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Main » Articles » The Construction Zone - Deck Tuning

The Construction Zone - Deck Tuning

Darwin Kastle
Posted on November 24, 2010
 Reddit

So you've built a powerful Standard deck that seems like it will be good in the current metagame. Now what? Now it's time for testing and tuning. For me, the process usually works something like this:

  1. Analyze the metagame. What types of decks are popular? What will match up well with them?

  2. Scour the format for cards and combos to exploit. Is there something new? Is there something people are already using that could be used better?

  3. Write up a list. Check the mana and the mana curve.

  4. Consider likely matchups and make some changes.

  5. Build it!

  6. Test it against decks that represent major classes of decks from the metagame.

  7. Tune it or start over depending on the results.

I've been building decks long enough that usually by step seven it's time for tuning, but I've gotten pretty good at knowing when to give up and start over. While that can be frustrating, it's much worse to sink even more time and effort into a bad concept. So, I was cautiously optimistic when I started testing the Black Trinket Mage deck I designed for last week's article:

"Black Trinket Control"

I have three primary test decks: Blue/Black Control, Valakut Ramp and Red Deck Wins. Obviously there are more than three decks being played in the current metagame, but I'm not going to do extensive testing against 10 or 12 decks before I'll give a deck a shot in an event. Not to mention, I'm rarely going to have 10 decks built just for testing. At any given time, I may have around ten Standard decks built, but usually at least half of them are decks that I'm trying to develop.

So instead, I have a copy of what I consider to be the best Blue control deck, the best non-blue control deck and the best aggressive deck. If one of the decks I'm developing shows promise against all three of them, I will usually go ahead and tune it. When it comes time for a tournament, I choose the deck that has been doing best in my testing. If it's close between two decks, I will usually choose the one I think my potential opponents will be least prepared for.

When testing my Black Control deck, I figured that RDW would be the biggest problem. This was an example of the importance of actual testing. It's important to make some evaluations based just on theory. You can't test every possibility; you have to be able to make some conclusions without spending hours testing everything that comes to mind. You should be able to figure out it's a bad idea to rely on small creatures against RDW without having to be burned over and over by Forked Bolt and Staggershock.

In this case, RDW turned out to be a good matchup. Playing a Gatekeeper with kicker on turn three and then fetching an Elixir with a Mage usually buys me enough time for my card advantage to take over. Obviously, they can have draws that I can't beat in game one, but bringing in Disfigure and a Doom Blade is usually enough to make the matchup very favorable. Cards like Consuming Vapors, Masticore and Bloodhusk Ritualist all give RDW problems. Usually I'm able to tutor for a card that will break the game wide open. I think if I had a Wurmcoil Engine to tutor for I would almost never lose after sideboarding, but the matchup is good enough I'm not sure it's necessary.

The toughest matchup was Valakut Ramp. Usually they could get a creature in play before I could empty their hand or kill them and by then a Gatekeeper usually didn't cut it. If they got an Avenger of Zendikar, I occasionally could get out of it with a Brittle Effigy, but not if they were careful. If they got a Primeval Titan, a Gatekeeper might be enough, depending on the Valakut situation.

Overall, I was encouraged by the power of my new deck, but I wanted to make some adjustments. The beauty of the deck is that with Trinket Mage and Tutors a small change can make a big difference in a matchup. During my testing, I found myself to be happy with my three ofs and four ofs, so I decided to focus on my one ofs when deciding what could come out.

I examined them in two ways: how often did I find myself searching for them and how excited was I when I just drew them. Three cards stood out: Mimic Vat, Nihil Spellbomb and Nantuko Shade. I never searched for any of them and the Shade was the only one I ever found myself excited to draw and then mainly as something to do on turn two. The spellbomb could easily be moved to the sideboard and the Vat and the Shade could probably be cut entirely, since they didn't seem to address any specific deck or strategy.

The next question was what to add? I decided to replace the Spellbomb with another Chalice. I found the games where I had a Chalice in my opening hand were some of my best draws. It allows for turn three Persecutor. It's also great with the Ritualist and Masticore. It can help you tutor for something and play it on the same turn. It keeps my number of things to search for with Trinket Mage the same and it gives me another good turn two play.

I cut the Shade for a Ratchet Bomb. It gives me a way to get rid of Avenger tokens without having to play with sketchy main deck cards like Consume the Meek or Marsh Casualties. It even gives me enchantment and artifact removal. It's also another decent turn two play.

I replaced the Mimic Vat with a Memoricide. It's a card that I can often search for and play before an Avenger hits play. If I do get it off early against Valakut Ramp, my chances of winning soar. It's also good against control, combo and Vengevine. When playing a tutor deck like this, it's important to identify which cards are better put in your sideboard for specific matchups and which cards are game winners against important enough matchups that they're worth main-decking one copy of.

This is the version I would probably play in my next standard event:

"Tuned Black Trinket Control"

I've recently had another interesting deck brought to my attention that I was asked to help tune. A local Magic player named Jimmy Williams sent this deck to my girlfriend Rada on Facebook:

"Molten Trap by Jimmy Williams and Joe Dubois"

He suggested Rada build it and play it against me since he had been having success with it and thought she might be able to surprise me with it. Rada focuses most of her Magic efforts on limited, so he was disappointed in his efforts to see what I thought of his list. Not to be deterred, Jimmy kept working with it and started kicking butt in his local FNM events. Next, he messaged me directly on Facebook with his further tuned version:

"Tuned Molten Trap by Jimmy Williams and Joe Dubois"

Jimmy asked me for my thoughts and since it looked interesting, I decided to take a look. I started by building the first version that he sent to Rada. I was shocked by how competitive it was. It doesn't seem to be targeting any specific part of the metagame, it just tries to do its thing faster than the opponent can win the game. Don't get me wrong, it interacts with your opponent, it's just that most of the deck is focused on making itself go off, not stopping what your opponent is doing. Cards like Mana Leak, Galvanic Blast, Elixir of Immortality, Brittle Effigy and even Trinket Mage can be convenient to help ensure your opponent doesn't win before you can get going, but they're just stall, they won't win you the game.

As I played the deck, I started to see why Jimmy made his changes:

-3 Mana Leak

-2 Time Reversal

-4 Island

-1 Mountain

+3 Halimar Depths

+3 Prophetic Prism

+2 Jace Beleren

+1 Mox Opal

While strictly speaking Time Reversal is more powerful than Jace Beleren, it costs five mana, it should be. However, by the time you can cast Time Reversal and be ready to take advantage of it, it's often just too late. Yet just taking them out leaves you with not quite enough mutual card draw. Jace is a good replacement, the main issue is that it makes you want two blue early in a base Red deck.

Another big problem I ran into with the initial build was that I often had trouble getting to three artifacts for metalcraft in a timely fashion. Also, sometimes you have plenty of colorless mana thanks to Chalice and Key, but you need lots of Red mana. Adding Prophetic Prism and to a lesser extent the second Mox helps with all of these things: more Blue mana, more Red mana and more artifacts. The Halimar Depths are an excellent turn one play to help set up the next few crucial turns for your deck. They also go well with fetch lands, Preordain and Trinket Mage.

By adding Prisms, Depths and another Mox it also makes it reasonable for Jimmy to reduce his land count. In addition, going from a 61 card deck to a 60 card deck helps with this. Frankly, in a combo deck like this, playing anything more than 60 cards seems a little crazy. Cutting Mana Leak hurts a little. I found they made the matchup with Blue/Black Control much more palatable and they seemed good in general. However, something needed to go to make room and Mana Leaks don't actually help the deck run.

This line of reasoning brought me to consider the following cards: Kuldotha Phoenix, Brittle Effigy and Elixir of Immortality. These are all one ofs that also don't help the deck run. In a long game against control the Elixir can be cool for shoving Traps, Psyche, Blasts etc. back into your deck, but that's about it. The Phoenix is good against permission and gives you an alternate victory path, but it's usually too slow against RDW and Ramp. Against U/B, it just makes a really good target for things like Brittle Effigy. The Effigy and the Elixir are really cool things to be running in a deck with Trinket Mage, but I think they should be moved to the sideboard to make room for more cards dedicated to make the combo more reliable. Obviously, if you run into RDW, bring in Pyroclasm and an Elixir. This is the build I prefer:

"Molten Trap"

Like with most decks, the first few turns are critical and increasing the number of early deck smoothing cards seems like a good idea: Depths, Prism and Preordain. The Galvanic Blast are nice because not only can they be a good answer to Goblin Guide and Kiln Fiend, but they can just be a nice addition to your efforts to burn your opponent out. I had one crazy game against U/B where I had both my Psyches and my Traps exiled with Memoricide and I ended up winning with Blasts and Reverberate.

When a new deck is doing well but not great in testing, the important question is whether it's time to move on or whether it's just time for some tuning. I've been to multiple pro tours where the winning deck was a version of a deck that I gave up on in testing, but if I had kept working on it, maybe I would have Top 8'ed with it. If you're not sure, it's usually worth at least one round of tuning. Even if it doesn't pan out, hopefully you will learn some valuable lessons about deck design, the metagame or both.

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