i believe i'm starting to slowly understand things i didn't understand before. here's what i know for sure:

(1) i know for a fact that i'm good at playing a game for board position where my goal primarily revolves around (a) defending my own life points, (b) attacking my opponent's life points, and (c) judging risk vs reward in balancing those two. i know that for a fact because it's the kind of game i was playing that day at the card shop where i won a whole bunch of times with almost all of my life points remaining, using my yugi starter deck vs a couple of relatively simple aggro decks, against players who were more experienced than i was

(2) i know that i struggle deeply with keeping track of card advantage in real time during games, and being able to calculate in my head all my options and how much card advantage i gain/lose from each seems to be beyond my cognitive ability. i don't know to what extent this ability is actually necessary to win in a game where card advantage matters, and if so i don't know whether this is a skill that can be learned, but it's definitely my biggest weak point

(3) i'm still a bit unclear about what extent "card advantage" plays a role in simpler decks like my yugi starter deck or the "aggro" decks in goat format. upon inspection i can see card advantage engines in all of them, but the goat format site specifically claims the aggro decks are *not* playing for card advantage so i don't really understand the distinctions here. cameron in the formatlibrary server seemed to understand what this meant but i'm increasingly realizing i might be getting confused by vague terminology that's preventing me from seeing the proper distinctions. i don't know if it's "card advantage" in general i'm bad at or if it's something more specific that i don't have a proper term for yet

(4) i think a big part of the issue is that i'm matching with people in the unranked goat format pool on duelingbook who are leagues above me in terms of experience (the people at the card shop i played against weren't super high level players). so i don't actually fully know which skills i'm good at and which i struggle with, because i'm losing no matter what almost every time and am not getting the "feedback" of winning or losing. i'm very very hesitant to play ranked during this time where i'm so unsure of myself but it might be the most sensible way of trying to match with people close to my own skill level. will have to think about this

(5) the strength of a deck in defending life points (i.e. blocking direct attacks as well as shielding weak monsters that are left "exposed" in attack position) is a variable that i'm not sure of the role of here. the goat format decks i've played seem to do a really bad job defending life points and don't seem designed to do so, but i don't know if that's because they're trading life point protection for card advantage or if it's just because the people who built those decks had more risky playstyles. i don't necessarily *need* a deck i play to be good at protecting life points (i'm open to different playstyles and strategies) but i feel it would play more to my strengths to be playing a deck that cares more about life point protection since i seem to be pretty good at doing that

(6) one thing i do know is that i don't particularly want to play an "aggro" deck (e.g. warriors) because those are just trying to win as quickly as possible by attacking and i don't find that to be a particularly fun playstyle. though it could be that trying one for a short time might help clarify some distinctions idk