I hate playing "good stuff" decks in EDH. I hate playing against them. Every time I see a $5,000 hodge-podge five-color EDH list pop in a forum, I just see red, black out and wake up in an alley with a baseball bat in one hand, a wet trout in the other and a chorus of police sirens all around me.

As a Magic player, I'm driven by an obsessive-compulsive need to impose order and focus upon my decks. I want their mana curves to look perfect. I want them to play as smoothly as possible. In many ways, I see decks as machines.

In EDH, I pride myself on building Fun Machines. What does that mean? In a few words, I ascribe to the belief that EDH decks can be sleek, streamlined contraptions that don't have to be oppressively overpowered or obnoxiously combo-rific. With a good deck, you can have fun and be fun to play against. It can work!

I find it mind-boggling when someone builds an EDH deck without consideration of their general or any particular theme. "Where's the order?!" I'll scream at my monitor. Everyone plays EDH according to different principles, but building a deck without a tangible, overarching framework...to me, that seems to be an oversight.

Themes, whether they're flavor-based or mechanic-based, are an important part of building a fun EDH deck that will stay fun long after you've assembled it. And incorporating a theme in your EDH deck isn't just a Timmy "thing" or a Vorthos "thing": it's a strategically beneficial approach to victory as well. Having a theme focuses your deck's win conditions, and shapes the paths it will take to achieve victory. Instead of going in all directions and failing to reach any destinations, you pick one of a few select paths and get there consistently.

The strategic side to building a Fun Machine revolves around three general principles:

1. Know your game plan
2. Back up your game plan
3. Cut the dead weight

Pretty simple, right? There's a little bit more to it than that. Just to give you an idea of these principles in action, I'll use my newest deck, Experiment Kraj, as an example.

1. Know your game plan:

Identify the ways you want to win, and build your deck to achieve those conditions. If you play with lots of little combos, know what pieces you need and how you're going to get them.

My two main win conditions with Experiment Kraj revolve around the theme of +1/+1 counters. There are usually a lot of combo interactions in a Kraj deck, but these are the two kill methods that I use the most:

Release the Kraj!

Experiment Kraj has some well-documented combos to kill players with general damage. Pairing him up with a counter-ed Thornling, Morphling, Chameleon Colossus and/or Jodah's Avenger will help turn Kraj into a giant, horrifying purple buzzsaw.

Minion Horde Smash!

If left unchecked, the small, innocuous-looking hodge-podge of Graft creatures Kraj has on the table can grow exponentially into an unstoppable force. Graft has a funny way of making creatures bigger in a subtle way that not many players will notice until it's too late (and I don't mean adding extra counters when no one's looking). Decree of Savagery, Strength of the Tajuru, Tooth and Nail and Rite of Replication are all blow-out spells that can end a game very quickly by pushing damage through. Proliferate effects (Contagion Engine, Inorexable Tide) and busted counter-centric cards (Gilder Bairn, Doubling Season) can also multiply the strength of numbers.

2. Back up your game plan:

Knowing your strategy also means knowing its weaknesses, and defending them against those who would attempt to derail your heinous plans. Because Kraj relies on other creatures to get bigger and nastier, it's important that I be able to defend against board sweepers like Wrath of God, or be able to rebuild quickly once a sweeper spell manages to resolve.

My main defensive tools:

Countermagic

I use counterspells to keep my creatures alive and to keep other players in check. In a creature-heavy deck like Kraj, there isn't much room for counterspells, so high-value cards like Glen Elendra Archmage and Mystic Snake are MVPs.

Card advantage

In a multiplayer game, a sweeper will eventually resolve and Kraj will need to rebuild his army of sycophants. Green has a number of tools to pick up the pieces and get going again, such as Genesis, Regrowth, Restock and Eternal Witness. Blue gives the card draw necessary to reload your hand and prepare for a second assault. Novijen Sages, Sage of Fables and Sphinx of Magosi are creature-based draw engines that play nicely with the +1/+1 counter theme.

3. Cut the dead weight:

When you've built a few EDH decks, oftentimes there is the tendency to auto-include "good" cards without even thinking because you've been conditioned to play them. Some cards are truly good in almost every deck, like Sol Ring, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Solemn Simulacrum. But with 99 choices to make, it's important to second-guess every choice and scrutinize why those cards make the cut. Does the card really fit into your overall strategy, or is it there just because it's "good"? Sometimes a generally good card may be a poor fit in a deck with a specific focus. In my experience, playing a few games will quickly separate the all-stars from the dead weight that needs to be benched.

Hopefully this brief overview gives you an idea or two for when you build your next little Fun Machine. Until next time, keep whipping the Xs and pinching the Os!