How to think about building decks
This all pertains to Magic, I swear.
For those of you who don't know, in my non-Magic playing time I'm a teacher. I teach High school theater. In fact, I've done a lot of things in my life, including professional actor, director, designer, stage manager, and so many *make-money-so-I-can-continue-acting* kind of starving artist jobs that I've lost count. My background is eclectic to say the least.
Subject change: I am a student. I'm not in grad school or college or anything, but I'm always learning, attempting to get better at the things I am interested in, and that encompasses almost everything. I'm an eternal student. I analyze what I want to do, find a path that will get me to that point, then do the things I need to do in order to get there. One good example: I have always wanted to get married and have kids. I've known this about myself for ages, seriously since before high school.
When I started acting, my goal was to have a career that allowed me to be creative, active, mentally stimulated, and possibly allowed for some travel. It worked. When I was acting I had all of these things, but I realized about 6 years into my career that given the way my life was leading, I would be unable to achieve the OTHER probably more important aspiration of having a wife and family. So even though I loved my job, I realized I wasn't happy with the life that came along with acting as a career, the solitary, transient, unstable, and uncertain life. My goals had become more specific.
So I left the career. My goal was still to work in a job where I got to be creative, active, mentally stimulated, and passionate, but now I had added the important goals of being financially stable, having a house & car, and spending time with family and friends with the hopeful result of finding a wife and having a family. I was lucky enough thanks to my parents to be able to go back to school, get a Masters in Secondary Education, and begin a new career without too much problem. The happy result is that I now have what I wanted, a wonderful wife, a beautiful daughter, a house, two cars, and a career in teaching for which I am excited to get up in the morning because I love what I do.
Moral of the story: You have to understand exactly what you want to accomplish before you can achieve it.
What does this have to do with Magic? I'll get there.
Ok, so now I'm a teacher. You know what they don't tell you before you get into teaching? Teaching is hard, really, monumentally, hold-up-the-world-on-your-shoulders HARD! I mean I know we were all students at one point, but as we get older we forget what we were like when we were in school. Well I've spent a lot of time remembering what I was like while teaching, and yes, I was just as annoying, immature, impulsive, loud, obtuse, unfocused, and flat out obstinate as my students frequently are.
(Side note: I love the vocabulary of Magic. Wizards uses SAT words all the time and 13 year olds are reading them and might just wonder what they mean. Love it, keep it up!)
Students are difficult to teach, and frequently are actively fighting NOT to be taught. So teachers learn a lot of skills that are designed to get the best results out of their classes. One such skill is having a clear objective for your lesson; what is your lesson trying to get your class to DO? Now design a lesson that gets your class to DO that thing. Seems like a simple idea, but it isn't.
I'll finally use an example in Magic. When I design decks, I frequently go through my entire standard legal collection of cards, find every card that is even slightly interesting for the deck I want to build, put it in a HUGE pile, and then start trying to cut that pile down to something in the range of 60 cards. This is a horrible deck building strategy, utterly horrible. Why? I'm trying to do too much. I end up with a pile of 160 cards easy. Another way of saying it is this: I have no idea what I want my deck to DO. I don't have a clear objective.
Understanding your objective is just the first part. Once you know what you want to do, the next step is to figure out all the little steps it takes to actually accomplish that goal. As a teacher this means that I will figure out what skills I want my students to learn, then figure out each thing my students must DO in order to learn that skill.
In Magic, for me at least, my goal, when building a deck, is to give myself the best chance of winning possible. I play in FNM and tournaments that I can get to without spending too much money or travelling too far, and I am always looking to win as much as possible.
This is the stated objective, but what are the steps that go into accomplishing that goal?
1. Know the cards and decks that your opponents will most likely be playing. How do we accomplish this? Read. A lot. Read tournament reports, articles by pros, articles by scrubs, sift through the non-top 8 decks from large tournaments to find new or different deck lists, read spoilers of new sets, and read set reviews. Listen to members of your Magic community and get a feel for what they are interested in and why, etc.
2. Understand how the decks that your opponents will be playing work. Proxy them up and see how they play. You learn so much from actually piloting a deck, rather than playing against it. What are the choices you are making? Which cards do you feel are more important in certain matchups? What sideboard cards are they likely to bring in to fill in the holes their main deck has against you. If you can’t play them, then read about (yes, reading again) how other people are approaching playing that deck.
3. Have a clear understanding of what each card in your deck is designed to do in each matchup, and make sure you use those cards for that purpose. Don’t waste cards for short term gain when they could be used more effectively accomplishing a specific task. Nick Spagnolo has a great article describing this concept here. I highly recommend reading it. High level Magic theory there, good work Nick.
4. Refine your play decisions with those specific goals in mind in every game. Decide whether to mulligan or not based on your likely-hood of winning in this specific matchup with this cards. What do you need to do by turn 1? What do you need to do by turn 3, 4, or 5? Will you be able to do those things? Think ahead.
5. Assess your play. Play test. Write tournament reports that analyze your play, deck and decisions. Have someone else play you with your deck and see what problems or weaknesses it has. Figure out which series of plays work best in which matchups. Think behind. This is the opposite of think ahead, in that it is analyzing your own play in order to improve it.
How do we apply this to deck construction?
1. Know the math. I’ll admit I am horrible on this point, but Magic is a game of probability. Know which effects you need to have and how frequently you will need to have them. Then design your deck with numbers of cards that will maximize the odds of you drawing the cards you need when you need them. This can be learned (if you, like me never took statistics as a course) by looking at successful decks and breaking down their cards into job: threat, answer, acceleration, etc. Then see how many cards of each type are used by those players. Figure out why this is. Then apply those numbers to your decks and watch your matchup percentages improve.
2. Plan for opposition. Your opponent has 60 cards and is sitting across from you with the same goal as you: to win. He/she is not a goldfish. He/she will play cards. Those cards will have an effect on the game. This doesn’t mean that you should build control decks, but that you should choose cards that will be resilient in the face of opposition.
3. Be aware of the hive mind (net decks, pro theory, the general populations idea of the “best” deck, etc.) but do not be ruled by it. Magic is a fluid game. It changes. It evolves. It grows. This is a major reason it has lasted as long as it has. If you are constantly playing the deck everyone else has deemed the “best” deck, then you are missing out on chances to surprise your opponents with a card they were not expecting. War theory states that if you ever even slightly suspect that you are doing what you think your opponent wants you to do, DO SOMETHING ELSE! The “best” deck always has the biggest target on it, and your opponents will be prepared for your deck. You have to keep innovating, and you can’t always rely on others to do it for you.
- Rogue Insight
For those of you who don't know, in my non-Magic playing time I'm a teacher. I teach High school theater. In fact, I've done a lot of things in my life, including professional actor, director, designer, stage manager, and so many *make-money-so-I-can-continue-acting* kind of starving artist jobs that I've lost count. My background is eclectic to say the least.
Subject change: I am a student. I'm not in grad school or college or anything, but I'm always learning, attempting to get better at the things I am interested in, and that encompasses almost everything. I'm an eternal student. I analyze what I want to do, find a path that will get me to that point, then do the things I need to do in order to get there. One good example: I have always wanted to get married and have kids. I've known this about myself for ages, seriously since before high school.
When I started acting, my goal was to have a career that allowed me to be creative, active, mentally stimulated, and possibly allowed for some travel. It worked. When I was acting I had all of these things, but I realized about 6 years into my career that given the way my life was leading, I would be unable to achieve the OTHER probably more important aspiration of having a wife and family. So even though I loved my job, I realized I wasn't happy with the life that came along with acting as a career, the solitary, transient, unstable, and uncertain life. My goals had become more specific.
So I left the career. My goal was still to work in a job where I got to be creative, active, mentally stimulated, and passionate, but now I had added the important goals of being financially stable, having a house & car, and spending time with family and friends with the hopeful result of finding a wife and having a family. I was lucky enough thanks to my parents to be able to go back to school, get a Masters in Secondary Education, and begin a new career without too much problem. The happy result is that I now have what I wanted, a wonderful wife, a beautiful daughter, a house, two cars, and a career in teaching for which I am excited to get up in the morning because I love what I do.
Moral of the story: You have to understand exactly what you want to accomplish before you can achieve it.
What does this have to do with Magic? I'll get there.
Ok, so now I'm a teacher. You know what they don't tell you before you get into teaching? Teaching is hard, really, monumentally, hold-up-the-world-on-your-shoulders HARD! I mean I know we were all students at one point, but as we get older we forget what we were like when we were in school. Well I've spent a lot of time remembering what I was like while teaching, and yes, I was just as annoying, immature, impulsive, loud, obtuse, unfocused, and flat out obstinate as my students frequently are.
(Side note: I love the vocabulary of Magic. Wizards uses SAT words all the time and 13 year olds are reading them and might just wonder what they mean. Love it, keep it up!)
Students are difficult to teach, and frequently are actively fighting NOT to be taught. So teachers learn a lot of skills that are designed to get the best results out of their classes. One such skill is having a clear objective for your lesson; what is your lesson trying to get your class to DO? Now design a lesson that gets your class to DO that thing. Seems like a simple idea, but it isn't.
I'll finally use an example in Magic. When I design decks, I frequently go through my entire standard legal collection of cards, find every card that is even slightly interesting for the deck I want to build, put it in a HUGE pile, and then start trying to cut that pile down to something in the range of 60 cards. This is a horrible deck building strategy, utterly horrible. Why? I'm trying to do too much. I end up with a pile of 160 cards easy. Another way of saying it is this: I have no idea what I want my deck to DO. I don't have a clear objective.
Understanding your objective is just the first part. Once you know what you want to do, the next step is to figure out all the little steps it takes to actually accomplish that goal. As a teacher this means that I will figure out what skills I want my students to learn, then figure out each thing my students must DO in order to learn that skill.
In Magic, for me at least, my goal, when building a deck, is to give myself the best chance of winning possible. I play in FNM and tournaments that I can get to without spending too much money or travelling too far, and I am always looking to win as much as possible.
This is the stated objective, but what are the steps that go into accomplishing that goal?
1. Know the cards and decks that your opponents will most likely be playing. How do we accomplish this? Read. A lot. Read tournament reports, articles by pros, articles by scrubs, sift through the non-top 8 decks from large tournaments to find new or different deck lists, read spoilers of new sets, and read set reviews. Listen to members of your Magic community and get a feel for what they are interested in and why, etc.
2. Understand how the decks that your opponents will be playing work. Proxy them up and see how they play. You learn so much from actually piloting a deck, rather than playing against it. What are the choices you are making? Which cards do you feel are more important in certain matchups? What sideboard cards are they likely to bring in to fill in the holes their main deck has against you. If you can’t play them, then read about (yes, reading again) how other people are approaching playing that deck.
3. Have a clear understanding of what each card in your deck is designed to do in each matchup, and make sure you use those cards for that purpose. Don’t waste cards for short term gain when they could be used more effectively accomplishing a specific task. Nick Spagnolo has a great article describing this concept here. I highly recommend reading it. High level Magic theory there, good work Nick.
4. Refine your play decisions with those specific goals in mind in every game. Decide whether to mulligan or not based on your likely-hood of winning in this specific matchup with this cards. What do you need to do by turn 1? What do you need to do by turn 3, 4, or 5? Will you be able to do those things? Think ahead.
5. Assess your play. Play test. Write tournament reports that analyze your play, deck and decisions. Have someone else play you with your deck and see what problems or weaknesses it has. Figure out which series of plays work best in which matchups. Think behind. This is the opposite of think ahead, in that it is analyzing your own play in order to improve it.
How do we apply this to deck construction?
1. Know the math. I’ll admit I am horrible on this point, but Magic is a game of probability. Know which effects you need to have and how frequently you will need to have them. Then design your deck with numbers of cards that will maximize the odds of you drawing the cards you need when you need them. This can be learned (if you, like me never took statistics as a course) by looking at successful decks and breaking down their cards into job: threat, answer, acceleration, etc. Then see how many cards of each type are used by those players. Figure out why this is. Then apply those numbers to your decks and watch your matchup percentages improve.
2. Plan for opposition. Your opponent has 60 cards and is sitting across from you with the same goal as you: to win. He/she is not a goldfish. He/she will play cards. Those cards will have an effect on the game. This doesn’t mean that you should build control decks, but that you should choose cards that will be resilient in the face of opposition.
3. Be aware of the hive mind (net decks, pro theory, the general populations idea of the “best” deck, etc.) but do not be ruled by it. Magic is a fluid game. It changes. It evolves. It grows. This is a major reason it has lasted as long as it has. If you are constantly playing the deck everyone else has deemed the “best” deck, then you are missing out on chances to surprise your opponents with a card they were not expecting. War theory states that if you ever even slightly suspect that you are doing what you think your opponent wants you to do, DO SOMETHING ELSE! The “best” deck always has the biggest target on it, and your opponents will be prepared for your deck. You have to keep innovating, and you can’t always rely on others to do it for you.
- Rogue Insight
Really great post, sir. I agree with you here towards the bottom when you say:
ReplyDelete"If you are constantly playing the deck everyone else has deemed the “best” deck, then you are missing out on chances to surprise your opponents with a card they were not expecting. War theory states that if you ever even slightly suspect that you are doing what you think your opponent wants you to do, DO SOMETHING ELSE!"
You explained the main reason I have a deck that nobody plays. It also helps that nobody has sideboard answers specifically for my deck, because it's not worth creating a sideboard for a no-namer deck.
Next thing I like about your post was this:
"Know the cards and decks that your opponents will most likely be playing. How do we accomplish this? Read. A lot. Read tournament reports, articles by pros, articles by scrubs, sift through the non-top 8 decks from large tournaments to find new or different deck lists, read spoilers of new sets, and read set reviews."
Just like you recommend, I usually start off looking for what the most common cards people play are. I also look for the most expensive and dangerous cards people play which are, incidentally, also very common in tournament play. Then I take that list of cards and I find cards that work well against them.
Take Frost Titan, for example. How do you get rid of this creature (assuming it resolves)? Well, you can target him directly and hope your opponent doesn't counter it. But in doing so, you must pay an additional 2 mana just to target him on top of the risk of your spell getting countered. Next option is you target the player, forcing him to sacrifice a creature. But then he has so many creatures to choose from...he would never choose Frost Titan. So the the only other option is to take him out in combat. Not an easy thing to do to get rid of a 6/6 who taps creatures. He'll just tap whatever has power enough to threaten him. So then I think about something that doesn't necessarily have to have huge power to kill-- deathtouch. Deathtouch will do the trick, even on a small creature. But again, your opponent can see ahead of that and tap your creature that has deathtouch. Well then you're left with one final option -- an instant that gives deathtouch. He won't see it coming. Voila, virulent swipe. Narrowed my cards down just based on that one rationale/conversation I just had out loud.
Sort of a reverse process of elimination. And I go from there.