https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/budget-beginner-teaching-decks-1-green/
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/budget-beginner-teaching-decks-2-red/
^^ the two decks I used, I played green and the ai was red. Still getting the hang of this game but with over like 50k cards in the library and endless combos it's so deep. The AI is quite smart on Forge too. I've never played MTG in my life so this is all new to me.
There's definitely a lot of trash cards, but there's way more than 1k cards that regularly see play at tables. There's a ton of different deck archetypes and so some cards are better in certain decks than others. I think there might only be 1k cards at the very top level of competitive play, but those decks are worth thousands of dollars and are just not realistic for most players. It's kind of a completely different game once you get to that level.
Imagine paying for cards lmao
The community is generally cool with people having some proxies in their deck (10-15) but unless everyone in the pod is playing with all proxies, having an entire deck full of proxies is kinda frowned on (I would not be comfortable showing up with an all proxy deck to a non-proxy game).
There are proxy events and formats and those are fun. There's a lot of two turn wins and infinite combos in those, but playing with all high power cards is great.
Proxy Vintage sounds like so much fun
It's great! Sometimes it can result in some really annoying and frustrating games. There are some cards that are just broken and can result in some games that are really toxic for other players, but that isn't that often, and really only happens if you're playing with someone who is kind of an asshole anyway.