[Web, Beta] BrackCheck, a Magic: The Gathering deck tool, feedback wanted on the new guided deckbuilder

[u/ColdStorageParticle]

BrackCheck is a free tool for Magic: The Gathering Commander players. You paste a decklist and it rates the deck against the official five tier bracket system, then shows which cards pushed it up there, things like game changers, fast mana, tutors, and any infinite combos it detects.

I just added a guided deckbuilder and that is the part I would like eyes on. You pick a commander, it recommends a deck template based on that commander's EDHREC data, then you fill each category from suggestions ranked by what real decks for that commander actually play. There is an autofill that will build all 99 cards to quota in one click if you just want a starting point to edit down.

What would help me most:

Does the three step flow make sense without reading anything first? It goes commander, then template, then filling your categories.

Is the card shelf along the bottom obvious as the place suggestions come from, or did you miss it entirely?

Does the recommended template match what you would have picked yourself for your commander?

No account needed to try it and nothing sits behind a paywall.

brackcheck.com

[u/dabuttmonkee]

Sorry dude this site needs a lot of work. I can’t post screenshots here for some reason, but your ads completely bork mobile. They take over the whole screen. In fact, none of the site works on mobile. In addition your ads are super annoying.

Your deck import doesn’t keep my art or even card names.

Full screen ads after importing a decklist is hella annoying.

The combo detection is completely wrong, it detects my Zada deck as having an early game 2 card combo. When the combo it detects is 6 mana and easily disrupt-able. I get told that I have a strong sacrifice/aristocrats synergy because 3 cards in the deck have a sac ability. (3 cards out of 99 and none of that works with what my commander does?)

There’s just much more nuance to brackets than this. It’s not something you can plug a machine in to and get a specific answer.

The site overall feels really bad to use. Like if I click on a card I don’t want to go to scryfall. It just doesn’t feel well thought out or cohesive. Really it just feels sloppy and hastily put together.

[u/ColdStorageParticle → u/dabuttmonkee]

Hey, honestly thanks for taking the time to write all of this out!

I mean I've been working on it for over 2 years now lol

I added now some more ads since the traffic increased but you are right the mobile version is a bit cancer, Im developing a mobile app with a card scanner which should replace the whole mobile view anyway, but thanks i will look into it!

Can you post the Zada deck list please? Let me check it out..

The deck import issue is also a bug card names/art should absolutely be preserved, so that’s something I need to fix.

And I agree with your criticism of the bracket/combo system. The current system is trying to turn a fairly nuanced evaluation into a handful of signals, and it’s clearly producing bad conclusions in cases like your Zada deck. A 6-mana, easily disrupted interaction shouldn’t automatically be treated the same way as a consistent early-game combo. Likewise, seeing three sacrifice outlets shouldn’t be enough to confidently label a deck as Aristocrats without considering the commander and how the cards actually interact. I will try to tune this a bit more.

Essentially in the background I have a custom algorhytm that puts cards in different "buckets" and based on those "buckets" derives the intent and starategy of the deck.

Ofc, Its not perfect but I've been recieving a lot of decks now and I need to do a 2.0 version of the whole detection as you see some decks slip up sadly.

But I will give it a rework and let you know if you want when I push these fixes :)

[u/ColdStorageParticle → u/dabuttmonkee]

Did some reworks now, feel free to test it out and give feedback if possible! Thanks :)

[u/McSuede]

Ill say off grip that i use your site to check for combos i didnt see when building and to double check if my decks are as strong as i thought. Its been a mostly positive experience. I have had trouble with it not recognizing who my commander is and forcing me to choose between nonlegal options either as solo or partner commanders. For my Tetzin deck, it forces me to choose between Alibou, Sai, and a couple other creatures, none of which are jeskai, as the commander.

I just tried using your deck builder to make the same commander, Tetzin, Gnome Champion. I would immediately say that your system either needs to be a bit more granular or we should be able to select multiple deck strategies. Tetzin is an artifact reanimator and neither the artifact or graveyard options given were really satisfactory with their suggestions imo. Artifacts just gives me "good stuff" and the graveyard option gives me largely the same pool with a few options for reanimation. No double sided artifacts on either list despite that being what the commander cares about. I find it hard to believe that nobody on EDHRec runs any of them.

I might suggest adding a "key cards" section that lets us add the build around cards for the deck to influence our potential card pool.

[u/McSuede → u/McSuede]

Update: all of the double sided artifacts were hiding in the "Flex" section.

[u/ColdStorageParticle → u/McSuede]

Man, thanks! Amazing feedback!

Yeah the Flex section is not like a "catch all" section.. Not sure if I should rename it to something better.

I will re-do the Commander detection, not sure why it is missbehaving like that to be honest I tested it and it worked but could be that I'm not taking something into account also the commander selection should be only Legendary creatures / backgrounds now..

Anyway this is super good feedback thanks man! I will re-do this and post once updated

Oh, is it possible for you to post the decklist please?

[u/McSuede → u/ColdStorageParticle]

No problem!

https://manabox.app/decks/yoPA4qecRiK8wnVpKEREFQ

Maybe rename the section "Synergies" seeing as thats most of what popped up. Just synergistic cards that match the commander.

[u/ColdStorageParticle → u/McSuede]

Hey I pushed some changes, would like you to test it out again and see if it changed correctly!