at this point I might do that not due to the volume or complexity of text but the sheer fact there are too many cards for my brain to remember lol. even simple ones I'll end up asking for reminders. sometimes I'll need to recheck the cards I'm holding or have in play. I'm not even all that dumb, my brain just isn't willing to retain every card anymore. these days the cards I do remember, I couldn't tell you half of their names (as what they do is the only part worth remembering imo) and if I'm recommending something I'll do a quick scryfall search to tell them
When people cast cards and it's something that I am not super familiar with, I simply ask "and what does that do?". I hate to admit that happens more often than not, but I also play with a lot of people that will cast something with two paragraphs of text and just say "pass".
One very smart content creator said to only update your deck every 6 months or one year. I've started doing that. It's been great for two reasons: I get to see cards organically in the wild. And I'm not in a rush or panicked to update my decks. I have 45 decks. Updating them is no fun. But finding a wild card out in the open is kind of magical again. A feeling that's been lost for a while.
Honestly one year is probably the best balance since you can easily go to tcgplayer or wherever else and find most cards priced down. Personally because I heavily lean into themes, I rarely have to worry about most sets. Afterall I highly doubt Bloomborrow have Samurais for my Samurai deck and even for my Ninja deck (non-Yuriko) Thunder Junction only had 2 or so cards. It also helps that I only have 3-4 commander decks to take care of and not 10+ that I've seen people have.
For me building decks is just as fun and rewarding as it's always been- HOWEVER, keeping decks 'up to date' is something I just cannot do anymore. The amount of constant potential upgrades for all my decks in EVERY SINGLE SET is so overwhelming I've shifted my deck building philosophy into making 'finished' decks, and once I've completed them they're considered to be set in amber and unchangeable. Because otherwise I literally couldn't make any new decks because I'd just be constantly spinning plates keeping my current decks up to date.
This is my problem. I have thirty decks and I spend so much time trying to update them that I am getting burned out and not building anything new. I really need to pair down my decks and stop looking through every set for the “next” card to add. I might start doing this for all this for all the decks I don’t play as often and keep maybe 4-5 that can be regularly updated.
@@matthewneveling9021 for me I only have 2-3 decks that I ever update anymore, and even when I do it's usually every like 4-6 months when there's loads of new cards to play with.
I feel pretty positive about having so many options; I enjoy the fine tuning and making more accurate decisions about what fits into my deck, having it be unique and tailored to my playstyle and how I'm approaching the deck's strategy. I goldfish a lot more before I buy cards to get a really good idea of how the deck plays on a turn by turn basis. I want to know specific effects my strategy actually needs (or style of effects, like you guys mentioned more expensive versatile cards vs cheaper narrower cards) then filter new cards through that lens, instead of picking up every shiny thing that might loosely relate to what my deck could do. Maybe constantly maintaining 18 decks is too many for the way things are now. Having fewer decks that you put more time and effort into, or choosing some decks to constantly maintain while others stay the same for long periods of time might be a better way to go. Then you have a smaller workload (brainload?) when new sets come out, and if you ever feel like your static decks are too static, you don't have to wait until you completely overhaul everything before you feel like you can play with your friends.
Lately i have been employing a very tough-love and critical tactic for making cuts, especially when it comes to the abundance of new cards being released for my decks. Ive adopted the "killing your darlings" approach, where if a card is in the deck simply because i wanted it to be, i cut it for something better. The decision becomes, do you want the silly thing, or the objectively better thing. When it comes down to comparing apples to apples, however, I've started running fewer tutors and more draw effects. It be omes less fun over time (in my opinion) to always pull the one game ending card out of your deck in a casual game. More card draw means you see more variance and can scrutinize the cards you draw more effectively. I also like what Dana said at the end, where if you notice a card in your hand time and time again, but you never want to actually cast it. If that happens to me 3 times, and i feel like it wouldn't have advanced my game state to play a particular card that keeps sitting in my hand, i cut it.
@seanedgar164 This is a really good take, and it's hard to answer that question. Sometimes optimization never stops, but sometimes, backward steps also lead to the most fun. I powered down my favorite deck recently, and it's the most fun version of it i have played. Sometimes, you just can't fit the new cards in, and that's ok! But if you are committed to making a change, then you might have to make some hard decisions. That's just how it is.
I recommend playing the old filter lands that make colorless, Tainted lands and Pain lands if you have colorless pips in your deck but don't want to miss out on the color-fixing
Agreed I put all of them in every deck possible, and the odyssey filters as well since they completed the cycle. My favorite, the best filters imho are the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor filters. Those are absolute auto includes
@@BrootalMetalBanjo No these are more pricey. Some have been reprinted and are fairly cheap but a few are still kinda expensive. They come come in untapped and tap for colorless or tap and pay hybrid mana with one of the 2 colors to make any combination of the 2, get it? Look up Wooded Bastion, Sunken Ruins two of the expensive ones still
I'm using increasingly specific themes and arbitrary narrow restrictions to help me cut down my options. So I'm not building an equipment deck but a blademaster deck where every equipment has to be a sword for example. The only tribal deck I would run Roaming Throne in is golems, because I generally don't include creatures that don't mention the specific type on the card in those kind of decks. Decks with just creatures. Or no nonland permanents. Everything mana value 3. Something like that. I have a fixed playgroup though where I don't need to worry about power too much.
I feel like I'm increasingly in the same boat as you. I recently started putting together a list of possible modifications for the Bloomburrow squirrel precon and I got up to 50 nonland cards before I decided "okay, let's keep the deck animal characters only". No humans, elves or anything like that anywhere - not even in the card art. That made things both more interesting and way more manageable. I didn't use to care about themes or flavor with mtg. In my mind the game was always more about it's interesting mechanical aspects. But nowadays, it feels like if I only think about the mechanics, I quickly end up with a 200 card decklist.
Must be nice. A lot of us are stuck with Rule 0-less LGS pickup games, where you have to contend with a cEDH Fast Mana suite facilitating Infinites in otherwise slower colors. I’d love to do some jankier stuff, but where I play you’ve gotta have the speed and best Interaction available to avoid a T2-T3 combo blowout, and you still may get Thoracled.
@@scaredycat3146 Yeah, some nights it’s hell. Other nights, like tonight, you get this supreme upswell of satisfaction, when you dunk on four infinite-attempts (On Mono Green), in one game, and go on to dome the offenders with a gigantic Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider. (Railway Brawler has to be my favorite Green creature *since* Monstrous Raider and Vanilla Clex. Screw that Stacksy-Voice of Hunger.) Ezuri’s Predation + Railway Brawler + Doubling Season + Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider + Mirage Mirror copying the Branching Evolution killed with 3-cost-or-lower-Removal = The seldom seem Everyone Dead From 30-40 life. I’ll cherish that memory forever. It’ll keep me warm through the next 100 unsuccessful attempts to stop Infinites.
I think the hard part is commander players realizing we don't have to get a rhystic study, cyclonic rift, tutors etc for every deck we build lol there's too many weird but cooler and more fun options if things work out. The other cool part is that just because you weren't around for urzas saga and pulled a Gilded Drake you can get a weird energy version now. In a way the reworked old school staples are kind of like reprints
Building decks now feels like tuning into an exact frequency. It use to be adding new sounds and instruments to a deck. Now every deck has enough sound in it, you just want it to do it at a certain volume with a certain amount of base and do it for a particular mood.
I have a super easy solution, guys. Outside of mana base, I make every effort to run any given card in ONE deck. Yep, that means Swords and Path in only one deck...Blas Act, Rhystic Study, Inkshield all in only one deck. It provides challenging deckbuilding restrictions and I don't have to modify 10-15 decks every time a better Wrath or Rampant Growth is printed.
This is a good idea. I self-imposed the rule of only building each color combination once. That helps focusing creative energy. Sounds like a really great idea. I am still under the assumption that some staples I still want to run everywhere. like maybe sol ring or arcane signet? it is hard to say good buy to those. maybe exclude mana producing artefact from this rule.
This whole vid is operating under the pretense that we HAVE to optimize or find the BEST option for any slot. Keep your pet cards, run what you have, have fun and play with others that do too
I agree. I totally get the impetus, part of the whole point of a trading card game is making tweaks to your deck, but in EDH of all formats you really don't need to stress over minor gains. Like, how often would Lightning Bolt do a job Lightning Strike couldn't also have done? Not zero, but is it enough to bother ordering a copy, driving out to get it or waiting for it to come in, unsleeving the Strike, sleeving the Bolt, all just in case of the game where you both draw it and have that one mana difference matter? It's not the biggest chore in the world, but still should measure if it's worth it.
One of my favorite pet cards is Sight of the Scalelords in my Omnath, Locus of Rage deck. Essentially gives my all my creatures +2/+2 and vigilance since the majority of my attacking force will be the elementals.
By my experience, it's not a pretence. You can't just run whatever you like anymore. People buy into the latest cards and those cards bring upsides with them compared to vanilla versions. Modal cards are also more and more common. Having flexibility can be a game changer in a 100 card unique card format. With the new Spree mechanic you basically get 2-3 cards in 1. If you run only cards or from 2-3 years ago, you will be a punching bag at your local lgs. My experience is exactly this. My decks can't keep up with the new card designs which just go faster. New legendary creatures designed to be commanders have immediate payoffs while older cards need to stick through a whole turn cycle. The same goes for triggers. It's trigger town galore now. Everything does 2 or more things. So again, you are forced by your local meta to keep up and change out your cards. Which is not the nature of the format. This is what I understood they meant with this podcast. The point they're illustrating is that due to powercreep and fast releases, edh has become a.rotating format in a way. As an edh player, did you not experience the same in your play environments ? Curious about this, thanks :)
@@grishnakh1712that seems like a local phenomenon. I follow you some of the way, although for me it's the latest Boros card which interact with equipment, or a new seamonster - that's not necessarily the optimized deck approach. A smart person recently said to build and bring different levels of decks.
To me, it's more the internet is being devalued because of the amount of product being released. It feels like older school magic where you dont know what cards are because you've never seen them before. So much is being released that they can easily be replaced by nearly similar things. Its on the player to decide how much to invest time wise to optimise their deck, which is great for both casual and invested players imo.
I have always loved deckbuilding and brewing... finding synergies and niche cards that work amazingly well within my self imposed deckbuilding constraints has always been a passion of mine... now most of my decks, a number which keeps going up, despite my best efforts, have 20+ cards in the sideboard, and cutting them requires so much brainpower that it takes me days of collaborative effort to finish a single one. There's always new set out before I can finish.
@Dana To the point about how to make upgrades/changes to your deck - I do something Joey suggested a while back. I have tags for Draw, Ramp, Removal, Mill, Buffs, Evasion - depending on the deck. Then I try to keep those numbers as tight as possible. Like, no matter how good a card draw spell fits my deck - I max out around 12-13 sources of draw. So it forces me to cut old cards or compare them to a small subsection, then play what’s most powerful or most flavorful depending on preference.
I do this too, and it's useful even if cuts can still be tough within each category lol. But I also find it pretty interesting to track how many cards different decks can allocate to "utility/cool card" slots vs categories that are less exciting but necessary to make the deck function properly.
wizzards rapidfiring products is the first thing in my mind why its so hard to build decks in the powerlevel you want it to have. the second thing is that wizzards wanted to have a rotading format with commander (or brawl) so we get even more products.
@@robotov2334 cause you need to evaluate the cards and synergies within the new changes. so stronger cards push weaker cards and that changes the powerlvl at all. decks that arent updated for 3 or 4 moths get pushed away. also we all have less time to evaluate cause at the next day you get the next product.
@@happybrain2674 if your decks become outdated in 3 to 4 months, that's not on anyone but the builder. I really think I've only swapped 5 cards in the past year in my main mid-power deck, but only because I like tweaking my ratios. Each set introduces maybe 1 or 2 cards that are actually relevant to any given deck, or more (maybe 5) if the set is directly supporting your archetype.
@@robotov2334 that might be right for ONE deck, but not if you take in consideration other decks and how they change. also 3 moths means 12 new commander decks with around 10-15 new cards specially made for commander per deck + cards from modern/standard sets. means if you dont update your missing a huge cardpool and knowledge about those cards. but thats again too much information to keep up and be able to match the right power lvl esp if some are up to date and others arent. so the chances to missmatch are even higher.
I actually love this bc it means that you get a really powerful "second row" of cards that many players don't run anymore that you can get for cheap now to build budget decks. Or in case that we have different but equal options not everyone has to chase the same card, thus increasing the price of that in astronomic heights, but instead have some choices on the same level all with a more reasonable price tag on.
How I make upgrades in my deck: I don’t. If it’s a minor +5% upgrade I won’t agonize over it and will consider the card in a future deck. So many cards come out so often I don’t care enough to look at spoilers anymore. I focus more on the cards I want to have in my deck and periphery cards like ramp or removal I don’t worry about upgrading unless it is a theme-specific slam dunk, or an upgrade that is so clear (like heroic intervention to smugglers share in my dragons deck) that I don’t have to actually consider changing my deck’s construction.
Yeah this whole video is operating under the pretense that we MUST optimize, even. I just build with what I have or what interests me, most of my upgrades are for consistency not power
Heya! Longtime listener here. It sounds like you are struggling with the fact that there are too many good cards for the decks you are interested in building so it's getting tougher to slot in staples. ...that world sounds amazing, not gonna lie. I love how it's no longer as easy to predict the metagame because every deck will be running maze of ith, cyclonic rift, path to exile, outpost siege etc. The game is no longer "same-y" and if this keeps up, then it will actually make the game MORE fun and unexpected while also still remaining EDH. You'll still need to build ramp, card draw and removal, wincons, role-fillers and lands, so if you are metagaming, you can still loosely fit the principles in every build you make. But hyper-niche meta calls are now an impossibility in casual commander and thats AWESOME!! Torpor Orb's usability will eventually be cut in half if creatures keep getting cast triggers instead of ETB. Thats good in casual commander. Uniform board-wipes like Wrath of God are being changed out for one-sided boardwipes to keep games from going to 3+ hours because wiping the board now no longer slows down the game, it speeds it up. Thats great in casual commander! And that concept will just keep on injecting new life into the metagame so that commander becomes a wacky game of missed-triggers, silly boardstates and completely off-the-wall games that were completely impossible to predict. Just as Sheldon would have wanted. Lol.
The challenge is having to consider the optimized option from a dozen or more similar cards to keep up with pickup games or the wider community. I just don't tbf, I'm not interested in optimization or power creep lol
One thing that is happening in parallel is increased card diversity through people just getting priced out. There are always gonna be people that choose not to run the best cards intentionally, but ignoring those people, I think that we would definitely see enough Fierce Guardianships, Dockside Extortionists or Gaea's Cradles to get sick of them every game night. But those cards are just way too expensive for the majority of the players - especially if they'd have to get them for every deck they'd be legal in.
😅 every time that I see you guys run an advertisement for better help hurts me, they have been proven to be a very irresponsible company and made my as well as many other people's mental problems worse than when it started. would you ever consider trying to get a sponsorship from a different company? I understand that they help pay the bills, but they have a very very bad image that is starting to hurt to be associated with
As a mental health professional who has had to pick up the pieces when Better Help failed and sometimes actively harmed people, I can’t second this enough. I will be glad when that contract is done.
@@danaroach29we understand you guys didn’t know about it when you signed the deal. And we know you likely only found out after commenters let you know about the issues on videos published after said deal signing. We’re sorry that you are stuck with it. It takes a lot of bravery to discuss a sponsorship at all when you get comments about it, thank you for addressing it. Most creators wouldn’t. Don’t let the diks get you down.
@@Xmr2024 One sort-of solution I have with my playgroup is that we limit how often and how expensively we build and upgrade decks. We do that by doing group deck building challenges. The challenge can include a budget cap, color restriction, certain theme, etc. My personal favorite so far has been building the scariest possible deck on an $80 budget, which is how I chose to build my mono red Kiki-Jiki deck. Other restrictions we've had are building a tribe that has less than 500 decks on EDHREC. That's how I built my Selvala elephant tribal deck before Hamza and Lulu existed.
I have multiple binders that contain the “maybe” boards for each of my 30 decks. When I get new cards I first go through the maybe board binders to cut cards and put in the new ones. This usually isn’t too hard to make cuts of cards that were either previously removed or never made it into the deck. Then I review the current deck list and see if the new cards are an upgrade to an existing card or just a more fun option. Sometimes I just replace a card I’ve used a lot with a new but comparable option to test it out. I definitely keep track of cards when I’m playing to see if they are functioning as intended which assists me with cutting. I’m not going to say any of this is more efficient than what you two have tried but it at least gets the cards into a binder which I can reference over time.
One of the best ways that I have found to narrow down the number of potential cards for slots in my decks is to start with the commander I choose to build around. I either choose a commander that is very focused on a specific strategy, or I take a more broadly focused commander and zero in on one way that the deck can be approached. This allows for me to be much more selective when building/upgrading the deck because there are less cards that are relevant. It also is much more rewarding when you find an otherwise bulk bin card, that in your specific build for a commander, ends up being a powerhouse.
I've started implementing scarcity again in my deckbuilding. When I first got into Commander I ran Cultivate in one deck because I only had one Cultivate. Now I have 10 of them, but when I'm building a new deck I try to use a different card if possible, like Far Wanderings in my grave deck. Now that one is debatably better, but even if it was the same (like Fork in the Road) or even a little weaker but only really worked in a grave deck then I'm going to use it instead cause it can. A lot of decks become so similar to each other when you only build for power, so just like picking your commander for fun try and double down on those strats even if they hurt the power a bit.
A lot of how I make cuts have been from what I hear from this channel. 1. If I have a card that feels bad to have once, then I put it on the chopping block. 2. I try to have less decks by only having one in each archetype. 3. I use categories in Archidekt/Moxfield like "interaction" or "ramp" and when I want to swap in a card, I look at cards in that category so the deck doesnt get unbalanced. If a card is modal or doing things in multiple categories, it is easier to find a card to cut. 4. I proxy swaps before buying the card so I'm not disappointed if the new card doesn't work. 5. When deckbuilding, I normally find that only about 5-10 cards are "must includes" (like Akroma, Vision of Ixodor in Oderic, Lunarch Marshal). If a new card isn't a "must include" I don't worry about adding it because it's only going to make marginal improvements to the deck as a whole.
I really like where we are now in making these decisions. We’re transitioning from evaluating WHAT a card does to putting more of a focus on HOW a card does it. We’ve also reached a point where we get to decide what % of our deck is doing a specific thing in a specific way at the MV that we want to do it. A lot of these “upgrades” aren’t necessarily huge upgrades but they are very nice for polishing synergy 💚
Beautiful day cast and community… my suggestion for deck building for close groups is strive to avoid optimized builds. Enjoy finding cards you do not use or taking a different strategy within your decks. Example is I built new Gitrog saddle friend. I used mostly cards from Thunder junction through MH3. Every mythic in deck has two commons. Deck is lower power, but still allot of fun. Always love and laughter in your lives and cheers:)
As someone who used to love to brew commander decks for fun, this whole episode hits home. I just find it more and more exhausting to brew decks these days so many new "staples". With that being said, there is a mass proliferation of more strategically narrow cards being made. I have been switching to playing more of those types of cards in place of a lot of the more generalized staples, which has proven to be fun.
Glad you mentioned Vindicate. I remember when that came out and there were discussions like "thank God it's two colors, otherwise that might be too powerful" 😂
i have 31 decks so i definitely feel the difficulty when making cuts for new cards. one thing that i've found helps is making use of the tagging feature in moxfield, so i can know all the categories each card fits into in the deck, and i can easily see what the deck has a lot of and can afford to have one less card with that type of effect.
When I’m trying to decide what to cut for upgrades, I’ve been focused on the functionality of a card in my deck. I’ve been trying to increase the consistency of my decks by squeezing more removal, draw, and ramp while increasing my decks’ synergy at the same time. A lot of my decks are running between 15-20 of each of those categories without sacrificing synergy now. By themselves, powerful cards don’t necessarily make your deck more powerful unless you use them to make your deck more consistent, fast, and/or resilient.
I had just commented on another video today where there was talk about MtG getting ever more powercreep. I think what is missing here is that the new Moonshaker Behemoth will not be the same mana value as Craterhoof or Moonshaker Cavalry. As soon as nearly every design space is filled in eternal formats with cards that do nearly the same or exactly the same, the only way to go is more efficient - meaning cheaper. And that's what's happening - Fell, from Bloomburrow, is a one+B sorcery "destroy target creature". That was never printed before, without a downside at least. So what will happen is not that they will fill all of these slots ever more, at least not if they want to move product. What they _will_ do is either add ever more power to the slots that are now occupied already, or just make effects cheaper to get from the get-go, which both are basically identical, considering that at some point cursed mirror's effect will just be on a mindstone on top of everything else at some point. As with modern, Wizards basically has made Commander into a rotating format as you mentioned shortly. The cards, with how many are released, will just become ever more efficient, pushing out all else. They are getting into serious trouble therefore also, because that breaks for example 5 colour cards, as those cannot get cheaper while retaining their cost. Already, mana curves in commander seem to be getting ever lower. In conclusion, we can expect to see a rampant growth for one green mana sometime in 2027 I'd assume.
I think a good side effect of this is also there's a lot more self expression in deck building now. You are not forced to run the same staples in every deck cause there is more options to choose from in those slots. Although this is from someone with a pod that's power level has been slowly increasing so the need for powerful cards is required
in regards to ryan's challenge the stats thing you guys mentioned sol ring and confusion around generic and colourless, sol ring has been printed as showing "colourless" mana, but the most common printing show "generic" mana (tap: gain 2 mana in a grey circle (generic) vs tap: gain 1 mana in the shape of a diamond twice (colourless)). sol ring is weird this way and may be the main factor for this...aside from colourless mana being a weird and rare thing commonly associated with eldrazi
What I personally like to do is instead of trying to cut cards, I just take the commander and its manabase and add the most important cards from there. I usually find myself cards short instead of too many.
What you describe here regarding building decks is how I felt coming back to Magic and seeing Commander in 2020. There were like 20,000 cards to plow through and understand. That's likely one of the reasons theme decks are so popular - it's much easier to narrow down the options.
Another thing that makes deckbuilding harder is that we try to do too much. I’ve found my decks to be more fun if I’m not trying to do/answer everything. Sure I can put more ways to deal with flying in a ground-based green deck but it’s more exciting and fun to have 1-3 answers and need to get to the out. Also I have hit the point where I don’t really look at sets for 6 months-2 years unless I’m interested in the theme upon release, barring friends having cards for trade/sale. Some cards get/stay out of budget, some cards become affordable, and sometimes I just go “meh” if something looks like a marginal upgrade (or sidegrade). Sure I *could* make my decks better but fun and themes trump optimization so I’ll just have a deck or two on hand that can easily compete at higher power casual. Bloomburrow is my definite set this year and I might also go into Duskmourn a bit.
While it definitely has made deck building more challenging because every card in the deck is excellent, I think the reasons that deck building is more difficult now also cause a lot more variety in decks. When there are ten good versions of an effect you only want 4 of in your deck, it means a lot of diversity even in decks with the same commander. One skill I think is not spoken of enough is “maybe I just won’t add that to my deck.” If there isn’t an obvious upgrade and you are just agonizing over which card to swap out, maybe just don’t. If it’s a sidegrade and you just don’t want to cut anything, you’re not worse off if you don’t add it.
My considering list often turns out quite big, in extreme cases even like 50+, but I never put everything in the main deck straight away but in the considering, so I see my number of card slots remaining shrink with every add. It helps to focus on the "absolutely needed" vs the "sounds cool I guess" cards, especially when you reach the 90+ card slots!
Having many options is great, because there’s always a budget version available that might be less efficient but does something cool on top or allows flexibility.
Similar to what Matt said, I've been trying to make mental note of how it FEELS to play those on-the-chopping-block cards vs new subs. Keeping the replacement in a clear sleeve behind the commander & switching out either in goldfishing or games.
I came to that conclusion with Kozilek in my Rakdos Lord of Riots deck just last week. Even worse, it’s my understanding that you can’t use the “add one mana of any color” utility pieces because technically colorless isn’t a color.
I have 47 current decks, All of which are built to differing power levels. When new cards are released/spoiled, I have to take into consideration which deck I'm thinking about putting it in. I don't want to grab a lower power deck and slap in something that would cause me to overhaul the entire deck. I keep lower power decks for when there are newer players showing up at my LGS and we need a fourth player. For my mid-power level decks, I only upgrade cards on quarterly basis, and I always grab a deck that I haven't "upgraded" recently. I then will pick a number ahead of time on how many cards I will upgrade/swap out, before even taking the deck out of its case. Then I determine which color in the deck (in my opinion) needs the most help. I will then go through all the cards of that color to see if I hit my desired number of cards are swapped. If not, I then move to next color or mana and mana rocks.
Agree with the topic here. Power creep is real and setting healthy expectations for how much time and money you’re willing to invest should be apart of a balance deck building experience. I enjoy the optimization part of brewing but realize at a certain point I’m not striving to have a cEDH deck.
The biggest issue is the mental load of all the new cards. It's to many. Building a deck now is such a large project. It will only make decks more homogeneous. Since tools like EDHREC will be used even more. Nothing wrong with using EDHREC ofc. But it shouldn't be the only tool you use. Before it was manageable to scryfall/mtgassist for a sub optimal similar card. Now it's just raining cards that the average player has no way/time to appreciate. Wish WotC would listen to the player base and slow down.
I have started dedicating pages in my card binder to other options for cards to run in my deck. Each deck has its own section, some spanning multiple pages.
I suspect part of the challenge around deck building could be related to being content creators. Content creators work to provide informative and entertaining content. This includes reviewing cards, showcasing new cards in the 99 or as a commander. This takes a lot of work. The average player isn’t playing/creating decks/discussing magic nearly as much as content creators. I know for myself (and commentators below), there is a lot less pressure on myself if/when I make deck changes.
I do think the Petra Sphinx really epitomizes what theme decks were like back then. Today i can say im on the opposite end of that spectrum. I had a theme deck that was kinda lacking in power, a few years back, with its theme, so i threw a Dockside Extortionist to help boost the decks effectiveness despite not fitting in the theme at all. I have since taken Dockside out, because even sticking to my own specific theme, i still have so many powerful choices.
I have over 60 double sleeved Commander decks... I use Moxfield to keep track of everything... And I have a shelf dedicated to my Commander collection in my walk in closet. I'm constantly updating and moving cards around and into them... So yeah, the struggle is real 😅
I'm still waiting for an instant speed version of Seize the Spoils to complement the Thrill of Possibility, Big Score and Unexpected Windfall for my Chainer, Nightmare Adept. I will grant you the point that it would probably make me drop the Windfall to make my 'veggies' be more efficient.
I am kind of the opposite from what it sounds like you guys are, at least for necessary things like card draw, removal and lands. Since there are so many similar cards I don’t worry too much about which deck which ends up in unless it is to match the flavor or if it’s something that is necessary for a particular deck. A good example is lands, I just build a workable mana base and move on without bothering to try and optimize it by tier ranking the lands. I might pick a couple decks to optimize or prioritize, but given the plethora of options available and the number of decks I have I really don’t worry too much about most of the staple sorts of cards. The place I have a harder time is usually the cards that are directly tied to the theme of the deck.
Regarding the white protection/phase spells - they made yet another one in BloomBurrow. I play Concealment & Teferi’s Protection alongside Akroma’s Will in Millicent - and with countermagic up, and her passive, it makes it almost impossible to properly wipe it out.
As a player who plays on a budget, I disagree with it being harder to deckbuild these days. Ultimately, having too many options is easier to work with than having to scrape by with barely playable cards due to budget options barely existing. Tbh a part of me does miss when I'd have to find hidden gems to have a complete deck, but it's not like that's NOT an option anymore, there's tons of hidden gems out there that don't see a lot of play but are very good, fun cards
I had got a though decission some time ago on my Omnath, locus of creation deck. I play in a LGS where the meta game is quite aggro whith a little of control, so I´ve been running Bane of progress to be sure that the voltron/enchantress decks doesn´t outrun me. That was until i´ve got my Roaming throne from a booster, my deck became a trigger tribal, so Bane of progress had to get out. Wasn´t easy to cut a pet card, but there it is, taking a nap until the next meta adaptation of the deck.
You aren’t wrong, so in my case, I mostly don’t try to edit old decks - if I don’t break them down entirely for parts, I just leave them as is and build a new deck.
I own 80 Commander decks and have been playing for 11 years now. Keeping track of what cards are in decks can be really hard now. It used to be easy, I run my decks ona budget, spending no more than £2.50 per card, so replacing budget options with re-prints and new alternative version used to be easy. Last four years it has not. I would say that it is stille asier for me than most, becasue 50p cards often have powerful and obviosuly better versions made latter. It used to be that I would see a card, know it would be good in my deck and just buy the cards without even checking, now I go to put them in the deck and realise I might not be even able to put it in (except my tribal ooze deck, that needs all the help it can get). Useing Archidect has helped a lot, I've started trying to uplaod all my decks on there. My older decks land bases! Dear god some of them are so bad and I never noticed. Found out my Uril the Mistwalker deck only had 36 lands and was 103 cards. But now it is so hard, I had to Goldfish the deck for three hours before I was able to cut out the cards, and several of those were the new ones I had added over the last few years. What I have to do, is just goldfish the deck several times and see, does this help me 90% of the time? If not I then check it against EDH rec, and see if lots of people, or no one, is playing it. If lots are, I try to evaluate why, if no one is, then it is an easy cut. Also as some people have said on here, I don't try to upgrade the decks all in one go. I have a Text file on my computer that has a list, so when I spot cards I think might be useful I note them down and the deck they could go into (I also added them to the Maybe section of Archidect if the deck is uplaoded). Letting it sit there for a while means I have a record of it, but at a latter point two sets down the raod I can re-evalaute if it is still needed. Also my playgroup are fine with testing proxies, so I hand draw a little version of the new card and slip it over the one I am considering cutting, that way I can test it agaisnt real people for a few weeks. www.archidekt.com/search/decks?owner=The_Almighty_Pillock&ownerexact=true
I have 18 decks as well and keeping up is exhausting. Not because I want them fully optimized but because there are some amazing synergy pieces being released in every set. I think the best advice I could give myself is "stop adding new cards to the decks that work well" or "have less decks and keep up with those to your heart's content"
Art and theme is so much more of a driver now for me. It's maybe shallow, but Everybody Lives, Tef Pro, Flare of Fortitude... ehhh. Which art works best with the deck theme?
out of the 14 decks I have, I only keep 3-4 up to date. It's not that I've finished the other decks, it's just to much hassle to go through each deck every set. If I see a card and think that it would go great in x deck, then I'll swap it into. More recently, if there is a set I'm not interested in, I'll use that time to update a few of the other decks. I'll also update the deck if I feel like I really want to play it. I also have a mayeal deck that has 27 big stomp cards, and I have a 'side board' of like 50 big stompy creatures that I'll sometimes rule 0 to flip over the top when I draw an 'egg' card. it helps me so I don't have to draw up a murder board of which 27 are most efficient, or if I want cut that one really good creature for another really good one. I also have a list for dragons, dinos, angels, elementals, etc. so I can go grab those specific creatures from the stack and swap out the 'egg' cards.
For my deck, I have a list of cards I will NEVER cut - the reason I want to play that deck in the first place. I have another list of cards I'd most likely want to cut: underperformers, cards I wish were slightly more efficient/synergistic, and cards that I just don't *vibe* with for whatever reason (could be art, flavor, play pattern, etc.) So whenever I see an interesting new card, I can compare it against what I want to cut and ask if that shiny new toy is just going to end up right back on the list once the novelty wears off. In which case if the card is more than a bulk rare, or I don't open it naturally, I'll just forget it and move on.
This may seem niche, but given the abundance in cards, i try to build a minor theme or lore for my deck. Adds a challenge but also solves alot of the harder choices. The theme can be anything from fit the plane, the kindred type, to revolving it around a genre or story (my dusk theme deck), the challenge of the deck ( i have a colour pie breaking deck, a all spells deck and land creature kill deck). Otherwise i just dont buy new versions as often.
I dont see this as an issue, but a feature. It used to be that there were only so many cards above a 7/10 that worked in your deck. Now there are so many more 7s and they all have little nuances that make them stronger if you put it in the right context/meta/playstyle. It makes deckbuilding more enjoyable as a whole imo. And if you dont like sifting through all the 7s, picking the "wrong" one isnt like you accidentally picked a 5 or missed a new 7 that came out to replace the 5 your begrudgingly put into your deck. Your deck is still pretty decent if you dont update and optimize constantly. You also touched on the fact that in general this makes cards cheaper. And lastly, I find it makes games more varied, even when you see a lot of similar decks because you get to see the different choices that particular player made.
I don't generally have a problem with too many good cards, if I feel a card needs to be in my deck then it's in some form or fashion an upgrade of a card I already have, so I just replace the lesser card. Also my decks tend to be on the focused side, so I have very little opportunity to replace cards that don't strictly fit with my game plan.
My solution to this issue is vorthos. If you have the option to build a deck on theme instead of sweaty 100% staples, build on theme instead. Assuming "on-theme" doesn't mean "my entire deck is Wood Elementals." 😉
one thing I do is at the end of the game I look at my hand an make mental notes of what cards are there and how long ...a card can be really good bit if you find your self holding for large portions of the game it's probably safe to cut
Having only recently come back to brewing for EDH (after leaving the game entirely for 5+ years), I've stopped thinking about cards in terms of trying to tune every slot to be the best version of itself and more about individual cards bringing me joy in the deck. Sometimes that means a "worse" version of a card because it's better suited to the (non-mechanical) theme, or simply one that I remember fondly from some other format; other times it's because I appreciate some niche quality a particular card has.
what helps me with updating my decks is to think of each of my decks as a feeling of what it's trying to do so that if I'm making cuts or considerations, I can try to sense whether or not it would increase or decrease the feeling I'm attempting to have while playing it. how the deck feels to play is the main thing im after, whetherit be a theme, a strategy, a certain synergy or tempo. if I'm still torn then I'll do multiple play tests on moxfield up to when I see the new card or 10 turns (whichever comes first) to kind of guage how that card makes me feel at that moment with my current board state with reminding myself it'd only be 30-60% that state on average then make up scenarios for what the opponents might have or do and rate how good I'd feel holding or casting it at that point under those scenarios. it's hard to describe it better as for me I intuit with feeling mostly and within reason I tend to favor the flavor and theme over the power (but not so far that it won't do fine)
I’ve always built to synergy and that has kept me from falling into what I call the “good stuff trap.” People focus so much on staples, they lose focus on whether or not the effect of the cards work in their decks. Synergy will always be better than individually powerful cards. For commanders they either need to enhance a deck strategy, which can still work without it, or be the focus of the strategy and put in cards to protect it. Edgar Markov and Queen Marchesa are examples of the former, while Kelsien The Plague would be an example of the latter. Even if Edgar Markov didn’t have his eminence ability, the deck strategy would remain the same and work without him. If I ever cast him, he’d enhance what the deck is already doing. Kelsien relies on effects to dodge kill spells and reset him, so he can activate his ability again. Rules and edge cases can also play a factor. Take my Extus, Qriq Overlord deck for example. I use the aforementioned Big Score, but don’t use Faithless Looting because of how the cards interact with the commander. With Big Score, Extus’ magecraft ability trigger and goes on top of it resolving, letting me return the card I pitched to initially cast it. Faithless Looting however doesn’t discard until the ability resolves meaning Extus’ ability won’t see any of the cards. As for lands, I think we now have enough lands that they breakdown into two different sub-categories: to fetch or not to fetch. There are some people who think fetch lands are the only option. Not only do I disagree, but I also don’t count them as lands. They’re tutors. The other camp revolves around bounce lands and many utility lands that don’t use basic land types. Which subset you go with depends on that your deck is trying to do and how important mana fixing is to your strategy.
Since it came up again in this video, I wanted to sympathize with Matt as I also finally got to cast what would've been a big Last March and someone cast Time Stop in response. I feel the pain too now.
I feel like the thing that helps me make cuts consistently is not just playtesting a bunch and seeing which cards in practice i wish were something else but keeping track of how often i get that feeling. For example take Daxos the Returned in my Minthara Merciless Soul Deck. This deck does not play a bunch of enchantments and does not make so much mana as to be a super strong payoff compared to cards like Elenda the Dusk Rose or Ghoulcaller Gisa. So I've regularly run into situations where Daxos does nothing unless I'm already in a winning position. So i swapped him
The way to overcome not being able to not make cuts is to not make them. Expand your deck to 200 and you won't regret it. It makes for less variance and more fun so no one can even complain
Really? I've never felt better at building decks, felt like I had more options, felt like I had more variety. I rarely see duplicate commanders, meta commanders, it always feels like games are so varied. Not everyone has every single card or 10 copies of every staple. There's enough variety throughout each set that I have plenty of choices, and not everyone is always picking the most efficient (good) option.
It’s always about finding a balance that suits your wants/needs because tbh it’s the power-creep and sheer number of cards being printed that makes things like the petra sphinx strictly worse than another card. Personally I enjoy having a few “staple cards” or just well known powerful cards thrown into a mostly janky deck, I don’t think it takes away from the themes all that much and sometimes you just need something good to keep up with everything else floating around
My playgroup has started cutting Sol Ring and we try to avoid generic great cards or only have a couple kicking around our decks. I know it's blasphemy but the format is supposed to be fun first.
The easiest way to help make deck construction more fun is to set arbitrary restrictions. Limit the number of cards you have to look at or can possibly include. I keep bookmarks for specific scryfall searches and get excited when something new comes through that fits the theme. Maybe deck only uses cards from Ravnica blocks, another only uses cards with old borders, another that uses cards with a certain thing in the artwork or text. That or just set a limit on budget. Each card needs to cost 50 cents or less, or maybe the deck can only be $50. Reduce your decks' scope because taking everything into consideration is too much.
When facing the hard to evaluate cards I 1. hold off until it falls below a particular $$ amount (fill in your budget) and 2. mostly restricting myself to card draw effects Otherwise I typically wait until cards are one or two sets behind (which only take a month now - half joking)
One approach that I take is to just run one copy of any given card in all of my decks. So you get the true singleton feeling crossed over all decks. Obviously in some decks you still play the same mana dorks however this approach gives you the opportunity to have a lot of variations in your decks and you get the different ups and downs of the cards with basically the same function. I am not sure if i could convey my point, was rather complicated to put down in words as non native speaker xD And yeah, if you dont have multiple decks than this approach ain't working so well 😂
I’ve got 34 decks, sadly I’m reaching critical mass. I turned the volume of decks into a spectrum of power level. My most played or favored play style are my upgrades usually go. And as I upgrade those ,I trickle down with the card that was replaced.
Yeah, Craterhoof Cavalry; when it etb it creates X X/X creature tokens w haste and sac at the end step; then all your creatures gain trample until end of turn. Sounds like a good’n
I actually have a deck that would prefer Utter End over Abstruse Appropriation, if only for a corner case scenario. My Edgar Markov deck (which is not the highly tuned mono-1-drops version) has Vampire Nocturnus, which actively wants black cards on the top of my deck, and only a few sources of colorless mana for Abstruse Appropriation’s upside. Of course, since I long ago cut Utter End in favor of a Vampire with removal stapled to it, it’s a moot point.
Weird thing I've been taking notes in the app manabox on my deck names so if there is something weird about a deck when I go to edit I know to loom for a specific card or change I need to make which takes the stress of trying to remember or even doing the work until it is necessary and I have a deck edit session and I have my manabox notes handy with out having to have charts or flipping cards
12:40 I am so glad to hear someone mention how I feel about Brawl too. The state of the format is very bad compared to how it was let's say 2 years ago, when the card pool was more like Explorer instead of the current Timeless card pool.
Most of my decks are some kind of tribal deck and I can't really afford to keep up so I only really update them when I get a card that does something that I'm already doing with another card but is also part of that tribe, are Aki Scrapchomper or Ghostly Pilferer the most efficient draw I could be running in those colors? No but they are on theme for what the deck is doing. Do I really need a powerful card in every slot or perhaps a less powerful card that's doing something more unique to my deck than a generically good one, cause already so much is happening in a game I'd rather have a simpler card than every card have a college thesis of text on that everyone needs to read multiple times to figure out what it does when it sets off a dozen other things me or someone else is doing. One thing I've noticed is even though the power creep theoretically should make games faster I feel they are taking longer cause there are so many moving pieces and so many cards that you couldn't possibly know all of them that the game ends up being paused to figure out what's even happening.
It used to be a joy to find a great card for your deck, now it's a joy to find a cut, "An available slot!!"
The last couple of months, I've really been noticing how often people have to ask to see cards to read them again and again.
at this point I might do that not due to the volume or complexity of text but the sheer fact there are too many cards for my brain to remember lol. even simple ones I'll end up asking for reminders. sometimes I'll need to recheck the cards I'm holding or have in play. I'm not even all that dumb, my brain just isn't willing to retain every card anymore. these days the cards I do remember, I couldn't tell you half of their names (as what they do is the only part worth remembering imo) and if I'm recommending something I'll do a quick scryfall search to tell them
Yeah! I've reached my limit for speed of learning sets for suuuure. Like a year ago I'd say.
That's always been a thing though
It's cause naturalize comes on top of some other nonsense value engine card
When people cast cards and it's something that I am not super familiar with, I simply ask "and what does that do?". I hate to admit that happens more often than not, but I also play with a lot of people that will cast something with two paragraphs of text and just say "pass".
One very smart content creator said to only update your deck every 6 months or one year. I've started doing that. It's been great for two reasons: I get to see cards organically in the wild. And I'm not in a rush or panicked to update my decks. I have 45 decks. Updating them is no fun. But finding a wild card out in the open is kind of magical again. A feeling that's been lost for a while.
Big same! It's fun to see other players trying out the new cards while I don't even have to worry much about it for months to come.
Honestly one year is probably the best balance since you can easily go to tcgplayer or wherever else and find most cards priced down. Personally because I heavily lean into themes, I rarely have to worry about most sets. Afterall I highly doubt Bloomborrow have Samurais for my Samurai deck and even for my Ninja deck (non-Yuriko) Thunder Junction only had 2 or so cards.
It also helps that I only have 3-4 commander decks to take care of and not 10+ that I've seen people have.
@@MasouShizuka I really like that. It avoids the artificial pre sale price spike too. Then we benefit when prices tank.
KHALANI Gardens is still the best turn 1 green land in any creature deck
It's for this reason i only have 12 decks lol there's gotta be a specifically fun reason to build a new deck!
For me building decks is just as fun and rewarding as it's always been- HOWEVER, keeping decks 'up to date' is something I just cannot do anymore. The amount of constant potential upgrades for all my decks in EVERY SINGLE SET is so overwhelming I've shifted my deck building philosophy into making 'finished' decks, and once I've completed them they're considered to be set in amber and unchangeable. Because otherwise I literally couldn't make any new decks because I'd just be constantly spinning plates keeping my current decks up to date.
This is my problem. I have thirty decks and I spend so much time trying to update them that I am getting burned out and not building anything new. I really need to pair down my decks and stop looking through every set for the “next” card to add. I might start doing this for all this for all the decks I don’t play as often and keep maybe 4-5 that can be regularly updated.
@@matthewneveling9021 for me I only have 2-3 decks that I ever update anymore, and even when I do it's usually every like 4-6 months when there's loads of new cards to play with.
I feel pretty positive about having so many options; I enjoy the fine tuning and making more accurate decisions about what fits into my deck, having it be unique and tailored to my playstyle and how I'm approaching the deck's strategy.
I goldfish a lot more before I buy cards to get a really good idea of how the deck plays on a turn by turn basis. I want to know specific effects my strategy actually needs (or style of effects, like you guys mentioned more expensive versatile cards vs cheaper narrower cards) then filter new cards through that lens, instead of picking up every shiny thing that might loosely relate to what my deck could do.
Maybe constantly maintaining 18 decks is too many for the way things are now. Having fewer decks that you put more time and effort into, or choosing some decks to constantly maintain while others stay the same for long periods of time might be a better way to go. Then you have a smaller workload (brainload?) when new sets come out, and if you ever feel like your static decks are too static, you don't have to wait until you completely overhaul everything before you feel like you can play with your friends.
Lately i have been employing a very tough-love and critical tactic for making cuts, especially when it comes to the abundance of new cards being released for my decks.
Ive adopted the "killing your darlings" approach, where if a card is in the deck simply because i wanted it to be, i cut it for something better. The decision becomes, do you want the silly thing, or the objectively better thing.
When it comes down to comparing apples to apples, however, I've started running fewer tutors and more draw effects. It be omes less fun over time (in my opinion) to always pull the one game ending card out of your deck in a casual game. More card draw means you see more variance and can scrutinize the cards you draw more effectively.
I also like what Dana said at the end, where if you notice a card in your hand time and time again, but you never want to actually cast it. If that happens to me 3 times, and i feel like it wouldn't have advanced my game state to play a particular card that keeps sitting in my hand, i cut it.
Where does the optimization end tho? I keep my darlings whenever possible and often strive to not power up my decks because fun is the goal
@seanedgar164 This is a really good take, and it's hard to answer that question.
Sometimes optimization never stops, but sometimes, backward steps also lead to the most fun. I powered down my favorite deck recently, and it's the most fun version of it i have played.
Sometimes, you just can't fit the new cards in, and that's ok! But if you are committed to making a change, then you might have to make some hard decisions. That's just how it is.
O
Silly thing wins
I recommend playing the old filter lands that make colorless, Tainted lands and Pain lands if you have colorless pips in your deck but don't want to miss out on the color-fixing
I think the filter lands are underrated. I use them as a great untapped dual land
Agreed I put all of them in every deck possible, and the odyssey filters as well since they completed the cycle. My favorite, the best filters imho are the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor filters. Those are absolute auto includes
@@xeper9458 are those the Signet lands? I used to hate on them but they are perfect budget duals
@@BrootalMetalBanjo No these are more pricey. Some have been reprinted and are fairly cheap but a few are still kinda expensive. They come come in untapped and tap for colorless or tap and pay hybrid mana with one of the 2 colors to make any combination of the 2, get it? Look up Wooded Bastion, Sunken Ruins two of the expensive ones still
Really underrated lands especially in 3 colors when you have spells that require double of a specific color
I'm using increasingly specific themes and arbitrary narrow restrictions to help me cut down my options.
So I'm not building an equipment deck but a blademaster deck where every equipment has to be a sword for example. The only tribal deck I would run Roaming Throne in is golems, because I generally don't include creatures that don't mention the specific type on the card in those kind of decks. Decks with just creatures. Or no nonland permanents. Everything mana value 3. Something like that.
I have a fixed playgroup though where I don't need to worry about power too much.
I feel like I'm increasingly in the same boat as you. I recently started putting together a list of possible modifications for the Bloomburrow squirrel precon and I got up to 50 nonland cards before I decided "okay, let's keep the deck animal characters only". No humans, elves or anything like that anywhere - not even in the card art. That made things both more interesting and way more manageable.
I didn't use to care about themes or flavor with mtg. In my mind the game was always more about it's interesting mechanical aspects. But nowadays, it feels like if I only think about the mechanics, I quickly end up with a 200 card decklist.
Must be nice.
A lot of us are stuck with Rule 0-less LGS pickup games, where you have to contend with a cEDH Fast Mana suite facilitating Infinites in otherwise slower colors.
I’d love to do some jankier stuff, but where I play you’ve gotta have the speed and best Interaction available to avoid a T2-T3 combo blowout, and you still may get Thoracled.
@@shawnpanzegraf5642 my condolences. If I had to rely strictly on PUGs I would've probably sold all my magic cards a decade ago.
@@scaredycat3146 Yeah, some nights it’s hell. Other nights, like tonight, you get this supreme upswell of satisfaction, when you dunk on four infinite-attempts (On Mono Green), in one game, and go on to dome the offenders with a gigantic Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider. (Railway Brawler has to be my favorite Green creature *since* Monstrous Raider and Vanilla Clex. Screw that Stacksy-Voice of Hunger.)
Ezuri’s Predation + Railway Brawler + Doubling Season + Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider + Mirage Mirror copying the Branching Evolution killed with 3-cost-or-lower-Removal = The seldom seem Everyone Dead From 30-40 life.
I’ll cherish that memory forever. It’ll keep me warm through the next 100 unsuccessful attempts to stop Infinites.
I think the hard part is commander players realizing we don't have to get a rhystic study, cyclonic rift, tutors etc for every deck we build lol there's too many weird but cooler and more fun options if things work out. The other cool part is that just because you weren't around for urzas saga and pulled a Gilded Drake you can get a weird energy version now. In a way the reworked old school staples are kind of like reprints
wild that you dont have to play the most powerful, expensive and annoying to play against cards in a casual format 🤪
Building decks now feels like tuning into an exact frequency. It use to be adding new sounds and instruments to a deck. Now every deck has enough sound in it, you just want it to do it at a certain volume with a certain amount of base and do it for a particular mood.
I have a super easy solution, guys.
Outside of mana base, I make every effort to run any given card in ONE deck. Yep, that means Swords and Path in only one deck...Blas Act, Rhystic Study, Inkshield all in only one deck.
It provides challenging deckbuilding restrictions and I don't have to modify 10-15 decks every time a better Wrath or Rampant Growth is printed.
This is the ultimate singleton way. I love it.
I don’t know how to play white without StP.
This is a good idea. I self-imposed the rule of only building each color combination once. That helps focusing creative energy. Sounds like a really great idea. I am still under the assumption that some staples I still want to run everywhere. like maybe sol ring or arcane signet? it is hard to say good buy to those. maybe exclude mana producing artefact from this rule.
This whole vid is operating under the pretense that we HAVE to optimize or find the BEST option for any slot. Keep your pet cards, run what you have, have fun and play with others that do too
I agree. I totally get the impetus, part of the whole point of a trading card game is making tweaks to your deck, but in EDH of all formats you really don't need to stress over minor gains. Like, how often would Lightning Bolt do a job Lightning Strike couldn't also have done? Not zero, but is it enough to bother ordering a copy, driving out to get it or waiting for it to come in, unsleeving the Strike, sleeving the Bolt, all just in case of the game where you both draw it and have that one mana difference matter? It's not the biggest chore in the world, but still should measure if it's worth it.
@@seanedgar164 This
One of my favorite pet cards is Sight of the Scalelords in my Omnath, Locus of Rage deck. Essentially gives my all my creatures +2/+2 and vigilance since the majority of my attacking force will be the elementals.
By my experience, it's not a pretence. You can't just run whatever you like anymore. People buy into the latest cards and those cards bring upsides with them compared to vanilla versions. Modal cards are also more and more common. Having flexibility can be a game changer in a 100 card unique card format. With the new Spree mechanic you basically get 2-3 cards in 1. If you run only cards or from 2-3 years ago, you will be a punching bag at your local lgs. My experience is exactly this. My decks can't keep up with the new card designs which just go faster. New legendary creatures designed to be commanders have immediate payoffs while older cards need to stick through a whole turn cycle. The same goes for triggers. It's trigger town galore now. Everything does 2 or more things. So again, you are forced by your local meta to keep up and change out your cards. Which is not the nature of the format. This is what I understood they meant with this podcast. The point they're illustrating is that due to powercreep and fast releases, edh has become a.rotating format in a way.
As an edh player, did you not experience the same in your play environments ?
Curious about this, thanks :)
@@grishnakh1712that seems like a local phenomenon.
I follow you some of the way, although for me it's the latest Boros card which interact with equipment, or a new seamonster - that's not necessarily the optimized deck approach.
A smart person recently said to build and bring different levels of decks.
To me, it's more the internet is being devalued because of the amount of product being released. It feels like older school magic where you dont know what cards are because you've never seen them before. So much is being released that they can easily be replaced by nearly similar things. Its on the player to decide how much to invest time wise to optimise their deck, which is great for both casual and invested players imo.
I have always loved deckbuilding and brewing... finding synergies and niche cards that work amazingly well within my self imposed deckbuilding constraints has always been a passion of mine... now most of my decks, a number which keeps going up, despite my best efforts, have 20+ cards in the sideboard, and cutting them requires so much brainpower that it takes me days of collaborative effort to finish a single one.
There's always new set out before I can finish.
@Dana To the point about how to make upgrades/changes to your deck - I do something Joey suggested a while back. I have tags for Draw, Ramp, Removal, Mill, Buffs, Evasion - depending on the deck.
Then I try to keep those numbers as tight as possible. Like, no matter how good a card draw spell fits my deck - I max out around 12-13 sources of draw. So it forces me to cut old cards or compare them to a small subsection, then play what’s most powerful or most flavorful depending on preference.
I do this too, and it's useful even if cuts can still be tough within each category lol. But I also find it pretty interesting to track how many cards different decks can allocate to "utility/cool card" slots vs categories that are less exciting but necessary to make the deck function properly.
wizzards rapidfiring products is the first thing in my mind why its so hard to build decks in the powerlevel you want it to have.
the second thing is that wizzards wanted to have a rotading format with commander (or brawl) so we get even more products.
How does an increase in options hamper your ability to build at a certain power?
Shouldn't it have the opposite effect?
@@robotov2334option paralysis
@@robotov2334 cause you need to evaluate the cards and synergies within the new changes. so stronger cards push weaker cards and that changes the powerlvl at all. decks that arent updated for 3 or 4 moths get pushed away.
also we all have less time to evaluate cause at the next day you get the next product.
@@happybrain2674 if your decks become outdated in 3 to 4 months, that's not on anyone but the builder. I really think I've only swapped 5 cards in the past year in my main mid-power deck, but only because I like tweaking my ratios.
Each set introduces maybe 1 or 2 cards that are actually relevant to any given deck, or more (maybe 5) if the set is directly supporting your archetype.
@@robotov2334 that might be right for ONE deck, but not if you take in consideration other decks and how they change.
also 3 moths means 12 new commander decks with around 10-15 new cards specially made for commander per deck + cards from modern/standard sets. means if you dont update your missing a huge cardpool and knowledge about those cards.
but thats again too much information to keep up and be able to match the right power lvl esp if some are up to date and others arent. so the chances to missmatch are even higher.
I actually love this bc it means that you get a really powerful "second row" of cards that many players don't run anymore that you can get for cheap now to build budget decks. Or in case that we have different but equal options not everyone has to chase the same card, thus increasing the price of that in astronomic heights, but instead have some choices on the same level all with a more reasonable price tag on.
How I make upgrades in my deck: I don’t. If it’s a minor +5% upgrade I won’t agonize over it and will consider the card in a future deck. So many cards come out so often I don’t care enough to look at spoilers anymore. I focus more on the cards I want to have in my deck and periphery cards like ramp or removal I don’t worry about upgrading unless it is a theme-specific slam dunk, or an upgrade that is so clear (like heroic intervention to smugglers share in my dragons deck) that I don’t have to actually consider changing my deck’s construction.
Exactly. A lot of times I just pick the art I like the best
Yeah this whole video is operating under the pretense that we MUST optimize, even. I just build with what I have or what interests me, most of my upgrades are for consistency not power
Heya! Longtime listener here. It sounds like you are struggling with the fact that there are too many good cards for the decks you are interested in building so it's getting tougher to slot in staples.
...that world sounds amazing, not gonna lie. I love how it's no longer as easy to predict the metagame because every deck will be running maze of ith, cyclonic rift, path to exile, outpost siege etc. The game is no longer "same-y" and if this keeps up, then it will actually make the game MORE fun and unexpected while also still remaining EDH. You'll still need to build ramp, card draw and removal, wincons, role-fillers and lands, so if you are metagaming, you can still loosely fit the principles in every build you make. But hyper-niche meta calls are now an impossibility in casual commander and thats AWESOME!!
Torpor Orb's usability will eventually be cut in half if creatures keep getting cast triggers instead of ETB. Thats good in casual commander. Uniform board-wipes like Wrath of God are being changed out for one-sided boardwipes to keep games from going to 3+ hours because wiping the board now no longer slows down the game, it speeds it up. Thats great in casual commander! And that concept will just keep on injecting new life into the metagame so that commander becomes a wacky game of missed-triggers, silly boardstates and completely off-the-wall games that were completely impossible to predict.
Just as Sheldon would have wanted. Lol.
The challenge is having to consider the optimized option from a dozen or more similar cards to keep up with pickup games or the wider community. I just don't tbf, I'm not interested in optimization or power creep lol
One thing that is happening in parallel is increased card diversity through people just getting priced out. There are always gonna be people that choose not to run the best cards intentionally, but ignoring those people, I think that we would definitely see enough Fierce Guardianships, Dockside Extortionists or Gaea's Cradles to get sick of them every game night. But those cards are just way too expensive for the majority of the players - especially if they'd have to get them for every deck they'd be legal in.
😅 every time that I see you guys run an advertisement for better help hurts me, they have been proven to be a very irresponsible company and made my as well as many other people's mental problems worse than when it started. would you ever consider trying to get a sponsorship from a different company? I understand that they help pay the bills, but they have a very very bad image that is starting to hurt to be associated with
It's a contract that has yet to reach the end.
More likely they just pay well @danaroach29
@@certanmike ok
As a mental health professional who has had to pick up the pieces when Better Help failed and sometimes actively harmed people, I can’t second this enough. I will be glad when that contract is done.
@@danaroach29we understand you guys didn’t know about it when you signed the deal. And we know you likely only found out after commenters let you know about the issues on videos published after said deal signing. We’re sorry that you are stuck with it. It takes a lot of bravery to discuss a sponsorship at all when you get comments about it, thank you for addressing it. Most creators wouldn’t. Don’t let the diks get you down.
"Commander is kind of a rotating format" BARS
Yeah, it kinda has become a problem. At LGS's and socially with friends. With no return to form I am very concerned about MTG's game health...
especially with the crazy powerful generals they print lately. U can't play your Legends commanders and expect to keep up
@@Xmr2024 One sort-of solution I have with my playgroup is that we limit how often and how expensively we build and upgrade decks. We do that by doing group deck building challenges. The challenge can include a budget cap, color restriction, certain theme, etc. My personal favorite so far has been building the scariest possible deck on an $80 budget, which is how I chose to build my mono red Kiki-Jiki deck. Other restrictions we've had are building a tribe that has less than 500 decks on EDHREC. That's how I built my Selvala elephant tribal deck before Hamza and Lulu existed.
I'm sorry but what the hell does "BARS" stand for? 🤔
@@Sicktoid try the urban dictionary
I have multiple binders that contain the “maybe” boards for each of my 30 decks. When I get new cards I first go through the maybe board binders to cut cards and put in the new ones. This usually isn’t too hard to make cuts of cards that were either previously removed or never made it into the deck. Then I review the current deck list and see if the new cards are an upgrade to an existing card or just a more fun option. Sometimes I just replace a card I’ve used a lot with a new but comparable option to test it out. I definitely keep track of cards when I’m playing to see if they are functioning as intended which assists me with cutting. I’m not going to say any of this is more efficient than what you two have tried but it at least gets the cards into a binder which I can reference over time.
One of the best ways that I have found to narrow down the number of potential cards for slots in my decks is to start with the commander I choose to build around. I either choose a commander that is very focused on a specific strategy, or I take a more broadly focused commander and zero in on one way that the deck can be approached. This allows for me to be much more selective when building/upgrading the deck because there are less cards that are relevant. It also is much more rewarding when you find an otherwise bulk bin card, that in your specific build for a commander, ends up being a powerhouse.
I've started implementing scarcity again in my deckbuilding. When I first got into Commander I ran Cultivate in one deck because I only had one Cultivate. Now I have 10 of them, but when I'm building a new deck I try to use a different card if possible, like Far Wanderings in my grave deck. Now that one is debatably better, but even if it was the same (like Fork in the Road) or even a little weaker but only really worked in a grave deck then I'm going to use it instead cause it can. A lot of decks become so similar to each other when you only build for power, so just like picking your commander for fun try and double down on those strats even if they hurt the power a bit.
In the flooded grove artwork it looks like the center tree is fleeing in terror :)
A lot of how I make cuts have been from what I hear from this channel.
1. If I have a card that feels bad to have once, then I put it on the chopping block.
2. I try to have less decks by only having one in each archetype.
3. I use categories in Archidekt/Moxfield like "interaction" or "ramp" and when I want to swap in a card, I look at cards in that category so the deck doesnt get unbalanced. If a card is modal or doing things in multiple categories, it is easier to find a card to cut.
4. I proxy swaps before buying the card so I'm not disappointed if the new card doesn't work.
5. When deckbuilding, I normally find that only about 5-10 cards are "must includes" (like Akroma, Vision of Ixodor in Oderic, Lunarch Marshal). If a new card isn't a "must include" I don't worry about adding it because it's only going to make marginal improvements to the deck as a whole.
I really like where we are now in making these decisions.
We’re transitioning from evaluating WHAT a card does to putting more of a focus on HOW a card does it.
We’ve also reached a point where we get to decide what % of our deck is doing a specific thing in a specific way at the MV that we want to do it.
A lot of these “upgrades” aren’t necessarily huge upgrades but they are very nice for polishing synergy 💚
Beautiful day cast and community… my suggestion for deck building for close groups is strive to avoid optimized builds. Enjoy finding cards you do not use or taking a different strategy within your decks.
Example is I built new Gitrog saddle friend. I used mostly cards from Thunder junction through MH3. Every mythic in deck has two commons. Deck is lower power, but still allot of fun.
Always love and laughter in your lives and cheers:)
As someone who used to love to brew commander decks for fun, this whole episode hits home. I just find it more and more exhausting to brew decks these days so many new "staples". With that being said, there is a mass proliferation of more strategically narrow cards being made. I have been switching to playing more of those types of cards in place of a lot of the more generalized staples, which has proven to be fun.
Glad you mentioned Vindicate. I remember when that came out and there were discussions like "thank God it's two colors, otherwise that might be too powerful" 😂
Vindicate remains so strong that it's in many vintage cubes.
i have 31 decks so i definitely feel the difficulty when making cuts for new cards. one thing that i've found helps is making use of the tagging feature in moxfield, so i can know all the categories each card fits into in the deck, and i can easily see what the deck has a lot of and can afford to have one less card with that type of effect.
When I’m trying to decide what to cut for upgrades, I’ve been focused on the functionality of a card in my deck. I’ve been trying to increase the consistency of my decks by squeezing more removal, draw, and ramp while increasing my decks’ synergy at the same time. A lot of my decks are running between 15-20 of each of those categories without sacrificing synergy now. By themselves, powerful cards don’t necessarily make your deck more powerful unless you use them to make your deck more consistent, fast, and/or resilient.
I had just commented on another video today where there was talk about MtG getting ever more powercreep. I think what is missing here is that the new Moonshaker Behemoth will not be the same mana value as Craterhoof or Moonshaker Cavalry. As soon as nearly every design space is filled in eternal formats with cards that do nearly the same or exactly the same, the only way to go is more efficient - meaning cheaper. And that's what's happening - Fell, from Bloomburrow, is a one+B sorcery "destroy target creature". That was never printed before, without a downside at least. So what will happen is not that they will fill all of these slots ever more, at least not if they want to move product. What they _will_ do is either add ever more power to the slots that are now occupied already, or just make effects cheaper to get from the get-go, which both are basically identical, considering that at some point cursed mirror's effect will just be on a mindstone on top of everything else at some point.
As with modern, Wizards basically has made Commander into a rotating format as you mentioned shortly. The cards, with how many are released, will just become ever more efficient, pushing out all else. They are getting into serious trouble therefore also, because that breaks for example 5 colour cards, as those cannot get cheaper while retaining their cost. Already, mana curves in commander seem to be getting ever lower.
In conclusion, we can expect to see a rampant growth for one green mana sometime in 2027 I'd assume.
Rampant growth for 1 green mana already exists. It is called utopia sprawl.
I think a good side effect of this is also there's a lot more self expression in deck building now. You are not forced to run the same staples in every deck cause there is more options to choose from in those slots. Although this is from someone with a pod that's power level has been slowly increasing so the need for powerful cards is required
in regards to ryan's challenge the stats thing you guys mentioned sol ring and confusion around generic and colourless, sol ring has been printed as showing "colourless" mana, but the most common printing show "generic" mana (tap: gain 2 mana in a grey circle (generic) vs tap: gain 1 mana in the shape of a diamond twice (colourless)). sol ring is weird this way and may be the main factor for this...aside from colourless mana being a weird and rare thing commonly associated with eldrazi
What I personally like to do is instead of trying to cut cards, I just take the commander and its manabase and add the most important cards from there. I usually find myself cards short instead of too many.
What you describe here regarding building decks is how I felt coming back to Magic and seeing Commander in 2020. There were like 20,000 cards to plow through and understand.
That's likely one of the reasons theme decks are so popular - it's much easier to narrow down the options.
Another thing that makes deckbuilding harder is that we try to do too much. I’ve found my decks to be more fun if I’m not trying to do/answer everything. Sure I can put more ways to deal with flying in a ground-based green deck but it’s more exciting and fun to have 1-3 answers and need to get to the out.
Also I have hit the point where I don’t really look at sets for 6 months-2 years unless I’m interested in the theme upon release, barring friends having cards for trade/sale. Some cards get/stay out of budget, some cards become affordable, and sometimes I just go “meh” if something looks like a marginal upgrade (or sidegrade). Sure I *could* make my decks better but fun and themes trump optimization so I’ll just have a deck or two on hand that can easily compete at higher power casual. Bloomburrow is my definite set this year and I might also go into Duskmourn a bit.
While it definitely has made deck building more challenging because every card in the deck is excellent, I think the reasons that deck building is more difficult now also cause a lot more variety in decks. When there are ten good versions of an effect you only want 4 of in your deck, it means a lot of diversity even in decks with the same commander.
One skill I think is not spoken of enough is “maybe I just won’t add that to my deck.” If there isn’t an obvious upgrade and you are just agonizing over which card to swap out, maybe just don’t. If it’s a sidegrade and you just don’t want to cut anything, you’re not worse off if you don’t add it.
I call this 125 card problem.
You put a list together and have a 25 card side board/ considering
My considering list often turns out quite big, in extreme cases even like 50+, but I never put everything in the main deck straight away but in the considering, so I see my number of card slots remaining shrink with every add. It helps to focus on the "absolutely needed" vs the "sounds cool I guess" cards, especially when you reach the 90+ card slots!
Ah! Dana’s hat changed! Was liking that Detroit representation.
Wait it’s changed again! How many hat changes?
Again! Just keeping up the bit but now I just want to see how many different hats there will be.
Having many options is great, because there’s always a budget version available that might be less efficient but does something cool on top or allows flexibility.
Similar to what Matt said, I've been trying to make mental note of how it FEELS to play those on-the-chopping-block cards vs new subs. Keeping the replacement in a clear sleeve behind the commander & switching out either in goldfishing or games.
I came to that conclusion with Kozilek in my Rakdos Lord of Riots deck just last week.
Even worse, it’s my understanding that you can’t use the “add one mana of any color” utility pieces because technically colorless isn’t a color.
I have 47 current decks, All of which are built to differing power levels. When new cards are released/spoiled, I have to take into consideration which deck I'm thinking about putting it in. I don't want to grab a lower power deck and slap in something that would cause me to overhaul the entire deck. I keep lower power decks for when there are newer players showing up at my LGS and we need a fourth player. For my mid-power level decks, I only upgrade cards on quarterly basis, and I always grab a deck that I haven't "upgraded" recently. I then will pick a number ahead of time on how many cards I will upgrade/swap out, before even taking the deck out of its case. Then I determine which color in the deck (in my opinion) needs the most help. I will then go through all the cards of that color to see if I hit my desired number of cards are swapped. If not, I then move to next color or mana and mana rocks.
After playing for 12 years I have nearly 20 EDH decks and my goal now is to update them as little as possible, maybe once or twice a year.
Agree with the topic here. Power creep is real and setting healthy expectations for how much time and money you’re willing to invest should be apart of a balance deck building experience. I enjoy the optimization part of brewing but realize at a certain point I’m not striving to have a cEDH deck.
The biggest issue is the mental load of all the new cards. It's to many. Building a deck now is such a large project. It will only make decks more homogeneous. Since tools like EDHREC will be used even more. Nothing wrong with using EDHREC ofc. But it shouldn't be the only tool you use. Before it was manageable to scryfall/mtgassist for a sub optimal similar card. Now it's just raining cards that the average player has no way/time to appreciate. Wish WotC would listen to the player base and slow down.
I have started dedicating pages in my card binder to other options for cards to run in my deck. Each deck has its own section, some spanning multiple pages.
I suspect part of the challenge around deck building could be related to being content creators. Content creators work to provide informative and entertaining content. This includes reviewing cards, showcasing new cards in the 99 or as a commander. This takes a lot of work. The average player isn’t playing/creating decks/discussing magic nearly as much as content creators. I know for myself (and commentators below), there is a lot less pressure on myself if/when I make deck changes.
I do think the Petra Sphinx really epitomizes what theme decks were like back then.
Today i can say im on the opposite end of that spectrum. I had a theme deck that was kinda lacking in power, a few years back, with its theme, so i threw a Dockside Extortionist to help boost the decks effectiveness despite not fitting in the theme at all.
I have since taken Dockside out, because even sticking to my own specific theme, i still have so many powerful choices.
I have over 60 double sleeved Commander decks... I use Moxfield to keep track of everything...
And I have a shelf dedicated to my Commander collection in my walk in closet.
I'm constantly updating and moving cards around and into them... So yeah, the struggle is real 😅
I'm still waiting for an instant speed version of Seize the Spoils to complement the Thrill of Possibility, Big Score and Unexpected Windfall for my Chainer, Nightmare Adept. I will grant you the point that it would probably make me drop the Windfall to make my 'veggies' be more efficient.
I am kind of the opposite from what it sounds like you guys are, at least for necessary things like card draw, removal and lands. Since there are so many similar cards I don’t worry too much about which deck which ends up in unless it is to match the flavor or if it’s something that is necessary for a particular deck. A good example is lands, I just build a workable mana base and move on without bothering to try and optimize it by tier ranking the lands. I might pick a couple decks to optimize or prioritize, but given the plethora of options available and the number of decks I have I really don’t worry too much about most of the staple sorts of cards. The place I have a harder time is usually the cards that are directly tied to the theme of the deck.
I gave up looking at new cards with all the releases. Now I'm using my C18 collection over and over.
Regarding the white protection/phase spells - they made yet another one in BloomBurrow.
I play Concealment & Teferi’s Protection alongside Akroma’s Will in Millicent - and with countermagic up, and her passive, it makes it almost impossible to properly wipe it out.
For me, its part of the game. Winnowing down my decks to the ones I actually care about and want to play primarily has also assisted
As a player who plays on a budget, I disagree with it being harder to deckbuild these days. Ultimately, having too many options is easier to work with than having to scrape by with barely playable cards due to budget options barely existing.
Tbh a part of me does miss when I'd have to find hidden gems to have a complete deck, but it's not like that's NOT an option anymore, there's tons of hidden gems out there that don't see a lot of play but are very good, fun cards
I had got a though decission some time ago on my Omnath, locus of creation deck. I play in a LGS where the meta game is quite aggro whith a little of control, so I´ve been running Bane of progress to be sure that the voltron/enchantress decks doesn´t outrun me. That was until i´ve got my Roaming throne from a booster, my deck became a trigger tribal, so Bane of progress had to get out. Wasn´t easy to cut a pet card, but there it is, taking a nap until the next meta adaptation of the deck.
You aren’t wrong, so in my case, I mostly don’t try to edit old decks - if I don’t break them down entirely for parts, I just leave them as is and build a new deck.
I own 80 Commander decks and have been playing for 11 years now. Keeping track of what cards are in decks can be really hard now. It used to be easy, I run my decks ona budget, spending no more than £2.50 per card, so replacing budget options with re-prints and new alternative version used to be easy. Last four years it has not. I would say that it is stille asier for me than most, becasue 50p cards often have powerful and obviosuly better versions made latter.
It used to be that I would see a card, know it would be good in my deck and just buy the cards without even checking, now I go to put them in the deck and realise I might not be even able to put it in (except my tribal ooze deck, that needs all the help it can get). Useing Archidect has helped a lot, I've started trying to uplaod all my decks on there. My older decks land bases! Dear god some of them are so bad and I never noticed. Found out my Uril the Mistwalker deck only had 36 lands and was 103 cards. But now it is so hard, I had to Goldfish the deck for three hours before I was able to cut out the cards, and several of those were the new ones I had added over the last few years.
What I have to do, is just goldfish the deck several times and see, does this help me 90% of the time? If not I then check it against EDH rec, and see if lots of people, or no one, is playing it. If lots are, I try to evaluate why, if no one is, then it is an easy cut.
Also as some people have said on here, I don't try to upgrade the decks all in one go. I have a Text file on my computer that has a list, so when I spot cards I think might be useful I note them down and the deck they could go into (I also added them to the Maybe section of Archidect if the deck is uplaoded). Letting it sit there for a while means I have a record of it, but at a latter point two sets down the raod I can re-evalaute if it is still needed. Also my playgroup are fine with testing proxies, so I hand draw a little version of the new card and slip it over the one I am considering cutting, that way I can test it agaisnt real people for a few weeks.
www.archidekt.com/search/decks?owner=The_Almighty_Pillock&ownerexact=true
I have 18 decks as well and keeping up is exhausting. Not because I want them fully optimized but because there are some amazing synergy pieces being released in every set. I think the best advice I could give myself is "stop adding new cards to the decks that work well" or "have less decks and keep up with those to your heart's content"
Art and theme is so much more of a driver now for me. It's maybe shallow, but Everybody Lives, Tef Pro, Flare of Fortitude... ehhh. Which art works best with the deck theme?
out of the 14 decks I have, I only keep 3-4 up to date. It's not that I've finished the other decks, it's just to much hassle to go through each deck every set. If I see a card and think that it would go great in x deck, then I'll swap it into. More recently, if there is a set I'm not interested in, I'll use that time to update a few of the other decks. I'll also update the deck if I feel like I really want to play it.
I also have a mayeal deck that has 27 big stomp cards, and I have a 'side board' of like 50 big stompy creatures that I'll sometimes rule 0 to flip over the top when I draw an 'egg' card. it helps me so I don't have to draw up a murder board of which 27 are most efficient, or if I want cut that one really good creature for another really good one. I also have a list for dragons, dinos, angels, elementals, etc. so I can go grab those specific creatures from the stack and swap out the 'egg' cards.
For my deck, I have a list of cards I will NEVER cut - the reason I want to play that deck in the first place. I have another list of cards I'd most likely want to cut: underperformers, cards I wish were slightly more efficient/synergistic, and cards that I just don't *vibe* with for whatever reason (could be art, flavor, play pattern, etc.)
So whenever I see an interesting new card, I can compare it against what I want to cut and ask if that shiny new toy is just going to end up right back on the list once the novelty wears off. In which case if the card is more than a bulk rare, or I don't open it naturally, I'll just forget it and move on.
This may seem niche, but given the abundance in cards, i try to build a minor theme or lore for my deck. Adds a challenge but also solves alot of the harder choices. The theme can be anything from fit the plane, the kindred type, to revolving it around a genre or story (my dusk theme deck), the challenge of the deck ( i have a colour pie breaking deck, a all spells deck and land creature kill deck).
Otherwise i just dont buy new versions as often.
Commander being a rotating format is going to live in my head rent free now
I love your hat, Dana.
Really pleased to hear the shade thrown at Farewell. Then I couldn't tell if it was genuine.
I dont see this as an issue, but a feature.
It used to be that there were only so many cards above a 7/10 that worked in your deck. Now there are so many more 7s and they all have little nuances that make them stronger if you put it in the right context/meta/playstyle. It makes deckbuilding more enjoyable as a whole imo.
And if you dont like sifting through all the 7s, picking the "wrong" one isnt like you accidentally picked a 5 or missed a new 7 that came out to replace the 5 your begrudgingly put into your deck. Your deck is still pretty decent if you dont update and optimize constantly.
You also touched on the fact that in general this makes cards cheaper.
And lastly, I find it makes games more varied, even when you see a lot of similar decks because you get to see the different choices that particular player made.
I was wondering why we keep getting 2 man shows… but I realized it’s summer and you guys are taking turns enjoying vacation time ☀️
I don't generally have a problem with too many good cards, if I feel a card needs to be in my deck then it's in some form or fashion an upgrade of a card I already have, so I just replace the lesser card. Also my decks tend to be on the focused side, so I have very little opportunity to replace cards that don't strictly fit with my game plan.
My solution to this issue is vorthos. If you have the option to build a deck on theme instead of sweaty 100% staples, build on theme instead. Assuming "on-theme" doesn't mean "my entire deck is Wood Elementals." 😉
one thing I do is at the end of the game I look at my hand an make mental notes of what cards are there and how long ...a card can be really good bit if you find your self holding for large portions of the game it's probably safe to cut
Having only recently come back to brewing for EDH (after leaving the game entirely for 5+ years), I've stopped thinking about cards in terms of trying to tune every slot to be the best version of itself and more about individual cards bringing me joy in the deck. Sometimes that means a "worse" version of a card because it's better suited to the (non-mechanical) theme, or simply one that I remember fondly from some other format; other times it's because I appreciate some niche quality a particular card has.
what helps me with updating my decks is to think of each of my decks as a feeling of what it's trying to do so that if I'm making cuts or considerations, I can try to sense whether or not it would increase or decrease the feeling I'm attempting to have while playing it. how the deck feels to play is the main thing im after, whetherit be a theme, a strategy, a certain synergy or tempo. if I'm still torn then I'll do multiple play tests on moxfield up to when I see the new card or 10 turns (whichever comes first) to kind of guage how that card makes me feel at that moment with my current board state with reminding myself it'd only be 30-60% that state on average then make up scenarios for what the opponents might have or do and rate how good I'd feel holding or casting it at that point under those scenarios. it's hard to describe it better as for me I intuit with feeling mostly and within reason I tend to favor the flavor and theme over the power (but not so far that it won't do fine)
I’ve always built to synergy and that has kept me from falling into what I call the “good stuff trap.” People focus so much on staples, they lose focus on whether or not the effect of the cards work in their decks. Synergy will always be better than individually powerful cards.
For commanders they either need to enhance a deck strategy, which can still work without it, or be the focus of the strategy and put in cards to protect it.
Edgar Markov and Queen Marchesa are examples of the former, while Kelsien The Plague would be an example of the latter. Even if Edgar Markov didn’t have his eminence ability, the deck strategy would remain the same and work without him. If I ever cast him, he’d enhance what the deck is already doing. Kelsien relies on effects to dodge kill spells and reset him, so he can activate his ability again.
Rules and edge cases can also play a factor. Take my Extus, Qriq Overlord deck for example. I use the aforementioned Big Score, but don’t use Faithless Looting because of how the cards interact with the commander. With Big Score, Extus’ magecraft ability trigger and goes on top of it resolving, letting me return the card I pitched to initially cast it. Faithless Looting however doesn’t discard until the ability resolves meaning Extus’ ability won’t see any of the cards.
As for lands, I think we now have enough lands that they breakdown into two different sub-categories: to fetch or not to fetch. There are some people who think fetch lands are the only option. Not only do I disagree, but I also don’t count them as lands. They’re tutors. The other camp revolves around bounce lands and many utility lands that don’t use basic land types. Which subset you go with depends on that your deck is trying to do and how important mana fixing is to your strategy.
Since it came up again in this video, I wanted to sympathize with Matt as I also finally got to cast what would've been a big Last March and someone cast Time Stop in response. I feel the pain too now.
I feel like the thing that helps me make cuts consistently is not just playtesting a bunch and seeing which cards in practice i wish were something else but keeping track of how often i get that feeling.
For example take Daxos the Returned in my Minthara Merciless Soul Deck. This deck does not play a bunch of enchantments and does not make so much mana as to be a super strong payoff compared to cards like Elenda the Dusk Rose or Ghoulcaller Gisa. So I've regularly run into situations where Daxos does nothing unless I'm already in a winning position. So i swapped him
The way to overcome not being able to not make cuts is to not make them. Expand your deck to 200 and you won't regret it. It makes for less variance and more fun so no one can even complain
Really? I've never felt better at building decks, felt like I had more options, felt like I had more variety. I rarely see duplicate commanders, meta commanders, it always feels like games are so varied.
Not everyone has every single card or 10 copies of every staple. There's enough variety throughout each set that I have plenty of choices, and not everyone is always picking the most efficient (good) option.
It’s always about finding a balance that suits your wants/needs because tbh it’s the power-creep and sheer number of cards being printed that makes things like the petra sphinx strictly worse than another card.
Personally I enjoy having a few “staple cards” or just well known powerful cards thrown into a mostly janky deck, I don’t think it takes away from the themes all that much and sometimes you just need something good to keep up with everything else floating around
My playgroup has started cutting Sol Ring and we try to avoid generic great cards or only have a couple kicking around our decks. I know it's blasphemy but the format is supposed to be fun first.
The easiest way to help make deck construction more fun is to set arbitrary restrictions. Limit the number of cards you have to look at or can possibly include. I keep bookmarks for specific scryfall searches and get excited when something new comes through that fits the theme.
Maybe deck only uses cards from Ravnica blocks, another only uses cards with old borders, another that uses cards with a certain thing in the artwork or text. That or just set a limit on budget. Each card needs to cost 50 cents or less, or maybe the deck can only be $50.
Reduce your decks' scope because taking everything into consideration is too much.
When facing the hard to evaluate cards I 1. hold off until it falls below a particular $$ amount (fill in your budget) and 2. mostly restricting myself to card draw effects Otherwise I typically wait until cards are one or two sets behind (which only take a month now - half joking)
One approach that I take is to just run one copy of any given card in all of my decks. So you get the true singleton feeling crossed over all decks. Obviously in some decks you still play the same mana dorks however this approach gives you the opportunity to have a lot of variations in your decks and you get the different ups and downs of the cards with basically the same function.
I am not sure if i could convey my point, was rather complicated to put down in words as non native speaker xD
And yeah, if you dont have multiple decks than this approach ain't working so well 😂
I’ve got 34 decks, sadly I’m reaching critical mass. I turned the volume of decks into a spectrum of power level.
My most played or favored play style are my upgrades usually go. And as I upgrade those ,I trickle down with the card that was replaced.
We're spoiled for choice!
Yeah, Craterhoof Cavalry; when it etb it creates X X/X creature tokens w haste and sac at the end step; then all your creatures gain trample until end of turn. Sounds like a good’n
Hunters insight is such a good cheap Mana cost draw spell in green
I actually have a deck that would prefer Utter End over Abstruse Appropriation, if only for a corner case scenario. My Edgar Markov deck (which is not the highly tuned mono-1-drops version) has Vampire Nocturnus, which actively wants black cards on the top of my deck, and only a few sources of colorless mana for Abstruse Appropriation’s upside. Of course, since I long ago cut Utter End in favor of a Vampire with removal stapled to it, it’s a moot point.
Weird thing I've been taking notes in the app manabox on my deck names so if there is something weird about a deck when I go to edit I know to loom for a specific card or change I need to make which takes the stress of trying to remember or even doing the work until it is necessary and I have a deck edit session and I have my manabox notes handy with out having to have charts or flipping cards
Love the Tigers hat Dana!
TP got dethroned by the white flare. It is better because it doesn't exile itself and can be regrowthed and has an alt cost. But I still use both lol.
Keep it up, boys!
Just build more decks. 😅
Edit: 😂 Spoke too soon-30 seconds later Matt says, “I don’t want to keep up with 18 decks.”
12:40 I am so glad to hear someone mention how I feel about Brawl too. The state of the format is very bad compared to how it was let's say 2 years ago, when the card pool was more like Explorer instead of the current Timeless card pool.
The game is becoming less about upgrades and more about side-grades.
Matching powerlevel is trickier now too
Most of my decks are some kind of tribal deck and I can't really afford to keep up so I only really update them when I get a card that does something that I'm already doing with another card but is also part of that tribe, are Aki Scrapchomper or Ghostly Pilferer the most efficient draw I could be running in those colors? No but they are on theme for what the deck is doing. Do I really need a powerful card in every slot or perhaps a less powerful card that's doing something more unique to my deck than a generically good one, cause already so much is happening in a game I'd rather have a simpler card than every card have a college thesis of text on that everyone needs to read multiple times to figure out what it does when it sets off a dozen other things me or someone else is doing. One thing I've noticed is even though the power creep theoretically should make games faster I feel they are taking longer cause there are so many moving pieces and so many cards that you couldn't possibly know all of them that the game ends up being paused to figure out what's even happening.