Pandora's Deckbox: Efficiency and Deck Strength

Pandora's Deckbox

Epochalyptik

18 March 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 efficiency as a deck trait and how it affects the strength of a deck.

Efficiency: the ability of a deck to utilize its resources in an economical manner. Efficiency is also a quality of individual cards; efficient cards represent a profitable return on resource investment.

Of all the characteristics of strong decks, efficiency is probably one of the few with which most players are already familiar. Generally speaking, players understand that it is good to pay as little as possible for as much as possible. An efficient deck is one that maximizes on its resources, including cards, mana, and time. The more power, toughness, or utility that can be bought with a given amount of resources, the more efficient the expenditure, and, consequently, the more efficient the deck.

An inefficient deck makes poor use of cards, mana, and time. It often spends large quantities of resources to achieve its goals. Inefficiency reduces tempo because it limits the number of possible plays per turn and the earliest turn for any possible play.

Efficiency is best described as a continuum. It is not a measurable characteristic. Cards and decks are comparatively more or less efficient than one another, but there is no way to effectively rate the level of efficiency with which a deck operates. A card is more efficient than another card if it offers the same effect for a lower cost, or if it offers a more powerful effect for the same cost.

Why Is Efficiency Important?

Efficiency allows a deck to make more plays more often, and to make the most of each of those plays. These ideas are related to deck tempo and power, respectively.

Tempo is the cadence at which a deck makes plays. A strong deck has an even tempo, meaning it can make plays at any point during the game. If a deck's plays cost less to make, then there is potential for more plays to be made at any one point. In this way, efficiency is also related to the mana curve of a deck; a deck with a lower mana curve that is equal in power to a deck with a higher mana curve is comparatively more efficient than that second deck. The lower costs on its cards allow it to make plays earlier in the game, and to make more plays later in the game.

An efficient deck may also be comprised of cards that offer more power for the same cost as its counterparts. These cards increase the impact the deck has on the game at any one point.

A strong deck capitalizes on both kinds of efficiency to gain the advantage in a game.

Contributing Factors

A deck's comparative level of efficiency is influenced by a number of factors. Chief among these factors is the efficiency of the individual cards that comprise the deck. It is impossible to have an efficient deck without efficient cards.

Card efficiency depends partly on mana cost and partly on power level. If Card 1 offers the same effect as Card 2, but for a lower cost, then Card 1 is more efficient. Similarly, if Card 1 offers a better effect than Card 2, but for the same cost, then Card 1 is more efficient. Cost and power are therefore interrelated; it is difficult to judge a card using only one of these two factors.

Card efficiency also depends on flexibility, or the number of different tasks that card can perform. Flexible cards offer more options, and therefore reduce the number of cards required to handle different situations. This conserves deck space, making it efficient from a deck construction standpoint. Likewise, efficiency depends on effectiveness; inefficient cards will accomplish a task more slowly and with greater expenditure of resources than will efficient cards.

Considered as a whole, a deck's efficiency depends upon the deck's tempo and resource management. A deck that can make full use of its resources every turn is certainly economical because it does not waste those resources. The opportunity for a deck to capitalize on available resources depends, in turn, on its mana curve and general resource availability. A low mana curve allows a deck to make plays earlier in the game, when resources are limited, and make more plays later in the game, when resources are more abundant. A high mana curve prevents a deck from making many plays in the early turns, and it limits that deck to one play per turn when sufficient resources become available. These concepts are tied to sustainability and consistency.

How Does Efficiency Interact With Other Characteristics?

Flexibility

As discussed above, efficiency and flexibility tend to reflect one another. A flexible card brings many functions together into a single package. This allows the deck to conserve space because those functions are represented by fewer slots in the decklist. Therefore, the deck can contain other cards, and efficiency is increased.

Resilience

Efficiency lends itself to resilience. The more plays a deck can make with fewer resources, the faster that deck can rebuild its position after a setback.

Sustainability

Efficiency has a dual-natured relationship with sustainability. An efficient deck can be sustainable in that it has strong tempo and can make plays throughout the game. The smoother mana curve helps spread the deck's options throughout the course of the game. However, efficiency can lead a player to overextend if he or she attempts to capitalize on every possible play, regardless of what the game state suggests would be optimal. Once a deck is overextended, it burns out and loses sustainability.

Furthermore, efficiency relies on sustainability to provide the resources on which the deck will capitalize.

Consistency

An efficient deck is likely to be consistent because its smoother mana curve and stronger tempo give it more options throughout the game. It will not have to wait on high-cost, clunky plays.

Cohesiveness

Efficiency can improve cohesiveness, but has no direct relationship in the way other characteristics do. Efficient function leads to cohesive function, but this is better interpreted as sustainable function.

Effectiveness

A deck cannot be effective if it is not efficient. Inefficiency reduces a deck's tempo and enlarges the window of opportunity opponents have to disrupt or end the game. Efficiency is vital to effectiveness.

Some decks are not optimally efficient because of budget constraints. Because monetary investment is a matter of personal finance rather than deckbuilding skill, it is difficult to properly address the task of maximizing deck efficiency. When buying the best cards available is simply not an option, then the focus of the deckbuilding process necessarily becomes building the best deck possible with the cards that are available. The only appreciable difference is the objective strength of the end product; the principles are the same in either case.

An efficient deck must make proper use of each turn. Resource availability is the foundation for this principle. A deck must contain the proper amount of ramp, card draw, and other support engines to ensure that resources are available at each point in the game. In short, the deck must be sustainable. Typically, the land count is the most significant factor. The deck should have a number of lands that allows it to draw and play them as necessary. Decks with low mana curves will require less lands -- sometimes in the area of 18 to 22 -- while decks with high mana curves may include upwards of 27 lands. The land count should scale with the frequency with which the deck needs to provide a land card.

Mana curves are the next significant factor in efficiency. A low-curve deck will have a faster tempo and will make better use of the early game, but high-curve decks can also be efficient. Comparatively, the former win because they make better use of the early turns. That aside, the mana curve is also crucial because it dictates the sustainability of the deck, which heavily impacts the efficiency of the deck.

Of course, a deck's mana curve is determined by the costs of its individual cards. The principles of card vs. card efficiency outlined earlier in the article are particularly relevant here. The cards in a deck should offer as much power as possible for as little cost as possible. "Power" is loosely defined because a card's power is so multifacted. It takes into account synergy with other cards, flexibility, impact on the game, and so many other factors. Player discretion plays the largest role in card selection, so the player must make intelligent and logical decisions when it comes to deck construction.

Some cards and effects reduce the costs of spells and abilities, but a deck should not rely on cost reductions. Remember, the reducers themselves still require resources to play, so the impact of the effects must be weighed against the consumption of resources.

Consider also the dependence of any card on any other card. If some cards in a deck are functionally useless or irrelevant without other cards (this is a particular problem for combo decks), then the deck's efficiency is reduced because its flexibility and resilience are taxed. An efficient deck tries to evade or overcome its problems so it does not need to take the time and resources to reset after an unfavorable change in the game state.

Efficiency is one of the most well-known characteristics of deck strength, but that does not mean it is one of the most well-understood. Many times, players consider the most efficient card to simply be the cheapest card. In truth, efficiency depends on many more factors than cost, although cost does play a large role in determining efficiency.

Additionally, efficiency is closely tied to many of the other characteristics, so it is in an interdependent position within the deck's structure. Miscalculations or poor decisions regarding one of the characteristics, including efficiency, can ripple throughout the deck and weaken the whole list. Conversely, proper deck construction can capitalize on this interdependence to greatly strengthen the list.

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