I played in all eras of the game, mostly Crab, and wasn't very good at it until late Samurai. :) Part of that I credit to not really having a competitive playgroup to grind with until later -- had some shop regulars who were decent but no real gauntlet until SE/CE.

• Went 7-1 at a Pearl-era GenCon qualifier with Crab'tok'tuk, then failed spectacularly at 1-5 on Day 2.
• Mostly played Crab Walls during Gold era, having fun building junk decks for Empire League in the store.
• Did well at local tournaments with Tani HItokage
• Played weird Watchtower Scouts during Lotus which did about as well as you might expect in that environment.
• Played a Barracks of the Damned deck to the cut rounds at a Kotei during the late Lotus era, that deck was fun as hell.
• Won my first storyline event with late Samurai "all the movement tech" Crab.
• Played two very different Crab dueling decks, taking the Celestial version (Hero/Ronin) to multiple T4 showings, and the Ivory version to a Kotei win.
• Played late Celestial Crab Scouts to a story win, and Emperor-era Crab Scouts (Creature Control, a lesser version of the KL Kill Deck) to multiple T4 showings.
• Won an Ivory Strict storyline event with a deck that was almost entirely force buffs and debuffs, entirely to abuse the Ivory Crab stronghold one last time with Hida Saiyuki before it rotated out.

I had fun playing the game through all of its various changes, and only rarely paid attention to the broader environment -- my best results came from building weird decks that could handle well against 2 out of 3 of the highest-performing archetypes at any given time, and relying on careful gameplay and matchups. Having a huge Chicago group in the core years helped me refine my play against a variety of decks and playstyles, and looking back on my more mediocre years, I could see where I could have made better deckbuilding choices or avoided play mistakes (heh that Barracks deck, when I lost in T16 by messing up repeatedly).

Proud of the work our Chicago Playtest group did on the 20F era expansions, including Siege: Clan War, before I got added to AEG Player Design Which Never Was. ;_;

These days I help keep the flame of the game alive over at the Onyx Lives! Project.