How do you cook down a deck?
Deck Help forum
Posted on Feb. 1, 2014, 10:27 a.m. by Tortun
Hello, I'm relatively inexperienced at limiting my decks to 60 cards, since I feel that every card I already have, could play an important role. My concerned deck is: Let's equip! Kor or another version without Kors: Let's equip! S&K. What principles are you using, when creating a new deck, to limit yourself? Also, criticism is greatly appreciated!
First, read this article by Patrick Chapin.
When building a deck, you almost always want to keep it down to 60 cards. By probabilities, the more cards you have in a deck, the less chances you have of drawing a particular card. This is the reason why people tell you to run playsets of cards, because by running the minimum number of cards needed for a deck (60) and the maximum multiples (4), you make your deck more consistent.
Now, when deciding to cut down on cards, you need to get into the mentality that some cards in your deck are better than others. In a deck, there is always a 'worst' card; this is a card that either doesn't do enough to warrant a slot in your deck, doesn't contribute to the theme or goal of your deck.
For example, in your Let's equip! Kor deck, you seem to be running of the theme of kor+equipments. So the goal of your deck is to strap equipment to kor, and swing in with them. However, you run Kor Sanctifiers . Unless your meta is fairly artifact+enchantment heavy, you don't need to kick the sanctifiers, which makes them basically a vanilla creature. It doesn't really fit the theme of your deck.
You also run Nemesis Mask . For an equipment, all it does is act as a Lure , while having a relatively high casting and equip cost. You're only running 18 lands, so it's likely 3 mana represents a whole turn's worth of doing stuff. This is an example of 'doesn't contribute enough as a card'.
By going by these principles, it helps you cut down the fat on your deck, and consequently make it better.
February 1, 2014 10:55 a.m.
Misanthropia says... #4
Also... Don't be afraid to kill your darlings.
Tl;dr; Single out your strong core (what will make you win before your opponent) and then further augment that with 8-12 cards, rest should generally be utility and lands.
February 1, 2014 10:56 a.m.
Thank you all for the answers, the article linked was very helpful.As Misanthropia mentioned, I've now tried to center my deck around the combination of first-strike and death touch. My current deck looks like this First is best, any improvements I could do?
Misanthropia says... #2
I usually streamline down the deck to the very core (Often something like 8-12 cards that the whole thing revolves around, this is whatever makes your deck tick), I then fill out with utilities to further the same goal or/(pref.)and cover up distinct weaknesses of my own core (counters, removal, enchant. hate, artifact hate, you name it).
After that, I'm usually done. As a rule of thumb, I often feel that when I get the "this card could be good in THIS situation" it's either sideboard or not in at all, it's impossible to build a deck for every possible situation, it's much better to focus on your own goal and try winning via those instead.
February 1, 2014 10:54 a.m.