Groupthink is a highly observed phenomenon of human behavior. It is often referred to as “herd mentality” or “following the crowd,” and it can be the best way to sabotage your tournament success. Top 8 contenders use independent thinking to design decks that are quite different from the majority.

Groupthink effectively explains why most players have completely ignored many of the powerful cards in the recent expansion set, Force of the Breaker. What does the majority say about these cards in tournament play?

To answer you truthfully, no one says anything. How many Force of the Breaker cards did you see in the Top 16 at SJC Minneapolis beside Raiza the Storm Monarch?

Not many.

But aren’t they powerful cards that deserve attention on the national level?

Yes, of course!

So why aren’t they played?

Because nobody has made the Top 8 with them yet!

Why Wait for a Top 8?

The way trends develop in this game (and in many other trading card games) is that a deck doesn’t truly become viable in the public’s eye until it has essentially “proven itself” in the hands of a Top 8 competitor in a high-level competition like a Regional Qualifier or a Shonen Jump Championship. I’m sure you’re very aware of this phenomenon and have observed it many times over. If you pay close attention to the coverage of most competitions, you’ll notice the same things happening over and over again in a sort of step-by-step process:

1.      The latest Top 8 decklists appear on the internet.

2.      The decks to beat naturally become the Top 4 decks and the rogue deck that makes it to the Top 8 but doesn’t win the tournament. These are the “latest trends.”

3.      Tournament competitors and local players alike copy these decks in order to improve upon them or to increase their likelihood of winning more tournament matches.

4.      Counterstrategies are developed to combat these latest trends and are integrated into main and side decks.

5.      After one or two months, the anti-trend decks (equipped with counters to the mainstream as part of the main deck) flourish and become the mainstream of the tournament scene.

6.      Deck designers go back to the drawing board to design a deck that not only conquers the mainstream, but the anti-mainstream as well.

7.      This new deck archetype emerges as the deck to beat.

8.      Rinse and repeat.

“This Sounds Like a Lot of Work”

It’s hard work to monitor the latest trends and develop their counters . . . then develop counters to those counters. It sort of makes competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! like a full-time job. So why aren’t more players doing something different? Why does everyone play the same deck?

Because nobody else is doing anything different.

Groupthink is largely an emotional process, not an intellectual one. In other words, people may think that they consciously chose to follow the crowd, when in reality, they didn’t make that choice. They just did what they thought was best. Following the crowd is an attractive choice and it always seems rational. A player may think, “Cool, a Monarch deck won the recent Shonen Jump Championship again. Maybe I should play Monarchs because they’re doing so well.” After that thought, most players will call or instant message their friends and talk about the recent competition, and agree that the winning deck is the best deck to play. Then rounds of testing begin, using the same decks over and over. The players make small modifications here and there, but the variations are usually only five or six cards different from each other.

How to Use This to Your Benefit

First, understand that many players run variations of the latest highly publicized decklists. Visit your local store exactly one week after the latest major tournament. You’ll be amazed.

If you get good at observing these trends and how quickly they form, then you can get good at developing your own counters to a metagame that has yet to debut in your area. You don’t have to go completely anti-mainstream, but you should at least be prepared for what’s coming. In the beginning, it will take a lot of testing to get a handle on how the future metagame will play, but you’ll be able to adapt more and more quickly as you go along. You’ll find that it takes less effort each time you counter the mainstream.

There will be some players who just won’t play what you expect, of course, but you want to focus on what the majority of players are doing. Then, instead of following the majority, go in the opposite direction. As the old saying goes, “If everybody’s doing it, then it’s time to get out.”

Why Do the Latest Trends Win So Many Large Tournaments?

I’m sure you’ve read many articles that attempt to answer this question. You’ve heard many theories, yet it all boils down to groupthink and basic knowledge of statistics. Think about the number of players that comprise the majority in any given tournament. If you were to attend a 500-player event, a large percentage of them are likely playing some variation of the latest “hot” decks or one of their counters. The remaining players will either be running rogue decks or the deck that counters everything in the field. The latter deck has no visible weaknesses for the current metagame or its counters to exploit. It’s called the “metagame breaker,” and you rarely see more than ten or so players running it. Now think about the Top 8. That’s only eight players. I’m no statistics guru, but common sense suggests that 90% of the Top 8 will be playing the majority decks or their counters. In a nutshell, that means the latest trends win by sheer numbers.

I don’t say this to discredit the hard work, preparation, and dedication it takes to achieve a Top 8 finish at a major competition. The point I’m trying to make is that somebody in the majority has to win. The players who play these decks the best will win (or, more accurately, the players who play these decks the best on a consistent basis will win).

Become an Independent Thinker

There are truly talented players out there who can win with the latest hot deck on a consistent basis. There’s nothing wrong with this approach unless you’re not achieving the results with it that you would like. If you aren’t, instead of bashing your head against the wall playing more of the same, look for an alternative—something that would help a lot of players who are simply fed up and believe there are no other deckbuilding options.

Taking the contrarian road to deckbuilding is difficult to do—not because of the work required to prepare, but because you will always be inclined to follow the majority. Why try so hard to build a new deck that is unproven when you can just copy a deck and get proven results? The funny thing is, most people rarely get those “proven” results.

Playing with a proven deck makes it easier to win, but only in theory. If you find it hard to make your own design because you’re not winning as much, try keeping one of those mainstream decks handy to satisfy that craving for easy wins. Then get back to building your deck.

Play your deck—a deck that works for you. It’s that simple, though it’s rarely easy. Since your deck concept is unproven, you’ll have to do twice as much preparation as a person playing a mainstream deck has to. Is it worth the effort? Of course! Doesn’t it get boring playing what everyone else plays? If you answered yes to this question, I encourage you to pick up that old concept you were trying and work on making it better. That concept could be the one that carries you to your Day 2 finish.

One more quote before I go:

“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.”

—Jim Rohn