Have you ever met the guy/gal at your local Friday Night Magic that asks for your opinion on a deck, and after you respond with your constructive input he or she responds back with: “But card A beats deck B, and card Y kills card Z.” This is followed up by the angry thought in your head, “Why the heck did you ask me for my opinion if you’re just going to keep your deck the way it is?”
This happens time and time again. Many brewers, including myself at one point, truly believe their ideas are the only way to go and that they’ve thought everything out. The problem ends up being that deck ideas become our own, similar to having a pet—we become attached and begin to see things too subjectively. I also believe that Magic is as popular as it is because of this reason; we all get to be creative and make something our own in a world full of people using the same product, but there’s never anyone doing the exact same thing. It’s the reason Commander has become what it is. If you are brewing for the kitchen table or simply to express yourself in the game you love then there is nothing wrong with that, more power to you. Although if you are looking to win, you have to battle yourself and get past your pet decks and ideas because they are far from perfect.
On the flip side, once you learn to break the mold that I just spoke about and trust yourself too. There can be too many suggestions that you can blindly end up changing and therefore make your deck worse. It’s at this point that you begin to lose focus of your initial strategy and believe you start wasting your time and move on to the next idea, although you may be putting down a winning deck!
My experience on this subject is something I still struggle with. I have public forums such as Twitter, my website, and now StarCityGames.com in which I share my decklists and ideas and then battle them on Magic Online. But with so many people adding input I have to be extremely careful of what advice I take. Some players simply don’t get it, or have their own pet cards they want you to include in your own deck. Generally speaking, it’s often worth it to slow down, take an idea, and really think about it for a while as well as ask others about someone else’s suggestion. I do this quite often and a common response is one in which I receive a reply from another individual explaining why the previous suggestion doesn’t work as well. If a lot of people agree or give similar suggestions, you should listen and try it on the battlefield. It’s mostly a rare occasion where just one or two people give a suggestion that no one else is mentions, and it turns out to be the missing link!
Simply put—you should listen to others and get past your subjective reasoning as to why you aren’t trying others’ input.
One caveat is that it’s ok to defend ideas; you’ll just have to know when it’s the right time.
THICK SKIN
Brewing is a painful process on the heart, body, and mind. This is particularly true if you’re after public notoriety for your ideas. You’ll suffer a lot of letdowns, but it will be only on yourself if you have a bad idea. I see a lot of people say nine-to-ten ideas are bad, and maybe I’m just horrible, but I’d say closer to 24 or 25 ideas are bad. This isn’t an arbitrary number either; I’d venture to say I’ve listed out an entire 75-card deck over 500 times, and what’s come of all those decks? My best results have come from G/W Stoneforge (Mat Marr placed top 30 at the PT with this), G/W Tokens (from Valakut era), Mill-Blade, Mono-Black Infect, and Tezzeret, the Mind Hammer. Despite having a lot of success on Magic Online with even more decks than those listed, only three of those equated to real success on paper ranging from the StarCityGames.com Open Series circuit to the Pro Tour. That’s less than 1% of my brews. To put it in prospective, however, I worked my way up by putting in tons of work. I have no Pro Tour experience (yet) and no real finishes in any large paper Magic tournaments, yet I’ve been able to brew my way up to having an impact on the world of Magic.
This is heavily due to the fact that I was able to realize I wanted success more than I wanted to have fun decks that are cool to look at. It took a constructive beating, but you have to realize that if people are being constructive they’re only trying to help because they see potential there. I’d say you have to worry if people stop giving advice. Oftentimes my goals are short sited, and I learn quickly that the idea I just laid out may not be worth it. Countless times now Gerry Thompson, Mike Flores, and Marshall Sutcliffe have given me their time to respond to my ideas. Nine times out of ten it’s a response that you won’t want to hear, but you have to realize that those awesome people who are very good brewers just responded to your idea! Take note and realize that despite them shutting down your idea, you should see that they just took the time to look over your deck list and respond with a professional eye.
The point is you need to have thick skin and not get down on yourself or defensive towards constructive criticism no matter how it comes off. Input is what makes decks great.
Here is a story that, while I can’t remember where I heard it, is one I will never forget.
One day Patrick Chapin suggested to Brian Kibler in reference to the U/W control idea he had been working on: “Try Squadron Hawk.” Kibler did so and simply replied with: “Wow.” Guess what deck this created? If you guessed Caw-Blade, you’re correct. There was nothing but trust from another and an attempt to try a suggestion, and look what it created. This is deck building professionalism at its finest, and it’s what you should try to mimic.
ACCEPTING FAILURE
Accepting failure involves a lot of time that may feel wasted. But realize it’s not wasted time; every failure is a step or gamble at hitting gold. Some of my most successful brews came from building a deck in about ten minutes and having it just destroy everything thrown at it. This is rare but can happen. And sometimes you won’t even know why it’s so ahead of the metagame, but you just accept it and tune it as best you can.
There’s no doubt it’s disappointing if an idea doesn’t work out. How I generally flip failure into success is once an idea seems like a no-go, I go into the think tank to find another idea to get excited about! From there I repeat the cycle. One of the hardest restrictions for accepting failure is the lack of time to try and start on the next idea. I will say that the best resource for this, and to date the best remedy, is playtesting on Magic Online. Particularly in money queues and not tournament practice because you want to face decks you plan on seeing in a larger tournament. A lot of ideas come from the fact that you want to beat the metagame, but if you face a bunch of rogue decks and lose, you’ll get down on your idea and move on to the next one too quickly. That idea could have been a good one for a particular week or tournament.
Money is another barrier in my opinion, or at least on the resources to test. In fact, if you have a good group, testing a lot of games quickly in-person can be extremely beneficial. Same is true if you have multiple players with meta decks online, because there you can sleeve and de-sleeve cards far more quickly. Accepting failure in terms of dollar bills is absolutely a barrier to entry in the field of building competitive decks, but if you want to succeed badly enough you can get past that the best way you know how. I don’t really have much advice on this and I could write a whole article on the intricacies here, but know that accepting failure comes in a lot of ways—be prepared.
If you have thick skin and can accept failure, as well as have confidence in your ability and know you have the skill to grow that ability, then you too can have success. Let me know your suggestions about this bonus list. I’m all ears!
BONUS MATERIAL
Last week I spoke about a Modern decklist: U/R Faeries. I absolutely advocate that list for Modern; I believe it’s a deck that gives you a real chance to win a PTQ. The other is Brad Nelson RUG Delver deck. However, Dark Ascension is upon us, and I’d like to show an early idea based on our current spoilers.
When building decks I often shy away from strategies that Wizards pushes, lists that people will figure out simply based on power level and card availability. Since my time in the game these strategies have mostly been underwhelming except for B/R Vampires. However, if you look at the history, Faeries, Jund, and Affinity have been grossly dominant strategies. I’m not generally a Zombie fan per se, but I see some real potential in the clan right now. There’s just one card you have to be ready for and that’s Mirran Crusader, so my way to attack the unknown metagame is to be as aggressive as possible out of the gate. Here is my B/R Zombies list that I’d start with:
Creatures (23)
- 4 Cemetery Reaper
- 4 Stormblood Berserker
- 4 Diregraf Ghoul
- 1 Ghoulraiser
- 4 Gravecrawler
- 2 Hellrider
- 4 Geralf's Messenger
Lands (22)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
One of the main concerns of this deck on paper seems to be B/W tokens, which I believe to be another Wizards-pushed tier 1 strategy. You want to be ready for this, which is a large reason for all the Ratchet Bombs. Crush is due to the fact that Grafdigger’s Cage may be a problem for us, at least in theory. Not devastating, but still a nuisance, however we also get the ability to efficiently destroy Swords and other various problem artifacts. My only other concern, and I haven’t used him yet, is Hellrider. The card seems very powerful, but its double red cost could cause problems. This could be remedied with maindeck Phyrexian Obliterator or Falkenrath Aristocrat, but I wanted the deck to have some reach since all your guys are attacking on the ground. Hellrider and Geralf’s Messenger help with this problem by doing damage in various ways.
It’s possible there are unspoiled cards to be seen that would fit even better in here. But this is the starting point I’d go for a fairly aggressive B/R aggro strategy.
PLUS GAME
I don’t have too much to say about this list other than it’s very well placed right now. In fact it dawned on me that Doran hasn’t received a sniff recently, so I built this a day before the Magic Online Pro Tour Qualifier. It was a ninth place finish unfortunately, but the deck felt unbelievable all day long. If I were to play again today here is the Modern list of choice that I’d feel best about.
Creatures (23)
- 4 Dark Confidant
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 3 Doran, the Siege Tower
- 4 Treefolk Harbinger
- 2 Kitchen Finks
- 4 Squadron Hawk
- 2 Spellskite
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (23)
Spells (12)
Zealous Persecution is currently maindeck material. We’ve seen countless lists do well chock-full of one-toughness creatures including last weekend’s winning Faeries list. The inclusion of Squadron Hawk (where I had Knight of the Reliquary in the PTQ) makes Zealous Persecution even better. Overall Knight of the Reliquary was just another body that wasn’t effective enough in Doran; it’s much better in Bant decks, and just because it’s a very good card in Legacy doesn’t necessarily translate to Modern, at least in the current format.