Randomized Card-Deck Building

Features

Zylo

19 September 2010

1245 views

Editor's Note
So Zylo has a neat little Johnny exercise for all of you. seem like a great way to think about how many of use think about constructed when you don't have all the power cards that exist. And after a second thought, practicing thinking like this allows players to consider synergy with limited options and may help in drafting, by knowing what you are looking for that plays nicely with what you have.

Setup

Sometimes I want to build a new deck, but I have no idea what to make; which is always an issue when you consider how many cards there are out there. Well here's a fun thing to do and you all might like it too. I go to magiccards.info and click the "Random" button. I click it until I find a "not crappy" card, not a power card or a great card, just one that does not hurt me to play. After I get that card, then I hit random one more time. Now having two cards selected at random, I make a deck based off those two cards, really trying search for a way for the cards to play together and have some synergy. So in this article I will explain what I did with my deck.

My cards

So, first I hit "Random" a few times until I found Zuran Spellcaster, I know he's not that great but he's not crappy either, which fits the rules i set for myself. I was excited to make a deck around this card and couldn't wait to see what I got. Well I hit "Random" once more and got Cultural Exchange.... How do you fit these together?

Again due to the rules I set forth these are the two cards that are now the focus of the deck I am going to build.

What to do

Well you have to ask yourself a few things:

1. what colors will the deck be?
Well since they are both blue that helps in choosing the colors, I figure that question later.
2. Two, how can these two cards work together?
Hmm... Well let's look more at Cultural Exchange.

Cultural Exchange not only exchanges my creatures with target opponent BUT I get to pick how many and which ones I give him/her! So I took this idea and went with a mutated version of a "trader" deck. I decided I would base it around Abyssal Persecutor and I could use Cultural Exchange to give them to my opponent when I'm done using them. This starts to build an answer to my first question. So far it looks like I am going U/B for my colors, and as always artifacts are mostly fair game.

...but wait, what if my opponent doesn't have creatures? Oh, I know! That's where zurn spellcaster comes into play! I'll throw in a play set of bassilisk collars and more blue pingers like Rootwater Hunter, that way not only do I have creature control if I need it, but I can get rid of my abyssals when I need to. Okay, so far this deck is looking pretty good. But what else could I add? Oh, I could add Clones so that I can clone an abyssal and more quickly beat my opponent in the face, and because I have several ways to get rid of the abyssals I don't really need to worry about have too many.

After that all I need is some good filler cards like counters, search, and draw accel. I went with Liliana Vess, Demonic Tutor and Infernal Tutor as my search. I went with Ponder for my draw accel, it's just me but I greatly prefer Ponder over Preordain. And for the counters I went with Rune Snag, which many people may disagree with, but honestly they are better than Mana Leak because only the first Rune Snag costs 2 to negate but the second costs 4, third costs 6, and fourth costs 8. Chances are you won't get a fourth, but you may get up to third and then it pays off as being better than Mana Leak.

Anyway, that's my deck idea and my creative way of making some new decks. Here is the deck: Multiplying Abyssal's .

Editor's Note Very nice way to practice building skills and stumble onto some new combos. Personally if I have Abyssal Persecutor, then I would toss in Despotic Scepter, even if my opponent has it I can kill it.