I prefer to devote all my time, resources and energy on a single pet deck. My ideal deck straddles the line between casual and competitive, and typically, I strive for such by finding a competitive concept and building it casually -- sort of the opposite of the "build casually and play competitively" mantra. My Baral, Chief of Compliance deck I put together just yesterday (cards are in the mail as I type), takes the Polymorph to an Eldrazi Titan concept, and replaces the hyper efficient counterspells with big value, battle-cruiser counterspells, for example.
33 decks, and yet I find the energy to go out to my LGS (which is really not that local to me) maybe once a month. Time spent Magic-wise is like 90% brewing and 10% playing. I enjoy brewing and theorycrafting more than I enjoy actually going out to play. Used to have a good circle of friends to regularly play with, but for various reasons we can't do regular 'kitchen table' anymore that often.
So, I craft decks, some of which have not seen play in several months. But I enjoy the process of "iterating towards perfection" quite a bit. I enjoy having unique mechanical approaches to each of my decks, making them as different as I can while remaining fun to play out for me. (I can't play control worth a damn.)
Monetarily, I am not concerned but I am in a rather unique situation in that my wife is a lvl 3 judge so I very rarely have to actually go out and buy cards, other than the occasional old junk rare we don't have around or extras of. My "Magic budget" is treating her to the occasional dinner around release times, if you will.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
X Hope of Ghirapur Swordpile W Ghosty Blinky Anafenza U Nezahal- Big, Blue and HERE! B Gonti Can Afford It R Etali, Primal 'Whatjusthappened?' G Polukranos Wants More Mana WU The Exalted Vizier Temmet WB Home, Athreos WR Basandra, Recursive Aggression WG Karametra, Momma of Lands UB Wrexial Eats Your Brains UR Arjun, the Mad Flame UG The Fable of Prime Speaker BR Hellbent, Malfegor Style BG Jarad, Death is Served RG Running Thromok WUB Varina and ALL the Zombies WUBYennett, the Odd Pain-Train WUR Zedruu the Furyhearted WUG Arcades' Strategy, Shmategy, Sausage and Spam WBR A Case of Mathas' Persistent F*ckery WBRLicia's League of Legendary Lifegain Layabouts WBG The Karador Advantage PackageWRG Gahiji Rattlesnake Collection UBR Jeleva... does... things UBG Damia's Just Deserts URG Yasova's Has More Power Than Sense BRG Wasitora, Bad Kitty WUBRBreya, Eggs, Breya'd Eggs WUBG Tymna and Kydele, Extended Borrowing WURG Kynaios and Tiro, Landfall Impersonations WBRG Saskia Pet Card EnchantressUBRG Yidris of the Chi-Ting Corporation WUBRG Tazri's Amazing Allies
My stable of decks started small. Then I built up a cycle of mono-colored decks (2/2 creatures for 1MM, after having already built Thada and Jaya). Then I slowly worked towards having a full collection of 32, plus a silver-bordered deck.
Now I build decks I think would be fun, and I don't take apart my old ones. Having a well-paying job helps. To echo my days playing City of Heroes, "I don't suffer from altitis, I revel in it."
I currently have 35 decks, with plans for 4 more.
I kind of hate you cause you are able to afford 32 decks when I can't even make rent each month.
I had 5 decks for a time but I felt spread too thin with that many. Now I usually have 2-4 with 3 being the most common. I always have one deck that is my "competitive" deck, right now this is Daretti, Scrap Savant. I also have a deck that I guess you could say is 75%, it has a fairly high power level but doesn't crush tables (usually), this is Geth, Lord of the Vault for me right now. Then I have a deck that is built for pure janky fun, right now this for me is Bladewing, the Risen.
I love to brew new decks so my decks tend to fluctuate. Daretti is brand spanking new, I haven't even finished it yet, it replaces my Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer stax build. Geth is in charge of a deck that changes commanders and strategies frequently. Right now it is more controlling with lots of Wrath effects and discard, not long ago it was Chainer, Dementia Master etb reanimator. Bladewing has been around forever and likely will be, even when I take it apart it comes back stronger, harder, faster, better.
Right now I'm brewing a few Dominaria legends but haven't settled on anything yet.
I have a few too many to play regularly and within that my Kresh deck is the one that I've put the most time into and will always take to the LGS. Most of the other decks I built and have remained the same since the day that they were put together and are simply not as good or as fun to play with. This kind of starts a cycle of "why bother when Kresh is more fun?" --> I don't update the deck to make it more fun.
As I end up scrapping decks often I've started to build up a box of staples and useful tech to put into new decks to keep costs down which is good for money but bad for deck building. Im curious to know if I'm the only one for who the staple box made me a more lazy deck builder. I will find a commander I liked, raid the staple box then call it done instead of searching for the hidden gems and niche cards that make a certain commander really work. It also means that a lot of my decks end up feeling similar despite having unique commanders.
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EDH BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern: RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
I have a few too many to play regularly and within that my Kresh deck is the one that I've put the most time into and will always take to the LGS. Most of the other decks I built and have remained the same since the day that they were put together and are simply not as good or as fun to play with. This kind of starts a cycle of "why bother when Kresh is more fun?" --> I don't update the deck to make it more fun.
As I end up scrapping decks often I've started to build up a box of staples and useful tech to put into new decks to keep costs down which is good for money but bad for deck building. Im curious to know if I'm the only one for who the staple box made me a more lazy deck builder. I will find a commander I liked, raid the staple box then call it done instead of searching for the hidden gems and niche cards that make a certain commander really work. It also means that a lot of my decks end up feeling similar despite having unique commanders.
I’ve noticed that with my decks, for sure. Since a lot of my decks share colors between them, they share a bunch of cards (anywhere from 25-30% I’d estimate) which really just make a stable platform to theme around. That’s actually part of why I don’t like more than the five I have. My group, even though brewing and playing casually, still knows how to press advantages when a card mismatch occurs, so I include resources and hard answers that adds to that cross-consistency. So for my meta, I don’t see it so much as laziness per se, but it is a situation I simply have to address when brewing or I get blown out as I’ve found out the hard way every time I went uber-wonky on theme. We may play casually without competitve combos, but we still use good cards, and lazy or wonky building just isn’t rewarded, lol.
Another thing I noticed is that my edh staples don’t lend much to my 60 card decks, of which format is still avidly played in my kitchen table group. For other peeps that might be different, I suppose. For as long as I had my Dune deck torn in pieces, I only ended up using about 6 or 7 of those cards elsewhere, which made for an easy re-constitution and upgrading.
For a while I kept about nine decks together at any point, a few that were complete, synergistic decks and a few that were kind of on trial to see if I wanted to keep them around. Lately, now that my play time has been severely limited I'm making an effort to really cut that number down, probably aiming for four or five total. The first three were easy to choose, but the last couple slots will be more difficult.
33 decks, and yet I find the energy to go out to my LGS (which is really not that local to me) maybe once a month. Time spent Magic-wise is like 90% brewing and 10% playing. I enjoy brewing and theorycrafting more than I enjoy actually going out to play. Used to have a good circle of friends to regularly play with, but for various reasons we can't do regular 'kitchen table' anymore that often.
So, I craft decks, some of which have not seen play in several months. But I enjoy the process of "iterating towards perfection" quite a bit. I enjoy having unique mechanical approaches to each of my decks, making them as different as I can while remaining fun to play out for me. (I can't play control worth a damn.)
Monetarily, I am not concerned but I am in a rather unique situation in that my wife is a lvl 3 judge so I very rarely have to actually go out and buy cards, other than the occasional old junk rare we don't have around or extras of. My "Magic budget" is treating her to the occasional dinner around release times, if you will.
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist
I love to brew new decks so my decks tend to fluctuate. Daretti is brand spanking new, I haven't even finished it yet, it replaces my Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer stax build. Geth is in charge of a deck that changes commanders and strategies frequently. Right now it is more controlling with lots of Wrath effects and discard, not long ago it was Chainer, Dementia Master etb reanimator. Bladewing has been around forever and likely will be, even when I take it apart it comes back stronger, harder, faster, better.
Right now I'm brewing a few Dominaria legends but haven't settled on anything yet.
amazingly epic sig courtesy of DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Planes.
As I end up scrapping decks often I've started to build up a box of staples and useful tech to put into new decks to keep costs down which is good for money but bad for deck building. Im curious to know if I'm the only one for who the staple box made me a more lazy deck builder. I will find a commander I liked, raid the staple box then call it done instead of searching for the hidden gems and niche cards that make a certain commander really work. It also means that a lot of my decks end up feeling similar despite having unique commanders.
BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern:
RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
Another thing I noticed is that my edh staples don’t lend much to my 60 card decks, of which format is still avidly played in my kitchen table group. For other peeps that might be different, I suppose. For as long as I had my Dune deck torn in pieces, I only ended up using about 6 or 7 of those cards elsewhere, which made for an easy re-constitution and upgrading.
The decks I'm for sure keeping are Chainer, Dementia Master reanimation control, Bruna, Light of Alabaster enchantment beatdown, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice lifegain and tokens, and Intet, the Dreamer ramp and dragons. I really don't know what else I'll keep, and what I'll do with the unused cards.
WU Bruna UW | R Kiki-Jiki R | RB New Chainer BR
Legacy - Burn | Pauper - Reanimator | Aristocrats | Burn
@votechainer2016