[reminded of it by peter's plurk but don't want to rant in it] Here's a sort of issue I have conceptually with digital CCGs

It's the area between low-level play and extreme top-level play

where like...

you have generally most of the cards you need

and the main challenge is in assembling a good deck with the cards you have

so if you can make a good deck, you can win good, and if you can't, you lose

except

like... we're on the internet

so people have already figured out top tier decks

that you can just go and google

and then that whole aspect of the game is out the window because those decks will be better than yours

and like you can choose to not look up those decks

but the people you play against don't have to choose that

and, as a result, their decks will be better than yours

that's one of the many reasons I like deckbuilders like STS

because you can't just look up the Best Deck and use it to win

because you will have access to random ass cards and have to make the best of it as you go

actually this is what drafts are isn't it

I played myself

yeah this is why most people who stream mtg arena and eternal do drafts a lot of the time, or are the kinds of people who figure out those top tier decks by just throwing shit at a wall to see if it works

(or both)

drafts seem like the most interesting way to play most of these games

like the main strategic element of play is the prep, not the execution

so make prep part of the game

Honestly like

Magic has been like this for years as I understand

I remember my cousins complaining about "netdecking" for years

for eons

drafts are so good tho

I have won a draft and a constructed event tho

There's this 'C'CG out there called Keyforge that actually amplifies this in the physical CCG realm, though maybe a bit too far.

Which is basically Draft As A Formal Norm. You buy premade random decks - 10 cards from each of 3 of the game's 10 'colors'. Every deck has a unique back, so in standard play, there's no mixing decks. You pick the deck you have that best suits the event you're in (and even register it by name.)