I like that approach. It’s important to learn why cards combo, and playing a proven list a lot will eventually do that for you.
I wonder how many of these overly confident authors actually think their decks are amazing. I could understand decks like Trash Pandas being a bit more tongue in cheek and accidentally becoming popular, but some of these (for example that Fisk list) are just straight up abysmal and written totally straight. It’s weird.
While I love these columns, I think it’s important to remember that most nrdbers (nerdbears?) don’t “like” decks because they’re powerful. Personally, I’ll like a deck if it has a good description, or if it a cool hook or new idea I haven’t seen before. If someone posts a tournament-perfect PPVP Kate deck I won’t really care, since I know how that deck works. If someone posts a deck that tells a story, however, I’m going to like the crap out of it. The flipside of that is I don’t expect the deck of the week to actually be good.
I’ll like/favorite decks that I see that I want to play, so I can find the list easier when I get home and to my collection.
All in favor of ‘nerdbears’ being the official slang?
This is canon. In netrunner you’re either a nerdbear or an mtg.
To add to that, I would say that plenty of the Deck of the Week decks would be fine to win a local GNK even if they’re not tuned against a the big meta decks. I’ve seen it happen. Netrunner is less about decks and more about piloting.
@Chill84, I dislike this column. There’s a lot of insulting language along with your advice. You’re being kind of an elitist jerk in an otherwise helpful and welcoming community. Not cool, dude.
Isn’t elitist jerk like, his MO? Like how losing games is mine.
Why all the hate? I think Interesting and new ideas should be the focus of NRDB decks.
From what I recall of postings of yor on ye ol’Stamherk, yeah. I suppose so. Doesn’t mean I won’t tell a brother I’m not a fan. He’s free to keep on doing what he does.
I think he could stand to turn down the snark a little but the idea of looking at decklists and trying to point out what they could do better is useful. The first one he did was the most interesting cause he was looking at a deck that was at least mostly viable and pointing out little improvements that could make it better.
Totally understandable. I like these articles the way they are by chill, and I also like deck of the weeks. You don’t see these kind of write-ups for other LCGs and I think it’s amusing to check them out.
Its content and comedy all around!
But…but I only played a little Magic in high school and I don’t want to be a Nerdbear.
I guess this is my life now.
Sorry for the double post, just wanted to say that I more or less agree with this. I like taking a critical eye to these decks that get the limelight, and the GRNDL deck definitely had some good ideas despite its flaws (though in my heart it’s perfect because GRNDL is love). Trash Pandas lacked a win condition and anything to do with its money. Novelist is just kind of a mess.
I don’t want to speak for @Chill84, but it seems like he’d say if a deck was actually good if that was the case.
In general, the NRDB front page tells one side of the story; the deck author’s. Chill is telling it from the perspective of a Competitive Player who has no interest in the deck other than competitive merit. As long as you go into it knowing that Chill’s only interest on this Review is to attack the deck on its Competitive Strength, then it’s fine. He’s not going to give a deck points for originality or concept or theme or what have you.
Yeah but that’s kind of like criticising a film because it completely failed to tile your bathroom. Criticism should make some attempt to address the goal of the thing criticised. You can question the value of that goal but completely ignoring it is unproductive and unfair.
Oh yeah I’m merely referring to the tone, the content is great and really helpful.
The Novelist claimed it was “almost Tier 1”. If you make that kind of claim, then it’s entirely fair to criticise it for utterly failing.
I completely agree. I’d guess that the articles have been divisive.
Isn’t decklist of the week decided by most <3’s during that week anyways? Tearing the decklist of the week apart from a wholly competitive point of view isn’t just coming down hard on the person who published the decklist, it is also deriding the choices of a plurality of the people who thought a deck deserved a “<3” in the first place.
Maybe the decklist publisher is arrogant and thinks that the list is actually Tier 1 (so I guess then they need to be put in their place???) but maybe not. I don’t know if @Chill84 gets their permission or not before writing the reviews, but I’d urge them to do so and make it clear that the publisher is down for an in-depth (and perhaps painful) review, posted in a very public way.
I reject that the opposite of a nerdbear is a MTG. That’s just as or even more insulting 
That seems to me to be more to do with the ambiguity in the terminology of “tiers” though. They seem to be meaning “tier one” as anything consistently good, and I’ve heard others use it in that sense as well. That’s different from the way in which some people use it only to mean the absolute elite level decks.
I mean, at the moment only PPVP Kate is “tier one” in the sense most people on stimhack use it. I refuse to believe they think their deck is “almost” as good as PPVP Kate and that the people who’ve liked it also think so.
Given the way they responded to comments, I absolutely believe that they think their deck is almost as good as ppvp Kate.