Locations
So you have your mean 75, and you go enter your deck in the local PTQ. You start off 3-0, feeling good, but then your deck starts to under-perform. The wheels come off, you lose the next three rounds, and you end up in side drafts. You're mad, because you felt like you played very well but the deck just didn't work for you. What happened?
Probably what you discovered was a small design flaw. These are small weaknesses in the overall construction of your deck that manifest themselves over a longer period of time. They can only be identified by playing with the exact same deck for quite a few games. If you make changes to your deck, you have a different deck; you may have inadvertently fixed a previous design flaw and created a new one.
Of course, no deck is without weaknesses. Developing a perfect deck list is impossible; you have to decide what design flaws you want to accept. However, you should be aware of your deck's inherent design flaws, so you can compensate for them during actual game play. By doing so you reduce the effect these flaws have on the result that matters – the outcome of your match.
So how practically do we accomplish this? It's a two-step process.
- Isolate your flaws
- Change as few cards as possible to help with your flaws
As an example, I'm going to talk about the UW list I've been playing for the past few weeks. For reference, the deck list:
[cardlist]
[Spells]
4 Mana Leak
3 Stoic Rebuttal
1 Cancel
2 Deprive
2 Negate
3 Condemn
3 Journey to Nowhere
3 Day of Judgment
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Jace Beleren
3 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Volition Reins
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Sun Titan
[/Creatures]
[Lands]
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
2 Seachrome Coast
3 Tectonic Edge
7 Island
2 Plains
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Marsh Flats
2 Kabira Crossroads
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
4 Wall of Omens
4 Luminarch Ascension
2 Negate
2 Flashfreeze
3 Baneslayer Angel
[/Sideboard]
[/cardlist]
I have discussed the strengths of this list at length, but let's look at its weaknesses, its design flaws that I understood during design and those that were identified by actual games.
Flaws that were apparent during design:
#1 – Limited ability to deal with on-board permanents that are not creatures
I accepted this as a fundamental design flaw because I was not expecting many of these to be problematic. At the time I designed the deck, Gerry T had not started advocating Mimic Vat, so the only real non-creature permanents I was concerned with were Luminarch Ascension and Pyromancer Ascension. Given the relative frequency with which I expected these two permanents, I felt it relatively safe to have only 2 Ratchet Bomb as a method of dealing with them.
#2 – Speed
This is not a fast deck. It seeks to grind out positional advantages and then achieve an unstoppable end game. Personally I am a very quick player and highly familiar with this style of deck, so I am confident that I can play it both adequately and quickly. If you are not comfortable playing fifteen to twenty turns at minimum to win the game, you should be playing a faster deck.
Flaws that showed up during play:
#1 – The mana is not strong enough
The mana base for this deck is solid, but it is not good enough. It is very important for this list to hit its first 4 land drops, and without early draw smoothing to get to either Jace or Jace's Ingenuity the deck stumbles on mana far more frequently than I would like. This is far more likely in the control mirror where Tectonic Edge can disrupt your mana development. Preordain helps with this, but in the "mirror" it's frequently offset by UB's lower land count. Still, the UW deck is a little mana hungrier than I expected, not because it needs more lands than I expected to operate, but because it hits those drops with less consistency than I expected.
#2 – The density of removal spells is more of a problem than I thought
I wasn't sure how big of an issue this would be initially. It was something I knew I wanted to keep my eyes on. Being so removal-heavy and not having the ability to filter means that I will draw runs of removal spells. If these come at the wrong time, they can greatly hurt my game.
#3 – Ratchet Bomb is the weakest card in the deck
When I designed the deck, I felt like I would use Ratchet Bomb in much the same way I use Mana Leak – as a glue spell to hold the appropriate suite together. Ratchet Bomb would hold the removal suite together and Mana Leak would hold the counter suite together. As it turns out, the removal suite is just fine without Ratchet Bomb.
The fact that Ratchet Bomb dealt with non-creature permanents was always nice, but never part of the main point of the card. It was just sort of "added value." Of course, I will have to find another way to address planeswalkers if I cut it, since that was job B for Ratchet Bomb.
#4 – Mana Leak becomes dead faster than I expected
This is mainly due to the fact that games of control go a bit longer than I expected; the presence of ramp decks doesn't help this either.
So, how do you go about tweaking a deck after you identify/discover a design flaw? You need to change as few cards as possible to accomplish the goal of fixing your design flaws. If you change too many cards you will alter the fundamental strategy of your deck, which will basically entail a re-build. People do not do this enough. If you are changing more than a small handful (say like 5) of cards in a deck, you should look at a from-the-ground-up rebuild. You might not have to do it, but you should be prepared to.
So let's take a look at a few things about the list. Firstly, it is 61 cards, so the mana problem could be helped simply by going down to 60 cards, thus raising the mana ratio a bit. The other card to take a serious look at is Ratchet Bomb. I have liked what the card has done for me in a variety of decks, but it is the weakest card in the deck. It is by no means a weak card, but every other card is more critical. Therefore, if there are to be cuts, those two Ratchet Bombs are probably the first on the chopping block.
Another option is to cut some number of Mana Leak. The card is really good in the early game but its utility drops far faster than I imagined it would. The effectiveness of the card drops very sharply, and cutting a single copy is potentially an option. It is too critical to the early game of the deck to be cut any further, however.
So we have three slots at the moment (2 Ratchet Bomb, 1 Mana Leak). What do we replace them with?
Looking at the issues that I have identified, it seems like some draw filtering is in order. The deck needs some way to smooth its first few draws. Wall of Omens had a larger effect on this than I had originally thought, and its loss was felt greatly in the early-game-draw-smoothing department.
Of course, Wall of Omens could make a move back into the main, but I don't think the time is right for that. Wall of Omens also leads down a more tap-out oriented line, which is acceptable but is a fundamental strategic change. This is not what we want, so we have to look elsewhere.
Preordain seems like the most legitimate option for an early game filter spell. Thus, two Preordain seems good. As far as the Mana Leak is concerned, I would like to replace it with a counterspell, since the functionality is important. Given the options present and the current metagame, Mindbreak Trap and Flashfreeze are the interesting options. I would rather not have dead cards in certain match-ups, so I will go with Mindbreak Trap.
This leaves us with this tweaked list:
[cardlist]
[Spells]
3 Mana Leak
3 Stoic Rebuttal
1 Cancel
2 Deprive
2 Negate
1 Mindbreak Trap
3 Condemn
3 Journey to Nowhere
3 Day of Judgment
2 Preordain
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Jace Beleren
3 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Volition Reins
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Sun Titan
[/Creatures]
[Lands]
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
2 Seachrome Coast
3 Tectonic Edge
7 Island
2 Plains
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Marsh Flats
2 Kabira Crossroads
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
4 Wall of Omens
4 Luminarch Ascension
2 Negate
2 Flashfreeze
3 Baneslayer Angel
[/Sideboard]
[/cardlist]
This list feels like it might be a bit on the slow side for this format, but that remains to be seen. The changes I made to the maindeck may have a cascade effect on the sideboard (necessitating Revoke Existence or Into the Roil, for example), but I am not going to make those changes right away. Changing too much at one time can invalidate much of the experience you've already gained with a specific list, and thus I prefer making small changes to solve problems, as opposed to large ones. Many problems can be solved independently of deck list through playing differently, and that is the primary avenue I use to deal with metagame shifts and things of that nature.
Tweaking decks is integral to your success as a tournament player, and you have to think very carefully about every change you make. It is important to note that as you move away from certain cards towards others, the relative strength of everything ranging from match-ups to individual cards is affected. Fundamental strategies can also be altered. Ensure that the tweaks don't do this unless it is actually your intention.
If there's one thing to remember, remember this – don't overdo it.
Chingsung Chang
Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO
Khan32k5@gmail.com
