted by control opponents playing around cards you no longer have.

13

You speak as if there are only meta decks and COMPLETELY different decks. The smart move is probably something in the middle. A meta deck with a couple of cards replaced to make it unpredictable to the opponents.

14

I would hardly call that a custom deck and it’s certainly not what your original post is describing. But it’s an interesting topic to me regardless so…

Those would just be less refined lists. Meta decks are refined from tens of thousands of games with data clearly showing which cards are weak and strong. Even if you take out the three weakest you would still be replacing them with even weaker cards.

That’s not to say it wouldn’t work. A single person plays against such a small amount of people overall that a few changes could easily end up increasing your win rate. It would take thousands of games by hundreds of people to see if those changes were actually an improvement and even then the results could be inconclusive.

There are basically two options with what you are suggesting.
1-Making the overall deck worse by replacing the weaker cards with niche and powerful cards.
2-Making the deck worse against some matchups, but better against others.

Both can be effective, but neither will likely be strictly better than the actual Meta version of the deck. As an example, I played a ton of Clown Druid and made it to legend several months in a row with it. I didn’t play the standard list, but mine was only off by 7 cards at most. It was still Clown Druid. The changes I made were initially for fun, but were basically option 2. The changes made it worse against quicker decks but stronger against slower decks.

15

Coming from an actual sucessful deckbuilder i have to say:

You’re far from the truth but in the correct path.

No. Usually you not gonna beat meta decks with your homebrew. People in general have to be made a really gross deckbuilding mistake for that to happen.

But…
There are usually better ways to build the same deck people are playing.

That happens for 2 reasons:

  1. Individual outliers:
    Some cards are so strong that even when you not play they in decks they’re meant to they still very powerful.

People will rarely catch those cards because they’re counter intuitive to use and this community specifically isn’t that invested in the game anymore.

  1. Package optimization:
    The same way some cards justify their use even out of their theme we have cards that don’t even when they’re in fact used as said.

One example to use for this is burrow buster. Sorry to say but this should just be forgotten.
Not even a excavation deck justify it.

To justify it you would need to both play a excavation deck that has mech synergy and even then it would be an average card in said deck.

How to do:
Therefore you can beat people in their own game if you can identify those 2 types of cards in a deck.

With the number 1 you try to fit in more decks and with the number 2 you take it out so you have the slot for your New card.
Making decks that Go extra 1/2% winrate up to 10% in the most extreme cases.

Yes, i already had the blast of getting decks to be completely overpowered doing this correctly sometimes.
But usually it not gets to THAT level.

This is the deck refinement 101 and someone who don’t dominate this just isn’t ready to dream about creating a new deck.

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16

You are looking at it too narrowly. Yes, as an individual card it’s not on par with cards of the same cost that are far more powerful. However it’s also drawing you a high value card and pushing you toward a card that is individually off the charts in power level. The one class that should never play it though even to excavate is Rogue because they already have the extra excavate in Drilly. Along with ways to recycle that card it makes it a no brainer to not play it.

If we took that line of thought none of the giants, that see regular play in standard, should be played because they are just vanilla stat sticks.

17

No i don’t.

It’s usually the last card in the lists for a reason.

And the reason is that people only run that for consistency.

The problem is that the card is so bad that not even extra consistency justify it.

Being consistently bad is just not a good form of consistency.

Again. Not even a excavation deck should run this unless they’re absolutely desperate for it. And they don’t.

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18

Do you think Custom decks beat Meta decks?

98% of the time, no.

2% of the time, yes. But in those situations, become meta deck in 1-2 weeks.

Margin of error ±2%.

Edit: chances of successful off-meta creation are significantly higher near the beginning of an expansion/miniset/balance patch, and decrease exponentially afterwards.

19

I think you’re transparently wrong here; it doesn’t take that much intelligence to replace ~2 cards and make your deck better against the “general competition” (by making it more unpredictable); this is happening because of two main reasons.

(1) Most simplistic/plain decks with great synergy will have at least 4 or 5 cards that have similarities with other cards in the game; you can often replace those cards with similar cards; they may not even lose their core synergy sometimes.

(2) Most transparently: the monstrous decks of a billion legendaries (the ones with the highest win rate on the top of legend): rarely have more than ~20 cards that cause their “core synergy” hence those are the easiest to “partly customize”.

20

No, you’re absolutely wrong here. It DOES take significant skill. You’re trying to outwit the best deckbuilders on the entire internet. They’ve considered the vast majority of alternatives, and quite frankly you’re just exaggerating the “surprise” effect of playing a suboptimal card that your opponent wouldn’t predict that you’d run. It might be worth something, but it’s rarely worth more than what you’re losing by replacing the optimal card out in the first place. Most of the time your opponent’s reaction isn’t going to be “oh noes!” it’s going to be “lul, ty for being free.”

Like I said earlier, that’s 98% of the time, ±2%. There are, rarely, innovations that actually work. But the surprise factor is so much less than you’re giving it credit for, and you basically need to be better than the best at deckbuilding to pull it off, and that’s very unlikely. You might want to be the guy, but you’re probably not the guy.