Deckbuilding 101: Having a Plan

It happens to everyone. You’ve been playing Magic for a little while – either borrowing decks from friends or using a preconstructed deck, but it’s started to seem hollow and empty to you. You want to build something of your own – something you can use to sling spells, summon creatures, and destroy your enemies. Maybe you have a format in mind, or maybe it’s a casual deck, or meant for multiplayer shenanigans. Regardless, you ideally want the deck to work on a fairly regular basis.

Today we’re going to start that journey – building your first deck. We’re going to do this slowly, over the course of a few articles, so we can get an in-depth look at each portion of the process. If you think that the majority of this is too simple for you, then I’d suggest you look at more advanced strategic articles – I’d recommend Star City Games’ Magic Fundamentals articles, which go into significant depth about the math and statistics behind many famous decks of the past years.

Step 1: Know Thy Enemy

When building a deck, the first thing you need to know is your environment. If you’re playing at your kitchen table with some friends, mainly casual games, you can be pretty sure that the bar might be lower than a Pro Tour Qualifier, or a Grand Prix. Likewise, if you’re planning on building for Standard, you should know what decks are good at the moment, so that you know what you should be aiming to compete against. For purposes of this example, I’m going to use Standard, because it’s the format that the majority of people have the most experience with.

Right now, Standard is broadly made up of three decks that would be described as Tier 1 – the best of the best, and the things you should expect to see at every tournament:  Wolf Run Ramp, Delver and Red/Green Aggro. Each deck has variations on it, but the core remains the same. Let’s take a look at each.

Wolf Run Ramp:

Wolf Run is a popular deck that is built on the foundation of a previously successful deck called Valakut. The principle is that if you have access to powerful lands that can win you the game, Primeval Titan is capable of finding those lands and practically ensuring a kill. Previously, this involved finding a number of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, and many Mountains to launch a torrent of damage at the opponent to kill them. Now lacking Valakut, the deck has changed to a Kessig Wolf Run/Inkmoth Nexus package, instead using the raw number of lands available as a weapon to feed enormous Kessig Wolf Run activations.

This deck is vulnerable before it is able to cast a Primeval Titan, however, and therefore seeks to minimize the time that this takes by casting ramping spells like Rampant Growth and Solemn Simulacrum, while stalling for time with large damaging spells such as Slagstorm.

R/G Aggro:

Red/Green Aggro is a resilient aggressive deck that uses mana-generating creatures to accelerate into large mid-game bruisers. It aims to push damage through in the early to mid-game and finish out (or just accelerate into) a Sword of War and Peace to close out the game. It runs a number of ways to avoid traditional control decks – Strangeleroot Geist has undying, while Wolvir Avenger has regeneration. Huntmaster of the Fells comes with a  second body, and Sword of War and Peace makes all of these into enormous threats that can blow through nearly any defense.

Delver:

More than either of the previous two, Delver is the barometer of the format. It took 6 of the top 8 spots in the last major standard tournament (at time of this writing) and has taken a huge leap forward with the addition of Restoration Angel to its game plan. At its core, Delver is a tempo deck that relies on casting an early threat and then defending it with inefficient but effective removal and counter magic. The addition of Snapcaster Mage basically allows you to have twice as much removal as you should, and cast it while adding additional pressure to the field. This one-two punch makes it difficult to disrupt Delver and when added to a powerful equipment package, makes the deck extremely potent.

Any deck that wants to make it in standard needs to be able to play on the same stage as these three juggernauts. You need to be able to fight through counter magic, powerful early board presence, and a powerful late game.  You need to be able to fight against 1/1 Inkmoth Nexuses at instant speed, 6/6 Titans before they resolve, Birds of Paradise with Sword equipped on turn 3, and everything in the middle.

If that sounds like a tall order, that’s because it is. Doing all three of these is nearly impossible, which is why the vast majority of good decks don’t. Delver cannot fight against a Wolf Run deck that has already resolved a Titan and found a number of its lands. Instead, it sidesteps the problem by trying to kill them first. This brings us to our next lesson.

Step 2: Have a Game Plan

Many times, I’ll see a beginning deck builder misinterpret this as ‘have a theme’, and that’s not terrible advice. There have been many ‘theme’ decks that have been powerful. Faeries was strong, as was Vampires during Zendikar. Zombies is a powerful ‘theme’ deck, and there are plenty of others. The difference between these decks and most freshman attempts is that these have an underlying plan that points towards victory.

Let’s take a fairly standard Werewolves deck for example. It’s full of creatures that are relatively unassuming on the front side, but extremely dangerous for their cost on the reverse. We have instant speed ways of making them more dangerous in Moonmist, and the vast majority of them cost between 1 and 4 mana. In addition, few of them have a way to survive a board wipe (outside of Full Moon’s Rise). All of this is pointing towards one conclusion – we want to kill them before bad things happen to us. We want to attack, relentlessly, and ideally force them to flail for survival.

So, our plan is to kill them quickly. This means that we want all of our weapons to be able to be their strongest as fast as possible. That means that, although something like Uvenwald Mystics is a potential 5/5 with regeneration for 4 mana, it won’t be able to attack before turn 6. That’s way too slow for us. We want quick and powerful. You know what kind of cards fits that mold?

Ideologically, these cards are the cornerstone of a good werewolf deck. They’re cheap, they’re designed to attack, they get a lot of benefit from their creature types. The Captive even gives us an easy way to flip our werewolves.

A plan can be simple. “Kill Him Quickly” is a plan, but having that plan in place helps us guide our deck to the place that we want to be in by the end of the game. Caw-Blade had an extremely complicated plan involving a mixture of Equipment, Stoneforge Mystic, Jace the Mind Sculptor, and Squadron Hawks. While all the parts rarely came into play simultaneously, they all formed pieces of the puzzle that made it so powerful and nearly unbeatable before its ban.

By comparison, Jund was fairly simple – it focused on casting creatures and spells that gave incredible advantage to their owner by virtue of how the cards worked. Each card you used earned you two of theirs to answer, and at the end of the day – you had cards and they didn’t. It’s not hard to see how to win those games. You bury your opponent in card advantage.

Next time you’re starting to design a deck, start by thinking about what you want to do with it. You could be a ponderously slow control deck, trying to take control of the game before landing a single game ending threat. You could act like a combo deck – surviving until you have the pieces you need to win, but when you’re designing a deck, always keep that plan paramount in your mind.

Step 3: Know what is possible in the format.

I could make up a deck right now and know that it would be terrible. I’m going to play a five color aggressive deck that focuses on flooding the board with powerful one and two drops. We’ll play Stromkirk Noble and Stormblood Berserker from Red, Champion of the Parish from white. Diregraf Ghoul and Gravecrawler in black, Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage in Blue, and finally Birds of Paradise and Strangleroot Geist in Green.

All of the cards I just mentioned are good enough to be played in Standard. Together, they are all terrible.  This deck would rarely get to play cards, let alone win games. In Standard, this deck doesn’t have a reasonable way to cast it’s spells because the mana base is insufficient.

Building a deck requires that the tools be available. Mass Land Destruction is rarely supported in standard. Building White/Black Land Destruction (for example) in the current standard is impossible. The only ways to do such a thing are complex and difficult to actually perform. You should not build a deck based around this idea. By comparison, a deck like tokens has a significant amount of support – there are many token generators in standard, and many effects that gain increased potency from a large number of creatures in play (like Anthem effects such as Intangible Virtue, Favorable Winds, and Honor of the Pure).

When you’re building a deck, take a close look at the card pool and decide – can I even do what I want to in this format? Are the other decks too good? Is my plan easy to execute? Does the mana work?

Obviously, this isn’t everything that there is to deckbuilding, but it’s a start. Ideally, this will get you thinking about what kind of cards and decks you’d be interested in building. From here, we’ll take a look at how to construct a deck and begin to test it for flaws.

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An exercise for all of you right now, new player or old. Think of an archetype that you could play in whatever format you’re most familiar with. Make it an archetype that isn’t currently winning, if possible. Post it in the comments (either here or on Reddit) and answer the following questions:

-What is the game plan for this deck?

-Can I accomplish this game plan in the format I have chosen?

-How do I interact with 3 of the major decks in the format?

The Sound of Wings

Innistrad is not a kind world.

Once, the Cathars, holy knights in the service of Avacyn the Archangel, roamed the countryside, giving blessings to the faithful, strengthening wards, and holding back the darkness. Now, it is all they can do to draw breath. The wards diminish, children are stolen from their beds,  and the shadows encroach upon all they held dear. Even mighty Avacyn, Archangel of Hope, and her countless winged flights of angels have fled or worse.

For those who live on Innistrad, the twilight world has gotten yet darker.

“Run, Stephen!” screamed his partner. The voice was a high frantic cry, brought of desperation. “Run!!”

Stephen was already gone, sprinting through the underbrush at breakneck speed. His heart pounded in his chest, moving as quickly as his thoughts. They had been out too far. Two villagers murdered in the last fortnight, and the previous night, a child missing. How could they have done anything else? Stephan had led the pair into the woods – searching for the young boy. His companion was a cathar in training, fresh from the Elgauld grounds. His name was Enval.

Screams pierced the dusk and Stephen checked his thoughts:  His name had been Enval. The snarls and howls of the pack left no doubt in his mind that Enval’s remains would never be recovered. So young.

Avacyn save us. He whispered the prayer as he darted between two bushes and onto a well-worn path. Avacyn save me! They had passed the border post nearly an hour earlier – into the Kessig Wilds. Neither of them had given any thought to turning back – there was a child to save! How could they have done anything else!

Enval’s screams died off, and moments later, the pack caught up to him. It was subtle at first: a flicker in the brush, visible only through the corner of his eye. Then an idle growl from his left. Stephen’s muscles burned, threatening to give way, but fear kept them moving, and a small miracle kept his footing sure as he careened through the forest.

Anything but the wolves, he prayed. Oh Avacyn, I don’t want to be killed. He remembered the descriptions of werewolf attacks that he’d learned about – how to recognize the signs of someone killed by one of the Cursed, how to know if you were dealing with Krallenhorde or Monodren.  How to tell if someone had been turned. Which parts of the body were safe to bury when the desiccated corpses were found.

Not like that. Not like this. He felt frenzied tears rushing down his face as the pack closed in around him.

Innistrad is not a kind world.

Then, he heard it. A single strong beat – like a bird’s wings but deeper, stronger. He’d heard tell of the sound before – during his training. They said that in years past, when Angels flew into battle alongside man, that the thrum of their wings provided a natural drumbeat for marching. There! There it was again, the deep, rumbling sound of enormous wings flapping against the cooling night air.

The wolves seemed to balk for an instant, and Stephen kept on the path as quickly as he could. In the woods, there was a chance that the holy being couldn’t even see him. He needed to make for the field – once he was in the open, the angel would surely see him. He might be able to go home – he might be able to live to see another day!

That kernel of hope took hold in Stephen’s chest as he ran. The wolves tightened their noose, but even as they did, he realized that they wouldn’t be able to stop him before the tree line. The wings beat louder now, closer. His savior, no doubt, flying just overhead. The wolves’ howls echoed, high-pitched, over the basso beat of the wings, an unholy symphony. The meaning was unmistakable: Follow him. Kill the man.

He burst from the trees and onto the open plains. The wolves were only half a dozen steps behind him.

“Avacyn!” he screamed with a breath he didn’t realize that he’d been holding. Every one of his limbs felt like molten steel. The wing beats grew closer and closer. He ran, and he listened, and he hoped. Eyes closed with panic, he tripped over an errant stone.

And then he felt the wind from the creature as it landed, heavy upon the ground. He heard the wolves all around him, frenzied with their kill.

And then, silence.

Stephan looked up at the source of the wing beats and felt every ounce of composure he’d cultivated over his life melt away. He felt the dread terror in his veins bleed away to icy resignation. Even the werewolves around him stared in fear, falling to their knees as they realized, as Stephan did, that Angels were not the only beings on Innistrad that flew.

The dragon’s wings unfurled majestically, dozens of feet wide. Its skin seemed to be made of some infernal metal, and its eyes burnt with shadow and flame. It opened its mouth and let out a roar that shook the whole plain. Like an earthquake made manifest, he felt the shock deep in his bones, rumbling there. Stephen closed his eyes against what he knew was his end. He felt the heat rise as the dragon called on ancient magics. Its mouth snapped open and a torrent of flame poured out, engulfing the wolves and Stephen alike.

The only mercy afforded him was that he only felt the flames for a few searing moments before his life was scorched from his flesh. The dragon roared in triumph.

Innistrad is not a kind place.

Innistrad Pre-Release at All-Star Collectables

This weekend, I went to the pre-release for Innistrad, the fall release for Magic: The Gathering by Wizards of the Coast. As is customary, I attended and had a great time. Here's a brief tournament report.

The closest event to me was being held at Redcap's Corner, in Philadelphia, but because my friends and I do monthly gatherings to play Magic, DnD, and other wonderful games like that, I instead went to All-Stars Collectables at the Oxford Valley Mall, about 45 minutes away, near Trenton, NJ.

We walked in at the crack of dawn, almost. Forgive me the exaggeration, but it was a weekend, and I figured that starting at 10am was beginning to get a little insane. I was used to noon-starts, but since the shop owner was planning on running two events, he wanted to start a little earlier. I guess that's why he owns a store and I play at one, because he ended up being correct, in spades.

There were some technical issues with getting started, between making sure the printer was running and signing up the over 100 (!) people who wanted to play in the first event. Our wonderful Tournament Organizer George was on hand, with his beaituful wife providing support and acting as a salesperson. When I went over to buy my intro pack, she seemed like she was doing some pretty swift business. On the other side of the room, we had Joel and his crew, who were the official singles vendors for the event. I'm told they didn't do too badly either, and picked up a fair number of good transactions for the day.

First event started at around 11am, by the time everyone was seated and started cracking their packs. I opened my set of six and admittedly, I was a little disappointed. Not that opening a new set isn't exciting, but I was less than thrilled by what I had opened. From what I'd looked at in spoilers and such, I didn't feel like I wanted to be in green, but lo and behold, there it was. There were just too many good werewolves to ignore, and beyond that, I had about even choice between:

-Red with a good removal suite, but a pretty poor creature base

-Blue with not enough to make it work

-White, with 8 cards in total, most not playable

and the option I ended up going with – Black with some removal and a few evasive creatures.

Taking the evasion to creep some damage through after my green fatties clogged up the ground seemed like the best choice, so I sleeved up the deck and sat down for my first round.

Admittedly, I did not expect to be writing this post, so I didn't take any kind of significantly accurate notes on individual games and rounds. I'll just sum this one up as an overall feel.

First, werewolves are interesting. Since the duel-side cards are kind of the elephants in the room, my opinion is that they're very dynamic, and easy to keep track of. I never found myself missing triggers on them, and everyone I was playing with felt that they were a very intuitive answer to them. Some of my opponents used the checklist cards, though I opted to sleeve up the originals. The only issue that I noticed that was detrimental at all was having to de-sleeve and re-sleeve so often in more constructed situations. A full-on tribal werewolf deck seems like it would be a hassle to switch back every two or three turns. Other than that, however, they played wonderfully. It was an interesting mini-game to switch them how I wanted, but it was never insurmountable. Overall, I liked it.

Morbid played well too. I found myself actively refusing to block, taking the damage rather than risking activating morbid at an inopportune time. It made me afraid of death in the games, and that's a wonderful translation of flavor to game mechanics.

Hexproof also seemed to fit here very well, giving me a real feel for the inevitability of certain creatures. The removal all felt powerful, but conditional. Bomb rares still felt powerful, but less overwhelming than normal. Making the format slower than m12 meant that I could effectively hold removal for the 'real threats', which mitigated their effect once they hit the field.

My first four rounds went 4-0, putting me in a great place to get into the top-8. I needed to win one of the last two rounds to seal my spot. Unfortunately, I lost the fifth round to an onslaught of blue and white flyers, and the sixth round to Garruk. A sad end to the first round of the day, but my friend Marshall managed to make it into the top-8 despite his round 3 loss (to the person I faced in round 6, actually. He also made top-8.)

The second sealed started just as the top-8 was running, and I made sure to get my name on the list. I opened a fairly solid pool, where I could have chosen any color but red. I ultimately decided to go with White/Black on the strength of the evasive creatures, even though there was only a single rare in those colors – an Elite Inquisitor. I was rewarded with a 3-0 record, and then an intentional draw into the top-8.

This sealed had three rounds that were very memorable for me, so I'll recount them a bit.

In the first round, I was paired with someone who unfortunately didn't have nearly the grasp of the rules that I did. He pulled a Liliana, but he was misplaying left and right. Even though the games were incredibly one-sided, I tried to keep the mood light-hearted so he wouldn't be discouraged. We had a bunch of laughs, and I got a handshake and a smile at the end of the game.

Playing against someone who's worse than you is always tough. You want to win and advance, but you don't want to hurt someone's feelings – it is, after all, a game, even if there's 100 bucks worth of boosters on the line. That round left me feeling a bit somber.

Second round, however, was a bit of a wake-up. The first game was pretty routine, with me winning on the strength of my flyers. Game two, however, was normal until my opponent got a rather large looking treefolk ready to beat me in the face. I counted a bit, doing the math, and figured that I could kill him before he could break through and counterswing for lethal. I even had a counterspell for backup. I swing out, and proclaim “So, that's it?”

He blinks at me, confused. “I'm at four.”

I look down at the spindown on my side of the table. He's at two by my count. He missed the swing last turn for two damage, by my reckoning. That said, his spindown still read four, and I didn't really have any way to prove one way or another. I all of a sudden realize why so many competitive players count with a pad – because it takes priority over a simple die. Without any method of deciding who had the correct count, I consider calling over a judge. That's probably the correct move, but I don't understand if there's anything they can do to correct the issue. I look over at the clock, and see fifteen minutes left, then make the snap call.

“That's fine. You're at four.”

He looks a little penitant, and protests that he doesn't want to be a (bad word redacted), but I assure him that it's fine. On his turn, he gains fifteen life, putting him safely out of range of my flyer and kills me on the backswing.

It bothers me, but I know it's not HIS fault. He clearly didn't miss the damage deliberately. We go to game three quickly and continue playing. The game goes down to the wire, but I manage to push enough damage through to kill him with less than a minute before turns.

I don't quite know if I handled that situation how I should have. There was a disagreement, but I didn't want to seem like 'that guy' by calling the judge – who knows me and doesn't know the guy – and ask him to make a ruling on the matter. I know George would have been impartial, and probably would have ordered us replay the game. (Since there's no other way to find an equitable solution, that I can see, at least.)

I gave him the match because I was fairly sure of my ability to win the third match, but the whole thing still left a sour taste in my mouth. I'll be bringing a pad next time, to avoid something like that.

We have to evacuate the community room at this point, because it's after 9pm. We go back down to the shop proper and resume the third round, with the shopkeep calling out that the soda is on him for the rest of the night. Thanks Warren!

The third match was one of the most technical games of magic I've ever played. It involved staring down a Bloodline Keeper in three successive games, and managing to win out over it despite having nothing on the field that could directly answer it. It was a long game of trying to fight tempo games and not fall behind while still maintaining enough offensive pressure that I didn't lose to a transformed Keeper. Winning that round, and against someone I knew from FNM's as a great player, gave me a nice ego boost – and happy day, my opponent managed to get into Top-8 on the strength of his breaks, so good news all around.

Because it was after 10pm, the top-8 decided to split the prize fund amongst us, rather than playing it out. We split to 9 packs each, and the shop closes. Total of about 14 hours of magic, all said and done.

I also did a healthy amount of trading, picking up a bunch of the utility lands that I needed, as well as a playset of Mentor of the Meek. By the end of the day, I had half a play set of Stromkirk Nobles as well, which makes my RDW nearly complete, and my Puresteel Deck 'finished' and ready for testing to prepare for the next constructed tournament I'm able to make it to (which depends largely on free time, sadly, since my Saturdays are notoriously terrible for the rest of the month).

Innistrad is the first set to have me really excited for the mechnical side of things. Ironic that as a long time player, I was more interested in New Phyrexia from a lore standpoint, but Innistrad really has me sold on a blending of the mechanics with the flavor of the set.

Overall: Favorable impression. Would buy again.

Till Next Time Everyone,

-Andrew