The EDH Deck Building Process #7 - Making Revisions

TappedOut Commander Series

Suns_Champion

9 May 2020

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Hello friends! It is I, Suns_Champion:

• TappedOut’s resident jank EDH brewer
• New Commander trailblazer
• Part-time dead-Planeswalker
• Full-time Boros Legionnaire
• Lover of bullet-point lists

Welcome back to my ongoing series, The EDH Deck Building Process! In my last article, I talked about asking for help and suggestions, and playtesting your newly built deck. At this point in my deckbuilding process, I haven't even bought the cards for the deck yet, but have instead been goldfishing and playtesting with proxies.

At some point during your playtesting, either through goldfishing or playing with friends, you may have found the need to make changes to your deck, so that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

Revising your deck

Nobody’s perfect, and nobody makes the perfect deck on their first try. Through playtesting, you might have noticed that a certain section of your deck isn’t pulling it’s weight, a single card or many different cards aren’t as good as you thought, or some parts of your deck are more powerful and fun than you expected, and you want more of those effects. This is why every step of playtesting is important, and you really can’t playtest enough. And again, figuring out that you want to make changes BEFORE you buy all the cards for the deck saves you money. That’s always a good thing in my book.

Example time. While testing my No Zombie Tribal | Gisa and Geralf EDH, I’ve discovered that I was having trouble casting my big win-con flample demons like Vilis, Broker of Blood. You see, my commander Gisa and Geralf just let me cast them from the graveyard, not cheat them into play in any way. So I’ve found the need to add in more ramp, and more recursion like Reanimate and Animate Dead so that I can more consistently get them onto the battlefield. Because of the custom categories I have in place, it’s easy to add and drop things while keeping the deck balanced.

I also discovered, upon rereading my commander Gisa and Geralf, that a previous synergy with Vedalken Orrery and Leyline of Anticipation doesn’t work how I thought it did. I thought having the ability to cast spells at instant speed would let me cast creatures on my opponent’s turns, but G&G says, “during each of your turns, you may cast a Zombie creature card from your graveyard.” Oops! Classic Suns_Champion. This happens to even the most experienced deck builders sometimes. A friendly reminder to read your cards carefully! This new discovery puts evaluation of those cards in a new light, and they might be cut for better options now.

Another concept I’ve noticed that I’d like to share is tailoring your ramp to the CMC of your commander. Gisa and Geralf are 4 CMC, so a 2 CMC mana rock like Arcane Signet and a land drop on each of my first three turns gets them out on turn 3 every time. This is a good thing to think about for your commander. A 3 CMC mana rock would not help me much with my 4 CMC commander. If your commander is 6 CMC, think about cards like Worn Powerstone that will get it out on turn 4 (with 4 land drops). If your commander is 5 CMC, Pyromancer's Goggles might not be a great choice for ramp. Take a look at your commander and consider switching up your ramp package.

So after playtesting your deck, what changes need to be made? Do you always have a good number of cards in your hand? If not, add more draw. Are you getting consistent land drops? If not, you might add a land or again add more draw. Are you struggling, like me, with the high-cost spells? More ramp. Is a certain category or sub-theme not working? Let’s take it out and switch it up. Are there some cards you never wanted to cast or never found an opportunity to cast? Let’s replace it with something you do want to cast.

After playtesting is a great time to go back over all the strategies to cut cards discussed in article #5. Use those reasonings and strategies to reinforce your decision to take out the cards you didn’t like in playtesting, and add in new cards to replace them.

What do we replace the cards that aren’t working with?

Back in article 5, I suggested setting aside the 10 or so cards that you cut last or were hardest to cut. You might start pulling from that pile and those ideas for what to add back into your deck. So that pet-card that didn’t quite make the cut, or that strategy that seemed weaker than the others, those might just have the opportunity to prove themselves.

If your deck is struggling in one of the key categories like ramp, draw, or removal, you can add in more staple cards, as discussed in article #4, that are just good even if they don’t necessarily further your strategy or synergize with anything in your deck. Suppose I was struggling to draw cards, and have all of the Ransack the Lab cards in the deck already. I might just add in a Rhystic Study and call it good. Even though it doesn’t go with my strategy, it’s just a great draw spell. Again, EDHREC is a great place to quickly browse staple cards in the colors you’re in.

In my last article, we talked about asking for help and suggestions. Maybe try out some suggestions that you disregarded before, or start the whole process over again to get new suggestions. Again, being specific with the problem you’re experiencing will be helpful for filtering feedback.

Finally, you can always go back to searching for new cards and ideas. You never know what’s out there until you look!

Sometimes, however, it’s not just a simple case of making a few swaps. Sometimes the whole deck just doesn’t seem to be working. For whatever reason, you feel stuck between different ideas, not knowing which ones work and which ones don’t. Not knowing what you should do, and not even knowing what you want to do.

I call this the Deckbuilding Midlife Crisis.

Dealing with the Deckbuilder’s Midlife Crisis

I’ve had a Deckbuilding Midlife Crisis for three commanders recently. Feather, the Redeemed, Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero (in case you forgot, I like Boros), and Neheb, the Eternal.

While building Feather, the Redeemed, I struggled with what direction to take my deck. Do I go voltron? Heroic tribal? Tokens? Sunforger? I didn’t know what to do. It took me a while, but I decided on tokens matter and Sunforger. It didn’t really work very well. The deck was never able to win because it’s attention was split by multiple strategies. The deck just wasn’t working. I have yet to revise the deck, since Feather got so popular I sorta lost interest. Plus I realized I didn’t enjoy casting cantrips over and over again every game. I still have the messy, unfocused version proxied out, but I rarely play it. I’m glad I didn’t spend money on it. If I were to build it again, I’d go Voltron/Protection. Sometimes, decks just don’t work out and you lose interest.

When I built Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero, I was pretty pumped. I had a few sweet combos set up, and lots of clever interactions. The problem came during playtesting, when I discovered that 1) Boros didn’t have the necessary tutors needed for a consistent combo deck, and 2) I didn’t like winning by combo. So I went back to the drawing board. I scrapped the original idea and built something else instead. I went with “enter the battlefield” effects and boardwipe tribal. Sort of a control and value engine deck. I like it a lot more now. Sometimes you have to switch directions to fix the problem.

Neheb, the Eternal was a little different, because I’d had the deck for a few years. At some point I just got dissatisfied with something in the deck, I wasn't sure what, and thought about massive structural and strategic changes. I swapped 20+ cards and created a whole new looting/rummaging subtheme. It was a very different deck. I did what I should NOT have done and bought the cards for the potential changes even though I wasn’t sure of anything. What I did do that was smart was set up a second deck page with the 20 changes applied, and went to work drawing sample hands and playtesting for hours. What came from this was the realization that my new deck was not, in fact, better than the old one, and was, in fact, quite worse. I only changed a few cards after that, and felt better about the whole thing. I’m glad I did only that.

What’s the takeaway here? Sometimes your deck isn’t working, and you’ll have an existential crisis. Sometimes, you might not care enough to change it, and that’s totally okay. Most of the time you will, and you might have to go back to the drawing board and Reforge the Soul of your deck into something new. Sometimes you’ll be dissatisfied with an old deck and want to switch things up.

In any case, I’d suggest testing your changes online or in person with proxies before buying any new cards. I hope this discussion has really hammered home the importance of goldfishing and playtesting that I talked about last week. I definitely suggest the second-decklist strategy. Just don’t also but the cards before testing. Save money when I did not!

Unfortunately, a temporary Deck Building Existential Crisis is not the worst that can happen to a deck, new or old.

Sometimes, its problems can’t be fixed. Sometimes, there isn’t a path to reconciliation.

Sometimes, you have to retire a deck.

Knowing when to Retire a Deck

A few years ago, I made a deck based around Horobi, Death's Wail. I searched for cards, I developed themes and subthemes, I found sweet synergies, I made cuts, I asked for suggestions, I goldfished the deck, and finally, I printed it out to play against my friends. I was so excited!

It was a nightmare to play, and a nightmare to play against. Nobody could keep creatures on the board, not even me. Everyone had a bad time sloughing through a grueling 2.5 hour game that I came close to winning, but didn’t. It wasn’t just an idea or subtheme in the deck, it was the deck itself. With some regret, I scrapped the deck. I knew it wasn’t for me or my playgroup. It was dishonorably discharged from my lineup of decks. And again, I’m glad I followed my usual process and didn’t spend money on it before doing this.

This is always the danger of building and buying decks. They might end up not being fun for you, or your playgroup might hate them, or both. This is an extreme example though. You will most likely be very happy with your deck starting out. But I consider the entire life of a deck to be part of the deckbuilding process, and retirement is an important part. The trail to retiring a deck might take years. You and your playgroup might be fine with a deck for a while, but it might eventually lose its spark.

Like Dack Fayden.

Too soon?

Anyway, Here are some reasons you might think about retiring a deck for good (oh yeah, it’s bullet-point list time):

• When you no longer enjoy playing the deck.
• When you can tell that your playgroup does not like playing against the deck.
• When you simply get bored of playing the deck.
• When the deck is repetitive, starting and finishing the same way every game.
• When your prefered playstyle shifts, leaving a certain deck in unfavorable light.
• When you’ve taken cards out for other decks, and haven't bothered to replace them.
• When new sets come out with great cards for the deck, but you don’t bother to update it.
• When you actively avoid playing the deck for any reason.
• When you have a critical mass of decks you enjoy playing more.
• When your deck stops winning, or even contributing to the game much in your meta.
• When even after changes and revisions it still doesn’t work.
• When you realize you don’t have anything else to discover or learn from the deck.
• When the deck no longer surprises you.
• When you want to make a different deck with similar themes or in similar colors.
• When the deck is not a Boros deck, and you feel dead inside playing it.

There are infinite reasons to retire a deck, and I don’t know a single deckbuilder who hasn’t done it. Sometimes, things just don't work out, and you can either tell it never will work out, or don’t want to put the time, money, and effort into making it work. It’s okay for an idea to not work out. That’s life. And that’s why we saved our divergent ideas when we were building our decks, that’s why we looked for inspiration, and that’s why we didn’t spend money on our idea immediately.

There’s an argument for just keeping the deck for a long time and cracking it out later. Maybe it will be better after time passes. If you retire a deck, make sure it’s documented on a deck building site, just like how we built our decks. That way if you ever miss it and want to revisit it, you can easily get back to where you left off.

Retiring decks is part of the Deckbuilding circle of life. Retiring decks makes room for new decks. Sell those cards to buy new cards. Reuse the sleeves for a new deck. Try to get The Lion King soundtrack out of your head. And so on.

Recap:

• Sometimes you’ll need to revise your deck. You can repeat the processes of cutting, finding, and adding cards, goldfishing, and playtesting to get to the place you want your deck to be.
• Occasionally you will have an existential crisis regarding your deck. Sometimes You’ll have to go back to the drawing board on a deck. That’s why we playtest first, and buy cards after.
• Alas, not all ideas are made to last, and you might have to retire a deck, new or old. That is also okay. Save the decklist online.
• It’s the ciiiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiife

Congratulations, you’re ready to buy your deck! If you like the deck you have, its life will be either a stable life of never seeing change, or you will tinker with it for all eternity, constantly improving or tweaking to make it more fun. If you still love it after all of this work, it’s probably a safe investment. I don’t consider buying cards to be part of the “brewing” process,” so I won’t be covering that aspect today. But perhaps other brewers do, and will have advice in the comments!

With that, I’ve completed my deckbuilding process! If you read through the whole series, thank you! I hope you found something you could use in your own deckbuilding. Join me next time for a reflection on the series and some other notes that didn’t quite fit within the series: The EDH Brewing Process Postscript: A Brewer’s Work is Never Done

Until then, obey the law kids. If you don’t, give me a call.

Suns_Champion