The EDH Deck Building Process #1 - Deck Building Philosophy

TappedOut Commander Series

Suns_Champion

1 April 2020

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The EDH Deck Building Process #1 - Deck Building Philosophy

Hello friends! Some mischief is afoot! My name is Suns_Champion, TappedOut’s resident jank EDH brewer, new Commander pioneer, part-time dead-Planeswalker, and full-time Boros Legionnaire!

Stuck at home in social isolation/quarantine? Looking for a new series to read or a new deck to build? This is just what the doctor ordered (along with washing your hands)!

This is the first article in a series about the EDH Deck Building Process, or more specifically, my deck building process plus helpful advice from other great deck builders! In this series I am going to tackle the tough questions all deck builders face, such as:

• How do I get started?
• How do I gather cards?
• How do I organize while building?
• How do I decide what cards stay and what cards get cut?
• How do I ask for help?
• How do I test my first draft?
• How do I make changes after testing?
• How will I know I’m done building?

I hope to answer all these questions and more, so if you’re reading along and have a question or topic you want answered or discussed, please comment below! I should note that yes, these articles are all going to be written from an EDH/Commander deck building perspective. That is my area of expertise. But I think some or maybe most of my thoughts can be applied to other formats with some tweaking.

With those disclaimers out of the way, on to today’s main topic: Deck Building Philosophy!

Deck Building Philosophy

So what is Deck Building Philosophy? As the name might imply, it is the mindset, attitude, and goals that a deck builder has for building and playing their decks. It might take the form of a bunch of separate statements forming a list. For example, here is my deck building philosophy:

• I love the deck building process more than playing (which I still love a lot).
• I am predominantly inspired by and built around commanders (rather than a theme or strategy).
• I like to choose commanders off the beaten path (The Conquistadors of Hernán Cortés | Elenda EDH), or take a popular commander and do something very different with them. I don’t “net-deck,” I prefer to make my own version of the deck that is unique and different.
• I also enjoy pioneering new commanders (Super Smash Boros | Firesong & Sunspeaker EDH), because no one’s ever built them before and being the first to build a commander is like exploring a previously unknown territory, and that’s very exciting for me.
• I am especially fond of Boros commanders (Bad Luck Brion), jank ideas/combos (Bludgeon Brawl | Tiana EDH), and Boros decks with jank ideas/combos (The Labor of My Love | Najeela EDH).
• I keep the health of my playgroup in mind when building, and try to build in the $300-$500 max price range (aka I am terrible at building on a reasonable budget) and build decks at the 7-8 power range (vaguely following the 75% rule).
• My playgroup having fun is very important to me, but I still build and play to win.
• I don’t feel obligated to build decks unless it’s a new Boros commander or something that really inspires me.

As you can see, some of these are restrictions or guidelines I put on myself, and some of these are just my preferences and random ideas I like. Your deck building philosophy might look like several statements similar to those that combine to form your whole deck building worldview. We’ll work on that later. First, another example of a deck building philosophy.

The 75% Rule

Now, if you are familiar with EDH and deck building, you might have already heard of one of the more common and popular deck building philosophies: The 75% rule. I mentioned it in my philosophy. Rather than try to explain it, I’ll post the articles below:

Original article by Jason Alt

Follow up article by Jason Alt

Fear not, if you didn’t read the article, here is my attempt at a summary. The 75% deck building philosophy is all about purposefully building your deck so it's pretty good, but not the very best it could be. This is helpful for joining new metas, and just generally having fun and not winning too much. The idea is if you play loose, you'll still have a good and fun game with budget or rather poorly constructed decks, and if you play tight and get a little lucky, you can still compete with fine-tuned and semi-competitive decks. Some points ripped from the articles:

• Scalable spells help tailor your cards to the power level of your opponents' decks.
• Always start weak and improve the deck—never weaken a better deck.
• You can skew toward power provided you skew away from consistency.
• It is better to punish everyone equally for doing something rather than prevent someone from doing it.
• Building around a theme will keep the power level from skewing too high.
• Imposing limitations encourages creativity and promotes balance.
• Do what you need to do to protect the execution of your strategy.
• Try to vary the game experience, and build with multiple paths to victory in mind.

The 75% is so popular, I think, because it encompasses part of the spirit of EDH. The casual but still fun gameplay, and the desire to have a good, well balanced game where everyone has fun, win or lose. This is a very fleshed-out mentality, and a lot of people have adopted it into their own personal philosophies. I did, and I sorta summed it up in the sentence, “I build decks at the 7-8 power range.” It serves as the most concrete example of a universal theory, meaning it more or less applies to all the decks you build.

With a few examples under your belt, you can start working on your own!

Your Deck Building Philosophy

So what’s your deck building philosophy? You don’t know? Well, I can try to help you figure it out! Here are some questions to ask yourself to form your own deck building philosophy:

Are you building to win, lose, or make sure everyone has a good time? What is something you consider a “win” that isn’t just winning the game? Let’s face it, different people have different ideas about what is fun. Some people think winning the game is the only way to have fun. Some people try to make sure everyone is having a good time (a difficult task). Some consider just getting a janky synergy to work to be a “win.”

Think about what you enjoy the most about Commander, or Magic in general. Do you like deck building or playing more? Do you like the singleton nature of EDH, or the fact that there’s a commander? I answered these questions in my philosophy. I like building around commanders. What do you like?

Do you like building around colors, strategies, combos, commanders, themes, tribes? Or all of the above? If you like building around colors and commanders, what are your favorite colors? What type of commanders do you like? My answer for the colors was of course Boros (Red & White).

Do you like combos? Or think they’re unfun? How do you like to win? What is your idea of a fun game? What is your ideal game time? Again, just some questions to get your brain thinking about you and how you like to play and build.

Do you like creating your own deck, or do you prefer getting inspiration from someone else? There is nothing wrong with copying a deck and enjoying it, so long as you don’t take credit for anything that isn’t yours. Personally, I like creating my own ideas and silly combos, but I get inspired by other decks all the time.

What power level is your meta at? Are you trying to build decks that win as much as possible in your meta, or just compete and win 25% of the time?

What’s your budget like? How much are you willing to spend on a card, a deck, or on Magic in general? Your budget can clue you in to what type of game you want to play and what type of deck you build.

Asking and answering these questions, as well as asking other people what their answers are, and building and playing your decks will eventually help you form your own philosophy. It’s an unusually introspective journey, but I think it is well worth it to have an understanding of yourself before you can understand your decks.

Development of a Deck Building Philosophy

To further help you develop your own philosophy and to illustrate how this is not a short process, let’s go back to my philosophy and see how it developed.

I love the deck building process more than playing. This obviously wasn’t always true, as I learned to play before learning to make decks. But over time I learned to appreciate the journey of discovery that is deck building. I love finding and creating new ideas. I love searching and finding answers. I love organizing information, cutting what I don’t want or don’t need. I love putting my theories to the test.

I am predominantly inspired by, and build around, commanders. I think the coolest thing about EDH is the fact you have a commander. One card that is guaranteed every game. That’s why I tend to pick commanders as the focus of the deck, as opposed to tribes or strategies.

I like to choose commanders off the beaten path, or take a popular commander and do something very different with them. I don’t “net-deck,” I prefer to make my own version of the deck that is unique and different. Again this wasn’t always true, as my first deck was a copy-paste Narset deck. But pretty quickly I realized I didn’t like doing what everyone else was doing, and Bad Luck Brion was born.

I also enjoy pioneering new commanders. I got a real love for this when Firesong and Sunspeaker were leaked months before the Dominaria release. Something about making a commander nobody ever had before was very exciting and was basically a better version of my previous philosophy statement.

I am especially fond of Boros commanders, jank ideas/combos, and Boros decks with jank ideas/combos. I get this question a lot: “why do you love Boros so much?” Weeeeellllll I’m glad you asked! I think it had something to do with the first Magic deck I ever saw played being Boros. I was vaguely interested when I saw my two best friends playing together. The art on the red and white land cards looked cooler than the art of the blue and green land cards to I was on the red and white side. After a few Wojecks and Skyknights, he played a Firemane Avenger and I was hooked for life. “Why do you still like Boros in EDH though? It’s terrible in EDH!” Well yes. But I’ve always loved a good underdog. Winning with Boros feels like you earned it. Playing non-aggro boros felt creative, like I was breaking the rules. Plus, playing Boros means I get to complain and gripe all day about what I’m playing hehe!

I try to build decks in the $300-$500 max price range and at the 7-8 power range. This developed after building many decks and realizing that I am terrible at building on a reasonable budget. But hey, budget is a very personalized thing. The power range statement is basically the 75% rule in fewer words.

My playgroup having fun is very important to me, but I still build and play to win. I play in a small playgroup with my friends, so we’re all looking to have a good time and continue playing together, so we’ve discovered that things like stax and superfriends aren’t for us. But of course we all still want to win, so our games are competitive and fun.

I don’t feel obligated to build decks unless it’s a new Boros commander or something that really inspires me. I want to feel inspired to build a deck, as it is a creative process for me. I see many posts on Tapped/Out and other sites asking “What should I build? I’m stuck. I don’t have any ideas.” Well, my answer is, wait. Wait for inspiration to hit you. More on that in later articles though.

Hopefully you get the sense that deck building philosophies change over time, in response to decks you build and play, reactions from your playgroup, or to events that happen in the Magic world. Your personal philosophy is never set in stone; it is a fluid entity that evolves over time.

I hope providing my philosophy provides a more tangible example, and will help you frame your own. Plus it’s good to keep my view in mind for the rest of the series, though I will try to stay as unbiased as I can.... just kidding! Boros for life!

Application

So how does deck building philosophy play into the bigger story of the deck building process? I believe your mentality for building decks greatly determines how and why you pick your commander, how you structure and optimize your deck, what cards you put in your deck, how you play your deck, and so much more. As I will be talking about all that in later articles, I thought it best to start philosophy because it provides a good background and context for our discussions. I plan on connecting a lot of what I will talk about back to this article (an ambitious move, perhaps, for a first time article-writer) in the hopes of having some continuity in the series, which helps people learn.

A Friendly Recap:

• Deck Building Philosophy is the mindset, attitude, and goals that a deck builder has for building and playing their decks.
• Each person’s Deck Building Philosophy is unique and usually very specific to them.
• The 75% rule is a popular deck building philosophy about building decks at 75% power level.
• One’s Deck Building Philosophy changes over time.
• One’s Deck Building Philosophy affects how one goes about building a deck.
• Suns_Champion is addicted to Boros.

Well then! Hopefully I have not overstayed my welcome. Remember, if you have a question or topic you want answered or discussed over the course of this series, please comment below!

Join me next time for The EDH Deck Building Process #2 - The Inspiration!

For the Legion!

Suns_Champion

Big huge special thanks to: Boza and berryjon for helping me get set up as a TappedOut writer, yeaGO fo all your hard work on the site, and Caerwyn for helping me refine the initial drafts of the entire series.