Overthinking decks you've made
General forum
Posted on April 8, 2023, 1:57 p.m. by Argy
Do you ever find that you go a bit funny in the head, after looking at a deck for too long?
I've just redone a deck I last worked on about five years ago, and I find myself thinking about changes to it, all the time.
wallisface says... #3
Looking at your profile i feel like you’ve fallen victim to some kind of “too many decks” syndrome. That is, the quantity of decks you have is far too many to maintain/keep-relevant. Added to that all-but the most basic decks have piloting hurdles to overcome, and maintaining this many decks will mean you’re likely ”rusty” with most of them.
Fine tuning and over-analysing decks is a perfectly fine thing to do (competitive players do this all the time to ensure their decks remain relevant), imo the issue is that you’ve got too much on your plate to successfully maintain any of it. There’s no way to fully be-a-master of soo many archetypes, so splitting your energy so broadly also means what changes you do make to decks could be the wrong ones.
I’m similar to you in that I do go over and fine-tune my decks regularly - and I love to brew. In this vein i’ve restricted myself to only 12 decks (this is still a LOT, and i’m actually in the process of lowering this to 10). This way, i get to still tinker a lot with each build while feeling confident with those alterations, and comfortable piloting the deck to its fullest.
Some ideas on where to go from here:
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Raise the price level. 10-20 Casual decks makes 1 top-tier competitive Modern deck. 5-10 Casual decks makes 1 top-tier competitive Pioneer deck. By raising the price level you (hopefully) naturally reduce your overall quantity of decks and allow yourself a wider pool of cards to brew from, while maintaining the same total price-point (this also has the added bonus of your cards being worth-something, as its very hard to get any money back on anything under $2-5).
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Restrict yourself to X number of brews. This is what i’ve done, and found it great for making better deck-building decisions as well as better overall sanity.
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Playtest changes. You might be thinking about changes for too long because you’re not confident with what you’re doing (this is related a bit to my ramblings above). Playtest what you’ve done to gibe yourself piece of mind. Understand what turn you need a winning boardstate in for your given format and make sure your brew can achieve that.
Not sure if any of this helped or if i drifted waay too much off-topic, but hopefully some part of this rambling proves useful
April 8, 2023 4:42 p.m.
Write down all of your deck edits when you focus heavily on one deck!
Sometimes we can get a little swap happy. I have a deck I love that I over-edited a bit, and didn't realize how much I had cut and had to go back through old lists to find some cards I ended up missing. I now keep questionable swaps in a list on my phone and it's super nice to be able to compare certain swaps/decisions.
April 8, 2023 6:11 p.m.
wallisface you don't understand me, or my decks, at all.
I've built many decks over the decade that I've played.
However, I only have a couple of decks that I regularly pilot. Based on different criteria.
You can't actually see any of my current competitive decks, as they are all hidden from prying eyes.
A lot of my decks ARE finished, as they are based on themes to do with specific Magic sets eg. Alexandria: The Walking Dead is made almost entirely from the Secret Lair cards, plus a Liliana, the Last Hope play set I had lying around. I won't ever add any other cards to it, in future.
I've just redone one of my first brewed Commander decks, and find myself thinking about tweaking it, a lot.
That's all I'm saying.
I playtest current buildings for about three hours each day. You made a few assumptions.
The first year I started playing Magic I built every Standard archetype that I came across. I still have all those decks. My friends and I play them.
I feel sad that you only have twelve decks. There are so many different decks out there for you to experience.
April 10, 2023 11:01 a.m. Edited.
sean360 you can keep cards you are still thinking about in a couple of places, including the Maybeboard, and in your Comments on the deck.
However, TappedOut has its own handy feature, which lets you look back over all the changes you have made.
April 10, 2023 11:09 a.m.
Oh well, this topic failed.
I wasn't looking for advice.
Just for kindred spirits.
Enjoy your brews.
April 10, 2023 11:10 a.m.
FormOverFunction says... #8
Argy I wholly endorse your repeated revisits; we can quit whenever we want to loool
April 10, 2023 3:31 p.m.
wallisface says... #9
Argy that’s fair - i did make a lot of assumptions with my initial post, so i was bound to be off the mark. I can’t relate to your current strife it seems.
12 decks (10 now) suits me just fine. I only play competitively and generally once a week at my LGS event - so even then I only get to pilot each build around 5-6 times a year. I’ve built and brewed many more decks in the past, but I know now the playstyle i enjoy most, and what tends to bore me - so now I’m just thriving in the gamespace I most enjoy. Also, rest-assured 10 decks isn’t low when we’re in the space of competitive Modern, where a deck is around $1k, and so quite prohibitive
April 10, 2023 3:33 p.m.
Argy Yea definitely, I get so excited sometimes I go right to editing the physical deck and forget to update tapped out lol. But it's fine because I too can quit whenever I want and I totally don't have a problem haha. You are definitely not alone for focusing so hard on building that deck until it has all the right cards
FormOverFunction says... #2
Not only do I never really consider a deck being 100% finished, one of the biggest enjoyments I get out M:tG is looking at a new batch of cards for new natural disasters (which there haven’t been much of, sadly), ocean creatures, torture devices, or things that belong in a haunted house! I don’t think it’s wrong to obsess lol
April 8, 2023 2:30 p.m.