the "Niche Deck" tendency

When you sit down to play in a tournament, you never know what the opponent is going to bring. There are, seemingly, only three sure ways to deal with this unknown.

First, play a fast-winning deck -- Dragon, TPS, Belcher. The tactic is to ignore the opponent's deck altogether, and win before the opponent gets to fight back at all. Versus a deck with no oppression, these will never lose. Versus a deck with good oppression, these often do absolutely nothing for three games in a row.

Second, play draw/control -- Morphling, Slaver, Cerebral Assassin. The tactic AGAIN is to ignore the opponent's deck altogether, and just counter everything they do that is marginally dangerous while a few key threats slow-roll to victory relatively unchallenged. Versus a deck with few threats, these will never lose. Versus a deck with mass amounts of threats, these often find themselves short on mana/counters/threats from start to finish.

Third and lastly, play all threat -- classicly speaking, Stompie or Crusade style. Instead of a winning combo that might get shut down by a timely counterspell, the assault is divided among many many cards that each need an answer. This tactic isn't as fast as combo, but is harder to entirely shut down without delving into cards that are ONLY practical vs mass creature assualt (like Ghostly Prison and Wrath of God).
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My observation begins where the archeotypes end. You will note another game, a much simpler game, being played. Combo beats Mass-Threat, Mass-Threat beats Counterspell, Counterspell beats Combo. With any number of good decks out there -- we are playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. The lure of easy wins, by one person or the other, has brought us to this end.

I have seen decks, rogue decks, that can beat anything in the field. They will never sweep, but get a 2 to 1 split no matter the opponent. And because they never sweep, they are considered to be "not good enough". But nobody pays attention to the fact that these decks are virtually NEVER swept themselves.

The other reason for rock/paper/scissors is what I benignly call the NOOB factor. In the lower brackets of every tournament, you are likely to face a deck that is sub-par but viable enough to beat you. Niche decks will usually sweep a noob deck, but a rogue deck will more than likely split 2:1 regardless of opponent. In point tournaments, advantage Niche. And also more Niche decks will advance than Rogue decks in the opening bracket or two. Both keep rogue decks on the fringe, regardless of quality.

I post this because I'd like to see more attention given to the rogue-deck strategy -- the deck that has control, combo, AND a mass number of threats. I'm hoping a few people who understand what I'm getting at will join the discussion.

Think...mass production of Meddling Mage. That sort of thing.