Brainstorm: best sets of Custom Categories
TappedOut forum
Posted on June 5, 2020, 4:01 p.m. by XiphiasX
Hi fellow MtG (Commander) players!
I love TappedOut's ability to create custom categories for cards (in the old and new deck editor). I'm still experimenting with the categories I want to use. The Command Zone team uses terms in their "... dsh, dsh, dsh, ... STATS" like ramp, card draw, removal, and boardwipes ... and they've used terms like enablers and enhancers before.
I like it when a card can 'have' 2+ categories, because that suggest its value in effect size and/or flexibility. The current categories I use are ramp, draw, tutor, removal, boardwipe, tribal, reclamation, reanimation, and diplomacy (plus deck-dependant tags like +1/+1 counters and lifegain). Perhaps I want to use new categories and order them alphabetically, like draw: card, draw: scry, and draw: tutor - to be more precise.
I bet the custom categories we use tell us about the perspective we have on the game mechanics and what we value in our games of Magic. So I'm curious:
- Do you have a preferred minimum or maximum amount of categories?
- What alternative categories do you use yourself?
- What do you consider your own approach's pros and cons?
Group by card type - this has got to be the best set of categories available. Explanations go in the deck description.
I've found that when reviewing decks, 99% of the time I will turn off custom categories if someone has added them to a deck. Because people use waaaaay too many. Seriously, you don't need to break your lands up into 4 different categories, "Lands" will do just fine.
But if I had to suggest custom categories: Lands, Ramp, Card Advantage (that's tutors and draw), Removal, Win Condition, Utility. Much more than that and your categories start blending together and becoming meaningless.
June 5, 2020 6:29 p.m.
JANKYARD_DOG says... #4
I agree with enpc. I use custom categories for my own organization usually. In a couple cases I do have everything labeled but not turned to default, just a mention in the description for anyone who prefers it.
June 5, 2020 8:57 p.m.
Cool, enpc - that hits the heart of the matter in an intuitive way. So you seem to run with about/exactly 6 categories then. I will then count things like scry under Card advantage and big creatures & evasion under Win condition.
Would you then also:
- Put recursion/reclamation under Card advantage?
- Put boardwipes under Removal?
- Put protection under Utility?
I'd like to see a deck of mine from this perspective.
June 6, 2020 7:36 a.m.
Recursion will generally go under utility in my mind. I get that you can call it card advantage, however I would say that you're getting access to a card that you already had, but not helping you dig for new stuff. Thus utility.
Boardwipes absolutely fit under removal. The only difference between a Wrath of God and a Murder is the number of things you can kill with it. I would also lump counterspells under removal as well.
Protection can be one of two things. It can either be utility for stuff like Privileged Position or can be win condition if you're using a Mother of Runes to connect commander damage (for example). It just comes down to how you are actually using the cards.
As I said, if you feel like you must use custom categories, you don't need a lot. A the end of the day, either a player will know enough cards to know the difference between a boardwipe and single target removal and will probably know the key ones (Wrath of God, Cyclonic Rift, Toxic Deluge, etc.) and so you don't need to spell out the different between single target and mass removal, or the player will know barely any cards and so they need to read all of the cards anyway. And that that point they should be able to figure out the differnece between "kill thing" and "kill everything".
And that principle kind of goes with all of it, either a plyer will knwo most of the cards and what they do so there's not a huge value add in putting cards in custom categories, or the player will have no idea and have a bunch of reading ahead of them. And that's honestly why a good description is much more valuable than a bunch of custom categories.
Not to mention, I actually think it's really important to see how much of your deck is permanents, how much is lands, how many instants you're playing, etc more than ech of the user defined categories. I can generally count the ramp in a deck pretty quickly (it seriously only takes 30 seconds to go through the categories), but knowing how creature heavy the deck is is generally more useful. And look, that's my opinion on it - others might like custom categories more but in my experience of deck building, the spread of card types has been very important.
But yes, if you do want to use custom categories, stick to the philosophy of less is more.
June 6, 2020 8:15 a.m.
Wow, thanks for taking so much effort to reply, enpc! I started out unsure about which main categories to use, as I'm experimenting with discovering what wheels to turn. Almost like playing a synthesizer: knowing which dials have the most important effects to create the sound you like. As I aim to create 25 decks that combine well, this helps me a lot.
I think I'll use your categories as the standard indexing, and keep the pie chart on supertype, and the order in categories on CMC. Thanks!
June 6, 2020 8:49 a.m.
So there was actually a thread on this some time ago. It seemed that people are very opinionated on custom categories in a deck. Personally I dislike them but that’s just personal preference. Common complaints about custom categories include: people can’t tell if you included a card in your deck because they don’t know if you just put a card in a different category than they would. You and the viewer have different ways of splitting up a deck in your minds, therefor your categories do not help them. you should not have a card be in multiple categories even if it fits multiple roles. That was a huge complaint a lot of people had even though it does fix one of the earlier problems. Also something to consider is why are you putting them in categories? Not like why put them in the categories you did, but why use custom categories at all? Generally if you are posting your deck it’s because you want feedback, which means your default views and your description should be aimed at helping other people do just that. And you have to think, does adding custom categories make it easier for someone else to help me? And if so, can I get the same effect from a good description (note, while categories were highly debated, it was universally recognized that you NEEDED to have a good deck description of you wanted good feedback)
June 6, 2020 9:18 a.m.
I don’t remember many of the arguments for custom categories besides it being an organization tool for the creator or some people taking it as a sign you put effort into thinking about your deck composition. And neither of those are important reasons for this discussion, but I don’t recall the other reasons.
June 6, 2020 9:20 a.m.
aholder7, thanks! I agree that deck descriptions (and clear questions) encourages others to help effectively. I also enjoy thinking about how to describe its strategies and power level - and sure, giving it a fantasy story flavour.
For me the categories help me identify how the deck mechanics provide me with the much needed resources during the game. For instance: I used to play too few removal spells in my decks, so whenever my playgroup played with my decks, there was a huge battlefield information overload. People became so reluctant to attack, games turned into who's going all in first?
The Custom Categories are an extra, anyone can change the indexing to supertype, right? :-)
gingerthewritingdog says... #2
Ramp, Card advantage, Removal, Tutors, Sweepers/Mass removal, recursion, and Disruption/protection are the custom categories I use. I may add another category for cards that fit into more than one, or just put those cards in the category that they best serve. Other than that, I will often use tags such as 'combat enhancers,' 'beaters,' 'alternate win-cons,' and 'Tribal support/anthems,' in decks that those categories apply to.
June 5, 2020 4:12 p.m.