The often maligned idea of different players having different playstyles is something we’re all familiar with, independent of if you belong to the faction
that considers it an excuse for making bad choices or the one that thinks it’s a legitimate factor to take into account when making decisions. A similar
idea, though concerning a rather different area of competitive Magic, is something I’ve rarely seen talked about even though I consider it both one of the
most important tools of any deckbuilder’s toolkit and one of the most necessary things to know about yourself if you want to improve your deckbuilding
ability: deckbuilding style.
Let me use a little anecdote to illustrate what I mean by deckbuilding style: In spite of being almost exclusively immersed in Eternal Magic myself, I
still tend to at least read up on winning decks in other formats, including Standard. That’s what led me to stumble over William Jensen’s delightful s econd place UW Sphinx’s Revelation control deck from GP Dallas 2013.
My first reaction to the list was what you’d expect if you know me a little. “Woah! Sweet. Deck.” But it’s the follow up thought to that one we’re
interested in today: “This has to be a Cuneo deck!” For the record, it was.
So how could I tell that that wonderful collection of 60 magical cards was a creation of old school master Andrew Cuneo just by having a look at the list?
Well, I recognized the signature traits of his deckbuilding – his deckbuilding style. To my mind, deckbuilding is a skill somewhere between an art and a
science, and as we can recognize pieces by many artists simply by taking a look at the technique employed, it’s possible with some experience to recognize
the handywork of a deckbuilder we’re familiar with in a similar way. Given that Andrew’s deckbuilding is something I’ve admired since I learned about Draw
Go back in the nineties and his style is actually reasonably close to mine – I assume because his work in the nineties was part of my own
formative period that established what I value in a deck and try to do with the 60 slots I have – his work is rather recognizable to me.
Alright, now that we’ve established that there is such a thing as a “deckbuilding style,” what’s the point of talking about it other than idle thoughts
about the beauty of Magic? Well, I believe that developing, understanding, and adapting our own deckbuilding style is a key tool in becoming good at
deckbuilding in general. So what I want to do today is to dissect the key elements of my own deckbuilding style so as to hopefully help you to take a look
at your own.
Note that while I’ll focus on my own way to approach deckbuilding, you shouldn’t take this article as a call for everyone to adopt my way of doing things.
There are quite a few very good deckbuilders out there who approach things with a very different perspective and mindset, and continuously come up with
powerful decks that use fundamental principles as different as night and day, clear proof that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I simply use my
own because that’s what I’m most familiar with (duh) and to provide an example for those of you out there who are still looking for a good starting point
in developing their own ability in the area. Well, enough foreplay, let’s get going.
A Matter of Principles
At its core, deckbuilding style is about the fundamental principles you assume govern the inner workings of a Magic deck. These are essentially mental
distillations of what you consider the hallmarks of a good Magic deck, the attributes that make a deck inherently stronger than one built without them in
mind. Now, clearly, there isn’t a universally valid set of principles that apply here, otherwise all the great deckbuilders would end up with exactly the
same lists all the time. Instead, there are different goals to strive for and different tools to reach them, and figuring out the ones we’re most
comfortable working with is the first step towards becoming a decent deckbuilder. So, what are the principles I tend to rely upon? Glad you asked!
Linearity Entails Power
I have a confession to make: I tend to think about just about any deck whatsoever as a linear deck first and foremost. Now, that isn’t to say that I want
my decks to be extremely narrow or limited to a single line of play by design. Instead, what I look for is the ability to play towards
implementing one particular, often match up specific angle of attack game after game if I so desire. My way of looking at Miracles gives me an easy way to
illustrate what I’m trying to say.
You see, the way I build (and play) Miracles looks at the deck not as a generalized control deck but as the fusion of two different extremely powerful
linear decks. On the one hand, you have the Terminus into Entreat the Angels gameplan that leads to the deck playing out as a heavy-handed board control
deck. On the other hand, you have Counterbalance and Sensei’s Divining Top, a really cheap to establish two-card lock that allows Miracles to play as a
combo-control deck against anybody who is cold to the soft lock.
Once you’ve understood this (or bought into my world view) that means building Miracles suddenly isn’t about juggling removal spell count and counterspell
count, cantrip counts, or setting up to grind value with Snapcaster Mage; it’s about enabling the deck to find and execute the correct one of these two
linear gameplans in every single game you play. That’s why I never understood when people cut into the Terminus or Counterbalance count. Either the vast
majority of the metagame is weak to at least one of these two strategies and you should maximize your ability to find the appropriate one by maxing out on
both key pieces, or you should just admit that one of these two plans isn’t good enough against the current meta and just cut it from the deck entirely to
do something more generally useful that requires less setting up.
There are a couple of rules of thumb that result from this idea of trying to enable your decks to play as linear decks when desirable:
– Always build around a specific powerful card or interaction (or a complementary pair like Terminus and Counterbalance). Don’t just wing it and stuff a
bunch of unrelated good cards into your deck.
– When in doubt, maximize your deck’s ability to find those cards that allow it to implement its core plan.
– Conversely, minimize the number of cards in your deck that cannot contribute to its linear element whenever possible.
That doesn’t mean a deck can’t have fun-ofs or that you always have to play full playsets of anything you consider putting in your deck. However, it does
mean you should consider any card that weakens your ability to play out like a dedicated linear deck as a huge deckbuilding cost that you’re only supposed
to pay if you’re absolutely convinced you can’t live without it.
Dual Cores
One thing related to the idea of streamlining towards linearity that I’ve found incredibly helpful in deckbuilding is that of working with a two-step
model, mentally dividing the cards in a deck into key groups: the support skeleton and the payoff.
Simply put, the payoff is what your deck actually does. That might mean a wide variety of things depending on what kind of deck you’re building,
from a bunch of Dark Rituals, a Past in Flames and a Tendrils of Agony (Storm), cheap threats and the Stifle–Wasteland package (Delver), or the
Counterbalance and mass-removal core of Miracles I’ve described just above.
The support skeleton, on the other hand. consists of those cards you use to solve issues and keep the deck humming smoothly. Classic examples include cheap
cantrips (to help make sure you draw what you need), spot removal (to keep you alive until you can enact your pay off), or flexible value tools such as
Snapcaster Mage (to create redundancy and value).
The point of looking at the deck through this lens is simple: anything that doesn’t neatly fit into either category is suspect by default and needs to be
carefully reevaluated, which in turn helps finding the final cuts to get to sixty and eliminate inconsistencies in implementing your own gameplan.
Enforce Predictability
One thing I value very highly in a deck is knowing what my deck is going to do before I even sit down at the table. I don’t want to have to wait to draw my
opening hand to find out what my plan will be depending on what mix of cards I’ve drawn this particular game. Basically, I don’t want my deck dictating
what kind of game I’m supposed to play, I want to decide what game is being played and have my deck conform to that expectation.
There are basically two ways to work towards achieving this. The first is to rely simply on redundancy – if your deck is 40 Lightning Bolts and 20
Mountains, there isn’t all that much that can force you to deviate from what you’ve built your deck to do, is there? The second is to incorporate as many
pieces of library manipulation, tutoring, and card drawing as possible. The more cards you see per game, the more likely you’re going to hit the ones you
need in order to do what you were planning to do in the first place.
Necessary Cards Versus Desirable Cards
When building a deck, there are two kinds of cards that go into it: cards we want to play and cards we play simply by necessity. You want to spend as few
slots as humanly possible on necessary cards. To illustrate: A control deck would like to be all card draw and answers; however, we also need to play lands
so as to even be able to play spells, as well as some kind of win condition because, well, you need to kill your opponent somehow to win the game. Every
slot we devote to these two elements increases the likelihood we’ll have one of these necessary cards in hand instead of the desirable answer or draw spell
we want, so we obviously should play as few of them as possible (you can see this in action in Andrew Cuneo’s U/W deck I linked in the beginning).
Similarly, an aggro deck like Zoo is meant to kill the opponent asap. Anything that can’t help with that (such as Path to Exile) is a huge burden that is
forced upon us because sometimes you just need to kill that opposing Tarmogoyf.
There are a couple of ways to help achieve this. By relying on cards that can do what is necessary but that also fill some other vital function (burn as
removal in Zoo, Jace, the Mind Sculptor in control decks, Burning Wish as the only way to access your Tendrils of Agony in Storm), we can fulfill the needs
imposed on us without actually spending too many slots on cards we’d rather not need in our deck. Library manipulation is another tool that helps with
this, as it allows us to run fewer copies of necessary cards but still retain the same ratio of access we’d have by playing more copies but less library
manipulation. Incidental bodies such as Snapcaster Mage or Phyrexian Revoker make for fine win conditions in a pinch, as do lands with special abilities
like Creeping Tar Pit that allow us to fill multiple necessary roles while only spending a single card slot.
Always Minimize Your Curve
There’s an extremely important lesson taught to all of Magic by Necropotence before it was used as a combo enabler: As long as you can keep yourself
fueled, it’s much better to play multiple cheap spells per turn than a single big one with a higher power level. This should be reasonably intuitive: If
you cast a single spell per turn and your opponent has an answer, you haven’t gotten ahead in the slightest. On the other hand, if you cast multiple
spells, any single one being answered still leaves you with a turn used constructively thanks to the other two.
A lower curve also means that you need to run fewer mana sources (for why that is good, see above), makes it more likely for you to use your mana every
turn, and reduces the risk of being paralyzed by mana screw (because you need fewer lands to cast more of your spells). As such, whenever you’re unsure if
you’re supposed to go with the powerful, expensive card or the cheap, weaker card, you want to default on picking the cheaper card until you’re convinced
you need the more expensive card to get enough power into the deck.
Role Reversal and Inevitability
Finally, there are two things I always try to provide for when building decks: a way to switch from defense to offense at a moment’s notice and tools that
ensure inevitability in matchups where that is relevant. Being able to suddenly switch roles – say by casting Entreat the Angels for two on the end step on
turn 4 and going aggressive with Miracles – gives a deck the ability to catch opponents off-guard and steal games where you’re significantly behind,
assuming you’d try to implement your regular strategy. Similarly, inevitability is such a powerful thing to have in any matchup because it allows you to
not devote any resources towards threatening your opponent unless the resources are essentially unused at the moment. Just the ability to stay alive
becomes a win condition on its own.
It isn’t always possible to give a deck either of these capabilities, but both are powerful enough to make it worth going out of your way to gain them in
at least some matchups. A typical example of this is the Engineered Explosives plus Academy Ruins sideboard package I’ve been using in both Golddigger and
Enter the Dragon. Both cards are reasonably flexible, and therefore, low cost (deck-construction wise) due to their wide applicability, but having them in
your deck when the main two ways you’re going to lose to Miracles are Entreat the Angels and the Counterbalance lock means that you can rely on being able
answer any number of either, assuming the game goes long enough – which it should, seeing how Miracles is indeed Miracles. That means these few very
flexible cards have just disproportionally increased your win percentage against Miracles.
Styled?
Well, those are the core elements I always look and work towards when creating or modifying a new 75. As mentioned before, there are other criteria to look
for, such as maximum earlygame power, the ability to blank opposing interactive cards, and probably a hundred others that are part of what makes decks
successful. Which ones to value and which ones to keep on the backburner is something every one of us has to figure out for themselves. As with playstyle
influencing which archetypes we should choose to play (assuming equal power levels), different players are simply better at building different decks
depending on experience, preferences, and the deckbuilding principles they tend to apply.
However, while we’re certainly predisposed towards building particular types of decks by our preferences and formative influences, just knowing different
deckbuilding styles exist gives us a huge opportunity: By understanding other deckbuilders’ styles, we can absorb their knowledge and broaden the spread of
archetypes we’ll be most successful working on. For an interesting learning experience, the next time you check out a netdeck, try to figure out the
guiding principles its designer adhered to. The more you can figure out, the more arrows you’ll have in your quiver the next time you’re interested in
building a similar style of deck on your own. Now go forth and build – but with style!