I’m talking about Deck Choice, and it’s the most
important thing that you can learn in Magic. We all hear about breakout decks.
Sam Black recently pioneered a Zombie deck at GP Atlanta to significant
success. A few years back, Dragonstorm took the Pro Tour by…well…Storm. Not a
year ago, in a field of Solar Flare and Illusions, a deck called Wolf Run Ramp
arrived from the shadows in a blaze of glory. Choosing the right deck is the
kind of choice that sticks with you.
Hard Choices
Something to take into account here is the difficulty of
actually assembling the deck in question. For the most part, building a deck
requires an expense of time and money, and both of those are scarce quantities
in the lives of many players. Many strategy websites have made their living off
using their time to work out a decklist and deliver it to players who don’t
have the time to analyze metagames and sift through available card pools. For
the brewers among us, the provide a critical jumping off point.
Thing is, we can’t just build every deck. I don’t know
about you guys, but I’m strained on time as-is, and adding a ton more decks to
upkeep would start cutting into valuable sleep time. That might work alright if
you’re a college student who doesn’t need to wake up till Noon because you have
a Class Schedule handed down from the Divines, but for us working stiffs who
need to be at work by 9, and need to actually cook our food when we arrive home, it’s less viable.
So, here’s the critical question – how do we decide what
decks are worth building?
A Question of
Style
There are a lot of people who would tell you that you
should just find the ‘best’ deck in the format and play that. While that will
certainly give you a reasonable chance to do well, it makes me leery because
the nature of the ‘best deck’ is that people will be gunning for it, and they’ll
likely have more experience playing against it than you do playing with it.
No, the best option for someone who wants to go to a
tournament is a deck that they will love. Find a deck that suits their personal
style and work on it. Iterate it until it’s the best it can be. If you know
your deck well, you will win games that you otherwise would not be able to.
This isn’t to say, of course, that you should play horrible decks with the
justification that you know them, but you need only look at recent legacy
tournament results to see the benefits. Goblins and Elves surging upwards where
they hadn’t before, Patrick Sullivan wins the Legacy Open with Burn of all
things, Junk takes one of them down. These aren’t the ‘best decks’ of the
format, but they certainly are decks that their owners have played with for a
while and see significant advantage from that.
Case Study:
Marshall
I’m going to mention my friend Marshall here, because his
deck building style is fairly pronounced. In general, if given a choice,
Marshall prefers two things overwhelmingly in his decks. First, he loves Blue.
He enjoys the cerebral aspect of it, and how much choice it gives him over the
way that the game plays out. When he plays a non-blue color, the decks just
feel inconsistent and constrained. He doesn’t enjoy it as much. The other thing
that Marshall loves is a good build around card. He wants to build a deck
around a central core that makes the deck borderline unfair.
Some decks that he’s worked on in the recent past include
Spirits, UR Delver, Heartless Architect, and Zedruu the Greathearted EDH. Each
of these decks incorporate aspects that Marshall loves, and all include Blue.
For Spirits, the deck has a strong tribal component that calls to him. Delver
asks for a high percentage of Instants and Sorceries that provide the backbone
of this counter-burn deck. Heartless Architect, as I noted in a previous
article here, takes a number of shells and melds them together into an
incredible ramp deck that is capable of really explosive starts. Building Zedruu
is an exercise in counterintuitive cards – turning otherwise unplayable cards
into deck staples via donation effects.
Case Study: Me
A wise man once looked at a deck that I had sent him and
sagely nodded before responding. “This deck suits you.” When I asked what he
meant, he pointed at it and explained. “Well, it’s an aggro deck…sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“It can be an aggro deck, but you it has a twist.”
“I do that a lot?”
I hadn’t even realized the common strain holding my decks
together until someone else pointed it out to me. I hated Combo – I knew that
much. The playstyle doesn’t appeal to me, and playing both with and against
Splinter Twin was miserable for me when it was in Standard. Control decks hold
some allure, but I can never bring myself to pull the trigger and build one to
actually bring to a tournament.
Then I look at an Aggro Deck, with its sleek lines of
play and I fall in love. For those of you who don’t know me in real life, back
during Zendikar-Scars, during the height of Caw-Blade, back when I was a much
worse player than I am now, I built UW Stoneforge Knights. I saw Hero of
Bladehold and Knight Exemplar and knew there was a deck there. Stoneforge
Mystic came along for a ride, just on the merits of sheer power, but the
knights were the core of the deck. Unfortunately crippled by a terrible
Splinter Twin matchup, the deck had some moderate success for a rogue strategy,
but was ultimately hamstrung by my own skills, which were still developing from
their young idealistic state. (I mourn that I wasn’t playing the full 4
preordain in that deck, even now, and I devoted no sideboard cards to Splinter
Twin because I just didn’t understand the matchup.)
When Knights rotated out (RIP Knight Exemplar and Student
of Warfare), I turned towards Puresteel Paladin. Here was a build-around card
that I could sink my teeth into. I got to cast awesome spells, and my deck had
five swords in it. What other deck could say that? I built my own Progenitus
using an Etched Champion and six different equipment at one point. I ran
Valakut out of threats – his deck had no mountains left, and all his Primeval
Titans were dead. I stood victorious, and it felt great. The problem with that
deck was that it was too fragile. Without a Puresteel Paladin in play, I felt
like I could get run over at any time. I didn’t devote anything to protecting
him, and without the advantages offered by the Paladin, I couldn’t keep up.
The loss of Puresteel left me in a lurch for a bit, I
played Red Deck Wins, and then Mono-Black infect. I wanted to attack with
creatures for the win, but balls-out aggro wasn’t for me. I liked counting
Shrine Triggers, and manipulating the board to win with a single 12 damage
shot. I loved being able to carve someone’s hand and use a 1/1 or 2/2 to get
there for the win.
Then I built Zombies, to some success, and then finally,
I found what I was looking for – BW Tokens.
I love the idea of Tokens. I love the spells that make
multiple creatures. I love the anthems that make it practically feel like I’m cheating.
I love that white gives me versatile answers, and black gives me effective
ones. I love that I can act at Instant speed, that Lingering Souls lets me play
around counterspells. I love that I can have explosive starts involving putting
them into single digits on Turn 3.
I like making them have the answer, not looking for it
myself.
So, what have I learned about myself? I like decks that
turn guys sideways, but I’m not happy with a single dimension. I want some
extra angle that lets me interact with the format.
Marshall often said that playing with a deck that you
know is the best play you can make in Legacy. The format is wide enough that
there’s no way to prepare for the entire field unless you’ve just played your
deck enough that you have experience there. When we set about building a deck
for me for GP Atlanta, Marshall took this into account and built a deck that
was deliberately similar to what he knew I loved – a deck that attacked with
smaller creatures, backed up by disruption. Yards Pale Ale was very much
designed with my play style in mind, and because of that – even with my
relative inexperience with the deck, I was able to pilot it to a 6-2-1 record,
and narrowly miss Day 2 due to tilting (which, again, the result of my
inexperience). Someone should write an article on recognizing and managing
tilt. (And when he does, I’ll be sure to link over to him – hint hint Wingman.)
Take It Away
So, what should you get out of this article? Simple. You
will play better and see stronger lines of play when you are playing a deck
that you enjoy and are comfortable with. If you’ve been building and rebuilding
decks every week, I strongly encourage you to build one deck that you’re happy
with, and play it for a while – perhaps a full three month rotation. Make small
changes, keep it current, but stay with the same deck.
I did with Tokens, and I can proudly say that it’s done
me well. I’ve had the best Magic finishes of my life with this deck, and not
once did I wish I was playing Delver, or Wolf Run Ramp instead. They don’t fit
me – and so I’ll always be stronger with one of my decks.
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Do you have a specific style of deck that you prefer? Why
do you like it? What advantages do you see in that style? Let us know in the
comments – here or on Reddit.
This Thursday, I’ll talk about the changes I’m making to BW
Tokens in anticipation of this weekend’s Star City Super IQ at All-Star Collectables.
I’m still not certain if I’ll be playing or judging, but either way, I will be
there. If you’re in the general Pennsylvania/New Jersey Area, it’s going to be
a great time and we’d love to have you there. More information can be found HERE.
As a bonus, Thursday will see the first
draft of the Naya Deck that I’m working on, though it’s far from complete.
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