Pandora's Deckbox: Cohesiveness and Deck Strength

Pandora's Deckbox

Epochalyptik

15 January 2014

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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 cohesiveness as a deck trait and how it affects the strength of a deck.

Cohesiveness: the ability of a deck to function as a unit and build upon internal synergies.

Cohesiveness has a few different components. First, it is a measure of how well the cards in a deck contribute to that deck's goals and strategy. Second, it is a measure of how well the cards in a deck interact with one another (a measure of the deck's synergy). A cohesive deck has, in a general sense, a kind of unity that holds its elements together. Whether it takes the form of themes, interactions between cards, or well-supported strategies, cohesiveness is important to deck strength.

A noncohesive deck lacks a unifying strategy or set of interactions, so it tends to play much like a random collection of cards. One of the signs of noncohesiveness in a deck is difficulty executing a strategy (outside interference aside). Because cohesiveness is multifaceted, it is possible for a deck to possess some elements of cohesiveness, but lack others. There is no guideline for "how much" cohesiveness a deck should have, or how much it can afford to lack. The subject is far too complicated to consider cases in that way.

Why Is Cohesiveness Important?

Cohesiveness is what allows a deck to function as one entity rather than a collection of sixty (or however many) different cards. Without this characteristic, a deck will lack the focus necessary to execute its strategy.

A deck that has a single strategy uses cohesiveness to align the function of its cards according to that strategy. Depending on the win condition, these cards may have to synergize with one another (as is the case with combo). Other times, synergy is less important (as is the case with goodstuff). It is, however, always critical that the operation of the individual cards supports the operation of the deck. Cards specifically included to improve a deck's flexibility, for example, do contribute to that deck's function even if they do not necessarily serve other purposes. Care must be taken so as not to overburden a deck with such cards, which would result in a reduction of effectiveness.

A deck that has multiple strategies must find a balance between each of them. If the strategies themselves are cohesive - that is, if they share components or synergize with one another - then designing and playing that deck will be comparatively simple. It is when each strategy demands its own deck space and resources that finding a balance between them becomes difficult. Division of deck space detracts from overall cohesiveness, and the resulting fragmentation impacts in-game performance.

It is precisely that fragmentation that cohesiveness is meant to combat.

Contributing Factors

Because cohesiveness is multifaceted, it has many contributing factors. However, most of these factors can be sorted into one of two broad categories.

First, cohesiveness depends on the degree to which each card in a deck contributes to that deck's goals and strategy. This is the most important form of cohesiveness because it most directly impacts the deck's performance. The greater the number of dead cards in a deck, the greater the chance of that deck faltering in game. Conversely, the fewer the number of dead cards in a deck, the lower the chance of the deck faltering in game. The extent to which each card contributes to the strategy is less significant than whether each card contributes at all to the strategy. Ideally, a deck should never contain any dead cards.

Cohesiveness also depends on the degree to which each card interacts with each other card in a deck. These interactions - collectively identified as synergy - strengthen a deck by creating additional advantage from elements that do not on their own produce such advantage. Synergy is the basis of combo decks, but synergy alone does not determine how strong a deck is. It is, however, a powerful tool for improving cohesiveness. Perhaps synergy is best considered an additive quality: its presence strengthens a deck, but its absence does not necessarily weaken a deck.

Conflict is effectively the opposite of synergy, and it reduces cohesiveness. Some cards have abilities or effects that functionally negate other effects (and even entire strategies). Other cards have abilities or effects that are noncumulative, so the result is the same whether one or ten such cards are played at once. For example, Sylvan Library conflicts with Necropotence because Necropotence causes its controller to skip his or her draw step, and Sylvan Library's ability triggers during its controller's draw step. Similarly, two Palisade Giants conflict because only one of their redirection effects may be applied; the second effect will no longer have an event to modify after the first is applied.

Additionally, cards may conflict due to their mana costs. If two cards share a mana cost or converted mana cost, they are likely to compete for resources on the same turns. A deck that contains only cards with converted mana cost 3 will struggle to make plays because too many of its components are competing for resources at the same time. Conversely, a deck with a smooth mana curve will be more cohesive because it has less conflict and a more defined pattern of resource use. Conflict can also occur when many cards in a multicolor deck compete for the same color of mana. Cost conflict is incredibly complex because it concerns the numbers of cards with each mana cost or converted mana cost, the color saturation of each cost, and the colors and amounts of mana available. It is usually only a consideration at the more advanced levels of deckbuilding, and its impact appears to be magnified once more obvious problems have been addressed.

Themes can also unite a deck by guiding card choice according to specific constraints, but they are also dangerous to use. Often, a player must choose between sticking with a theme or including an objectively better card for its increased power. Sticking to the theme does offer some cohesiveness, but at the expense of effectiveness and efficiency. The trade-off is not worthwhile from a strength standpoint, so theme decks are typically built out of player preference.

How Does Cohesiveness Interact With Other Characteristics?

Flexibility

Flexibility-oriented cards can be misinterpreted to be noncohesive if their sole purpose is to increase a deck's flexibility, and if they do not otherwise contribute to a deck's strategy or synergize with other cards. In truth, such cards do not detract from cohesiveness because flexibility is a means of supporting a deck's strategy and function. Conflict over deck space arises when too much space is given to cards that do not directly contribute to the strategy.

Resilience

Cohesiveness improves resilience because a cohesive deck plays few, if any, dead cards. If each card in a deck is relevant to that deck's strategy, then each play will be relevant (board states aside). The more each card does for a strategy, the faster a deck can get back on track after being disrupted.

Unfortunately, resilience can also decrease if a deck becomes too dependent upon synergies or combos. Those interactions become weak spots that make the deck more vulnerable to disruption.

Sustainability

Cohesiveness improves sustainability for two reasons. Because a cohesive deck contains few (if any) dead cards, there is less to hinder a its ability to deliver pressure. Furthermore, synergy creates additional advantage from resources, so it helps deliver pressure each time one card builds on another card's effect.

Consistency

Dead cards create the potential for not only turn-to-turn variance (which results in a reduction of sustainability), but also the potential for game-to-game variance. Therefore, a cohesive deck is likelier than a noncohesive deck to be consistent because it contains fewer dead cards.

Efficiency

Because cohesive design requires goal-oriented card selection, a cohesive deck is likely to be efficient. Of course, there is a wide variance in efficiency within the subset of goal-oriented for a given strategy. Cohesiveness at least brings a deck closer to maximum efficiency.

Synergy is, by definition, efficient because it can generate additional advantage from a set amount of resources. It is the degree of efficiency that varies.

Effectiveness

As with its relation to efficiency, cohesiveness improves effectiveness through goal-oriented card selection. Cohesive design relies on cards that are effective at accomplishing a given task. Synergy magnifies the effectiveness of certain cards when they are used in conjunction with one another.

Because cohesiveness is a complicated characteristic, it is best to think first about what impacts it, then about how to leverage those influences.

A deck should always begin with a clear strategy. Without a defined strategy, there can be little in the way of support. The simplest strategies center on one primary win condition, and perhaps one backup win condition (although the backup is not strictly necessary). A deck with a single win condition need only include cards that support that win condition. The design process is much simpler in this situation than it would be for a deck with multiple win conditions.

If multiple win conditions are necessary, then it is best to select win conditions that are themselves cohesive. If one win condition requires pieces that cannot be used in others, then deck space must be isolated for those cards. The result is a reduction in the space left for the remaining win conditions, and corresponding reduction in cohesiveness because of the lack of unity amongst the deck's components. In contrast, multiple win conditions can be implemented effectively if they share many or all pieces with one another. In such a situation, there is less chance of any given card being dead in relation to a specific goal.

Cohesiveness can be further improved by the inclusion and use of synergies. Special care should be taken to select cards that are still relevant to the deck even outside of their synergies; otherwise, those cards will actually reduce the cohesiveness of the deck because they do not offer any support on their own. Furthermore, a deck should be designed such that it is not dependent upon synergies in order to perform. This kind of dependence results in a drop in performance while the synergies are still being assembled, and it makes the deck much more vulnerable to disruption. Combo decks are a notable exception because their primary strategy is to abuse synergies to create enough advantage to win the game.

To avoid conflict between cards, a deck should have a smooth and logical mana curve - one that fits the strategy. There must be balance between card at each stage of the game between cards and resource availability. Too many cards of one kind, or too few resources to support them, and a deck will falter in game. Mana curve and resource availability influence one another, so they should be mutual considerations during the design process.

The selection process should also aim avoid general conflicts. Redundancy can be utilized to increase the chances of a particular card or effect being available by a certain stage of the game, but overemphasis on redundancy limits flexibility. Variation in card choice helps alleviate this problem. Additionally, conflict between effects should be avoided if possible because it directly reduces the cohesiveness and effectiveness of the deck.

Themes should be avoided in favor of optimizing other characteristics of deck strength unless the theme offers enough synergy to offset the cost of selecting some underpowered cards. Tribal decks such as Merfolk, Faeries, Goblins, and Elves use their themes to their advantage by capitalizing on lord effects and tribe-specific mechanics.

Cohesiveness is a critical factor in deck construction, but it is often one of the harder characteristics to fine-tune. There are many complexities about cohesive deck design, and the task of finding the most relevant and synergistic cards from among a card pool is often a daunting one. Still, cohesiveness is worth a great deal to a deck because of its benefits to functionality and to the other characteristics.

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