But before I begin, a few disclaimers. As much as I do enjoy building decks, I’m not an expert or genius when it comes to deckbuilding. If you’re already a veteran deckbuilder, I may not have anything new to teach you. In addition, there are others who have written at length on deck building theory and strategy, and I encourage you to read their work as well. Where my writing will differ from others is that I will be brief, and that I will endeavor to define any terms that I use, so that someone new to Magic will not be confused. Also, I want to make it clear that this is not the only or best way to approach deck building. It is simply my way, and I believe that by reading it, you might gain a new perspective on how to build. And finally, my final disclaimer: as part of this article, I will be building an example deck. The deck, however, will not be a thing of brilliance. It will not make you a star with your local gaming group. It is, in fact, not a deck that I would personally build. But what it will do is illustrate many of the concepts that I will be writing about. Now, with all of that out of the way, let’s get started.
Deckbuilding Basics
Step 1: Beginning At the End
The first thing that I do when I start to write a deck is to develop a win condition. A win condition is simply the point in the game where you have the cards in play or in hand that you need to win. A win condition is not a guarantee; after all, Magic is all about making exceptions and breaking rules. But if you have a solid win condition in play, you SHOULD be able to win the game. Now, a win condition does not follow specific criteria. It could be something as basic as having more or bigger creatures than your opponent, or it might be one of the handful of cards that actually declare, “you win the game.”
For this deck, I decided to use Pickles as my win condition. In spite of having a terrible name, a Pickles lock is one of the more effective win conditions that has been established in a while, achieving success on the Pro Tour at many levels. In addition, Pickles is noteworthy because it is one of the few types of control effective in a multiplayer format. A Pickles lock is achieved using a Brine Elemental and a Vesuvan Shapeshifter. When the Brine Elemental comes into play, it causes opponents to skip their untap step. Then, the Vesuvan Shapeshifter copies the Brine Elemental, forcing them to continue skipping their untap every turn. This forces the opponent into an extremely one-sided war of attrition, as many of their cards can suddenly only be used once. With that accomplished, it is then easy to have your creatures do fatal damage to each opponent.
As a rule, if I want to include a card in a deck, I want it bad enough to include 4 copies. In that, I disagree with many deckbuilders, who would rather have fewer copies, instead having more versatility by having a greater variety of cards. But, you definitely want to make sure that you draw your win condition, and you want to have multiple copies in case something goes wrong, so it is usually advisable to have 4 of each necessary card. So, our deck so far looks like this:
Quantity Card Name
4 Brine Elemental
4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
8 Creatures
Step 2: Taking Advantage
Okay, so now we have a win condition. Great. That and $3.99 gets you a booster pack. The fact is, a tight win condition doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t survive long enough to put it into action, or you get it in play too late. You have to have enough life, and you usually need the board to be stabilized, if not better than that. The board is the term given to the “in play” area of the table. It’s where all creatures and enchantments that are in play are located. When a board is stabilized, it means that neither player has a notable advantage over the other, and because of this, very little attacking is taking place. Obviously, all games of Magic will to some extent rely on the luck of the draw; however, there are many ways to try to skew this into your favor, and establish control of the board. This article will cover the two most common methods.
Card Advantage
Card advantage is most simply defined as having more cards available than your opponent. The more cards you have in your hand, the more likely that your hand contains the spell you need. There are two obvious ways to gain card advantage. Either you can increase the number of cards in your hand, or you can try to decrease the number of cards your opponent has in hand. Now, I should mention that generally, not just any card contributes to card advantage; most people only count threats. Threats are the cards that are actually damaging to your opponent, rather than lands or more innocuous spells. Therefore, while a spell that allows you to draw cards can help you establish card advantage, it is not in itself card advantage. For this deck, I elected to include Arcanis the Omnipotent. I like Arcanis for this deck, in part because it’s a permanent (a permanent is any card that stays in play, unlike instants and sorceries), so that you can reuse its ability to draw cards every turn. The other thing I like is that if you already have your lock in place, its power and toughness are high enough to help you attack for the win. Because Arcanis is a legendary creature, you can only have one in play at a time, so I will only include 2 in the deck.
Another, less obvious way to gain card advantage is through recycling cards. By bringing back cards from the graveyard, which is your stack of discarded, killed, or otherwise used cards, you can keep reusing the same threats over and over. My favorite card for this is Eternal Witness. When it comes into play, you get a card back, and have a 2/1 creature in play. But what if you don’t need a 2/1 creature? What if you’d rather have another card from your graveyard? For that purpose, I decided to add Vedalken Mastermind. With his ability, you can return Eternal Witness over and over, reclaiming your lost cards. But that’s not all Vedalken Mastermind is good for. He can use that ability on any of your cards in play, preserving your win condition, or saving one of your other creatures from death.
Our deck thus far:
Quantity Card Name
4 Brine Elemental
2 Arcanis the Omnipotent
4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
4 Eternal Witness
4 Vedalken Mastermind
18 Creatures
Time Advantage
The second advantage is time advantage. Time advantage is getting your threats in play faster than your opponent. Again, you can achieve this by speeding yourself up, or by slowing down your opponent. If you choose to speed yourself up, you have two main ways to go about it: mana acceleration or tutoring. The most common source of mana is land, but the rules state that you can only play one land card per turn. Mana acceleration is getting mana faster, either by circumventing the one land rule, or by using alternate mana sources. To get past the one land rule, I decided to include Rampant Growth. Because Rampant Growth puts the land in play through an effect, it circumvents the one land rule. As an alternate mana source, I included Llanowar Elves. With both types of acceleration, this deck should be able to churn out middle and late game threats quickly.
Tutoring describes any card that allows you to search your library (the stack of cards that you draw from) for a specific card or type of card. The term tutor is derived from the many cards that possess this effect that have “tutor” in their names. Tutors sacrifice card advantage, because having a tutor card means that you have one more card that is not a threat. But tutors help gain a time advantage, because you can trade them for the specific threat that you need. One tutoring card in this deck is Summoner’s Pact. By having an initial casting cost of 0, Summoner’s Pact further increases time advantage by leaving your mana free to play the card you just tutored. By the time you pay for Summoner’s Pact during your next upkeep, your creature will be ready for action. Another tutor in this deck actually contributes to your growth of mana. Civic Wayfinder doesn’t put your lands into play, but it puts them in your hand, making sure that your mana growth doesn’t stall. Also, Civic Wayfinder is a 2/2 creature, making it an acceptable mid-game attacker or blocker.
If you choose to slow down your opponent, your most likely options are going to be either recycling or removal. In addition to helping with card advantage, recycling aids in time advantage. After all, if your opponent has to deal with the same threats over and over, it hinders their ability to deal with new threats or to advance their own win condition.
Removal falls into two categories. The first category is destruction. If you can simply destroy your opponent’s threats, then their game stalls while they have to play new ones. Recursion, also known as bounce, is the act of returning a card to its owner’s hand. While not as solid a solution as destruction, bounce spells generally require less mana, and can target different types of cards more easily than destruction spells. For example, Disenchant is a perfectly good way to deal with enchantments, but is helpless to deal with creatures; the opposite is true for Terror. But they can both be recurred. Our deck contains a pair of Boomerangs to serve this purpose, although they can serve the same purpose as Vedalken Mastermind if needed.
So now our deck contains:
Quantity Card Name
4 Brine Elemental
4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
2 Arcanis the Omnipotent
4 Eternal Witness
4 Vedalken Mastermind
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Civic Wayfinder
26 Creatures
4 Rampant Growth
4 Summoner’s Pact
2 Boomerang
10 Other Spells
Firm Foundations
Okay, so you have a destination in the form of your win condition. And you have a route to get there, in the form of card advantage and time advantage. Now, all you lack is the vehicle to get you there. That vehicle is your mana base, which is simply the lands and mana fixers that will allow you to play the spells of your deck. Now, the exact number of lands to include has been discussed by minds far sharper than my own, with results that are heavily mathematical in nature. It is generally accepted, however, that a deck should have somewhere between 18 and 26 lands, depending on the cards in the deck. 18 is generally reserved for only the cheapest of decks, having few or no spells requiring more than 1 or 2 mana. Likewise, 26 is for decks full of high-powered spells. Most decks generally have somewhere between 20 and 24 lands. Because this deck has a great deal of acceleration, I am comfortable playing 20 lands.
But what lands? If this were a mono-colored deck, we could simply include 20 of the appropriate basic land, and we’d be done. But, if you were paying any attention at all, you’ll notice that this deck has both blue and green cards. Now, many would simply include 10 Forests and 10 Islands and call it a day. But that deck could potentially run into mana problems if they happen to only draw one type of land. To make a multi-color deck play consistently, steps must be taken to ensure that the proper mix of mana is available. This is referred to as mana fixing. To begin with, I will include 6 Forests and 6 Islands. This will insure that my Civic Wayfinders and Rampant Growths will have targets to search for. Also searching for them will be Terramorphic Expanse. This card functions in the same way as Rampant Growth and Civic Wayfinder, which means that in addition to time advantage, these cards also aid in mana fixing. The primary difference between Terramorphic Expanse and the other two is that you can play it for free as your land for the turn. The last land card that I want to include is Shimmering Grotto. This card is useful in that it can be used in decks with any number of colors. Basically, you pay one extra mana to get the color of mana that you want. If you don’t need a specific color, then it can produce a colorless with no drawback. And it doesn’t lose time by coming in to play tapped. Now, as a final step to mana fixing, I will include Joiner Adept. If it is in play, Joiner Adept will make sure that my lands are producing whatever I need them to. But if my mana supply doesn’t need any help, then Joiner Adept is an expendable attacker or blocker.
So, now that we have made our way through all of these steps, our deck has finally taken shape.
Quantity Card Name
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Shimmering Grotto
6 Forest
6 Island
20 Lands
4 Brine Elemental
4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
2 Arcanis the Omnipotent
4 Eternal Witness
4 Vedalken Mastermind
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Joiner Adept
30 Creatures
4 Rampant Growth
4 Summoner’s Pact
2 Boomerang
10 Other Spells
However, just because you’ve built a deck doesn’t mean that you’re done building your deck. Even the most well conceived deck will need some fine-tuning, and that is best done through trial. As you play the deck, you will begin to see which cards are performing in the way that you had hoped, and which ones are not doing as well as you might like. Hopefully, you will be able to determine what you can do to improve the deck’s performance, whether it be adjusting the number of a certain card, or replacing cards that consistently disappoint.
Deck building can be one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of Magic. As satisfying as it is to crush an opponent underfoot, it is that much more satisfying to do it with something that you created.
4 Brine Elemental
4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
2 Arcanis the Omnipotent
4 Eternal Witness
4 Vedalken Mastermind
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Joiner Adept
30 Creatures
4 Rampant Growth
4 Summoner’s Pact
2 Boomerang
10 Other Spells
However, just because you’ve built a deck doesn’t mean that you’re done building your deck. Even the most well conceived deck will need some fine-tuning, and that is best done through trial. As you play the deck, you will begin to see which cards are performing in the way that you had hoped, and which ones are not doing as well as you might like. Hopefully, you will be able to determine what you can do to improve the deck’s performance, whether it be adjusting the number of a certain card, or replacing cards that consistently disappoint.
Deck building can be one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of Magic. As satisfying as it is to crush an opponent underfoot, it is that much more satisfying to do it with something that you created.
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