These are some basic do's and don't for constructing a deck. There are no secrets of the universe in here, but if you are a novice player these points may help you get past some of the early mistakes that people make. It is aimed at someone who is constructing a deck for the first time or who has played a few games and has not had a great deal of success.
Stephen Edney edney@physics.usyd.edu.au
Just a few suggestions for the people on this list who don't have much experience in deckbuilding.
1) Land. If you think you don't have enough, you don't. 22 land is good for an aggressive
deck, 24 for a midrange deck and 26 for a fairly serious control deck. Note that these are
merely the bottom level. More land than this is good, especially if using utility lands or
effects requiring you to sacrifice them. This point may be overstressed with it being
mentioned in just about every guide to deckbuilding, but that is how important it is. See
the following section for a more detail coverage of this topic.
2) Only play with good cards. If you are building a deck to win, then this applies to you.
If you're building one for fun, ignore this point. Shock is a good card. Incinerate is a
good card. Flameshot is generally not a good card. Logical conclusion... don't play with
Flameshot. It works much the same with any card. Hecatomb is a bad card because it requires
you to sacrifice four creatures, thereby giving up almost any hope of getting card advantage
from it. Rhox is generally a bad card for a different reason, as it is too costly to play in
serious play. If a card is not seeing much play, it may be a hidden gem. Then again there is
a far greater chance it is simply chaff.
Occasionally this rule is broken as a bad card becomes golden in one deck. If that is the
case for your deck, then use it. Otherwise use something else.
3) Much the same as two. If a card exists that is better than a card that you're using while
giving an equivalent effect, use the better card. Basic example: Trade Routes vs Excavation.
Look them up and try to figure out why Trade Routes is better than Excavation.
4) Consistency. A very good rule is to use four copies of cards that you want to see all the
time with the deck; three copies for those that you want to see once in a game; two for those
that are only good in the late game; and one if you only want to see it once in a long game.
However, in a beginner's deck (no offence intended), a much better rule is play three or four
of all the cards unless you have tutoring capabilities in your deck. Since your collection may
not be up to providing you with four of the card that you want to use (I know mine wasn't until
about two and a half years of consolidation), you can replace those with cards with a similar
purpose. This is easy when you are talking about creatures, but becomes harder when you are
talking about specific cards. A basic example is replacing the two Seals of Cleansing/Disenchants
that you don't have with Dismantling Blow, or something with a similar effect.
Donald Shepherd - donald_shepherd@hotmail.com
Reliability is key
When building a tournament deck, above all else, reliability is key. After all, good ideas won't work if you cannot get them to appear reliably. And the first step to building a reliable deck is mana distribution.
Now this goes beyond just how many lands to play with, but also how many sources of a given color one should play with, as well as whether one should use "alternate" sources of mana, such as creatures or artifacts.
Now working in the current TYPE II format, the considerations are as follows:
Most decks, in order to be reliable, will require the ability to play a source of mana every turn for the first three to four turns. This means that on average, you want four mana producing lands (we will consider alternate sources later) in your first eleven cards. This adds up to around 22 mana producing lands in a 60 card deck. Now with the key word being ``reliability'', we may want to up this to around 24 or 25. The reasoning for this is that it is much better to have too much mana at the beginning of the game as opposed to too little mana.
Now for people who have not played much outside of casual groups, this may come as a shock. The traditional ratio of mana cards to non-mana cards has usually been 1 to 2. After all, if one plays with 25 lands, then there is only space for 35 other cards. And as well, what happens in the mid-game, when you're cursing under your breath because all you are drawing is land? Without getting into actual deck building strategies, my answer is that in the mid game, one should either be putting all this mana to good use (e.g. Jayemdae Tome, Disrupting Scepter), or be winning outright. Getting mana screwed is much worse than having an abundant source of mana, as one situation will have you drawing cards which you cannot use (becoming a target for Black Vise), while the other lets you either increase your hand size (to counter The Rack or Disrupting Scepter) or play some extra mana for future use. The point is, you have more options, and when the cards you need are drawn, you can actually play them.
Having alternate mana sources can also help in the mid-game, especially if your opponent is playing with Armageddon. As well, it forces the land destruction player to deal with non-land cards.
As a last point, alternate mana sources help to achieve a certain amount of mana more quickly in the beginning of the game. Even if the sources are disposable (Tinder Wall, Dark Ritual), the advantage gained by an early boost of mana may make it very difficult for the opponent to come back.
For a single color deck, it is usually straight-forward. In fact, single color decks can usually get away with playing with very few mana sources, since the type of mana they need will consistently show up. Note that this only applies to weenie decks (and perhaps black due to Dark Ritual), since their mana dependencies are very low. All-green decks with big creatures tend to play with many mana- producing elves and sometimes even with Nature's Lore and such, and as a result tend to play with very few lands, but overall play with many mana producers. For decks using two or more colors, it becomes very important to determine the color dependencies of cards, and when you are likely to play them. A card is considered very color dependend if it requires a lot of mana of a particular color to play. Cards which are very color dependend tend to be less reliable, since the mana required to play them may not always be available. This is one of the main reasons why artifacts are good, and this is also a big part of why Blastoderms [was Erhnam Djinns - DS] are very dominant in TYPE II play.
Another factor in deciding how much mana of a given color to play is when you are likely to play the cards of that color. If you throw in one Fireball into your deck, and this is your only red card, then it may not be such a bad idea to play with, say, 4 or 5 sources of red mana, the reason being you've only included it in your deck for the end-game, at which point you will very likely see at least 1 source of red mana. On the other hand, if you play with Balance as your only white card, then you may wish to play with quite a few white sources, since Balance is not necessarily an end-game type of card. Keep in mind that a white source of mana need not give white mana exclusively. In fact, it would be very prudent to make those white mana sources give up some other color as well. Being stuck with a plains could be very bad if Balance is indeed your only white card.
Painlands are very flexible in that they provide colorless mana painlessly. If your deck contains many basic lands, this can be a great boon because you will only take damage in tight situations. Having that extra reliability is always good, though, because bad draws will always happen and it is up to you as the deckbuilder to minimize those bad draws.
Taplands suffer from a totally different problem. While they do not damage you, and provide both colours of mana willingly, they come into play tapped. While this may not seem like a massive problem, depending on the type of deck, and its mana curve, it can seriously delay the deck. If you have a lot of cards in your deck with one casting cost, taplands are almost definately not good in your deck, as they will prevent from taking full advantage of the lower casting cost cards. If you are playing an aggressive deck (such as Fires), then playing a tapland will often give your opponent an extra turn to save themselves, and find that Wrath of God or Wash Out, making them strictly inferior to the painlands. However taplands are great in control decks, which have few low casting cost cards, often a high requirement for both colours of mana (two white mana in the casting cost of Wrath, and two blue mana in the casting cost of Counterspell, for instance) and plenty of land. This last point can be important because it allows you to play a non-tapland in many cases, if you require the mana right away.
As for the City of Brass, it is usually only necessary in large quantities (3 or 4) if you are either REALLY pressed for reliability (e.g. permission decks REALLY want blue mana in abundance) or your deck requires a lot of differently colored mana. Two color decks with a touch of a third color should consider playing with City of Brass, depending on what cards are of the third color. Any deck which uses three colors extensively will probably require the reliability of City of Brass. City of Brass has fallen out of favour recently because of the prevalence of Rishadan Ports, which can kill you if your deck stalls.
[Added the Invasion taplands and Rishadan Port to this section - DS]
To build a successful tournament-level deck, the most important thing to consider is reliability. And the first step to reliability is good mana distribution. If you can ensure that you will never be mana short, then you will actually be able to play your deck and test out your new ideas.
Seyil Yoon wings@io.org
When I build a sideboard, I build it based on several factors.
In detail, I'll cover each of these topics.
Almost all tourneys where I play are singles, but I have been in a few Team and Multiplayer tourneys. For single tourneys, you must design your deck and sideboard for the fast kill. For team play, the emphasis is for coordinated attacks/spells. For multiplayer the goal is ultimate defense, hold out as long as possible, slow and unpreventable death for your opponents. Each of these factors should replay over and over again in your head as you design your deck and your sideboard. If you are unsure if you should add a card to your deck or sideboard, ask yourself "Does this really fit the tourney format?" and if not, dont add it.
Most people build sideboards to combat certain colors of cards. But since you usually have only 4-6 cards/color in the sideboard, this accomplishes nothing since they have a whole deck of that color and you can only sideboard a few cards. Therefore, each card has to REALLY REALLY count - has to do something major. Therefore it is better to make a sideboard to face Deck TYPES, not deck colors.
For instance, you could make a sideboard like this:
4 Fellwar Stones (vs. Land Destruction)
4 Guerilla Tactics (vs. Discard)
4 Mishra Factories (vs. counterspell/permission decks)
3 Pestilence (vs. weenie decks)
Each time you get one of your sideboard cards, it does not just fight one card or one color, but rather it fights their whole deck concept. And aside from the Tactics, all the cards are REUSABLE, not oneshot. If your sideboard cards are oneshot, then they are limited in use. If they are lasting, then even one will attack their concept and weaken it.
But, it is important to realize the potential for ALL cards. A Karma vs. a Black player is an incredible sideboard card, even though it only attacks their color instead of their conecpt. That is because it is a lasting, ongoing effect, not a oneshot, like Tsunami. Rather than adding a Shatter, I would add either an Energy Flux or a Titanias Song. The key to successful sideboarding is that any ONE of the cards has to count. Having one REB vs. a Permission deck is useless. Having one Mishra Factory can win the game.
The best way to determine this is to play the deck in casual play against as many different decks as you can. Once you find out a weakness, write it down, be it land, creature or spell. Once you have a list, group common things into a single category, such as Weenies, Burn, Permission, Land Destruction, Discard, Enchantments, Artifacts, Green, whatever. If you have more than 3 things that the deck is particularly vulnerable to, the deck needs re-working. Having 2 vulnerabilities is average. Having 1 is terrific, and I'd love to see the deck + sideboard once you win the World Champs...:) There ain't no such thing as having none... Now, take 5 cards that combat each weakness (or 7-8 if you only have 2).
Most decks have at least a few emergency cards or bonus cards (like Ivory Tower, a few disenchants, a tranquility, etc.) It is important when making your sideboard that you ALREADY KNOW which cards you'll be switching for which. I usually make a list and keep it in my card box so I can simply pull it out (I usually show a judge so they dont have a fit) and quickly sideboard. Never pull out cards that are integral to your deck concept, like Pestilence in a Pestilence deck or a Stone Rain in a Land Destruction deck. It may seem that you could get away with one less of your core cards for the sideboard replacement, but any weakening of your core concept will negate the sideboard bonus. I would also suggest playtesting the deck with the sideboard cards in.
Ken Lignelli kjl@dart.thomsoft.com