Are rares truly necessary for a powerful deck?
Deck Help forum
Posted on Aug. 10, 2014, 12:11 p.m. by Kreux
So I've been doing some heavy duty playtesting for several of my decks and the overall results for five games with each are surprising. The decks I have tested are Common Trickery, Izzet defend to attack, Dimir Deck Eraser, and The Highly Devoted. Out of five playtests against various decks the results are:
Izzet defend to attack: W,W,L,L,WDimir Deck Eraser: L,L,W,L,WThe Highly Devoted: W,L,W,W,WCommon Trickery: W,W,W,W,W
Out of all the decks tested Common Trickery had the highest win record, followed by The Highly Devoted. This is worth noting as Common Trickery is the product of a challenge to build a strong deck without rares or mythic rares. It is also necessary to point out that the decks were tested impartially against decks with no such limitations, although typically high level competitive decks were not lined up against them for the preliminary testing.
These results raise the question: are rares truly required to make a powerful deck, or do they only make the victories easier? These results seem to imply that rares are not necessary to build a powerful deck, though I'd like to hear some additional opinions on the subject - as a diverse opinion can bring up additional insights.
Nigeltastic says... #3
The fact of the matter is that there are more powerful cards printed at Rare and Mythic. Rare cards are rare for a reason, and a deck which leverages that power is inherently stronger than one that doesn't (assuming both are equally well built). I would also say 5 games is not enough to conclude anything reasonable, as that still falls solidly into the variance of the game.
Additionally I would say you should be playtesting against format staples (Mono Black Devotion, B/W Devotion, G/B Devotion, Rabble Red, U/W/x Control, Jund Monsters, and Junk Midrange) is important for figuring out how powerful a deck is.
August 10, 2014 12:26 p.m.
A decks power is really defined, in my opinion, not by the rarity of the cards, but by the combinations within. If you have a deck full of Commons and uncommons that work very well together, it will win against the majority of decks. All people try to do is fit as many "powerful" cards as possible in a deck, which is amazing if they work well together, but 9/10 times, they do not.
August 10, 2014 12:26 p.m.
Fuck rares.
August 10, 2014 12:33 p.m.
Oh and how could I forget Mystical Tutor , Worldly Tutor , Demonic Tutor , Enlightened Tutor
August 10, 2014 12:37 p.m.
Nigeltastic says... #7
I don't think the best argument here is "fuck rares" and then linking cards from before WoTC really knew how to balance cards/set rarity well...
August 10, 2014 12:47 p.m.
Since Wizards dont make that many mistakes anymore - yes rares are necessary because they have the highest power level.
To get a true feel of how powerful a deck is you need to test against those decks that form T1.
August 10, 2014 12:48 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #9
Rares are rare because of complexity or because they are trying to lower the appearance rate in limited. You don't NEED rares to build a powerful deck. However the complexity of rares lead to more powerful ways to synergize with other cards, and most of the time the cards they are trying to lower the appearance of in limited are powerful cards in their own right.
Neglecting any one rarity of cards is going to lead to a less powerful deck over all. As TehCoopeh so eloquently said some of the most powerful cards ever created were uncommons. There are some commons that decks running them couldn't function without as well. For example Martyr Life (why isn't it still called Soul Sisters grr) in the 38 non-land mainboard cards contains 14 commons, 14 uncommons, and 10 rares. Rares make up the least amount of the deck, and the 3 cards the deck is based on are all commons.
August 10, 2014 12:58 p.m.
chrishuffman95 says... #10
Back when those cards were made, they weren't considered super good. The rarity of the card is determined by the power level at the time of printing. What made those cards good is not that they were printed, but that they just got better things to go grab or interact with.
August 10, 2014 1:28 p.m.
Context matters for a lot in these cases, but the simplest and brutally honest answer is yes, powerful cards are needed to make powerful decks or make good decks better.
No amount of clever deck building or strategy is going to make Izzet Guildgate a better land than Volcanic Island , outside of Maze's End , or Gray Ogre better than Brimaz, King of Oreskos . They are simply objectively better at what they do.
That said there are certainly reverses that are true, Dissolve sees a ton of play while Render Silent sees almost none. Lightning Bolt is still a lowly common, but it sees play in basically every format it's legal in.
Is it possible to create a powerful deck without rares and mythics? Absolutely, but don't expect to see the next Pro Tour taken down by a deck of all commons. Along with more raw power, a lot of the times rares also mean more consistency and versatility, which directly correlates to more winning.
August 10, 2014 2:03 p.m.
Didgeridooda says... #12
You also need to consider your opponents. Their knowledge of the game, and what decks they are playing. If you included the decks they played against we would be able see exactly how the games were.
You can make some pauper decks that will win some games, and maybe even do well at FNM. You will not be able to compete at any competitive level though.
Just look at the pauper format. It is super competitive, and capable of some good things. If you are wanting to not play with those cards, you might like that format.
The question should be can you build a viable deck with out rares. Viable and powerful are very different things.
August 10, 2014 2:21 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #13
The rarity of the cards is unimportant. Some cards are powerful. Others are not. A strong deck is built around certain characteristics, and the cards are what they are.
Of course, some of these cards are likely to be rare or mythic rare, but I feel like it's some kind of collector's fallacy to attribute power to rarity. Rarity is ultimately meaningless in terms of power because it's a tertiary characteristic that doesn't define what a card is or does. Some rares are amazing, and some are garbage. What matters is everything else about the card.
There is, of course, the counterargument that rares and mythic rares are designed to be more powerful, but this is only circumstantially true. There are many rares that are worse than some commons. I suspect WOTC designs the cards first, then assigns rarity based on what they want to happen in Limited and, to a lesser extent, outside of Limited. Limited is the primary focus, though, and it's misguided to assume that a card must be powerful because it's rare. Rarity and power can seem to have a strong correlation in some instances and be unrelated in others.
I suppose if you're talking about prices, rares and mythic rares become less desirable because they tend to be more expensive, but that's how supply and demand works. Not much we can do about it except choose to play and build around it if we find it a problem. You can certainly build a deck without rares, and that deck may be powerful. However, you shouldn't be using rarity as a factor in deckbuilding unless you're playing Pauper or Peasant. Don't equate rarity with power or with price.
August 10, 2014 2:37 p.m.
Didgeridooda says... #14
I think this is less of a how to build, and more of a defy convention topic though.
August 10, 2014 2:57 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #15
While that's true, the underlying question here is whether you need rares to build a strong deck. I'm trying to establish that the question is flawed because it's trying to establish a significant correlation between rarity and strength in a deck. There is no such correlation because rarity is a tertiary quality of a card and completely unrelated to its strength in an absolute sense.
August 10, 2014 3:04 p.m.
Card rarity is determined by its functionality in Limited over anything else. That's why most legendaries are rare. You don't want to open a bunch of copies of Bident of Thassa . Even two is probably pushing it. It's not because Bident of Thassa is a "better card" than something like Voyaging Satyr .
Then there are cards you don't want to open at all in Limited because of mana costs or the build-around-me factor. Sphinx's Revelation and Omniscience both come to mind. These are powerful, format-defining mythics, but they're really bad in Limited. So, R&D bumps up their rarity.
Few cards are at their rarity because of their power level in Limited. Rather, they're at their rarity because of how many copies R&D feels is comfortable for Limited. There are exceptions to this, of course.
August 10, 2014 4:47 p.m.
Nigeltastic says... #17
I think the most valuable point that has been made about rarity vs. power level is the one that stated that rarity is actually a function of complexity more than anything, and this is where the crux of the issue is. While yes, Limited determines some degree of rarity sometimes, the complexity of cards is always going to be higher at higher rarities, it's part of the "New World Order" of card design which came about ~M10.
Typically, more complex cards facilitate more complex, and if built well, stronger decks. That said, Red Deck Wins decks probably don't need as many or ANY rares, as they don't need complexity, they just need to beat face. Typically the format leaders will have some degree of complex mechanic usage or interaction, so in that sense Rare cards are more likely to be necessary.
julianjmoss says... #2
I think you should test them against some tier one decks (since you avoided them for preliminary testing) and also test each deck without the rares and then modify them with rares to see if they still make a difference
August 10, 2014 12:22 p.m.