When building decks, do you ever find yourself facing a conflict between playing original and exciting cards or consistent cards? If so, how do you usually prioritize? Do you play it safe or do you choose to play more original cards at the cost of decreasing the overall efficiency of your deck?
For instance, I have a Jeskai blink deck that I really like, and one of the coolest pieces in it is Zada, Hedron Grinder which synergizes so sweetly with Cloudshift and co. However, the deck desperately needs more card draw and ramp, and I recently cut a couple of my flicker instants like Acrobatic Maneuver and Long Road Home. With a reduced number of flicker instants, Zada becomes much less effective and would be the most natural card to cut for more some mana rocks. Rationally, I know this would be the correct choice to tune the deck. But I just really really want to live the dream and use Zada to turn Cloudshift into Ghostway.
So, in case you ever experience conflicts such as these, how do you deal with them? Do you have a heuristic to help you decide? A certain power level that you strive for in your decks? Or is it originality above all else?
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
It depends on what you are trying to achieve with the deck. If you feel the deck needs more consistency to function, then cutting some theme cards may be the better choice.
If this deck is designed as a 75% deck, meaning it is not supposed to be as powerful as possible, then sacrificing power for synergy is perfectly acceptable.
In my experience, cutting some theme cards for draw/ramp, while reducing originality, will greatly help with play-ability and allow the deck to do more of what it wants faster. This has equated to more fun with a given deck when it really flows well. Having a strong foundation of resources (mana and cards) will really help the deck feel more powerful even if the theme cards are rather weak individually.
My Karador deck was painfully short on both ramp and draw. I was cramming all these cool utility creatures and removal package like Big Game Hunter, Loyal Retainers, and Bone Shredder that my early game was very clunky and slow. Late game I would stall with minimal card draw ans rely heavily on Karador recursion to function. I had too much removal and not enough ramp/draw that I was stalling out late game.
Once I removed some of these fun, but unnecessary, cards in exchange for Farhaven Elf, Yavimaya Granger, and Moriok Replica, my games were vastly more fun because the deck had a more natural flow throughout the game. I could build resources, create synergies, and the theme cards that made the cut were that much more impactful.
That response turned out more wordy than expected. Sorry.
Sometime you can split the differences between Johnny and Spike, and sometimes you have to let one or the other win out. Zada, Hedron Grinder is the type of janky card that struggles to slot into other strategies unless your strategy is casting beneficial spells on your creatures. My advice is that, if you really want to run Zada, then go all-in. If you want card draw, run more cantrips that get copied by Zada. Run Mirrorwing Dragon and Radiate for redundancy. If you want ramp, run, uh, Jeskai Ascendancy, I guess?
There are plenty of cards that draws you cards and fit the theme like Mulldrifter and Cloudblazer as blink targets or draw cards like Expedite and Accelerate to use on Zada.
For ramp i assume you can find some space for a couple of signets and similar mana rocks. You don't need to add alot and i feel the theme will still be intact
I already play most of the playable etb card draw creatures of course. But Expedite and Accelerate are good examples of what I am talking about. They would be great fun with Zada, but on their own they are really subpar, and hence including them over, say, unconditional draw or mana ramp will decrese the consistency of the deck. Yes, it is fun when it happens, but too often it is frustrating when it does not come together. However, I do not see this deck going all in on the Zada strategy along the lines suggested by BlazingRagnarok, since I simply do not want to dilute the actual main theme of flickering too much.
In any case, thanks for all the suggestions! I was not actually expecting feedback on the deck but only wanted to give an example the illustrate the type of trade off I have in mind.
I have noticed that my newer decks are much more geared towards originality than the decks that I built a couple of years ago, who had more staples and functional cards (ramp, draw, removal) in them. In other words, my deckbuilding style has evolved in a way that I tend to favor originality over consistency. However, my play experiences often turn out to be very similar to what PrimevalCommander described above: no matter how fun and original some ideas seem in theory, if the deck just fizzles out I never get to play them. So I often find myself cutting back on some originality / overly heavy reliance on thems after testing a new deck for a bit in favor of more conservative deckbuilding. So, paradoxically, the less fun-seeming card choices make for more fun gameplay.
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
I don't think that there is a single right answer to this question, and I think the answer is totally dependent on the situation at hand.
In a case like Zada, Hedron Grinder, you really need to either have enough reasons to justify its inclusion in the 99, or more ways to re-create the same effect (in this case, maybe Mirrorwing Dragon and Radiate). So now, the chances of having one side of the combo and not the other are significantly lessened and there are less "feel bad" moments that can sometimes ruin all the "feel good" moments of pulling off your combo.
In general, when I'm running a pure synergy cards like this in my maindeck, I really want at least 14 cards for it to combo with. I would use this rule for things like Strionic Resonator, Rings of Brighthearth, Panharmonicon, or Thousand-Year Elixir; cards that are cool and let you do some really silly things in combination with other cards, but are otherwise dead. You can't afford to run too many of these or the deck's functionality comes down to the luck of the draw. Of course, if a cards synergizes with your Commander, then you can obviously run less other good targets and still have a card that is never really dead, but that is a different discussion.
So to go back to your original question, I would go with your original thought and find ways to make that work. That's not to say that you shouldn't try to add more ramp and card draw to make the deck more consistent, but make it the most consistent version of a deck that still does what you want it to do. In this case, I would just try to find other stuff to cut instead of the Zada package.
If this really isn't possible, then maybe Zada becomes part of a different deck (or potentially it's own deck). I've developed several of my decks from being a sub-theme of one deck to being their own deck once that theme had enough cards to outgrow it's current spot and warrant a deck focused on just that theme. My Selesnya decks are a perfect example; my first Selesnya deck started out as having a small token theme, a small lifegain theme, a small equipment theme, and a Legendary Snake theme. Tokens, Lifegain, and Legends (minus the Snakes) all became their own decks, and I moved the equipment package over to another deck. Sometimes a good idea just needs a different home.
As far as Zada goes, I think it's pretty silly to say the putting in expedite or whatever is original. Many commanders make certain cards more valuable, but most people building those commanders do roughly the same thing. expedite might be an unusual card in EDH at large, but it's far from original in the context of Zada decks. Actually building something original is fairly difficult, because most builds that are good have already been done before ad nauseam, and most things that haven't are just bad ideas that don't make sense (like zada dragon tribal or mirri spellslinger). Actually finding a focused build for a commander that's both unusual and good is pretty rare.
As far as whether or not you need to trade originality for power, I think it depends a lot on your meta, but unless your meta is extremely competitive I think there's no reason you can't build how you like, as long as you know what you're doing. Multiplayer, moreso than 1v1, allows for skill to triumph over deck quality.
My attitude has changed over the years. I tend to go for outrageous janky plays, rather than consistency. I just find it more fun to "pull something off", rather than have the best deck at a table.
Go with originality. Nothing is truly "original", but at least if you've come up with the idea yourself, then it feels really good to pull it off. Just bare in mind that because of it, you'll get run over by the run-of-the-mill try hard decks more often than not.
I really have problems with the Power/Consistency vs Creativity/Uniqueness thing. I tend to tip the scale into the Power/Consistency side of things way too often than I like. While I do have some cards that I'll just never let go of, either because I love the art/flavor/etc, it's getting to the point that regardless of what deck I'm building it still seems almost like a good stuff deck.
Lately, I've been building commanders with abilities or restrictions weird/unique and then adding another restriction on top of the commander so that I simply can't build anywhere near good stuff without the deck falling apart. Aggro-only win for Alesha, Dash/dragon tribal Kolaghan, and recently Brago with as many etb effects as possible and focusing on Mirrorworks. I'm also thinking about building Power 5+ Matters deck, but I've yet to pick Commander that'll add another restriction. After all this, the decks rarely ever win but I do have a lot more fun playing.
Depends on how strong you want the deck to be. I tend to go with style points first and power second and if I notice similar elements in multiple decks it's usually a warning sign that I need to remove those cards to maintain uniqueness of each deck.
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
Almost always I prefer to use a non-conventional mechanic or synergy for originality over consistency or competitiveness. There are exceptions, and sometimes I'll check myself if I feel like things are just getting silly. But I'd still almost always prefer to build a deck that's mine. My own. My precious.
Case in point is my Vorthos decks - Lazav, Kresh, Yidris and Ur-Dragon. They're all themed very specifically, and playing well is definitely a secondary purpose to telling a story I like. Regardless, 3 of the 4 play quite well. Ur-Dragon is a little janky, but Kresh has some nice tricks up his sleeve, Yidris is quite powerful and Lazav scales well to most metas.
The one case I can think of as being contrary to this is my Ghave deck. It sort of started as me going 'Ok, I'm going to intentionally stay away from degeneracy and combo, and just make it a counter themed fun deck'. A few games in I saw that Ghave wanted to game hard, and I kind of just let the deck do what it wants. It's far from degenerate combo, but it still has a few more common nasty synergies and games a lot harder than it used to.
I think there's somewhat of a fundamental mistake in equating power and consistency. I always want my decks to be consistent, but I don't always need them to be powerful. If I'm building a new deck, and that deck includes G, I might not want to make that deck a Tooth and Nail deck, or a Craterhoof Behemoth deck, or a Gaea's Cradle deck. But I will always put Sylvan Library in that deck.
At whatever power level you like to play at, it isn't fun when your deck doesn't do what you want it to do, whatever that thing may be. Anywhere from Werewolf tribal to storm.
Maybe I want to make a deck that wins with Form of the Dragon. That's pretty unique, yeah? But I'm still going to pump the deck full of tutors and ramp effects because if I don't cast that Form of the Dragon, neither I nor anyone else is going to get to experience this unique thing that I'm doing.
You can still make a strong deck that runs cards purely for synergy, or wins in an out-of-the-box way that no one expects. But if you limit yourself to cards that nobody plays, or you play everything with the barest possible synergy just for the sake of theme, I think that makes the gameplay less enjoyable, at least for me. Let's say I'm making a really garbage +1/+1 synergy deck. I could run Map the Wastes instead of Farseek, but would that really make the deck more enjoyable? I think what would be more enjoyable is accelerating into the cards that matter a whole turn earlier, like Kalonian Hydra or Master Biomancer or Doubling Season.
For instance, I have a Jeskai blink deck that I really like, and one of the coolest pieces in it is Zada, Hedron Grinder which synergizes so sweetly with Cloudshift and co. However, the deck desperately needs more card draw and ramp, and I recently cut a couple of my flicker instants like Acrobatic Maneuver and Long Road Home. With a reduced number of flicker instants, Zada becomes much less effective and would be the most natural card to cut for more some mana rocks. Rationally, I know this would be the correct choice to tune the deck. But I just really really want to live the dream and use Zada to turn Cloudshift into Ghostway.
So, in case you ever experience conflicts such as these, how do you deal with them? Do you have a heuristic to help you decide? A certain power level that you strive for in your decks? Or is it originality above all else?
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
If this deck is designed as a 75% deck, meaning it is not supposed to be as powerful as possible, then sacrificing power for synergy is perfectly acceptable.
In my experience, cutting some theme cards for draw/ramp, while reducing originality, will greatly help with play-ability and allow the deck to do more of what it wants faster. This has equated to more fun with a given deck when it really flows well. Having a strong foundation of resources (mana and cards) will really help the deck feel more powerful even if the theme cards are rather weak individually.
My Karador deck was painfully short on both ramp and draw. I was cramming all these cool utility creatures and removal package like Big Game Hunter, Loyal Retainers, and Bone Shredder that my early game was very clunky and slow. Late game I would stall with minimal card draw ans rely heavily on Karador recursion to function. I had too much removal and not enough ramp/draw that I was stalling out late game.
Once I removed some of these fun, but unnecessary, cards in exchange for Farhaven Elf, Yavimaya Granger, and Moriok Replica, my games were vastly more fun because the deck had a more natural flow throughout the game. I could build resources, create synergies, and the theme cards that made the cut were that much more impactful.
That response turned out more wordy than expected. Sorry.
For ramp i assume you can find some space for a couple of signets and similar mana rocks. You don't need to add alot and i feel the theme will still be intact
In any case, thanks for all the suggestions! I was not actually expecting feedback on the deck but only wanted to give an example the illustrate the type of trade off I have in mind.
I have noticed that my newer decks are much more geared towards originality than the decks that I built a couple of years ago, who had more staples and functional cards (ramp, draw, removal) in them. In other words, my deckbuilding style has evolved in a way that I tend to favor originality over consistency. However, my play experiences often turn out to be very similar to what PrimevalCommander described above: no matter how fun and original some ideas seem in theory, if the deck just fizzles out I never get to play them. So I often find myself cutting back on some originality / overly heavy reliance on thems after testing a new deck for a bit in favor of more conservative deckbuilding. So, paradoxically, the less fun-seeming card choices make for more fun gameplay.
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
In a case like Zada, Hedron Grinder, you really need to either have enough reasons to justify its inclusion in the 99, or more ways to re-create the same effect (in this case, maybe Mirrorwing Dragon and Radiate). So now, the chances of having one side of the combo and not the other are significantly lessened and there are less "feel bad" moments that can sometimes ruin all the "feel good" moments of pulling off your combo.
In general, when I'm running a pure synergy cards like this in my maindeck, I really want at least 14 cards for it to combo with. I would use this rule for things like Strionic Resonator, Rings of Brighthearth, Panharmonicon, or Thousand-Year Elixir; cards that are cool and let you do some really silly things in combination with other cards, but are otherwise dead. You can't afford to run too many of these or the deck's functionality comes down to the luck of the draw. Of course, if a cards synergizes with your Commander, then you can obviously run less other good targets and still have a card that is never really dead, but that is a different discussion.
So to go back to your original question, I would go with your original thought and find ways to make that work. That's not to say that you shouldn't try to add more ramp and card draw to make the deck more consistent, but make it the most consistent version of a deck that still does what you want it to do. In this case, I would just try to find other stuff to cut instead of the Zada package.
If this really isn't possible, then maybe Zada becomes part of a different deck (or potentially it's own deck). I've developed several of my decks from being a sub-theme of one deck to being their own deck once that theme had enough cards to outgrow it's current spot and warrant a deck focused on just that theme. My Selesnya decks are a perfect example; my first Selesnya deck started out as having a small token theme, a small lifegain theme, a small equipment theme, and a Legendary Snake theme. Tokens, Lifegain, and Legends (minus the Snakes) all became their own decks, and I moved the equipment package over to another deck. Sometimes a good idea just needs a different home.
Jalira, Master Polymorphist | Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder | Bosh, Iron Golem | Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Brago, King Eternal | Oona, Queen of the Fae | Wort, Boggart Auntie | Wort, the Raidmother
Captain Sisay | Rhys, the Redeemed | Trostani, Selesnya's Voice | Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight | Obzedat, Ghost Council | Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind | Vorel of the Hull Clade
Uril, the Miststalker | Prossh, Skyraider of Kher | Nicol Bolas | Progenitus
Ghave, Guru of Spores | Zedruu the Greathearted | Damia, Sage of Stone | Riku of Two Reflections
As far as Zada goes, I think it's pretty silly to say the putting in expedite or whatever is original. Many commanders make certain cards more valuable, but most people building those commanders do roughly the same thing. expedite might be an unusual card in EDH at large, but it's far from original in the context of Zada decks. Actually building something original is fairly difficult, because most builds that are good have already been done before ad nauseam, and most things that haven't are just bad ideas that don't make sense (like zada dragon tribal or mirri spellslinger). Actually finding a focused build for a commander that's both unusual and good is pretty rare.
As far as whether or not you need to trade originality for power, I think it depends a lot on your meta, but unless your meta is extremely competitive I think there's no reason you can't build how you like, as long as you know what you're doing. Multiplayer, moreso than 1v1, allows for skill to triumph over deck quality.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Go with originality. Nothing is truly "original", but at least if you've come up with the idea yourself, then it feels really good to pull it off. Just bare in mind that because of it, you'll get run over by the run-of-the-mill try hard decks more often than not.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Lately, I've been building commanders with abilities or restrictions weird/unique and then adding another restriction on top of the commander so that I simply can't build anywhere near good stuff without the deck falling apart. Aggro-only win for Alesha, Dash/dragon tribal Kolaghan, and recently Brago with as many etb effects as possible and focusing on Mirrorworks. I'm also thinking about building Power 5+ Matters deck, but I've yet to pick Commander that'll add another restriction. After all this, the decks rarely ever win but I do have a lot more fun playing.
WBG Karador, Ghost Chieftain
B Toshiro Umezawa
BG Pharika, God of Affliction - Necromancy and Politics
WWW The Church of Heliod
WBR Zurgo, Helmsmasher
RG Wort, the Raidmother
UBR Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge
UG Vorel of the Hull Clade
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
Case in point is my Vorthos decks - Lazav, Kresh, Yidris and Ur-Dragon. They're all themed very specifically, and playing well is definitely a secondary purpose to telling a story I like. Regardless, 3 of the 4 play quite well. Ur-Dragon is a little janky, but Kresh has some nice tricks up his sleeve, Yidris is quite powerful and Lazav scales well to most metas.
The one case I can think of as being contrary to this is my Ghave deck. It sort of started as me going 'Ok, I'm going to intentionally stay away from degeneracy and combo, and just make it a counter themed fun deck'. A few games in I saw that Ghave wanted to game hard, and I kind of just let the deck do what it wants. It's far from degenerate combo, but it still has a few more common nasty synergies and games a lot harder than it used to.
At whatever power level you like to play at, it isn't fun when your deck doesn't do what you want it to do, whatever that thing may be. Anywhere from Werewolf tribal to storm.
Maybe I want to make a deck that wins with Form of the Dragon. That's pretty unique, yeah? But I'm still going to pump the deck full of tutors and ramp effects because if I don't cast that Form of the Dragon, neither I nor anyone else is going to get to experience this unique thing that I'm doing.
You can still make a strong deck that runs cards purely for synergy, or wins in an out-of-the-box way that no one expects. But if you limit yourself to cards that nobody plays, or you play everything with the barest possible synergy just for the sake of theme, I think that makes the gameplay less enjoyable, at least for me. Let's say I'm making a really garbage +1/+1 synergy deck. I could run Map the Wastes instead of Farseek, but would that really make the deck more enjoyable? I think what would be more enjoyable is accelerating into the cards that matter a whole turn earlier, like Kalonian Hydra or Master Biomancer or Doubling Season.
Draft my Peasant Cube.