by argus88
To summarize my point:If you had a deck of 45 cards, some x3, some x2 a few x1 a streamlined and effective Runner deck. And if you consistently exactly drew through this deck every single game, meaning that you'd always see the 45th card on the final turn of the game (yeah, you're magic). What happens if you decide you want to add a particular card not yet in your deck?
If you just add it in without removing something, one of 2 things will happen when you play:
A) The change had no effect, the new card was on the bottom of your deck, and was the single card you didn't draw during the game. This would be an unfavorable outcome given that you added the card because you wanted to play it.
B) You do draw the new card, and you do not draw one random card from your deck. That could be your single copy of a unique, it could be one of 3 of the MVP card or your deck, or it could be just an average, good, but not standout card from you deck. There's no telling, it will be completely random which one it is.
Or..... you could look through all the cards in your deck and choose the one you think is weakest and you will least miss. Remove that, add the new card, and keep your deck at 45 cards. Instead of letting randomness determine what to cut, you decided yourself, which, as long as you believe in your ability to choose is going to make it better.
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Or another way of saying the same: The fact that you create a deck that is larger than the number of cards you will draw or play during a game creates a situation that is equivalent to the following, using the parameters of a 55 card deck and 30 cards drawn during a game.
Before the game you take your deck, shuffle it, remove 25 cards from it at random and without looking at them and then play a game.
Cutting that deck to 45 cards is essentially removing 25 cards where you get to pick the first 10 of them yourself, then shuffle and discard only 15 at random. This is pretty clearly the more desirable option.