Pandora's Deckbox: Consistency and Deck Strength

Pandora's Deckbox

Epochalyptik

14 December 2013

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This is a followup to Characteristics of a Strong Deck. That article outlined the seven characteristics that contribute to a deck's overall strength: flexibility, resilience, sustainability, consistency, cohesiveness, efficiency, and effectiveness. Each of the followup articles will focus in depth on one of these characteristics. In this release, we will examine consistency as a deck trait and how it affects the strength of a deck.

Consistency: the ability of a deck to perform evenly across multiple games.

Consistency is what makes a deck play the same way (almost) every game. Of course, Magic is full of random chance, but consistency takes some of the uncertainty out of the equation. A consistent deck is likelier to produce patterned and predictable results. These results are not a measure of how often the deck wins. Rather, they are a measure of the average potential actions per turn (e.g. land drops, number of spells available per turn, number of abilities available per turn) and how that average changes over the game. Consistency is therefore difficult to measure in any quantifiable sense. It is much easier to think of deck elements and changes in terms of whether they improve or detract from a deck's current consistency.

An inconsistent deck will produce unpredictable and varied results during games and testing. Inconsistency can be a problem for competitive play because a competitive deck must be able to produce strong results every game.

Why Is Consistency Important?

Consistency is a major contributor to deck strength. If a deck cannot deliver strong results across all (or even most) of its games, then it cannot truly be a strong deck. When assessing deck strength, one must account for all results and all characteristics. This means the worst results are just as important (or more important) than the best results. If an inflexible, unresilient, or unsustainable deck is a glass cannon, then an inconsistent deck is a glass cannon loaded with an indeterminate amount of shot and powder and primed with a random fuse.

In competitive games and events, consistency is one of the most important deck characteristics. A consistent deck can be properly understood on a functional level, which means the deck's pilot can gauge how the deck should perform in a vacuum, and also how the deck should perform in each matchup. Consistency across matchups allows a player to determine which cards need to be sideboarded to handle which matchups. An inconsistent deck will be more unpredictable, and it will therefore be harder to gauge how the deck will perform in certain matchups and what sideboard choices should be made to improve performance.

Contributing Factors

Because consistency is a broad characteristic, it has many contributing factors.

A deck's size is a factor in its consistency. With the exception of EDH and some other non-sanctioned formats, Magic decks have a minimum size requirement. Limited decks must contain at least 40 cards, and other decks must contain at least 60 cards. Decks that contain more than the minimum number of cards will naturally become less consistent for each card over the minimum. Therefore, the deck building process is often viewed as a process of elimination - it involves trimming all the dead weight from a deck such that only the best possible card choices for that deck remain. The common consensus is that the consistency offered by the minimum deck size is more valuable than the inconsistency that comes with larger decks, even if a larger deck allows for more options.

The card count for individual cards is also a factor in deck consistency. Decks may contain up to four copies of most cards (the exceptions are basic lands and some cards that specifically override the maximum card count rule). The more copies of a card a deck contains, the likelier the pilot is to draw that particular card. Therefore, higher card counts lead to higher consistency. A deck with more copies of fewer cards will naturally be more consistent than a deck with fewer copies of more cards (other contributing factors aside).

Draw power improves consistency by virtue of making more resources available during games. If more cards are available to a deck's pilot at any given time, it is likelier that an optimal permutation of cards will be in that pool. Draw power improves a player's chances of being able to make the appropriate plays at the appropriate times.

Tutor power is similar to draw power, but it operates on a finer level. Where draw power takes the numbers route, tutor power goes directly to the necessary cards for the current game state. In Magic theory, a tutor card represents an additional copy of each other card that tutor could find. Therefore, tutor cards exponentially increase a deck's consistency because they theoretically represent multiple cards while physically occupying fewer slots in a deck. Tutors are limited by their individual effectiveness and efficiency, but, when used properly, add a great deal of potential and consistency to a deck.

Recursion effects improve consistency in a roundabout way by giving extra access to some cards. It is not the most powerful contributor, and recursion effects are somewhat limited in effectiveness and efficiency.

A deck's mana curve has a strong impact on its consistency. A deck with a smooth, well-balanced curve will have a smooth, well-balanced transition between the phases of the game. Ideally, a deck will have some cards at each CMC up until its highest CMC. This means there should be options during each turn. Card count also matters here; if there is a low number of cards from a given CMC in a deck, then there is a decreased likelihood of drawing one of those cards as the game comes to the appropriate turn.

How Does Consistency Interact With Other Characteristics?

Flexibility

Flexibility indirectly contributes to consistency. A deck with flexible cards, especially modal or multi-optional cards, is more likely to have options available throughout the game. Additionally, flexible cards provide those options in fewer card slots, meaning there is more deck space available for other cards.

A lack of flexibility hurts a deck's ability to perform consistently in various matchups. Without reliable answers to changes in the game state, game outcomes are less certain. The results are subject to chance, which is exactly what consistency attempts to combat.

Resilience

Resilience, like flexibility, is crucial to consistency. Resilience contributes to a deck's ability to perform across various matchups. Without reliable ways to recover from setbacks, game outcomes are less certain. Player decisions do factor into resilience, but some deck designs are inherently fragile. This frailty translates to decreased consistency.

Sustainability

Sustainability is important to consistency because it is the driving force behind a deck's ability to operate. An unsustainable (or unreliable) deck is naturally inconsistent because the performance of the deck wavers. The random chance involved in draws, resource availability, and opponents' actions combine to reduce consistency when a deck is lacks the sustainability to control those factors.

Cohesion

Cohesion can contribute to deck consistency, but cohesion on its own is not a guarantee of consistency. Cohesiveness is simply a measure of a deck's synergy and the unity between its elements. Typically, a consistent deck has one unifying strategy, which means it has decent cohesion. A lack of focus tends to lead to a division of resources and power, which decrease consistency by virtue of increasing randomness.

However, cohesiveness can also function independently of consistency. Because cohesiveness encompasses strategies, card choices, and themes, it is possible for a deck to be cohesive in terms of composition without that cohesion also contributing to consistency.

Efficiency

Efficiency indirectly improves consistency. An efficient deck uses and does exactly what is necessary and pays only as much as necessary to get the job done. Because an efficient deck does not require more mana, cards, or time than is necessary to do something, it is likelier to perform the same way each game. An inefficient deck may have to stall for turns at a time until it builds up enough resources to take an action, and this stalling decreases consistency in much the same way that unsustainability does.

Effectiveness

An effective deck must be consistent. That is the bottom line. If a deck cannot reliably achieve its goals, then it is not effective. Consistency is critical because it allows a deck to perform uniformly across multiple games. However, consistency is not the sole factor influencing deck effectiveness - a consistent deck can still be weak if it does not properly account for the other characteristics.

Normally, this section would be devoted to explaining how to increase the relevant characteristic through better deckbuilding. However, consistency is unique in that it is the one characteristic most commonly overstressed in some way or another. Many deckbuilders aim for consistency without understanding that there is some value in inconsistency - as long as that inconsistency is functional. There are certain situations in which a deckbuilder may purposefully want to sacrifice some consistency to improve other characteristics. Understanding how to balance consistency with the other characteristics - specifically flexibility and cohesion - is the key to not weakening a deck in this manner.

Too often, the argument is made that a deck should include playsets of all of its cards. While it is true that running four copies of a card increases the chances of drawing that card (and thereby increases consistency), it is not always the case that a deck should contain four copies of every card. Often, cards are included because they add flexibility, resilience, or some other utility. A supporting card does not need to be included as a playset because it may not always be necessary. For example, a deckbuilder might opt to include only one or two copies of Maelstrom Pulse in a deck because it is a strong utility card, but not one that needs to be drawn every turn (or even every game). It is good to have, but it is not necessarily bad to not have.

Furthermore, it is detrimental to overload a deck with high-cost cards because that hinders the early game and directly decreases sustainability. Finishers, especially those in the 5+ CMC range, are only relevant in the late game. Therefore, it is appropriate to design a deck such that those cards become available in the mid to late game. By including only two or three copies of an important finisher, a deckbuilder can reduce the probability that said finisher will appear before it is needed, yet maintain a decent chance of drawing it when it becomes relevant later in the game.

For cards important enough and relevant enough in most situations, however, maximizing card count is the easiest way to ensure consistent availability. Most often, these cards fall in the 1-3 CMC range (although this varies by deck and archetype). Cards that are important in the early and mid game should be included with higher frequency than cards that are only relevant in the late game or as utilities.

Including functionally identical or functionally similar copies of important cards also increases consistency. When a role is so vital to a deck's function that one card (or one playset of cards) is not enough to fulfill that role consistently enough, it is wise to look for additional cards that can fill that role. Sometimes, the situation can be as broad as simply having enough aggressive creatures at a certain point on the mana curve. At other times, deck needs may be so specific as to require more cards with certain traits or abilities (for example, tribal lords like Lord of Atlantis and Master of the Pearl Trident).

Properly balancing a deck's mana curve is another means of increasing its fundamental consistency. As explained earlier, a deck with a smooth mana curve - meaning a logical progression of costs for the strategy and archetype - is likely to be consistent. A smooth curve means smoother transitions between the stages of the game, and smoother transitions mean less stalling for plays. There is no golden number of each CMC for each archetype. Consistency is a relative quality, and the deckbuilding process naturally involves testing and tweaking to achieve better consistency and performance.

Keeping the deck at the minimum possible size is also beneficial. Decks that are exactly the minimum number of cards have the maximum achievable consistency in terms of overall card count. It is not necessarily the case that a deck at the minimum total card count is a consistent deck, but it does derive some consistency by virtue of maximizing the potential to draw any one particular card.

There are other means of improving consistency, such as increasing draw power, including tutor effects, or including mana ramp. However, the most effective improvements will always be made at the foundational level. For the most part, a deck without a proper mana curve, overall card count, and individual card count will struggle to achieve consistency. EDH and other singleton formats are the notable exception to the latter two factors because deck size and card counts are dictated by the format rules. In EDH, draw, tutor, and ramp effects are often viewed as the primary means of achieving consistency.

Consistency is perhaps the most complex characteristic yet covered in this series. It has many influencing factors, and it influences many other characteristics. Additionally, there are times when consistency can be purposefully sacrificed to improve a deck's strength. It may be difficult to understand some of these concepts at first, but they are vital considerations for any serious deckbuilder.

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