The right environment for deckmaking
Deck Help forum
Posted on Feb. 25, 2023, 3:53 a.m. by Elsterooo
Let's exclude MTG Arena right away as its shuffler obviously does not give reliable data on mulligans/how many lands a deck needs to work.
If someone tries to improve their deck/deckmaking skills overall and truly wants to push a list competetively, what's the best place to go to?
Magic may not be my main hobby, but whenever I create a deck I find myself incredibly invested in it, which recently includes the chase to find new strategies that can perform. None of my friends are into magic, however.
How can you reliably test out a deck in that situation, is there a platform that can help with that? Right now I'm testing each deck across Arena (if I actually have the wildcards), MTG Duelist and the playtest function here.
I’d suggest what shadow63 said, or else try your local game store and play with randoms. I find that to be the most useful data you can gather, as you never know what to expect. Someone may find a crack in your deck’s armor and expose a weakness you can reinforce.
February 25, 2023 9:42 a.m.
You can use a hypergeometric calculator to figure out how many lands you want, lots of stuff can be figured out with one of these. I use a few different calculators on any deck I intend to make more competitive, most bad decks are bad because of inbuilt flaws.
https://www.mtgnexus.com/tools/drawodds/
As for how well a deck actually works, MTGO is a great resource but not a cheap one if you're already building in paper, but at least most decks you face will be pretty competitive, you see some spicy builds now and then but there is a reason it's the spike cards that, uh, spike on MTGO, that's what people like to play. Playing paper vs randoms is great, but keep in mind local metas vary immensely and what works somewhere might flop hard elsewhere.
February 25, 2023 10:49 a.m.
I guess I need to try out this MTGO thing then which I totally have never head about. My wallet will be happy to discuss that with me, by the sounds of it.
Thank you very much for your replies!
I would love to play local but the money factor is an issue, as well as the fact that there aren't any stores that host near me. The last store that did so hasn't picked it up again since Corona.
The drawodds thing is incredible and will be super helpful, much appreciated!
shadow63 says... #2
Magic the gathering online
February 25, 2023 7:58 a.m.