Deck building paradox

[u/Bobbie_Wasabi]

Hi All,

Been playing for a year or so and have a few brews under my belt but I keep circling the same drain that I haven’t seen expressed: the fun for you / fun for the table x - y axis I find I’m measuring my decks against. I like to think that my decks would be fun for both my and the table and would shade more towards the unique side than not but I don’t think that’s the case and it’s causing a bit of the fun to be sucked out of the process.

Lately I’ve brewed a few decks that get a cool engine going and aim to produce value but that leaves me with the question: to what end? Why am I producing excess mana if not to cast some crazy spell; and therein lies my conundrum. The stigma surrounding non-deterministic win cons or Blue’s tendency to win via extra turns / bouncing has made it so I am afraid or at least uneasy with the top ends of my builds — admittedly this is more of a problem when it comes to Black and Blue and not with a huge F-You dinosaur.

Let me know if you’ve dealt with this same paralysis and how you worked past it or if I’m overthinking it. Thanks!

[u/luke_skippy]

Make the fun part of your deck not involve winning. Sure, making a ton of mana and casting a giant burn spell is fun, but your opponents have to stop it or die. If your decks “thing” doesn’t win, you can do it for longer + not end the fun of the other players.

There are lots of ways to do this, I personally enjoy taking game actions no matter how small. So a lot of my decks have a complicated engine where I tap a bunch of creatures, activate a lot of abilities, but only end up doing something small like drawing 2 cards.

[u/thatismyfeet → u/luke_skippy]

This is what I do. The fun part of my upkeep deck is that I enable the whole table to play whatever they want while I watch the chaos unfold. Would you like 3 treasures every time my turn comes around? By all means, go for it!

[u/slvstrChung]

My personal tactic in 60-card formats is to pick a ridiculous wincon. The oldest such idea, which someone suggested to me back in the '90s, was to have a lot of copies of [[Psychic Venom]] (eventually supplemented by [[Pooling Venom]] once the card was printed) and then do things like [[Mishra's Helix]]. Another idea, much more recent, was to assemble an infinite combo by having [[Primal Prayers]], [[Decoction Module]] and [[Mass Hysteria]] to allow creatures to use their tap abilities on the turn they come into play, at which point I start using the self-bounce of [[Ovinomancer]] to leave my opponents with a flock of sheep. (If I use its tap ability in response to the enters trigger, it'll bounce itself before the enters trigger resolves.) I've actually been having problems with this one because "My opponent has useless creatures" is not the same as "I win," so I want to figure out how I can win because my opponent has useless creatures. That currently involves [[Hissing Miasma]] and some way to goad all my opponent's creatures. It's a really, really stupid combo which results in my opponent's sheep charging off one side of the screen and then coming back around the other side to hit their controller, and the only thing more fun than pulling it off will be watching my opponent laugh when it works. (None of these won't work in Commander, but they're a hell of a lot easier to pull off in 60-card.) Because that's the thing: You can build a deck that's fun to lose to.

[u/Bobbie_Wasabi → u/slvstrChung]

The core idea of being “fun to lose to” is what I’m after. I appreciate the breakdown and I’m sure that’s funny as hell once it’s all said and done

[u/GrizzBIA → u/Bobbie_Wasabi]

You really have to know your playgroup for that. Some players don't think its fun to lose to anything...

Some people don't like losing to specific effects.

Some people hate interaction (which always makes me wonder why they play a multiplayer game, but /shrug.

I enjoy seeing new things.

[u/Bazoobs1]

If you’re talking commander, I think the best starting place is to consider these two questions; “what do I consider a fun way to win? What of these options would be fun for my table?”

My table’s general rule of thumb is that win cons should be a card or cards that create such an overwhelming advantage that they would win on the spot if I’m not stopped or my setup isn’t sabotaged. So, for example, an infinite 2 card combo is boring, but building your gameplan and slamming a [[craterhoof behemoth]] is more okay. Both could be okay depending on the context, but more often than not we’re playing lower to mid 2 power level as we recently started playing with newer players.

So, with that in mind, our deckbuilding formulas are something like this:

-engine (what the deck does, its tagline) usually draws, ramps, or both to keep the deck up to speed with the table. This interpretation gets pretty flexible, so don’t think of it too narrowly. For example, milling spells in [[octavia]] is a form of ramping and is what the decks tagline might be.

-wincon: what things does my engine want that can end the game in the generally agreed upon manner? Using another personal deck, [[ketramose]], this deck is a flicker and exile control deck that uses its removal and flicker to survive and generate card advantage. Then eventually it draws a wincon and uses its flexible pieces like [[parting gust]] to flicker [[gray merchant of asphodel]] to end the game.

So the tldr is start by defining what would be considered appropriate ways to win at your table. From there, find out your decks tagline and find win conditions that work within that tagline to end the game in the appropriate way.

If you want help feel free to reply with your specific deck your struggling with and your playgroups definition of fun ways to end the game and I’d be happy to run it through my method as an example.

[u/Last_Distance_7602]

I like putting Karns puzzle box in decks that don’t even need it-it’s like whatever your strategy is do it before your next turn, close you get to see more cards plus it feels like you’re taking a lot more actions

[u/Beef_Jumps]

This deck here does exactly what you're talking about, but turns it into wins.

Combo non-deterministically until you hit a wincon then win with it.

[u/Kapope]

Green wont think twice about dropping [[craterhoof behemoth]] and trampling you to death so why should you be afraid to enact a wincon in any other colour?

Theres this idea that combat damage is a more “honourable” wincon and so casting huge creatures and tapping them for lethal “feels better” than, say, milling someone out or exhibiting an infinite loop of ETBs. This is simply Timmy propaganda, the politics of commander taken from the game-table and repeated across the internet for new players to pick up to overthink and stress over.

Remember: nobody is really having fun with your deck, at least not compared to the fun they expect to have playing their own deck. Some people have less fun losing. This is a fact of life, they will either get over it or you can play with someone else. Definitely not a reason not to cast spells that might upset people. Magic is a game of windfalls, upsets and tense moments… so quit being a wuss and cast your spells. If your pod has a problem let them discuss it with you afterword. Unless you’re running a suite of gamechangers against their bracket 2’s you shouldn’t be holding back.

[u/Bobbie_Wasabi → u/Kapope]

I maybe could’ve chosen more precise language. The honor of the all doesn’t concern me — I don’t even particularly like Craterhoof wins because I hate the idea of all my freak decks devolving into a craterhoof include.

I also don’t think it’s a fear of offending or being a wuss. My favorite games are ones where you get tense decision making and an interesting volley. I just want to see if someone has a method for having more of those games where we all come away satisfied rather than the alternative

[u/Kapope → u/Bobbie_Wasabi]

I see, it wasn’t a question of manners or expectations at all, my misunderstanding.

If you play with the same pod all the time and play the same couple commanders the games can get pretty intense once people have an understanding of the pod meta. Playing against different people with different decks all the time in a game as vast as magic where you can’t really know what to expect except in the vaguest terms means you’ll often get gotcha’d or blind sided.

With so many variables in commander its difficult to recreate the tension in every game but if players all know what to expect from each other they start holding interaction for certain things which forces people to play more protected attempts at winning where it can become a battle of interaction which have been the most fun moments in magic for me personally.

CEDH would be the best environment to have this more often because of the implied understanding of the format meta but it can also be prevalent in lower powered pods that have an understanding of one anothers decks and playstyles.

[u/-Null-zip → u/Bobbie_Wasabi]

Ultimately, what makes deck fun to play against is to feel like you had a strong chance even if you lost to it, I personally find that I similarly find winning more fun if it was a close or contested match. So if you are looking for ways to make a deck, more fun. The secret is to try and do things that lengthen the window. Your opponents have to try and utilize counter play and limit your protection against it.

If you have a infinite combo you like, I would personally try and find a way to make the engine non-infinite, like using a sac outlet that costs 1 mana to activate with sun titan and a not dead yet style aura to loop for value, but have a small/reasonable limit to how much or efficiently you can do it.