Lets see...

Some cards in a block are more likely to appear during tournaments than others.

It is logical to assume that the better a card is, the more often it is used.

If a block consists of so many artifacts, so many enchantments, so many creatures and so forth, and you look at what you got in the available sets it should be possible to analyze the impact of any single card that destroys one or more of these types.

This means that some players will use the least vulnerable cards, while others will use that knowledge to target exactly these cards.

This makes the choice of what to choose into some kind of rock, scissors and paper game...
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When most people make a deck they show it to someone.

The spectactor then seeks out the weaknesses of the deck and tells them to the creator.

Then the deck is rebuildt with modifications against these weaknesses and the showing is repeated.

This goes on until both participants of this process are satisfied with the number of flaws...
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Then the deck is pitted against other decks some times and new flaws will be detected and removed several times, then the deck is discarded as useless or it wins consistently.

Lets assume it wins.

Since all the competitive decks have not been changed during this trial, they are now altered in several ways in attempt to throw off the new decks winning rate.

If all attemps fail the deck is ready to tourneys and you participate with it...
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How do these changes appear?

Again all weaknesses are preyed upon time and time again.

This means that most of the time we focus on the weaknesses of a deck, not its actual strengths.

It could be argued that if the deck is hard to break appart it is actually what makes it strong.

Wrong...

The real strength is in how the deck weaken the other decks.

View each deck as a structure buildt to survive a crash with another structure and the structure will be worn down after several impacts.

If the structure is however focussed on penetrating and breaking the other structure it will not need to be the most solid one, just the most devastating...

Just think of war galleons with rams on them.
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Contradict me on that theory...

Meanwhile try to think of this other part of the concept, the one about selecting cards with the least vulnerability.

Lets say you evaluate each card in a block by all other cards impact on that single card, think only about negative actions towards it.

Then make a computer create totally random decks with the cards from the block.

Then the computer evaluates each card by giving one point for each hostile card it can meet.

It compares all these decks points choosing only those with lowest points.

Now look at the deck with the lowest score and the deck with the next lowest score, take some games with them played against each other, and see which one wins...

It is not entirely necessary to use a whole block, you could choose about 20 random cards...
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Now if the lowest scoring deck did not win, then there has to be something beyond the comparisson of weaknesses (DUH...)

Why could it be compatibility???
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What is it inside us that can see through the veils of weaknesses and tap on the strengths???

Its probably conceptual understanding...

Think about power surge, what do you do if your opponent have 4 of them in play, and you have 5 untapped mana during your upkeep and only 15 life???

The answer is simple to those whom have discovered or seen this secret...

You tap the 5 lands and manaburn yourself for these 5 mana, taking 5 instead of 20 damage...

I used this combo a long time ago and none of us had ever thought of manaburning if it hadnt been because I had researched what cards would make opponent manaburn him/her-self that day and my deck backfired when someone used zuran orb...

Now since that day I always have held back on the last powersurges against tranqulities and other instead of playing them all...

The card was actually weaker If several was in play...

Now how could I make it stronger???

Donate it...

Now how come I thought of it this way?

Each time players discover new tricks the news of that trick travels very fast and is manifested in a common concept of how to use a card...

What can be used with donate?

Everything that is harmfull to yourself...

Donate is in itself an entire concept, as is discard, burn and others.

By thinking a bit in reverse, you see a weakness in a card, if the weakness outweigths the use you dont want to use it yourself...

By this reversive thinking you have discovered the strength of a card.
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What I am trying to get at here is what are the processes of analysing a card, if it is mostly by random inspiration that will mean that we actually do not use logic as a deckbuilding factor but more or less some intuitive randomness like the computerprogram I just described above...

How do YOU, any of you choose what cards are good or bad.

Is it transferred knowledge through trial and error done by thousands of deckplayers all screaming that this is THE card, or do we all share some common sense of what is good???

If we are so logical how can anything hide for so long in the type 1 without being discovered.

Think of reap, deathlace and timewalk, I only read about this one about 3 weeks ago but the concept is so simple that I should have seen it right away had I only had the cards in front of me or something like it...

These unfound treasures that surfaces from time to time proves my theory that if you throw common logic and deckknowledge away and use more randomness you will end up with something new...

Is the metagame only the sum of our knowledge and all other areas just uncharted because we are reluctant to cross our secure borders of "higher deck tecknology"...

WD