Sometimes when landing at night, if it's been snowing all day at the airport of intended landing, you cannot see the airport surface while on final approach. This makes a good case for landing with autobrakes to account for the unknown condition of the runway. Braking will start immediately and will cover you if the runway is nice and dry at the touchdown point and midpoint, but is still icy and snowy at the far end. Some of our pilots on the classic had some interesting landings at a far north airport in years past when our braking policy was to use no autobrakes, reverse only until around 80 or 90 knots, and then use manual brakes. Of course, the control tower gave braking action reports, but the accuracy of those reports are marginal at best and you don't really know what you have until you touch down and start braking. The airport's policy was to remove snow and ice at the approach and midpoint portions of the runway, but not the departure end. Therefore, braking action reports for this particular airport were valid for the first 2/3 of the runway. You can see how you are set up for failure in this case. You roll through the good braking area of the runway, and start manual brakes just when you enter the departure portion of the runway, and braking is very marginal, risking running off the end. With manual brakes you risk wasting good runway surface where positive braking can occur. Those incidents inspired us to mandate the use of autobrakes on all landings, and we've had no similar problems ever since - some 13 years ago.