Nill's Deck Tech: Standard
Standard forum
Posted on May 1, 2018, 12:49 p.m. by Nillstan
Welcome, newblets wanting to learn and oldies to tell me I'm wrong, to Nill's Deck Tech! A place for crappy players to get slightly better and haters to gtfo!
I have decided to share what little talent I have in magic to improve on the newbies just a bit. I understand that people are better than me at this, and to that I say congratulations. But I mean to show that you can learn something from even the crappiest of players.
Today, we're going to be discussing Standard, which is probably my favorite format overall. Its decent, its respectful. There's good stuff, but no downright broken stuff. And the thing about standard is that any standard deck can be decent if you figure out how to play it. So now, without further bullshittery, let's dive right in.
What's Standard?
Standard is a format where you're only allowed to play cards from the most recent sets. Right now, this includes Ahmonket, Ixalan, ect.
This means that the card pool is very limited, which is fine. Just means there's less groundbreaking stuff to be unleashed in tourneys.
I consider Standard to be the newbie format. I personally feel that if you're going to learn magic, this this the format to start in. The limited card pool is much easier on the lives of new players, and there's very little downright broken things to be had.
Fewer strats, fewer cards, fewer complications.
My Deck For Reference
Token Country Anthem... SING IT!
Standard
SCORE: 8 | 10 COMMENTS | 1327 VIEWS | IN 3 FOLDERS
This is a relatively fast Vampires deck that I'm quite fond of. If you aren't comfortable building your own from scratch, feel free to use it as a baseline. It handles most threats fairly well and will serve as a good winning deck, but not a learning one.
The Basics
When deciding where to start, it depends very heavily on your limitations. How much money are you willing to spend? What kind of thing are you going for? What kind of style seems fun to you? These are all things you should keep in mind when starting a new Standard deck.
1) Costs
Standard, despite what people will tell you, is not the world's most expensive format. That's mostly because you dont have to have the best cards to be an effective killing machine.
That doesnt change the fact that if you want to improve your deck, you'll likely have to drop quite a bit for high tier cards.
I reccomend setting aside 30-40 bucks to start with if you cant get your hands on a starter deck.
This amount will allow you to buy a large assortment of commons and uncommons, or even some of the rates, as well as sleeves (If you want to play in tourneys). Is it the best amount? No. But it's a fantastic starting place for you to get your career started.
2) Archetypes
This is where it gets a little complicated. There are tons of archetypes that flourish in Standard. From Speedy Aggro decks to slower, controlling decks.
You need to pick something and stick with it. Dont veer off. It WILL come back to bite you.
What I usually do is run midrange and pick a subtype. What this means is to pick one type of card (Vampires, fliers, tramplers, etc) and build the deck around it.
My deck is not the best example of this. While it IS a vampire tribal deck, I split it into two separate functions. Token generation and anthem effects. The reason I was able to get away with this Scott free was because they go hand in hand. All creature in it, tokens included, are vampires. So all anthem effects pump all vampire tokens, hence the deck's name.
Let's say you choose pirates. That's fine. Pirates are cool. What pirates do well in is usually dealing with attacking to activate Raid triggers. This suits them heavily for aggro type things. What you'll want to do is build something that rewards you for being willing to be aggressive.
And it's as simple as that. You picked your archetype and what you want to do with it.
Mana Base
This is one of the most important aspects that separates a good deck from a great one. How your mana curve fits your deck is crucial to its function.
In general, a 60 card deck with 24 lands, split evenly between your colors will work fine. You can tweak this as you playtest.
Choosing a Function
Now is usually the point where you want to choose how you want your deck to go about achieving the win.
Looking at mine again for example, its function is to make swole tokens and cover the board with damage.
You'll want to choose this based on your style of play. If you like to play it slow and screw over your opponents, dont run an aggro deck. Build something more controlling. The same goes vise versa and all around. You dont want to just build a deck if you don't have fun playing it.
Let's say you like to do damage without leaving yourself exposed. Maybe try burn. Play blockers to defend your life and cast spells from behind them to reduce your opponent to ashes.
Building
Now that your manabase is set, and you've chosen your function, it's time to build the deck. You'll want to find cards that accomplish your function without being too far out there.
For instance, you're running a fast creature hate deck. You wouldn't take a 7 mana spell that exiles target creature. While it does accomplish your function, it compromises the speed of your deck. If you run a fast deck, dont run spells with CMC 5 or higher, if you can help it ofc.
A lot of decks will run 4 copies of each card, then run with that. Theoretically, that's the perfect way to go about it. However, for me personally, 3 ofs are much better. It allows you to have many more options for securing the kill, while keeping a decent amount of consistency within the deck. That, of course, is down to preference.
Sideboard
In standard, you're allowed a 15 card sideboard. Use it.
You'll want to fill your sideboard with things to further complete your function, or to handle threats and hard counters.
If a deck hard counters yours, you have almost no chance of victory as it is. So, when you inevitably lose game 1, you get your chance to fix that. Go into your sideboard, swap in some cards to deal with the things that shut you down.
Then just go for broke.
Playtesting
So now you have your deck? Great! You're done! You are now a professional deckbuilder!
If only it worked like that.
Now, your job is to test the deck. Just go out and play. Use your games to find what's wrong with your deck and change it out. It doesnt have to be a tournament. Play with friends, at your local card shop, or even on this site's playtester. It doesnt matter. Just go play.
Find some older players who are a bit more familiar with the format. Most are absolutely willing to help out a newbie. Hell, some will just toss you cards just cuz.
Mindset
Keep a mindset that you are going to lose. You suck. Just flat out. You're hella trash at this game. But that's fine.
A wise man once told me, "You dont learn anything from winning." And boy was he right. I've played this man many times. And I've learned many a thing from the many losses. Until finally, i won. And with that win I finally finished my Standard deck.
But yeah. Dont be afraid to lose. Just lose, figure out how to work around what killed it for you, and go to game 2.
It's going to take practice to know what does and what don't work. There's no set-in-stone way to determine what you did wrong. It just comes down to knowing your deck well enough to notice what kills it ever so easily.
DO NOT GET ATTACHED TO YOUR DECK!
If you want to get better, you have to be willing to change it to fit. When you refuse to change anything in your deck, you have cut yourself out of the curve. You have no chance of being a truly good player.
I've said my peace on that.
Closing
Thank you for reading this article, and I hoped it helped you out some. Have a great day, and may the vampires see mercy on you.
Thanks man. I'm just tryna help out a bit
May 1, 2018 2:10 p.m.
And yeah its understandable. I included mine not just for an example though. I also did it for the contrast, but it's fine either way, I suppose
May 1, 2018 4:05 p.m.
This doesn't have any suggestions for how to test your deck prior to tournament, which is an important part of the process.
It doesn't really cover tweaking your deck.
It would be better to critique a well known deck, rather than your own, to explain why it works in the current meta.
Covering the basics of what different archetypes do would be more helpful eg. Aggro, Control, Mid Range.
May 1, 2018 7:33 p.m.
Was planning on going into detail on those in a different article. I feel like the best way to test a deck prior to a tourney is to just use it. Practice with it and all that, so that's what I wrote.
Theres also not a whole ton I can say about tweaking the deck. Take cards out, put better ones in, test, rinse and repeat.
And I used mine because most of mine is just crap that I managed to tweak into decentness. Not to mention for the contrast between winning decks And learning decks.
All I said was said the way I would tell someone new, which is why I said that this really ain't the place for magic veterans.
But meh. Will prob do more detailed articles in the future. This was mostly just a quick overview, covering to basics only.
May 1, 2018 7:54 p.m.
If you just play a deck at tournament, without testing it some other way first, you can end up wasting a LOT of money if it just doesn't come together.
That's why we have the facility to playtest on this site, and there are also places like Cocatrice and MTGO where you can practice your decks against other real life players.
It's an important part of deck building to test your deck prior to tournament.
May 1, 2018 8:07 p.m.
Dont mean to be rude, but when I say just play it, that doesnt mean just go into any old tournament and get your rear end handed to you. Just play it means just that. Just go play. Doesnt matter where. That includes with friends, at the local card shop, on the site, ect.
Nevertheless, I did add it In just for the sake of it being said.
May 1, 2018 8:56 p.m. Edited.
State that, then.
Say HOW and WHERE they can play the deck to test.
As you said, this is a guide for newer players.
You can't assume that they know how to playtest their deck.
By the way, it's etc. not ect.
Short for et cetera.
May 1, 2018 9 p.m.
May 1, 2018 9:47 p.m. Edited.
I'm not a man. Don't care if you meant to use the term to refer to me in general. It's a male pronoun, which excludes women.
If you think I'm upset then you overestimate how much I care about this conversation. Was trying to help you make this piece better. Won't be in a hurry to do that in future.
May 1, 2018 10:08 p.m. Edited.
- I don't care. Im not changing the way i talk for some chick on the internet.
- I don't, and i already said it was a stupid thing to argue about. I really couldn't care less. It's just a quick thing to help new builders to get started, not an all encompassing guide. I'll probably make one of those later, but this aint it.
May 1, 2018 10:12 p.m.
Sorry, what little interest I had in this topic has now gone, and I've Unsubscribed.
Won't be responding any longer.
May 1, 2018 11:12 p.m.
While these are decent tips for a beginner, I think you are incongruent at points and misleading at others, none of which are helpful to a beginner in MTG. For example:
"Right now, this includes Ahmonket, Ixalan, ect." - if you can't be bothered to list the 4 sets currently legal in Standard, this is a disservice to a new player. On top of that you mispell "etc"?
"Its decent, its respectful. There's good stuff, but no downright broken stuff. And the thing about standard is that any standard deck can be decent if you figure out how to play it." - This is true for any deck and you are not saying much here.
"This is a relatively fast Vampires deck that I'm quite fond of. If you aren't comfortable building your own from scratch, feel free to use it as a baseline. It handles most threats fairly well and will serve as a good winning deck, but not a learning one." - as a new player, I would be lost at this point - why would I use a winning deck instead of a learning one? Are winning and learning mutually exclusive (later, you say they are, which downright weird)? As an older player, I would go "no playsets of anything? besides Essence Extraction, really now?
Another example of misleading and general unhelpfulness - "It's going to take practice to know what does and what don't work. There's no set-in-stone way to determine what you did wrong. It just comes down to knowing your deck well enough to notice what kills it ever so easily."
So, you refute your own earlier points mentioning to test the deck at various places, ask more experienced people, etc. to say this? You literally mention several ways to determine what you did wrong, only to refute it two paragraphs later.
I may sound mean, you may say you do not care, but at the end, this is just poor quality guide that I would not show to anyone starting the game.
TLDR: Proofread this. Read something Wizards puts in their products to teach new players, then proofread this again.
May 2, 2018 10:06 a.m.
Separate from the above, how did you start in Magic? I am genuinly intersted to hear the story.
May 2, 2018 10:10 a.m.
I said hey that looks fun about 6 months ago and taught myself deckbuilding and playing. Later on I got help. With improvements, but yeah. Pretty uninteresting story
May 2, 2018 11:21 a.m.
Besides. It's a basic guide that just goes over the basics. I said for a fact, I prefer 3 ofs over 4, those ways to test and improve are only examples, theres no set in stone way, everybody does it differently.
By all means, write a better guide. This is written only the way I would tell it in real life, and it's never been a problem before.
May 3, 2018 8:16 a.m.
If you do prefer 3ofs, why do you play 4 Essence Extraction and 4 Concealed Courtyard?
" theres no set in stone way, everybody does it differently." - That is really deceiving and unhelpful - it does nothing to indicate what a player should do (this is the main purpose of this guide); nor does it do justice to your guide in any way - you are literally telling people that this guide may not be useful to them, as "everybody does it differently".
Do you really think someone brand new to the game has an idea what aggro, combo, control, anthem; know what a good mana base, mana curve, archetype and function are...?
By all means, if you can't take criticism on your work, write a better guide. I only write the way I would tell it to you in real life, and its never been a problem before.
P.S. It is all too easy to dismiss criticism, but when it something constructive, do listen - this applies not solely to guide writing.
May 3, 2018 10:18 a.m.
4 courtyards because it's an untap dual land, which even i have to admit is useful
4 essence extraction because it's a suggestion I'm testing
I'm writing a full on in depth tutorial to shut people up.
I admit i should have gone in depth with the archetypes, that's my mistake.
I can take the criticism, I'm just trying to explain why i wrote what i did. Which is why im writing to better tutorial. Mostly to shut people up, but also because i did make mine kinda hard to understand.
May 3, 2018 12:45 p.m. Edited.
Nillstan, good! You are still focusing on the wrong thing - "mostly to shut people up", but this is at least a step in the right direction. Despite some comments with constructive criticism, you did gain traction, which is quite important.
You knew you would get this type of reaction ("oldies to tell me I'm wrong"). Of course you were wrong, there is no right answer in a game of imperfect information, but don't let that get you down :)
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #2
To start with, i'll have to admit i just flew over a big part in the middle. Nonetheless, i like many things you wrote. For someone with a little more experience, the text was easy to understand and totally relatable, which is great, as it underlines some truth behind your words. For someone newer to the game, going deep on some of your topics would seem necessary, but as you're willing to make a series out of this, i'll take it that it was on purpose to have content for future articles.
The one thing i didn't like too much was the inclusion of your own deck that was a good example only partly. But as you even mentioned that right in the article, this problem seems a minor one.
Tl;dr: great part one of a promising series for beginners. Keep it up!
May 1, 2018 1:27 p.m.