Part Four, going for efficiency

Building a deck - Part Four, going for efficiency.

This is the fourth article in a series intended to help players build better decks. References may be made to the previous articles posted. The planned blocks are:

Part One, the basic structure. – posted
Part Two, choosing a region. – posted
Part Three, creating a strategy/theme. – posted
Part Four, going for efficiency. – current
Part Five, countering the opposition.

Once you’ve built a deck following the recommended basic structure and focused on accomplishing a central objective, it is still quite possible to face repeated defeat. This has certainly happened to myself. For example, a deck I have built to try out something new may end up going down in frequent and awful defeat. Strangely, the same deck with changes to a very few cards will turn around, do what I wanted, and win. Making some of these adjustments to a deck is what this article will attempt to address.

There are few ways you can attempt to address this. As a player, you can consider the efficiency of your own deck. Or, you can adjust your deck to deal with specific threats in the opponents’ decks. A combination of the two approaches is a good way to tweak the deck. For this article, we’ll look at evaluating the deck to try and maximize its own potential.

When you are determining how efficient your deck is, you are attempting to assess how your deck is spending its energy and the cards. It is not uncommon for a deck with a nifty idea to be spending more energy/cards than it gains in benefits. Fixing the problems with such a deck may be as simple as adding an additional theme around adding energy/card advantage, or it may better to adjust a few cards to trim off the wasted energy and cards. A few common places to lose energy is card draw and regional penalties.

Micheal “Cald Magus” Welling posted an article on DeckTech called “Opportunity Cost” about card draw. While I may disagree with his view on the actual usefulness of card draw, I do agree that some decks will waste too much valuable energy to draw their cards. For a bit of a review, he equates one card to two energy. As an example, the cost of Tradewinds is two energy, plus two more for the card itself, and add another two energy for the card discarded. This adjusted cost of six energy is then compared to total gains, or for Tradewinds, three cards which is also represented as six energy. In this example, there is no evident loss or gain, as six energy is both spent and gained. However, if you add in a regional penalty, then the cost becomes seven energy for that same Tradewinds.

That formula is a great place to begin when evaluating how much the deck is spending and gaining for card draw. Since I do use card draw frequently, I would like to address some additional considerations when choosing cards to this end. I will try and explain a little of what I mean, and, as examples, I will refer to Dream Rift and Drowl.

For Dream Rift, the player spends five energy, shuffles the creatures in their discard pile back into the deck, and then draws three cards. For the formula, it works out 7e cost for 6e gains. Not very good. Now, there is one side benefit or cost. By shuffling all their creatures back into the deck from the discard pile, this increases the odds of drawing creatures. It can be useful if the player needs creatures, but it can drastically hinder the deck if what was really needed was relics or spells. It is still possible to get those crucial spells or relics by drawing those three cards. However, the more Dream Rift is used, the smaller the chances are of getting a particular spell or relic the player may need/want. The specifics of its costs will relate to the deck, and some decks will get around or use this extra cost/benefit to their advantage.

As for the Drowl, I like to look at it as spending 2e for 4e, since the six energy spent for the card is transferred to a six energy creature that can defend or attack. As secondary benefits, an Uwamar can gain two energy from the Drowl being played, and the Drowl has the effect weave. This makes the Drowl look appealing in Weave decks, unless using the Tweave. In the case of the Tweave, now the Drowl can end up being an opportunity cost, since a Tweave loses its advantage when it you draw it outside the draw step.

Although I spent a great deal on card draw, do not think that card draw is needed to win. As I said, some decks will waste valuable energy to draw their cards. However, the reverse could be said of using cards for other spells, powers, or effects. There has been several times that I’ve seen players toss away valuable cards for gains that are less than worth it. And while the formula doesn’t directly cover this, it may help once again to consider each card as two energy when determining how much you are getting in return. As an example, discarding a hand of eight cards to use Lifeweave (discards the hand of the user) when controlling only one or two creatures in play is usually a very bad idea, since Lifeweave only adds two energy to each of the player’s Weave creatures.

Moving on, we’ll look at regional penalties and restrictions. For regional penalties, it helps to consider the card as costing one more when considering its usefulness in the deck. For example, a five energy Shockwave can be treated as a six energy spell in non-Arderial decks. This doesn’t mean that the card isn’t useful or very good out of region, but it may be cheaper and better suited to the deck to use an equivalent card from within. Such things become a real factor when one or more of your magi cannot use a particular card.

In fact, regional restrictions can be far more costly than the penalties. A hand full of cards that you cannot use is usually a waste unless you have the correct magi. This is a major factor in the decks I build. There are two ways I will look at the problem. If there is only one magi in the deck that can use the cards, it may better to substitute something else for those cards. Otherwise, substituting the magi in question, or using another card to salvage some usefulness from them, is recommended. As always, there will be exceptions to this. Still, it is a very good idea to consider this with a very critical eye as you evaluate your own deck.

While regional penalties and card draw can impact the efficiency of the deck, the speed of the deck is very important. Card draw is most often used to increase the speed of the deck, or how fast the deck gets to the condition(s) desired. Many decks do very well without additional card draw, because the deck is fast enough and strong enough without it. The third part of this series attempted to get across the idea that focusing on just a small selection of themes/strategies can greatly improve a deck. This is more directly related to the speed of a deck. With a central focus, the deck has a better chance to draw cards relative to the goal, and should accomplish what it does faster. For example, having three copies of key cards in a deck increases the odds of drawing one of those cards.

Now, I have had decks with some idea go down in defeat, only to have the outcome changed by a very few cards. While this often has been related to focusing more on the central theme or strategy, sometimes it was just a matter of speed between two similar cards. An example of this was my first attempt to try and take Trogovo for a test spin in an Underneath deck. While Dream Channel offered an obvious cure for the Trogovo’s punishment to my magi’s energize rate, it wouldn’t take effect until my next turn. On the other hand, if I shared the suffering with a Nightmare Channel, my opponent felt it immediately on their turn. Suddenly, my first Trogovo deck went from always losing to frequently winning, just because the downside of the Trogovo was balanced faster. This doesn’t mean that Dream Channel is terrible in any way, as I have used it in other decks quite successfully. In this example, the Nightmare Channel was simply the better choice.

I want to remind people that the purpose of this article isn’t to decide just how good each card is, as that will vary according to the player and the deck it is used in. Rather, these are all conditions for you to consider as you determine how efficient your deck is. If your deck is efficient, and you play it well, it is very likely that your opponent will be spending more effort trying to counter your deck, rather than to accomplish whatever it was they had in mind for their own deck.

As you focus on making your deck efficient, you may easily find that there three or more cards in your deck that could be almost anything and not really matter much. The next, and hopefully final, article in this series will look at using those openings for countering opposing threats.