Building a deck for a card game can be a difficult process at the start. A person may have a few card and an idea of the strategy that they would like to play, but a person might also have a suspicion that one wrong card could cause that deck to fail when its actually being played. Using the right tool, however, can change that situation completly.
A person can use the structure, data, and provided path in a deck building tool to help them create a deck that will work well for the players who create it. Deck building tools can help a person in a variety of ways, and each of those tools can help a person create a better deck than they would of otherwise. Each of the following approaches and features to those tools will provide the most biggest gains to a person who chooses to use these programs as a part of their deck creating efforts.
Key Features of Effective Deck Building Tools
1. Visualizing Mana Curves
Perhaps the most important aspect of any Magic: The Gathering deck is the mana curve of that deck. Tools that allow a person to visualize the mana curve of their deck as a bar graph help to highlight problems within that mana curve, such as if they have too many cards that are only playable after the player does nothing for the first four turns of the game. The best of these tools allow for a person to drag the cards into the deck in order to create their desired mana curve, and the tools will automatically adjust to that change.
This helps to teach a person about their deck much faster than any tutorial would be able to teach them. A person will understand when they are missing a three-mana play, or when they have an overwhelming number of five-mana plays that will not ever be able to enter the battlefield during the game. This feature within these programs is particularly helpful in that it forces a person to be honest with themselves and their deck.
A person may believe that their rare six-mana card is a valuable play in their deck, but the graph can show the truth of that belief. Over time, with these tools, a person will become more familiar with the different types of mana curves that will win games in their specific card game format. For instance, they may discover that their aggressive deck must have fewer mana play after three mana, whereas a control deck can afford to have a more even curve throughout the game.
These tools, therefore, become more like a coach for a person that teaches them about their deck and what it is trying to accomplish within the game.
2. Optimal Sideboard Construction
A second of the crucial aspects of building a competitive deck is the consideration of the sideboard. Tools that help to construct an optimal sideboard are those that separate good players of games from great players of those same games.
The best of these tools allow for a person to tag each of their deck cards with specific matchup labels, allowing for the player to view which fifteen cards will best improve their deck for matchups with other bad decks. Some of the most advanced of these tools can even simulate swapping fifteen of their decks cards in and out of the game, updating their mana curve and the color requirement of the deck after each of these swaps. This specific feature of the programs is crucial to competitive gameplay, as most of the percentage points that a player will earn in a deck are found within the sideboard.
A person can construct a deck that loses to most decks in particular matchups, but have success against the majority of other decks. These tools will force a person to think about their sideboard accordingly, to ensure that they have a well-rounded deck that can win against the majority of opponents that they may encounter. These programs even allow for a person to store multiple sideboard configurations to their deck to prepare for various types of opponents in a tournament.
3. Identifying Card Synergies
Synergy is another crucial aspect of constructing a successful Magic: The Gathering deck. Tools that automatically analyze a person’s constructed deck will highlight any synergies between the cards in their deck, and will alert the player of any synergy that is overlooked during the decks construction. For instance, if a player selects a creature that is killed by other creatures dying, the tool will find and highlight any other cards in the deck that may trigger other creatures to die.
These synergies are overlooked during the construction of the deck, and these programs identify them automatically.
4. Playtesting with Sample Draws
Playtesting programs are some of the most crucial programs available to any player looking to create a competitive deck. These programs will generate ten or twenty sample opening draws for a person to play through, and will analyze a person’s performance during those games.
This ability to playtest against sample hands allows for a person to avoid the tendency to view their deck through rose-colored glasses. A deck that appears to be winning games in simulation may fail to account for the number of times that the deck may miss its third land drop in a row. Furthermore, a person can identify any issues with their deck that may result in flooding or screwing the game.
5. Metagame Analysis
An aspect of the playtesting tools that is crucial for competitive play is the ability to analyze a person’s deck against the current metagame. Tools that allow a person to analyze their deck against the most popular decks in the current metagame will allow the player to see their deck’s standing against the majority of other players in their games. Furthermore, this analysis will allow for a person to avoid the mistake of constructing a deck that is made for the metagame of the past month alone.
The metagame quickly changes, and a card that was unplayably in their deck six weeks ago may be the answer to a new and rising strategy in the current metagame. Furthermore, the best of these tools will be able to suggest specific cards from the current pool of available cards that will best fix the weaknesses within their current deck.
6. Color Fixing Tools
Color fixing tools prevent losses within decks that contain a variety of colors.
Tools that allow for a person to analyze their color requirements for the deck will suggest the best number of lands, fixing spells, and dual lands that will minimize the number of times the player is forced to draw a color screw. These tools take into account the needs of the player throughout the game, ensuring that they will not draw a hand that is full of red mana in a game that requires a blue and black spell played on turn three.
7. Limited Deck Building
While each of the previous features are impressive, limited deck building tools have a similar function, but with different rules.
For instance, limited deck building tools will suggest the types of decks that a person should construct based off the available cards within the limited pool that the player opened. These tools understand the current rates of speed of the limited format, and ensure that the player does not attempt to construct a slow, value-focused deck in an environment where faster, more interactive cards are required. Furthermore, these tools track the picks that each player makes during a draft, ensuring that they do not take actions that will lead to the construction of an unplayable deck.
8. Exporting Deck Lists
Finally, exporting one’s constructed deck is a feature that may seem like the least important of the available features of these programs. However, exporting a deck is crucial for a variety of reasons. For instance, the best of these programs will allow for a person to push the constructed deck to other tabletop simulators, print proxies of the deck that contain the images of the cards, or export the constructed deck as text to other software.
Furthermore, the exported deck will contain the sideboard, will correctly format the mana symbols for each mana cost, and will automatically update with changes made to the main deck. As such, these exported decks will remain in sync with whatever changes are made in the main program. Furthermore, because a person may make changes to the deck after it is exported to another program, this export function needs to be painless for the player to remain focused on constructing the best possible deck.
9. Deck Version Iteration
Finally, the most important and perhaps last feature of these programs is the ability to iterate on a constructed deck without losing the work that has been performed on it to create that original deck. Tools that allow a person to save multiple versions of their deck will allow them to create branches of that same deck, experiment with different versions of it, and revert to an older version of the deck if they hate what they created by trying a new direction. These tools will allow a player to experiment in ways that would otherwise be avoided, and to continue to create their best possible deck.
Every deck that won a tournament or every deck that dominated the tables at a casual game started with a collection of cards and a hope. While the tools cannot provide the spark of inspiration that will start the deck building process, the tools can transform that spark of inspiration into something that can be shared with others. The tools will calculate all of the deck statistics so that the person can focus on deck building as an art form.
The person should choose the features according to the way that the person likes to work, and then master the features that will help reveal the blind spots in the persons deck building knowledge. Thus, the person will see how much stronger the decks become once the guesswork is gone. The next great deck that the person will build is already within the next list of decks that the person can test.
All the person needs is the right lens through which to view the deck.
