How do I become a better deck builder?

Pagan wrote:

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Trolling aside nothing helps more than just playing it in a game. So many ideas sound great on paper but fail to be as impressive in actual play even if they happen exactly like you wanted them to.

It's true, everything is better with dominate. It is a discipline that is easy to find, so you can do a lot of disciplines + dominate and get a reasonable crypt selection. To that extent, think about using tried and true tech alongside some of your own personal touch.*

When I am "goldfishing" decks (I take that to mean playing as though I'm at a real table), I generally assume ~5 pool damage to me each turn starting around turn 4 (maybe 2-3 for turn 3) if I can come up with a moderate level of defense. If your deck can't deal with that, try to figure out how to make it work.

It is hard to account for things like combat and sudden reversals. Maybe you assume that one master gets suddened per game and you may need to deal with some nasty combat occasionally.

*I'd really like to see more discussion on modules. I'll make a new thread.

brandonsantacruz wrote:

When I am "goldfishing" decks (I take that to mean playing as though I'm at a real table), I generally assume ~5 pool damage to me each turn starting around turn 4 (maybe 2-3 for turn 3) if I can come up with a moderate level of defense. If your deck can't deal with that, try to figure out how to make it work.

Paul Johnson of the Los Angeles playgroup had worked up a specific system for this type of deck testing, called Playtest .

Off the top of my head, few things.

When playing, identify where a deck failed. Could argue that should also consider why a deck succeeded, but I am leery of putting weight on success.

When the deck is built but before play, consider what happens if a key part of the deck doesn't work. For a deck that plans on fighting, what if the combat gets trumped? For a deck relying on blocking, what if Obfuscate vote is the deck that needs stopping or block fails or whatever? For a deck relying on a particular minion, what if that minion never goes into play or is murdered right away?

Does the deck die to common, basic decks? If the deck rolls over and dies to a moderate stealth bleeder, that's a questionable choice, for instance. May not ever be able to survive a weenie predator, and a deck can't deal with everything anyway so have to make some decisions about what is acceptable to lose to, but if a weenie grandpredator just blows through you for a second VP, again, questionable deck choice.

Does a deck force you to make difficult or easily forgettable decisions? A deck with no untap phase decisions is easiest. A deck with one or two may be hard to remember, which is bad if it's a key thing in the deck. A deck with lots may make it easier to remember to do stuff during untap, but the volume of decisions may make the deck more difficult to play. This becomes increasingly important later in tournaments and later in rounds, the former for general tiredness and the latter for trying to play quickly to prevent a time out.

Does a deck want you to do things that you aren't comfortable doing? I hate rushing people. I'll build rush decks just to get experience with them, but they very well might be far more poorly designed because it's an uncomfortable strategy.

How often do you choke on cards? Beyond giving insight into distribution of card choices, almost any deck is advantaged by having improved hand cycling, which makes me wonder why I stopped playing The Barrens in most of my decks - probably arrogance.

Rather important, such that it could have been mentioned earlier, but it gets into general improvement in player ability, is knowing what cards do. Not every single card in detail. But, not knowing what commonly played cards do and not having an idea for some of the more esoteric strategies is brutal. Good example of this is people who don't want to lose to Imbued not bothering to learn what Imbued deck cards do.

Of course, when it comes to being a more successful player, deckbuilding is nowhere near as important as developing other skills. At worst, someone can always webdeck.