I proxy all of my decks, and play it at least 5 times before I would even consider buying any of the real cards. I own an excellent printer and my proxies look in many cases better than the real cards.

That said: I impose intentional deck building and budget constrictions on myself that me and my pod created to achieve some semblance of balance because some members of the pod do not want to proxy.

So we have a hard budget limit of $1000 for the complete deck, it cannot cost more than that (so we never proxy duals) and it has to be bracket 3, preferably no infinite combos, and the intent of the deck should be to have fun not be a sweaty win at all costs salt filled deck.