magic the gathering deck optimization

[trader]

What is some good general advice for optimizing your magic deck?

[seba1983]

ok that is a potentialy very broard question. i'll give it a shot anyway:

1. testing - the first thing you need to figure out is what is not working or what are my weekneses. the best way to do that is to test the deck over and over again and see where the deck fails.

2. going non-budget - trying to keep a deck as cheap as possible is an understandable notion but it stands contrary to optimising a deck. to get the fullest potential out of a deck can often result in spending a lot more money on a few % of proformance.

3. keeping the focus - this is very important and at the same time difficult. what does your deck want to do ? are there cards in your deck that do not lead to this end ? if yes do any of these cards not help you solve problems you encountered when testing ? if so they have to go. some may be cool some may be fun or just a card your realy like playing. all of that is ok but it stands in the way of an optimised deck.

4. pick your options carefuly - lets say your playing a deck with white in standard. you know you need some way to handle creatures. do you use Path to Exile or Oblivion Ring ? that depends. path is instant speed for W but ramps your opponent. are any of these factors going to be important ? are you going to need to use removal befor turn 3 ? yes ? than thats in favour of path. do you need your removal to be instant speed ? yes ? than thats in favour of path. is giveing your opponent that extra land going to be an issue ? yes ? than thats a relavant downside. the ring on the other hand cost 2W remains in play, is not instant speed but can also be used to handle artifacts, enchantments and plainswalker ... ask yourself the same questions as above and see what kind of removal you need. when compairing cards look closely at what they realy do. that incudes thier mana cost (on what turn can i expect to cast this spell the first time) if they are instant or not (will i be needing this effect in response or not?)and if they are permanents (can i thereby reuse the effect ? will it make it easyer to handle the effect by my opponent). after you have evaluated all factors go with the one more valueble to your deck... this point nicely leads me to:

5. know your meta - without knowing what decks you will be facing most of the evaluation from point 4. will be based on pure assumtions that could well turn out to be fals. gathering information on what kind of decks you will most likely to be facing (the top 4 most played decks is a good start but you should broardan that research when you get more experiance with it). that way you can not only optimise your deck better but also dismiss any deck that will just not work in that field but might be good in a diffrent field composition.

6. learn to let go - this is about cards and decks alike. you realy like card xy but testing shows you its not 100% optimal ... let go. also if testing shows you that your shiny new deck idear simply does not cut it you will have to go back to the drawing board.

7. more testing - after you've gone through all these steps its time for more testing. you will end up at the testing step several times befor you hit the potimal build of your deck.

ok thats a rough guideline on optimising a deck. there are more ways to go about it. other angles to look at from and so forth ...

here are some more general ways to improve your deckbuilding skills:

read - there are hundreds if not thousands of articles on the web about deck building. that a lot of information for you to use. however i would not sudgest starting off by reading because you will be prone to take up bad advice because you dont know it any better. when you have good grasp of deckbuilding (may be won a Friday Night Magic with a deck you designed yourself) you can check out all of them articles and see what new insights you can gain and what is just rubbish.

learn from otheres - is there a "deck building guru" where you play ? if yes take advice but ask them to keep it broad so you can apply it easyer to new situations ... stuff like this deck want to run card xy might be totaly correct but does not help with futur deck building. if there is no such person in your area than that no reason to despair ... after all your on your way to fill that spot ^^. go autodedactiv. check out what decks won major tournaments (pro tour, worlds, grand prix) analyse them to figure out why each and every card they played was played by them at that time. if you can find some comments on the deck by the person who played it go ahead and read it. watch tournaments either by attending (that way you'll have a chance to chat with the top players on how they designed thier deck) or podcasts.

go out and try - attand a tournament to play. after all that what you want to optimise a deck for. in casual optimising a deck only goes so far. the meta is nearly undeterminable unless every one has thier 1 pet deck. the cardpool is grusomly large with even awful cards bein able to ruin your day because you did not suspect them. with casual being a mostly multiplayer in most areas the power of your deck stands second to your social skills when it comes to winning games. so all in all deck optimisation only goes so far in casual, hence i will asume that the question is aimed at going to tournaments. every time you play and win that fantastic. but when you play and loose, those are the times you can improve a lot more than you ever could by wining. see what went wrong. dont blame luck. yes there are times when it just lets you down. good deck design is, however about minimising the role luck plays. so if your first feeling is i got unlucky all day then the problem was probably your deck and not your play skill. when taking a look at how a tournament went try to be honest to yourself. especialy when staring out with competetiv play you will be making mistakes both in play and deckbuilding. find these mistakes and accept that you made them or you will repeat them over and over.

dont netdeck - its very tempting to just look on the net what a good deck is and play that because you now it will do good. many people do so. but remember for every deck that proformed well there will have been several that were exactly the same that did not do well. netdecking is ok when your own testing has shown that a knowen deck is the top choice. just net decking will not help you play the deck well because you did not make all of the difficult choices and didnt developt the why's of the cards in the deck. also everyone expects you to play one of the knowen decks so thier sideboard will be pointed at your head. you will have more fun, know the deck better and play with more confidance if you desigend the deck yourself. even if what you desigend yourself turns out to be an exact copy of one of the top decks you went through the design process and thus know the deck inside out.

ok thats all for the moment ... i think this thread has some great potential as there is still a lot that can be said on the topic. feel free to post topic related questions here too.

[trader]

ok thanks for the advice

[Balsam]

This app may help you:

Magic Deck Optimizer

I use it and it is very interesting!