There was a Daily MTG article a few years back that I can't seem to find. It said something very striking to me. Casual players feel worse when their big Craw wurm is counter spelled, than if it was doom bladed right after it came into play. They felt like they at least did something. This sums up the casual player. Both effects are the same; the Craw Wurm is in the graveyard and I'm down a card.
Scrubs tend to keep this mentality with them when they first enter competitive magic. They feel control decks are unfun. They feel combo decks are not interactive enough. They feel you're "rushing" with a red deck, you aren't giving them a fair chance(1).
I honestly don't know what heart warming thing to say to make you, the aspiring competitive player to get over these mentalities. Suck it up. Suck. It. Up.
These things are apart of the game. Control decks (Casual hated), Sleigh decks (mono red), Mid-ranged creature decks (Casual favorites) and combo decks (Universally disliked by all). If you remove one archetype, you screw up the universal magic balance chart. Whats the universal balance chart you ask? Its simple, allow me to show you.
Small Creature Aggro -> Beats Control
Mid-ranged-> Beats small creature
Control decks -> Beats small creature aggro.
Combo decks -> Depending on the combo, inserts itself randomly in this chart as the meta dictates.
Sure there are crossovers, (aggro/control, combo/control, Midranged/Control) that pop up every once in a while to shake things up or ruin things (think Caw-blade) but this is the standard deviation of deck archetypes that make up EVERY magic tournament(2).
Good players gravitate to the best decks. Sometimes the best deck is a control deck, other times its a midrange deck. And every so rarely an aggro deck.We play the best decks because we want to win. We aren't there to necessarily have fun while playing the game. We want to win the prize, be it packs or cold hard cash. We don't care if its enjoyable for you to turn 30+ Craw wurm style creatures 60 turns into the game. That isn't why we are at the tournament.
The aspiring scrub should ALSO be working to that goal. If you never play control decks because of your own prejudices against the archetype as a whole, you are only hurting yourself in a tournament setting.
Lets break here for a moment to understand how tournaments work in a magic setting. Remember a few articles back when I talked about randomness? Tournaments are random as well. Assuming you play perfectly and have a random matchup selection, you are rolling the dice against your deck's win percentage. Occasionally you'll hear people say something like, "My deck has a 60% win ratio against deck X" or 40%, or 75%, or whatever number they pull out of their ass at the time the question is asked. Truth is, there real numbers behind this. High level competitive players use these real numbers to determine if a deck is good or not.
As I write this in July 2012, the best deck in standard is Delver. A UW control/aggro deck everyone hates. Recently during a starcity games event, the casters revealed it had a roughly 52% chance to win. This is over hundreds of matches during that day and adding in a few other events. 52%. This is the BEST deck in standard. It was still played by some of the best players in the magic scene. Why? Because it has the best winning chance over all the other decks in the format at 52%. This may not seem like much, but it can be the difference between day 2, and going home early in a 9+ round tournament. You should take something from this small fact. A few percentage points different, and it wouldn't be the best deck in the format. Football may be a game of inches. Magic is a game of 1%.
There is another reason to play other decks. To get you out of your comfort zone so you CAN play the best deck, and to know your opponents deck better than they do. This is what makes LSV LSV, and not some random PTQ player.
Footnotes:
(1): True story, in one of my rare screw it moments, I played a mono red burn deck, second round opponent told me to stop rushing him. Uh, I wasn't aware I was playing Starcraft here and my Goblin guide was a zergling... but thanks for the round 2 win in a 250 person 5k tournament... I'll be sure not to rush my next opponent and give him a sporting chance at $5,000.
(2): Ok not vintage. Vintage is about casting Jace the Mind Sculptor and protecting it till he ultimates, be it from inf turns with time vault, or countering it. Everything else however...
Also worth noting, the more eternal a format is, the more crossover archetypes get.
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