by KingOfTheDepths
Deckbuilding inspiration comes in a variety of ways. Maybe you saw a new card you liked, and wanted to try it. Maybe you found an infinite combo and have to build a brew around it. Maybe you just want to win the next tourney, and want to play all the busted cards at once. Whatever your goal, that inspiration is key, and you should never lose sight of it. As any author will tell you, often your first idea is the best one!
The important next step is to convert that inspiration into a way to win the game, or a gameplan. All of the cards in your deck should be focused on, and synergistic with, your gameplan. This is an important step that many aspiring deckbuilders miss! You can say "I want to play 4x Force of Will and 4x Swords to Plowshares", but those cards do not win the game, and therefore do not present a gameplan; they are just tools for controlling the game until your gameplan can take place. It's the win condition that defines the deck.
Consider this classic take on Legacy Counter-Top, which has very focused deck construction on its win condition, Entreat the Angels:
Also, enjoy the 61-card special!
Every card in the deck that isn't Entreat the Angels is focused on getting the user to a point where they can cast Entreat, or is an Entreat enabler. Brainstorm, Sensei's Divining Top, Ponder, and Jace all help set up Entreat at the right moment. Snapcaster Mage further ensures that you are able to cast your key spell at the right moment. Counterbalance, Force of Will, Spell Snare, Spell Piece, Counterspell, and Swords all help the player stay alive until the right moment. Fetchlands help clear "bad" cards off the top with Top and Brainstorm. Even Vendillion Clique can be used to cast an Entreat at instant speed!
The one card in the deck that breaks this rule is the 2x Monastery Mentor in the top-lefthand corner of this image; but every card in the deck triggers mentor, and mentor can force opponents to deploy a sweeper so that the angel tokens are guaranteed to stick around. There is also another reason to include Mentor, Optimizing your Curve, which will be covered in a later article in this series!
For Ragavan Delver, the starting inspiration is simple: play a broken 1-mana creature, protect it with Daze, remove blockers with Lightning Bolt. This translates to a gameplan of attacking with efficient creatures, backed by Countermagic and efficient removal, but naturally flows into selection spells and cheap card advantage in order to draw the right card at the right time. Every card in the Ragavan deck is effectively executing on the plan of "cheap creature backed by cheap disruption!"
It's not enough to simply have a great idea. Keep that decklist vision clear and established in your mind when making card choices. Any card in your deck that does not help accomplish your end vision is going to ultimately cause tension in the decklist, either in playtest or when making final cuts. Ragavan is a powerful creature, but ultimately doesn’t belong in Burn decks, as it incentivizes you to point removal spells at creatures rather than your opponent’s life points. Don’t let powerful but off-plan cards slip into your decks! The more focused your deck is, the better it will perform overall. As an easy rule of thumb, if a card is "cute", it probably shouldn't make the cut!
Note that this rule also extends to sideboard cards! Ultimately, sideboard cards are also part of your deck; and if your sideboard plan doesn't mesh with your maindeck plan, you will be playing with "bad" cards 2 out of every 3 games! Make sure sideboard slots help shore up your deck's weaknesses; but ultimately belong in the same list as your 60-card maindeck pile. Ragavan Delver isn't sideboarding Pyroclasm, for example, because any sweeper that hits its own creatures would be dramatically off-plan.
Let's Brew Together
For the deck we'll be brewing in this article series, I want to focus on building a fan-favorite archetype, and a cool legendary creature with powerful abilities:
The plan is simple. I want to reduce my opponent's life points from twenty to zero using Juri's second ability! That means that sacrificing permanents - including creatures - is going to be the name of the game; but especially sacrificing creatures and permanents for Damage. Juri is an aggressively costed card, and is going to be best suited in a deck that races to the finish as quickly as possible using efficient creatures and burn spells. Let's keep "Sac Permanents, Sac Juri" in mind throughout this series as the focal point of our deck!
Comments