Maybe WotC has gotten better at printing new cards, but lately I’ve noticed that several of my decks have gotten an enormous influx of new options, to the point that cuts have become impossible. I was looking over my deck spreadsheet and noticed at least 3 or 4 different decks (Chainer, Mizzix, Yeva, to name a few) with enough alternative spells to make an entirely separate deck from the one currently in sleeves. Some (Chainer, Yeva) have been around for years, while others (Alesha, Scarab) have only been around for a few months.
Has anyone else run into this problem? What have you done to try and prevent or mitigate it?
I've ended up being with multiple decks of the same (or similar ) color combinations. I across 5 decks I have zero overlap in non-land cards. My life is made slightly easier because I really dislike playing Ramp.
I've seen some people go with a "Next 99" deck, utilizing the same commander and/or theme but using none of the same non-land cards to give those other cards a home. Sheldon Menery of the RC has a "Do-Over" project where he is going back to all his commanders and is essentially doing the same thing. If you have a commander and/or theme that you really like, this makes a lot of sense to change things up by having two decks that do the same kinds of things but in different ways.
One of things that I have done is to move subthemes into their own decks. For example, my original Selesnya deck had a mini lifegain theme, token theme, an enchantress theme, and a bunch of Legendary stuff. Each of those themes outgrew the deck and spun off into their own decks.
As for preventing this phenomenon or trying to mitigate it, I think that the only thing you can really do is to take a really hard look at each "goodstuff" card that is only in the deck because the deck is the right colors and make sure that it is worth keeping over a card that might fit your theme better. For example, every blue deck always wants a few counterspells, but if it comes down to cutting something fun and more in-theme like Firemind's Insight to keep in Cryptic Command then maybe you look at cutting Cryptic.
I just decided to ignore the 100-card limit, and now I'm playing with a 150-card deck (which may or may not expand into a 200-card deck).
Good deckbuilding, it seems, is all about ratios. This is most evident with lands. Too many, and you'll flood out. Too few, and you won't be able to cast your spells. By having the right ratio of lands to spells, you ensure your deck won't needlessly underperform. Good deckbuilding needn't stop there though. There are other components that decks can play too little or too much of as well. Mana ramp. Card draw. Removal. Threats. However you want to categorize things, if there's an optimal number of some effect you would like consistent access to each game, your deck will need to play a certain amount of it relative to everything else in order to reach that number.
If you're like me, and you want to include a new card in your deck, but can't cut anything else for one reason or another, then the only solution is to scale the deck up by including even more cards while simultaneously maintaining your proper ratios.
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I have the same problem right now with my planned ‚5 color black‘ deck (all colored cards have to be black or muliticolor with black; all lands have to produce black mana). I cut around 100 cards.
I know the struggle with too many subthemes. In the deck they are thief, lifedrain, sacrifice and reanimate (I already cut mass discard and stax). I could build a own deck for each theme but I don‘t want that because the deck shall be ‚the best deck ever without any fillers‘ (aside from several of my pet cards).
One way about it may be to cut your strongest/most overplayed/most combo-enabling card. If you are trying to make the most optimal deck, then cut out the least-performing card... but if you are just trying to have fun, take out a card that everyone already knows will win the game.
The answer is always to make more decks. Which is why I have 62, and more in progress.
No, I realize that's sort of insane, even though I do it, but the fact is, there are a lot of cool cards available in the format, and new cool cards are indeed released all the time. Sometimes it's a matter of strict upgrade (there are few reasons other than budget to not run one an equivalent Battlebond dual over something like Rootbound Crag, for example), but most of the time it's a much harder call to make re: just switching something out for something else. Especially as we keep getting new options for commanders, sometimes the best way for a new card to shine is to make a deck for it. Other times, new cards provide us with enough redundancy in effects that it becomes viable to split a deck that had two themes into two different decks, each based around one of those themes. And sometimes we really can't fit in another card, even if it would work great in a deck, because everything in there already works great. I'm facing that with my Gahiji token swarm deck. Divine Visitation is obviously a great card for that deck, but there have been so many great token-related cards released and the deck runs so well in its current incarnation that I honestly don't know what I am going to cut to fit Visitation in.
I have the same issue. I decided to build a bunch of decks to accommodate such cards, then I found myself not playing them enough. So I took a bunch of decks apart and cut them down to having only 4 decks. I'm a lot more selective about what cards I want now, and I have a box full of cards I like that I may consider playing in the future, but I am keeping only 3 active decks, and 1 (the Kamigawa one) as a "collection theme" deck which I don't really play.
So far that has been better. I was overwhelmed before with ideas and cards, until I just chose 3 and cut the rest.
If you're like me, and you want to include a new card in your deck, but can't cut anything else for one reason or another, then the only solution is to scale the deck up by including even more cards while simultaneously maintaining your proper ratios.
there's always a weakest card. Identifying it is a skill required for good deck building. Figure out your ratios, put the cards in order from best to worst in their categories, and cut the worst until you've got the right number for your ratio.
Sometimes it's a matter of strict upgrade (there are few reasons other than budget to not run one an equivalent Battlebond dual over something like Rootbound Crag, for example), but most of the time it's a much harder call to make re: just switching something out for something else.
there's always a weakest card. Identifying it is a skill required for good deck building. Figure out your ratios, put the cards in order from best to worst in their categories, and cut the worst until you've got the right number for your ratio.
Woah woah woah! Hang on a second. I don't think you're giving me enough credit. I'm obviously familiar with good deckbuilding practice. What you seemingly aren't considering is that playing a 61st card can sometimes be more valuable than not playing a 61st card.
To begin with an example, imagine you're playing some kind of Tooth and Nail deck in Modern. Now I'm not very familiar with the Modern format, so forgive me if this example isn't very indicative of it, but bear with me; there's a point I'm trying to make. Say this Tooth and Nail deck you've built is carefully crafted, and you've chosen the 60 cards that you believe maximize your deck's win percentage against the other various decks in the field. Now, the question is: should you include a 61st card? That depends on whether or not doing so increases your deck's win rate.
But arrogantAxolotl, if the 61st card is the worst one, why would including it increase your win rate? Wouldn't excluding it make your deck more consistent, thereby increasing the probability of you drawing your best cards more often? Yes, that is true, but that logic fails to account for the added utility of playing the 61st card. With a card like Tooth and Nail, being able to find a wider variety of creatures could mean winning games you might otherwise lose, so there's a cost-benefit analysis to run there. Is the marginal drop in consistency more valuable than the utility the 61st card provides? If so, run 60 cards. If the reverse is true though, you should continue to play as many cards beyond 60 that this is true for. There's no rule in Magic that says 60 card decks will always have a higher win percentage than 61+ card decks. That's just a proxy we've adopted since it's easier for players to understand why more consistent decks have a greater chance of winning than less consistent decks. If mill was the best deck in every format and was grossly overpowered by comparison, it would be a lot easier to see why running the fewest possible cards all the time isn't always the right decision.
Now, In Commander, I'm not concerned with maximizing my win rate, but I am concerned with potential. What can my deck do in any given situation? Can it exile a permanent if it needs to? Can it stop players from drawing cards? Can it gain a lot of life quickly? Can it untap a permanent? Can it return cards from exile? Can it increase its maximum hand size? These are all useful qualities for a deck to possess, but ensuring that a deck can do all of these things while simultaneously keeping its ratios balanced is nearly impossible at the minimum deck size.
If I want to steel myself against Wave of Vitriol for example, I ought to play a sizable number of basics. If I do so though, maybe my deck can't consistently produce the colors it needs anymore. At the minimum deck size, bloating my deck with basics would throw off all my ratios. I could include more non-basic lands to rectify this, but then I would need to include more spells to compensate. This might not be worthwhile from a competitive perspective, but as someone concerned with capability, scaling decks up this way leads to more possibility, and Commander has an expansive enough cardpool that I don't have to give up much in terms of win rate to afford this.
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I take your point, but I think if your goal is achieving maximum power, then you're wrong. Simply because there are cards in EDH that have such higher power than others in the format - mana crypt, necropotence, cyc rift, sol ring, etc - that the argument that you can simply expand the numbers across the board and maintain a similar average power level is incorrect, imo. The best ramp is so, so much more powerful than the tenth-best ramp.
Now, theoretically, if I wanted to make a deck around zirilan of the claw where I planned to only use zirilan and a bunch of dragons and moutains, and I never wanted to draw a dragon but wanted to have maximum utility, then the best deck would be every dragon within the mono-red CI and MAX_INT mountains. So theoretically, if that's the deck you want to build, then sure, fine. In practice, though, the deck is far stronger if you give yourself a chance to draw a sol ring, mana vault, or mana crypt start, even if that means you lose a lot of dragon utility and run the risk of drawing your critical dragons that you want to tutor.
If you really want to play around wave of vitriol, you COULD balloon the deck size by increasing the number of lands, thus watering down your fixing and your card quality, but you'd be better off just watering down your fixing (a bit more, percentage-wise, if you're trying to hit the same number of basics, admittedly) than sacrificing card quality as well. ESPECIALLY in a format where such powerful cards exist.
The argument that you want your deck to be able to do many things is only reasonable, imo, if you have a tutor in the command zone, or a large number of tutors. The potential to do something is only relevant if it's likely to be able to do that thing with some reliability. If you're holding your "gain a bunch of life" card when you need the "exile a permanent" card, then you're not really accomplishing anything.
So in this theoretical deck with a bunch of tutors and a small number of "do-something" cards, is it reasonable to balloon the deck size to fit in all the effects you want? I'd still argue no. There aren't so many things that need doing that you can't reasonably whittle down the number to the things that you really, really need. If we were looking at 30 card decks or something, then perhaps this could be a reasonable position, but with 100 cards there's just no way that you need more effects than you have space for. No competitive 1v1 deck has been larger than 60 cards to my knowledge, with the possible exception of battle of wits, which doesn't really count for obvious reasons. We've got an extra 40 cards, PLUS because it's singleton we're already running worse cards than formats where you get to run 4-ofs.
Is there a theoretical deck for which you could be right? Sure, if wotc printed a tutor commander that got enormous power from having a wide variety of tutor targets without requiring anything specific off the draw (which, for the record, describes Zirilan almost to a T, and I am still very comfortable saying that the deck is best run at 100 cards to maximize the chances of drawing fast mana, if nothing else) then perhaps it could be reasonable to make a deck with more than 100 cards. Or maybe there are some other corner cases that exist in theoretical decks. But in terms of practical examples, I defy you to show me an actual deck that wouldn't be improved by cutting it down to 100.
I take your point, but I think if your goal is achieving maximum power, then you're wrong. Simply because there are cards in EDH that have such higher power than others in the format - mana crypt, necropotence, cyc rift, sol ring, etc - that the argument that you can simply expand the numbers across the board and maintain a similar average power level is incorrect, imo. The best ramp is so, so much more powerful than the tenth-best ramp.
I'm not sure what you mean by maximum power here. If your goal is to build a deck with the highest power ceiling, then it would include many, many cards since a 100-card Primal Surge is going to be much more powerful than a 60-card Primal Surge.
But I agree. The best ramp spell is significantly better than the tenth-best ramp spell (although the tenth-best ramp spell isn't that much better than the eleventh). Our difference in opinion just seems to be wherein lies a marginal advantage. Does it lie in increasing the probability of drawing your deck's most powerful cards? Or does it lie in the increased utility offered by playing a diverse set of cards? Traditional wisdom says it's the prior, but I suspect that isn't true 100% of the time. I'm not competent enough at math to prove that though. I'm just operating off of heuristics here.
Now, theoretically, if I wanted to make a deck around zirilan of the claw where I planned to only use zirilan and a bunch of dragons and moutains, and I never wanted to draw a dragon but wanted to have maximum utility, then the best deck would be every dragon within the mono-red CI and MAX_INT mountains. So theoretically, if that's the deck you want to build, then sure, fine. In practice, though, the deck is far stronger if you give yourself a chance to draw a sol ring, mana vault, or mana crypt start, even if that means you lose a lot of dragon utility and run the risk of drawing your critical dragons that you want to tutor.
Again, this only sounds true because the advantage of consistency is outweighing the advantage of utility. I don't disagree with what you're saying here.
If you really want to play around wave of vitriol, you COULD balloon the deck size by increasing the number of lands, thus watering down your fixing and your card quality, but you'd be better off just watering down your fixing (a bit more, percentage-wise, if you're trying to hit the same number of basics, admittedly) than sacrificing card quality as well. ESPECIALLY in a format where such powerful cards exist.
Once you hit a certain point though, your average card quality really isn't taking any kind of significant dip though. As mentioned before, the difference between the best ramp spell and the tenth-best ramp spell is fairly large. (Hell, the difference between the best of anything and the second-best of anything tends to be fairly large.) The difference between the tenth-best ramp spell and the eleventh-best ramp spell isn't all that different though. By including an eleventh ramp spell, you are decreasing the average quality of your ramp spells, yes, but not by any kind of significant margin since the biggest differences in quality tends to be at the top. And since you're going to want to play, let's say, ten ramp spells anyway, that eleventh ramp spell isn't really decreasing the quality of your average ramp spell much at all.
The potential to do something is only relevant if it's likely to be able to do that thing with some reliability.
Agreed. If performing a certain action is technically possible but not realistically feasible, then there isn't much difference in being able to perform that action and not being able to perform that action.
If you're holding your "gain a bunch of life" card when you need the "exile a permanent" card, then you're not really accomplishing anything.
Well, this is just Magic in general though. If I'm holding a bunch of lands, and what I really need is a blocker, that's not a great position to be in either. That's why the ratios are what they are.
The argument that you want your deck to be able to do many things is only reasonable, imo, if you have a tutor in the command zone, or a large number of tutors.
See, here's where I disagree. Tutors don't tend to do much beyond increasing the probability that you will see certain cards, usually your most powerful. In essence, that isn't doing anything other than adjusting the ratios though. It's entirely possible to have the ratios be where you want them without playing any tutors.
Now, this is kind of complicated, but I do think that if you absolutely need to see many, many different kinds of effects across a single game for whatever reason, then you will need to include some cards that allow you to see more cards than you might normally otherwise. For example, if you had a 100-card deck where all 60 of its non-land cards were partitioned into 30 different 2% ratios, then you likely wouldn't see every different kind of card without lucking into some kind of massive card draw spell or something like Hermit Druid that can go through practically everything since the ratios would be so small that you wouldn't ordinarily see that many different cards in a game. But generally speaking, there's no reason why the added utility of a card can't outweigh the advantage of increased consistency even if that card did not make up a significant ratio of the deck.
So in this theoretical deck with a bunch of tutors and a small number of "do-something" cards, is it reasonable to balloon the deck size to fit in all the effects you want? I'd still argue no. There aren't so many things that need doing that you can't reasonably whittle down the number to the things that you really, really need. If we were looking at 30 card decks or something, then perhaps this could be a reasonable position, but with 100 cards there's just no way that you need more effects than you have space for.
It isn't always about the number of different effects. Sometimes, as with the Wave of Vitriol example, you have to include multiple cards to proffer an advantage. For the sake of argument, let's just say full Wave of Vitriol protection demands a dozen basic lands. If that kind of protection is worth paying for (and let's just pretend that it is), then the deck would have to balloon to keep the ratios right even if no other new effects were added to the deck.
No competitive 1v1 deck has been larger than 60 cards to my knowledge, with the possible exception of battle of wits, which doesn't really count for obvious reasons.
I can vaguely recall something like a 66 card deck winning some big Star City Games event forever ago, but yeah, I can't remember something like this ever happening at a Grand Prix or whatnot.
Is there a theoretical deck for which you could be right? Sure, if wotc printed a tutor commander that got enormous power from having a wide variety of tutor targets without requiring anything specific off the draw (which, for the record, describes Zirilan almost to a T, and I am still very comfortable saying that the deck is best run at 100 cards to maximize the chances of drawing fast mana, if nothing else) then perhaps it could be reasonable to make a deck with more than 100 cards. Or maybe there are some other corner cases that exist in theoretical decks.
But in terms of practical examples, I defy you to show me an actual deck that wouldn't be improved by cutting it down to 100.
This is going to hinge on what you consider practical, but for a format like Commander, I think there are definitely some theme decks, some decks doing the best they can to not necessarily be as powerful as possible, but to just play reasonably well while still adhering to a given premise, that can serve as examples. I go into two such decks here. If you'd like an actual decklist, I can provide you with the 150-card version of Mr. Bones' Wild Ride that I'm currently playing. That's a deck that's very difficult to build in 100 cards without relying on lame two-card assemblers like OmniscienceEnter the Infinite since roughly a third of the deck's spells are practically garbage.
Celerus, you might want to look over this thread where the Battlebond duals are discussed at length. Players tend to rate them much less favorably than they deserve.
This is going to hinge on what you consider practical, but for a format like Commander, I think there are definitely some theme decks, some decks doing the best they can to not necessarily be as powerful as possible, but to just play reasonably well while still adhering to a given premise, that can serve as examples. I go into two such decks here. If you'd like an actual decklist, I can provide you with the 150-card version of Mr. Bones' Wild Ride that I'm currently playing. That's a deck that's very difficult to build in 100 cards without relying on lame two-card assemblers like OmniscienceEnter the Infinite since roughly a third of the deck's spells are practically garbage.
Besides some quibbles about how much worse a deck becomes when you're diluting the sol ring percentage, I think this is roughly the main crux of the issue - what constitutes the essence of the deck, and what elements can be optimized and which ones are considered untouchable without destroying the intent of the deck.
Obviously the examples you cited, from the perspective of deck optimization, be drastically improved on by cutting...tons of stuff. Basically anything. But then they wouldn't be the same deck. Which doesn't make any difference from the competitive side, but I'm sympathetic to the idea of wanting a deck to do something specific, even if that something specific isn't actually the "most powerful" thing it could be doing. All decks, if they were optimized enough, would presumably eventually all end up turning into one of the miserable monstrosities that end up on the cEDH tier lists.
But I said that I could improve any >100 card deck, in terms of making it more likely win, by cutting many of the cards inside it. And that definitely holds true for your decks, which I don't think you'd disagree with. Now, if you don't want to do that because you think it ruins the essence of the deck, then fair enough, but we're talking about optimization, not essence.
All your arguments about wave of vitriol and the relative power level of ramp spells are basically irrelevant. Could theoretical universes games of magic benefit from bigger decks? Maybe, but in this universe, we both know that bigger decks are worse in a competitive sense because they don't happen in competitive events. When magic's best minds come together to find the absolute best decks, looking for any advantage over the competition, the solution has never been to add more cards to your deck. If you want to run a huge deck because you're trying to do something funny, the by all means do so - but it doesn't really mean anything about actual deck optimization for decks operating in a more normal sphere, where decks will continue to be the minimum.
I was so sad to cut the Thornbite staff + viridian longbow combo from my Gissa, the traitor deck, but alone the pieces were just so bad... particularly when I had cut a lot of the incidental deathtouchers my original deck had. Compared to the insanely powerful GB and artifact cards that just keep printing they just aren't worth the slot.
This may be getting a little off topic, but I started investigating what other players had done with 61+ card decks, and I found this interesting article from 2017. In it, Sam Black observes that you can actually construct a better manabase with 80 cards than you can with 60. He also posits that if there's ever a format where it would be correct to play more than 60 cards, it would probably be Modern. The cardpool there is vast, but the disparity in power between the best cards and the second-best cards isn't nearly as large as it is other formats. Apparently, some Scapeshift decks are already playing more than 60 cards because they want to run seven Mountain cards and also cast Cryptic Command reliably.
There color decks can already reliably fix their mana to the point that minor improvements to their manabase wouldn't justify the inclusion of adding additional cards, but four and five-color decks seem to stand something to gain by doing so. Unfortunately, the limiting factor seems to be sideboards. Because the disparity in power between sideboard and non-sideboard cards is so large, it seems hard to justify reducing your chances to draw them.
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Interesting article, but I think it's pretty obvious why it doesn't apply very well to EDH. for one thing, a good manabase is already capped on the number of fetches it's running, so expanding it makes the odds of drawing them worse instead of better (and of course, broken non-fixing lands like gaea's cradle are diluted too, even if fetches are the best fixers in the format). The power levels of cards is very diverse, with the top end extremely powerful, so you can't enlarge the deck without diminishing the card quality substantially. And of course, he's talking about a format of 4-ofs and 60 cards, etc.
The one saving grace for commander is that, unlike modern death's shadow where adding cards dilutes your key card, commander can start with THE key card available from the command zone, which is why theoretical toolbox commanders could potentially benefit from a big deck - I just don't think such a commander exists yet. It would need to be extremely strong to justify warping the deck, low-cmc to diminish the advantage of sol ring/mana crypt/etc, and demanding enough of diversity to encourage adding a significant number of cards (especially ones that might be bad draws) - something like lazav 2.0, if he copied from deck instead of the graveyard, maybe.
Of course, the exactly-100-cards rule makes all of this irrelevant. Plus who want to shuffle a deck with more than 100? 100 is stretching comfort for me, and I have pretty huge hands.
theoretical toolbox commanders could potentially benefit from a big deck - I just don't think such a commander exists yet. It would need to be extremely strong to justify warping the deck, low-cmc to diminish the advantage of sol ring/mana crypt/etc, and demanding enough of diversity to encourage adding a significant number of cards (especially ones that might be bad draws) - something like lazav 2.0, if he copied from deck instead of the graveyard, maybe.
Checking this theory, I looked up CMC<=4 commanders that can search libraries. I think the closest existing cards to matching this description are Kaho, Minamo Historian (although has to lose summoning sickness to get value, and a Sol Ring still lets you play it T2 without any wasted mana), Lin-Sivvi, Defiant Hero (also has to lose summoning Sickness to get value, though doesn't telegraph what value you're getting like Kaho; also, while Rebels are generally pretty low-power, they do represent a decently-diverse toolbox), Captain Sisay (again, T2 with Sol Ring and no wasted mana, needs to lose summoning sickness), Thada Adel, Acquisitor (needs to lose summoning sickness, needs to connect, and you can't control what's in her toolbox), Yisan, the Wanderer Bard (if your toolbox is largely made of 1-drops; also needs to lose summoning sickness), and Zur the Enchanter (needs to lose summoning sickness).
Finally, there's also Arcum Dagsson. He tends to really want 0-mana artifact creature spells, though, of which there are (functionally) 4.
Lin is probably closest, and she does generally want to avoid drawing the other rebels. Real problem is that mono-white just doesn't have enough good cards imo, and the rebel toolbox is pretty shallow tbh. WotC needs to stick more incidental creature types onto things to reinvigorate some of these older cards - no reason deadeye harpooner couldn't have been a rebel, that would have been neat. I don't see what they'd lose by throwing us a bone every once in a while.
Upon reflection, I think I realize why I've arrived at the point that I have.
Let's say I'm playing something like the all-alternate-win-cons deck, a deck where I must include every card with an alternate win condition. Given that premise, ballooning such a deck makes a lot of sense. There's quite a few alternate win cons, and they're generally all pretty terrible since most tend not to do anything intrinsically useful. As such, the 101st card isn't worse than the 100th card. It's actually better. A deck full of alternate win cons would benefit by adding anything more powerful to it even if doing so meant drawing the deck's best cards less often because that deck's overall power would increase if it did so. The quantity and sheer terribleness of the deck's worst cards far outstrips the benefits of maximizing the probability of drawing its best cards to the point that going over the minimum makes sense.
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The good ol' saturation problem? Looks at the pile of foil cards I've acquired and eventually cut.
Sacrifice. Discipline.
The possibilities of a deck's growth and diversification is essentially "infinite" as the game continue to introduce card after card. Sooner or later a card or theme of a set will hit all the correct notes of your deck's intention. It is easy to be tempted by every new shiny toy that comes along, but for those to seek to sustain a deck (or a few decks) and have some experience will quickly realize the real cases of a card being made "obsolete" is very minimal due to the nature of the format. Throw in some even stringent/subjective "units" of measurement such as flavor-matching, those numbers shrink even more. Sprinkle in the reality of budget with that realization, the whole truth becomes easier to swallow.
Most misery that comes from actual games stem from the mismatch of overall power-levels and/or playstyles within the group, and almost never with the relevancy or newness of a individual card in relation to other cards (unless it's a direct call to the power levels I said earlier).
In the cases of decks with multiple themes that may or may not be cobbled together because each theme isn't individually strong enough this problem is most obvious as these previous unsupported themes get more and more supported. There is no all-size-fits-all solution for it is dependent on the situation and intent when the creator cobbled those themes together. If it was cobbled together simply due to either budget or the sheer lack of support back then that isn't the case now with no real attention of intention to find the unique gel that bonds them together, then perhaps it is better to split the deck into two to give each theme their deserved attention when one has the budget.
But even then the solution of "splitting decks/making new decks" doesn't work for everyone, some people (like me) simply don't see the purpose of managing too many decks, since we consider the active management as important as the games they enroll in (and this is coming from me with 8 decks which some people think is already overwhelming while others vice versa). So I choose to focus on cards that help multiple themes and became more jaded when analyzing and reviewing shiny new toys that come along every release. In practice , a card that is superior in one subtheme but inferior in the others generally doesn't perform as well as a card that is functional in both modes even if it is inferior to the best choices of the respective themes because a game is essentially a coordinated performance of all subthemes of a deck.
Of course, each subtheme needs a couple of strong anchors that may not coordinate as well, but those cards are few and very seldom replaced by actually better new cards. The flexible "gel" cards that function between subthemes essentially exist in a spectrum of variability and when comparisons are whether it is slightly better for Theme A or Theme B, the consequences for "wrong/inferior choices" aren't as heavy and it becomes easier to simply select cards for external reasons such as flavor.
Ultimate disclaimer this is a hodgepodge of random thought processes that came to me in relation to how I manage my decks when I read the question and I was actually quite tired when I typed this, so excuse me if this post didn't seem to flow as well (ironically considering how much I emphasized on flexibility between themes on card choices) or doesn't seem like a tangible solution to some of you (I already said there's no true universal solution though...)
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Maybe WotC has gotten better at printing new cards, but lately I’ve noticed that several of my decks have gotten an enormous influx of new options, to the point that cuts have become impossible. I was looking over my deck spreadsheet and noticed at least 3 or 4 different decks (Chainer, Mizzix, Yeva, to name a few) with enough alternative spells to make an entirely separate deck from the one currently in sleeves. Some (Chainer, Yeva) have been around for years, while others (Alesha, Scarab) have only been around for a few months.
Has anyone else run into this problem? What have you done to try and prevent or mitigate it?
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
Savra, Queen of the Golgari (Green Black Control with Graveyard Advantages)
Standard
Probably Mono Red Sligh
Modern
Dredge
Legacy
Dredge
One of things that I have done is to move subthemes into their own decks. For example, my original Selesnya deck had a mini lifegain theme, token theme, an enchantress theme, and a bunch of Legendary stuff. Each of those themes outgrew the deck and spun off into their own decks.
As for preventing this phenomenon or trying to mitigate it, I think that the only thing you can really do is to take a really hard look at each "goodstuff" card that is only in the deck because the deck is the right colors and make sure that it is worth keeping over a card that might fit your theme better. For example, every blue deck always wants a few counterspells, but if it comes down to cutting something fun and more in-theme like Firemind's Insight to keep in Cryptic Command then maybe you look at cutting Cryptic.
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
Good deckbuilding, it seems, is all about ratios. This is most evident with lands. Too many, and you'll flood out. Too few, and you won't be able to cast your spells. By having the right ratio of lands to spells, you ensure your deck won't needlessly underperform. Good deckbuilding needn't stop there though. There are other components that decks can play too little or too much of as well. Mana ramp. Card draw. Removal. Threats. However you want to categorize things, if there's an optimal number of some effect you would like consistent access to each game, your deck will need to play a certain amount of it relative to everything else in order to reach that number.
If you're like me, and you want to include a new card in your deck, but can't cut anything else for one reason or another, then the only solution is to scale the deck up by including even more cards while simultaneously maintaining your proper ratios.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
I know the struggle with too many subthemes. In the deck they are thief, lifedrain, sacrifice and reanimate (I already cut mass discard and stax). I could build a own deck for each theme but I don‘t want that because the deck shall be ‚the best deck ever without any fillers‘ (aside from several of my pet cards).
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
No, I realize that's sort of insane, even though I do it, but the fact is, there are a lot of cool cards available in the format, and new cool cards are indeed released all the time. Sometimes it's a matter of strict upgrade (there are few reasons other than budget to not run one an equivalent Battlebond dual over something like Rootbound Crag, for example), but most of the time it's a much harder call to make re: just switching something out for something else. Especially as we keep getting new options for commanders, sometimes the best way for a new card to shine is to make a deck for it. Other times, new cards provide us with enough redundancy in effects that it becomes viable to split a deck that had two themes into two different decks, each based around one of those themes. And sometimes we really can't fit in another card, even if it would work great in a deck, because everything in there already works great. I'm facing that with my Gahiji token swarm deck. Divine Visitation is obviously a great card for that deck, but there have been so many great token-related cards released and the deck runs so well in its current incarnation that I honestly don't know what I am going to cut to fit Visitation in.
So far that has been better. I was overwhelmed before with ideas and cards, until I just chose 3 and cut the rest.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
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
Bruse Tarl & Kraum, Ludevic's Opus
Mayael the Anima
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
To begin with an example, imagine you're playing some kind of Tooth and Nail deck in Modern. Now I'm not very familiar with the Modern format, so forgive me if this example isn't very indicative of it, but bear with me; there's a point I'm trying to make. Say this Tooth and Nail deck you've built is carefully crafted, and you've chosen the 60 cards that you believe maximize your deck's win percentage against the other various decks in the field. Now, the question is: should you include a 61st card? That depends on whether or not doing so increases your deck's win rate.
But arrogantAxolotl, if the 61st card is the worst one, why would including it increase your win rate? Wouldn't excluding it make your deck more consistent, thereby increasing the probability of you drawing your best cards more often? Yes, that is true, but that logic fails to account for the added utility of playing the 61st card. With a card like Tooth and Nail, being able to find a wider variety of creatures could mean winning games you might otherwise lose, so there's a cost-benefit analysis to run there. Is the marginal drop in consistency more valuable than the utility the 61st card provides? If so, run 60 cards. If the reverse is true though, you should continue to play as many cards beyond 60 that this is true for. There's no rule in Magic that says 60 card decks will always have a higher win percentage than 61+ card decks. That's just a proxy we've adopted since it's easier for players to understand why more consistent decks have a greater chance of winning than less consistent decks. If mill was the best deck in every format and was grossly overpowered by comparison, it would be a lot easier to see why running the fewest possible cards all the time isn't always the right decision.
Now, In Commander, I'm not concerned with maximizing my win rate, but I am concerned with potential. What can my deck do in any given situation? Can it exile a permanent if it needs to? Can it stop players from drawing cards? Can it gain a lot of life quickly? Can it untap a permanent? Can it return cards from exile? Can it increase its maximum hand size? These are all useful qualities for a deck to possess, but ensuring that a deck can do all of these things while simultaneously keeping its ratios balanced is nearly impossible at the minimum deck size.
If I want to steel myself against Wave of Vitriol for example, I ought to play a sizable number of basics. If I do so though, maybe my deck can't consistently produce the colors it needs anymore. At the minimum deck size, bloating my deck with basics would throw off all my ratios. I could include more non-basic lands to rectify this, but then I would need to include more spells to compensate. This might not be worthwhile from a competitive perspective, but as someone concerned with capability, scaling decks up this way leads to more possibility, and Commander has an expansive enough cardpool that I don't have to give up much in terms of win rate to afford this.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Now, theoretically, if I wanted to make a deck around zirilan of the claw where I planned to only use zirilan and a bunch of dragons and moutains, and I never wanted to draw a dragon but wanted to have maximum utility, then the best deck would be every dragon within the mono-red CI and MAX_INT mountains. So theoretically, if that's the deck you want to build, then sure, fine. In practice, though, the deck is far stronger if you give yourself a chance to draw a sol ring, mana vault, or mana crypt start, even if that means you lose a lot of dragon utility and run the risk of drawing your critical dragons that you want to tutor.
If you really want to play around wave of vitriol, you COULD balloon the deck size by increasing the number of lands, thus watering down your fixing and your card quality, but you'd be better off just watering down your fixing (a bit more, percentage-wise, if you're trying to hit the same number of basics, admittedly) than sacrificing card quality as well. ESPECIALLY in a format where such powerful cards exist.
The argument that you want your deck to be able to do many things is only reasonable, imo, if you have a tutor in the command zone, or a large number of tutors. The potential to do something is only relevant if it's likely to be able to do that thing with some reliability. If you're holding your "gain a bunch of life" card when you need the "exile a permanent" card, then you're not really accomplishing anything.
So in this theoretical deck with a bunch of tutors and a small number of "do-something" cards, is it reasonable to balloon the deck size to fit in all the effects you want? I'd still argue no. There aren't so many things that need doing that you can't reasonably whittle down the number to the things that you really, really need. If we were looking at 30 card decks or something, then perhaps this could be a reasonable position, but with 100 cards there's just no way that you need more effects than you have space for. No competitive 1v1 deck has been larger than 60 cards to my knowledge, with the possible exception of battle of wits, which doesn't really count for obvious reasons. We've got an extra 40 cards, PLUS because it's singleton we're already running worse cards than formats where you get to run 4-ofs.
Is there a theoretical deck for which you could be right? Sure, if wotc printed a tutor commander that got enormous power from having a wide variety of tutor targets without requiring anything specific off the draw (which, for the record, describes Zirilan almost to a T, and I am still very comfortable saying that the deck is best run at 100 cards to maximize the chances of drawing fast mana, if nothing else) then perhaps it could be reasonable to make a deck with more than 100 cards. Or maybe there are some other corner cases that exist in theoretical decks. But in terms of practical examples, I defy you to show me an actual deck that wouldn't be improved by cutting it down to 100.
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
I'm not sure what you mean by maximum power here. If your goal is to build a deck with the highest power ceiling, then it would include many, many cards since a 100-card Primal Surge is going to be much more powerful than a 60-card Primal Surge.
But I agree. The best ramp spell is significantly better than the tenth-best ramp spell (although the tenth-best ramp spell isn't that much better than the eleventh). Our difference in opinion just seems to be wherein lies a marginal advantage. Does it lie in increasing the probability of drawing your deck's most powerful cards? Or does it lie in the increased utility offered by playing a diverse set of cards? Traditional wisdom says it's the prior, but I suspect that isn't true 100% of the time. I'm not competent enough at math to prove that though. I'm just operating off of heuristics here.
Again, this only sounds true because the advantage of consistency is outweighing the advantage of utility. I don't disagree with what you're saying here.
Once you hit a certain point though, your average card quality really isn't taking any kind of significant dip though. As mentioned before, the difference between the best ramp spell and the tenth-best ramp spell is fairly large. (Hell, the difference between the best of anything and the second-best of anything tends to be fairly large.) The difference between the tenth-best ramp spell and the eleventh-best ramp spell isn't all that different though. By including an eleventh ramp spell, you are decreasing the average quality of your ramp spells, yes, but not by any kind of significant margin since the biggest differences in quality tends to be at the top. And since you're going to want to play, let's say, ten ramp spells anyway, that eleventh ramp spell isn't really decreasing the quality of your average ramp spell much at all.
This next bit is taken a little out of order.
Agreed. If performing a certain action is technically possible but not realistically feasible, then there isn't much difference in being able to perform that action and not being able to perform that action.
Well, this is just Magic in general though. If I'm holding a bunch of lands, and what I really need is a blocker, that's not a great position to be in either. That's why the ratios are what they are.
See, here's where I disagree. Tutors don't tend to do much beyond increasing the probability that you will see certain cards, usually your most powerful. In essence, that isn't doing anything other than adjusting the ratios though. It's entirely possible to have the ratios be where you want them without playing any tutors.
Now, this is kind of complicated, but I do think that if you absolutely need to see many, many different kinds of effects across a single game for whatever reason, then you will need to include some cards that allow you to see more cards than you might normally otherwise. For example, if you had a 100-card deck where all 60 of its non-land cards were partitioned into 30 different 2% ratios, then you likely wouldn't see every different kind of card without lucking into some kind of massive card draw spell or something like Hermit Druid that can go through practically everything since the ratios would be so small that you wouldn't ordinarily see that many different cards in a game. But generally speaking, there's no reason why the added utility of a card can't outweigh the advantage of increased consistency even if that card did not make up a significant ratio of the deck.
It isn't always about the number of different effects. Sometimes, as with the Wave of Vitriol example, you have to include multiple cards to proffer an advantage. For the sake of argument, let's just say full Wave of Vitriol protection demands a dozen basic lands. If that kind of protection is worth paying for (and let's just pretend that it is), then the deck would have to balloon to keep the ratios right even if no other new effects were added to the deck.
I can vaguely recall something like a 66 card deck winning some big Star City Games event forever ago, but yeah, I can't remember something like this ever happening at a Grand Prix or whatnot.
To be fair, roughly 40% of those 40 cards are still going to be lands, so you're really only looking at 24 or so extra cards.
I don't fault you for thinking this.
This is going to hinge on what you consider practical, but for a format like Commander, I think there are definitely some theme decks, some decks doing the best they can to not necessarily be as powerful as possible, but to just play reasonably well while still adhering to a given premise, that can serve as examples. I go into two such decks here. If you'd like an actual decklist, I can provide you with the 150-card version of Mr. Bones' Wild Ride that I'm currently playing. That's a deck that's very difficult to build in 100 cards without relying on lame two-card assemblers like Omniscience Enter the Infinite since roughly a third of the deck's spells are practically garbage.
EDIT:
Celerus, you might want to look over this thread where the Battlebond duals are discussed at length. Players tend to rate them much less favorably than they deserve.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Obviously the examples you cited, from the perspective of deck optimization, be drastically improved on by cutting...tons of stuff. Basically anything. But then they wouldn't be the same deck. Which doesn't make any difference from the competitive side, but I'm sympathetic to the idea of wanting a deck to do something specific, even if that something specific isn't actually the "most powerful" thing it could be doing. All decks, if they were optimized enough, would presumably eventually all end up turning into one of the miserable monstrosities that end up on the cEDH tier lists.
But I said that I could improve any >100 card deck, in terms of making it more likely win, by cutting many of the cards inside it. And that definitely holds true for your decks, which I don't think you'd disagree with. Now, if you don't want to do that because you think it ruins the essence of the deck, then fair enough, but we're talking about optimization, not essence.
All your arguments about wave of vitriol and the relative power level of ramp spells are basically irrelevant. Could theoretical universes games of magic benefit from bigger decks? Maybe, but in this universe, we both know that bigger decks are worse in a competitive sense because they don't happen in competitive events. When magic's best minds come together to find the absolute best decks, looking for any advantage over the competition, the solution has never been to add more cards to your deck. If you want to run a huge deck because you're trying to do something funny, the by all means do so - but it doesn't really mean anything about actual deck optimization for decks operating in a more normal sphere, where decks will continue to be the minimum.
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
I mean I seriously cut decree of pain (highest mana cost in the deck) for Phyrexian Scriptures.
There is all this sweet durdling I could be doing but there is all this overwhelming good stuff putting pressure on my deck building.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
There color decks can already reliably fix their mana to the point that minor improvements to their manabase wouldn't justify the inclusion of adding additional cards, but four and five-color decks seem to stand something to gain by doing so. Unfortunately, the limiting factor seems to be sideboards. Because the disparity in power between sideboard and non-sideboard cards is so large, it seems hard to justify reducing your chances to draw them.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
The one saving grace for commander is that, unlike modern death's shadow where adding cards dilutes your key card, commander can start with THE key card available from the command zone, which is why theoretical toolbox commanders could potentially benefit from a big deck - I just don't think such a commander exists yet. It would need to be extremely strong to justify warping the deck, low-cmc to diminish the advantage of sol ring/mana crypt/etc, and demanding enough of diversity to encourage adding a significant number of cards (especially ones that might be bad draws) - something like lazav 2.0, if he copied from deck instead of the graveyard, maybe.
Of course, the exactly-100-cards rule makes all of this irrelevant. Plus who want to shuffle a deck with more than 100? 100 is stretching comfort for me, and I have pretty huge hands.
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
Finally, there's also Arcum Dagsson. He tends to really want 0-mana artifact creature spells, though, of which there are (functionally) 4.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
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
Let's say I'm playing something like the all-alternate-win-cons deck, a deck where I must include every card with an alternate win condition. Given that premise, ballooning such a deck makes a lot of sense. There's quite a few alternate win cons, and they're generally all pretty terrible since most tend not to do anything intrinsically useful. As such, the 101st card isn't worse than the 100th card. It's actually better. A deck full of alternate win cons would benefit by adding anything more powerful to it even if doing so meant drawing the deck's best cards less often because that deck's overall power would increase if it did so. The quantity and sheer terribleness of the deck's worst cards far outstrips the benefits of maximizing the probability of drawing its best cards to the point that going over the minimum makes sense.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Sacrifice. Discipline.
The possibilities of a deck's growth and diversification is essentially "infinite" as the game continue to introduce card after card. Sooner or later a card or theme of a set will hit all the correct notes of your deck's intention. It is easy to be tempted by every new shiny toy that comes along, but for those to seek to sustain a deck (or a few decks) and have some experience will quickly realize the real cases of a card being made "obsolete" is very minimal due to the nature of the format. Throw in some even stringent/subjective "units" of measurement such as flavor-matching, those numbers shrink even more. Sprinkle in the reality of budget with that realization, the whole truth becomes easier to swallow.
Most misery that comes from actual games stem from the mismatch of overall power-levels and/or playstyles within the group, and almost never with the relevancy or newness of a individual card in relation to other cards (unless it's a direct call to the power levels I said earlier).
In the cases of decks with multiple themes that may or may not be cobbled together because each theme isn't individually strong enough this problem is most obvious as these previous unsupported themes get more and more supported. There is no all-size-fits-all solution for it is dependent on the situation and intent when the creator cobbled those themes together. If it was cobbled together simply due to either budget or the sheer lack of support back then that isn't the case now with no real attention of intention to find the unique gel that bonds them together, then perhaps it is better to split the deck into two to give each theme their deserved attention when one has the budget.
But even then the solution of "splitting decks/making new decks" doesn't work for everyone, some people (like me) simply don't see the purpose of managing too many decks, since we consider the active management as important as the games they enroll in (and this is coming from me with 8 decks which some people think is already overwhelming while others vice versa). So I choose to focus on cards that help multiple themes and became more jaded when analyzing and reviewing shiny new toys that come along every release. In practice , a card that is superior in one subtheme but inferior in the others generally doesn't perform as well as a card that is functional in both modes even if it is inferior to the best choices of the respective themes because a game is essentially a coordinated performance of all subthemes of a deck.
Of course, each subtheme needs a couple of strong anchors that may not coordinate as well, but those cards are few and very seldom replaced by actually better new cards. The flexible "gel" cards that function between subthemes essentially exist in a spectrum of variability and when comparisons are whether it is slightly better for Theme A or Theme B, the consequences for "wrong/inferior choices" aren't as heavy and it becomes easier to simply select cards for external reasons such as flavor.
Ultimate disclaimer this is a hodgepodge of random thought processes that came to me in relation to how I manage my decks when I read the question and I was actually quite tired when I typed this, so excuse me if this post didn't seem to flow as well (ironically considering how much I emphasized on flexibility between themes on card choices) or doesn't seem like a tangible solution to some of you (I already said there's no true universal solution though...)