Does this happen to you? I started a Sigarda, Heron's Grace deck that was supposed to be Eldritch Moon themed with a bunch of humans and other dorks providing utility and blockers until I could get out Brisela, Voice of Nightmares. I favored Tamiyo's Journal over Staff of Nin for card advantage and made other such flavor choices.
Then I started subbing in more useful angels for the dorks as my Brisela plan routinely got shafted. Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, original Sigarda took over at the helm of the deck, and suddenly my Bygone Bishop wasn't ever being activated.
The deck is still plenty playable, but would be much more efficient as a full blown angel/equipment deck or back to the humans matter deck it was originally intended to be.
I suppose the best plan would be to have a list for both decks and alternate, letting each thrive in its best version. When I get the oomph I'll do exactly that. But in the meantime, how many of you have found your original deck ideas corrupted as you edit your deck and suddenly have a split personality creation on your hands?
It's happened to me.
Most recently, I realized that my Alesha, Who Smiles at Death deck (list here) had become a bit unfocused and less fun to play as I ended up slotting in new interesting cards that didn't quite hit the artifact theme.
About a week ago, I took the deck into the lab and tried to refocus it back to what it was designed to be. I ended up cutting out an entire Monarch package and replaced that with more artifact based looting, e.g. Gate to the Afterlife and Hazoret's Monument, and some new artifact-focused ways of getting advantage, such as Smothering Tithe. In the end, I only ended up swapping out about 6-8 cards, but the deck has felt a lot more like it used to since I made the switch.
I think the key to avoiding "deck drift" over time is to make sure that every other new set or so, you take a good look at your deck and make sure it's still doing what you want it to do. I've found that putting my decks on tappedout has helped with this as well as I can get a snapshot of the deck without having to physically sort all the cards to see what it's doing.
I've found that putting my decks on tappedout has helped with this as well as I can get a snapshot of the deck without having to physically sort all the cards to see what it's doing.
I do this as a reference but for some reason have never used it as a tool to compare an A and a B version of a deck. I'll have to do that. (though sorting out my decks on the kitchen table is always satisfying for some reason, tactile interaction with my creation?) And deck drift is a pretty good term for the phenomenon.
Nissa can sort of change strategy really quickly and has a lot of tools at hand. Glissa is similar but slower and more unwieldy. This being said, most of my decks are sort of midrangey, so this isn't really all that surprising.
A lot of times. I have a bad habit of putting ALL card choices on the table, regardless of theme, and remove them one by one, and in the process I might ended up going for a different deck build, or enough indecision that I'd try to cramp all themes into the deck. Thantis, the Warweaver was one such case, from battle manipulation to token generation to low creature count to landfall... etc.
Good example was going over my landfall Damia deck to see if there's any cards there that would have a better home in Kynaios and Tiro lands deck... and I took out five cards with actual 'landfall', the mechanic, on them. Damia had evolved into something more to do with tokens and abusing discard, with the occasional nod (Trade Routes, The Gitrog Monster) to some actual land-changing-zones-and-benefiting kind of thing, but it wasn't really a "landfall" deck anymore.
Another case was certainly Ephara, God of the Polis spirit deck. The initial idea was just to play all the cards that make 1/1 flying spirit tokens. From my previous incarnation of Azorius and from few spirits that do the thing, the deck had a 'freeze creatures' theme. That plus generating a lot of flying tokens led to planeswalkers. And good ETBs on some of the spirits led to Astral Slide and blink shenanigans. And now the deck kind of wants to do all of that. Somehow. Come to think of it, it might warrant a look with the deck, haven't tinkered with it in a while...
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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
but it's also made the deck go from wonky to outright bad. It even loses to vanilla beaters.deck!
Other than that though, most of the decks i have have been pretty pin-point focussed to a specific strategy. I've even taken cards like sol ring out just 'cuz it doesn't fit with the deck's mantra/strategy without double-thinking myself.
but it's also made the deck go from wonky to outright bad. It even loses to vanilla beaters.deck!
Other than that though, most of the decks i have have been pretty pin-point focussed to a specific strategy. I've even taken cards like sol ring out just 'cuz it doesn't fit with the deck's mantra/strategy without double-thinking myself.
Just wanted to point out that Painter’s Servant is banned in multiplayer EDH.
I imagine most players have experienced "deck drift" over time as they tweak. When I started I had an Oloro deck that eventually go to the point where it was losing to combat damage a lot, so when I finally laid out the cards and looked at it as a whole I only had like 16-17 creatures left and that's why I never had blockers. I'd done so many in-place tweaks where I added a card and then removed a card (by going through the deck and sortof just picking one) that I'd changed about 10 creatures into non-creatures.
But it (and lots learned from videos and threads here) eventually taught me to look at the deck as a whole, somewhat by card type but mostly by function, when considering where a new card should go.
It's happened to me.
Most recently, I realized that my Alesha, Who Smiles at Death deck (list here) had become a bit unfocused and less fun to play as I ended up slotting in new interesting cards that didn't quite hit the artifact theme.
Snip
How is this working out with so many six+ drops and 32 land with barely any ramp? It feels like you're over relying on Alesha here which makes you too sawft to removal.
On-theme, have you considered Guiltfeeder with its built in evasion, Aleshability, and potential for massive swings? I like Workhorse a lot, but Guiltfeeder is better, from this Alesha connoisseur's experiences.
On artifacts: you probably couldn't go wrong with a Vault Skirge and Signal Pest. Other modular creatures look good too (hi, arcbound worker).
It's happened to me.
Most recently, I realized that my Alesha, Who Smiles at Death deck (list here) had become a bit unfocused and less fun to play as I ended up slotting in new interesting cards that didn't quite hit the artifact theme...
Speaking of that, I just took another look and realized that I had ended up really low on sacrifice outlets in the deck, so another tweak later and Viscera Seer and Priest of Forgotten Gods are in the deck.
I think that mono and 2-color decks are not completely immune from this, but it's a lot harder to go off the rails when you are limited to just 2 colors and artifacts. Once the universe opens up thousands more cards, things can go south real fast.
I created a cleric tribal deck with Tymna the weaver and Ravos, soultender, and it has too many themes: aggro, lifegain, sacrifice, and control. I built it to be less competitive that my other decks, but I still want it to feel streamlined and “go off” well.
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Modern
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
but it's also made the deck go from wonky to outright bad. It even loses to vanilla beaters.deck!
Other than that though, most of the decks i have have been pretty pin-point focussed to a specific strategy. I've even taken cards like sol ring out just 'cuz it doesn't fit with the deck's mantra/strategy without double-thinking myself.
Just wanted to point out that Painter’s Servant is banned in multiplayer EDH.
I know.
I'm currently testing how 'broken' painter's servant really is. So far, it's been completely fine. And I figured putting it in a deck that tries to break colour-interactions would show the more broken interactions. My playgroup has been far from impressed, but then again, they're not really all that worried about the official banlist.
Another deck i realised that has this weird split-focus is my teshar, ancestor's apostle deck. It used to be a combo deck based off teshar, sac outlets and 0-3 cmc artifact creatures, but it also happens to have the bombermancombo in it just because... i've no idea why really, but it doesn't actually fit in with the rest of the deck all that well. it feels like it does though.
Deck drift is not necessarily a bad thing at all, just gotta be mindful of its dangers. Trying something new can soup up your list in unexpected ways, but it's also important to constantly assess if the new direction is working and what are its main players. Implementing some quality measures to keep track of key deck constituents, e.g. a creature count, curve or whatever else is necessary for base functionality, is a good idea. Keeping a text record of the list goes a long way. As a practical example, my Daxos the Returned has drifted quite a bit. My initial spin was very pillow fort'y, then I dabbled with various forms of control, and now I'm exploring reliable card selection and value engines. With each of those passes, stuff that works (Sphere of Safety, Oppression, Sensei's Divining Top) stays, and stuff that flubs (Aurification, Nevermore, Azor's Gateway) leaves. As a result, the final product may not be quite as single-minded as what you started out with, but retains the strongest elements of each game plan and hopefully offers a more versatile shell.
Deck drift is not necessarily a bad thing at all, just gotta be mindful of its dangers. Trying something new can soup up your list in unexpected ways, but it's also important to constantly assess if the new direction is working and what are its main players. Implementing some quality measures to keep track of key deck constituents, e.g. a creature count, curve or whatever else is necessary for base functionality, is a good idea. Keeping a text record of the list goes a long way. As a practical example, my Daxos the Returned has drifted quite a bit. My initial spin was very pillow fort'y, then I dabbled with various forms of control, and now I'm exploring reliable card selection and value engines. With each of those passes, stuff that works (Sphere of Safety, Oppression, Sensei's Divining Top) stays, and stuff that flubs (Aurification, Nevermore, Azor's Gateway) leaves. As a result, the final product may not be quite as single-minded as what you started out with, but retains the strongest elements of each game plan and hopefully offers a more versatile shell.
EDH
Could not have said it better myself. This tends to be what I aim for, somehow. I've always found when I go too deep into a particular theme or strategy I end up with a deck that has significant weaknesses that are easily exploited, or something that looks great in a vacuum but ends up as a glass cannon in reality. Keeping a broader view while taking the strengths of different strategies often gives a deck more resilience to disruption and a few more avenues to take towards a win.
Deck drift is not necessarily a bad thing at all, just gotta be mindful of its dangers. Trying something new can soup up your list in unexpected ways, but it's also important to constantly assess if the new direction is working and what are its main players. Implementing some quality measures to keep track of key deck constituents, e.g. a creature count, curve or whatever else is necessary for base functionality, is a good idea. Keeping a text record of the list goes a long way. As a practical example, my Daxos the Returned has drifted quite a bit. My initial spin was very pillow fort'y, then I dabbled with various forms of control, and now I'm exploring reliable card selection and value engines. With each of those passes, stuff that works (Sphere of Safety, Oppression, Sensei's Divining Top) stays, and stuff that flubs (Aurification, Nevermore, Azor's Gateway) leaves. As a result, the final product may not be quite as single-minded as what you started out with, but retains the strongest elements of each game plan and hopefully offers a more versatile shell.
While this is some great advice and a good perspective to have, be wary of taking this approach too far as this can lead to decks devolving into just "good stuff" piles which end up boring and flavorless.
When doesn't it happen to me. Its usually getting caught up in the whole "But what if I add this card just in case of..." thoughts, repeating so ad nauseum.
Deck drift is not necessarily a bad thing at all, just gotta be mindful of its dangers. Trying something new can soup up your list in unexpected ways, but it's also important to constantly assess if the new direction is working and what are its main players. Implementing some quality measures to keep track of key deck constituents, e.g. a creature count, curve or whatever else is necessary for base functionality, is a good idea. Keeping a text record of the list goes a long way. As a practical example, my Daxos the Returned has drifted quite a bit. My initial spin was very pillow fort'y, then I dabbled with various forms of control, and now I'm exploring reliable card selection and value engines. With each of those passes, stuff that works (Sphere of Safety, Oppression, Sensei's Divining Top) stays, and stuff that flubs (Aurification, Nevermore, Azor's Gateway) leaves. As a result, the final product may not be quite as single-minded as what you started out with, but retains the strongest elements of each game plan and hopefully offers a more versatile shell.
While this is some great advice and a good perspective to have, be wary of taking this approach too far as this can lead to decks devolving into just "good stuff" piles which end up boring and flavorless.
Deck drift is not necessarily a bad thing at all, just gotta be mindful of its dangers. Trying something new can soup up your list in unexpected ways, but it's also important to constantly assess if the new direction is working and what are its main players. Implementing some quality measures to keep track of key deck constituents, e.g. a creature count, curve or whatever else is necessary for base functionality, is a good idea. Keeping a text record of the list goes a long way. As a practical example, my Daxos the Returned has drifted quite a bit. My initial spin was very pillow fort'y, then I dabbled with various forms of control, and now I'm exploring reliable card selection and value engines. With each of those passes, stuff that works (Sphere of Safety, Oppression, Sensei's Divining Top) stays, and stuff that flubs (Aurification, Nevermore, Azor's Gateway) leaves. As a result, the final product may not be quite as single-minded as what you started out with, but retains the strongest elements of each game plan and hopefully offers a more versatile shell.
While this is some great advice and a good perspective to have, be wary of taking this approach too far as this can lead to decks devolving into just "good stuff" piles which end up boring and flavorless.
Agreed. When I made my Varolz deck, I wanted to build a deck that could win from the position that my entire library is in my graveyard. This leaves me with a fairly narrow way to interact with certain strategies, but I’d be diluting the deck if I decided to add in Doom Blade, Damnation or Kodama’s Reach.
While this is some great advice and a good perspective to have, be wary of taking this approach too far as this can lead to decks devolving into just "good stuff" piles which end up boring and flavorless.
This is pretty much the primary danger of allowing multiple goals in deck building to go too far. While there’s nothing wrong with ‘goodstuff.dec’ per se, often they end up trying to do too much and achieving none of it. I’ve definitely been guilty of this, it’s a fine line to walk sometimes.
While this is some great advice and a good perspective to have, be wary of taking this approach too far as this can lead to decks devolving into just "good stuff" piles which end up boring and flavorless.
This is pretty much the primary danger of allowing multiple goals in deck building to go too far. While there’s nothing wrong with ‘goodstuff.dec’ per se, often they end up trying to do too much and achieving none of it. I’ve definitely been guilty of this, it’s a fine line to walk sometimes.
This is a non-issue, really. The answer is simple - play interesting commanders and make sure that the deck is actually about the commander This may be a personal thing though, I'm needlessly picky with regards to my legends.
I have a game to help think about this - I call it "Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon Synergy". Lets use as an example my first Toshiro Umezawa deck, which I didn't like how it turned out.
The primary synergy with Toshi is instants - without those, Toshiro does nothing, and he needs nothing else to have synergy.
Then you have stuff that supports that synergy but doesn't have synergy on its own, such as self-mill to get instants into your grave without casting them, or non-instant removal, which can trigger toshiro. So that's the second degree of synergy.
Once I had the self-mill, suddenly self-recurring creatures like reassembling skeleton were better. Now we're up to three degrees of synergy.
And once I had a bunch of self-recurring creatures, I needed something to do with them to get decent value besides just chump blocking. So then I threw in grave pact and dictate of erebos and the like. Holy crap, we're up to four degrees.
And finally, now that I've got a grave pact engine going, I need sac outlets to reliably trigger them instead of relying on blocks. Five degrees of synergy at this point. Yikes.
You can see where this went off the rails. By the end, there were a lot of cards that had no direct synergy with my commander, and I was spreading myself way too thin across many different functionalities of cards. The odds of drawing cards that didn't work well together was way too high, and a lot of my cards were very low-impact without synergies.
So I think it's worth analyzing card choices in this way. Think to yourself - "why is this card in my deck, what makes it good here?" And if you find that it takes quite a few degrees of synergy - by which I usually mean more than about 3 at absolute maximum - then you should probably reevaluate and try to refocus your deck.
I have a game to help think about this - I call it "Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon Synergy". Lets use as an example my first Toshiro Umezawa deck, which I didn't like how it turned out.
The primary synergy with Toshi is instants - without those, Toshiro does nothing, and he needs nothing else to have synergy.
Then you have stuff that supports that synergy but doesn't have synergy on its own, such as self-mill to get instants into your grave without casting them, or non-instant removal, which can trigger toshiro. So that's the second degree of synergy.
Once I had the self-mill, suddenly self-recurring creatures like reassembling skeleton were better. Now we're up to three degrees of synergy.
And once I had a bunch of self-recurring creatures, I needed something to do with them to get decent value besides just chump blocking. So then I threw in grave pact and dictate of erebos and the like. Holy crap, we're up to four degrees.
And finally, now that I've got a grave pact engine going, I need sac outlets to reliably trigger them instead of relying on blocks. Five degrees of synergy at this point. Yikes.
You can see where this went off the rails. By the end, there were a lot of cards that had no direct synergy with my commander, and I was spreading myself way too thin across many different functionalities of cards. The odds of drawing cards that didn't work well together was way too high, and a lot of my cards were very low-impact without synergies.
So I think it's worth analyzing card choices in this way. Think to yourself - "why is this card in my deck, what makes it good here?" And if you find that it takes quite a few degrees of synergy - by which I usually mean more than about 3 at absolute maximum - then you should probably reevaluate and try to refocus your deck.
This is the best explanation of this phenomenon that I've seen. Also pretty much sums up what happened to the deck in my op... It was a Sigarda humans and small useful dorks matter deck, so Skullclamp was super important as it's the best draw engine in the deck. So I put in Stoneforge Mystic to get clamp and to activate Bygone Bishop and Champion of Lambholt and others. But then I would draw Stoneforge Mystic when I already had clamp out and be like, wouldn't it be cool to have other equipment to go fetch, especially with beaters like Sigarda, Gisela, and Avacyn... And so how I end up split between a humans/dorks matter deck and an angels with swords deck.
Does the drifted deck play badly? No, but I consistently find myself wondering mid game what it is I'm trying to accomplish. I have good cards in my hand and on the battlefield, and I can do some decent damage, but part of the fun of playing a deck for me is piloting a well-tuned engine (is that a mixed metaphor? it might be).
If your deck drifts to good stuff and it's still fun to play, hey, cool. But that's not my jam.
The lesson for me here, and Dirk puts it so well, is not to mistake my support engines for the goal of my deck. If you're really digging that 4th level of synergy, then that's a sign you should build a deck that makes it a higher level of synergy, especially if you're frustrated at where the original intent of the deck has gone. Which is why my current project is to develop lists for both ends of the spectrum of my deck and decide which one is actually more fun to play.
I'm glad this thread and these responses cropped up. Having just posted the first list for Traxos, I can just SEE how far stretched I'm at. Pretty close to that level six synergy I feel. I never would have guessed in the heat of battle, but wow now that it's spelled out in front of me...yikes.
I have a game to help think about this - I call it "Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon Synergy". Lets use as an example my first Toshiro Umezawa deck, which I didn't like how it turned out.
The primary synergy with Toshi is instants - without those, Toshiro does nothing, and he needs nothing else to have synergy.
Then you have stuff that supports that synergy but doesn't have synergy on its own, such as self-mill to get instants into your grave without casting them, or non-instant removal, which can trigger toshiro. So that's the second degree of synergy.
Once I had the self-mill, suddenly self-recurring creatures like reassembling skeleton were better. Now we're up to three degrees of synergy.
And once I had a bunch of self-recurring creatures, I needed something to do with them to get decent value besides just chump blocking. So then I threw in grave pact and dictate of erebos and the like. Holy crap, we're up to four degrees.
And finally, now that I've got a grave pact engine going, I need sac outlets to reliably trigger them instead of relying on blocks. Five degrees of synergy at this point. Yikes.
You can see where this went off the rails. By the end, there were a lot of cards that had no direct synergy with my commander, and I was spreading myself way too thin across many different functionalities of cards. The odds of drawing cards that didn't work well together was way too high, and a lot of my cards were very low-impact without synergies.
So I think it's worth analyzing card choices in this way. Think to yourself - "why is this card in my deck, what makes it good here?" And if you find that it takes quite a few degrees of synergy - by which I usually mean more than about 3 at absolute maximum - then you should probably reevaluate and try to refocus your deck.
That's a good way to look at it, but the way I see it they're really degrees of separation. The self-mill and opponent-creature-death-trigger are directly related to the commander, but the self-recurring creatures are only related to the self-mill. The pacts could also be seen as bridging the sacrifice fodder creatures back to the commander for synergy with the death triggers rather than an additional degree of separation.
Then I started subbing in more useful angels for the dorks as my Brisela plan routinely got shafted. Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, original Sigarda took over at the helm of the deck, and suddenly my Bygone Bishop wasn't ever being activated.
The deck is still plenty playable, but would be much more efficient as a full blown angel/equipment deck or back to the humans matter deck it was originally intended to be.
I suppose the best plan would be to have a list for both decks and alternate, letting each thrive in its best version. When I get the oomph I'll do exactly that. But in the meantime, how many of you have found your original deck ideas corrupted as you edit your deck and suddenly have a split personality creation on your hands?
WUBRG Some of these decks can actually win games...WUBRG
How I know I should build a deck:
Most recently, I realized that my Alesha, Who Smiles at Death deck (list here) had become a bit unfocused and less fun to play as I ended up slotting in new interesting cards that didn't quite hit the artifact theme.
About a week ago, I took the deck into the lab and tried to refocus it back to what it was designed to be. I ended up cutting out an entire Monarch package and replaced that with more artifact based looting, e.g. Gate to the Afterlife and Hazoret's Monument, and some new artifact-focused ways of getting advantage, such as Smothering Tithe. In the end, I only ended up swapping out about 6-8 cards, but the deck has felt a lot more like it used to since I made the switch.
I think the key to avoiding "deck drift" over time is to make sure that every other new set or so, you take a good look at your deck and make sure it's still doing what you want it to do. I've found that putting my decks on tappedout has helped with this as well as I can get a snapshot of the deck without having to physically sort all the cards to see what it's doing.
magicjudge.tumblr.com
GWU Angus Mackenzie's Fog of War GWU / B Sheoldred's Sleepless Cemetery B / R Ashling's Purifying Pilgrimage R
U Unesh's Sphinx Storm U / R Ib's Goblins: What It Says On The Tin R / UR Okaun & Zndrsplt Flip Out UR
Oathbreaker: UB Ashiok's Persistent Nightmare UB
I do this as a reference but for some reason have never used it as a tool to compare an A and a B version of a deck. I'll have to do that. (though sorting out my decks on the kitchen table is always satisfying for some reason, tactile interaction with my creation?) And deck drift is a pretty good term for the phenomenon.
WUBRG Some of these decks can actually win games...WUBRG
How I know I should build a deck:
Nissa can sort of change strategy really quickly and has a lot of tools at hand. Glissa is similar but slower and more unwieldy. This being said, most of my decks are sort of midrangey, so this isn't really all that surprising.
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
Good example was going over my landfall Damia deck to see if there's any cards there that would have a better home in Kynaios and Tiro lands deck... and I took out five cards with actual 'landfall', the mechanic, on them. Damia had evolved into something more to do with tokens and abusing discard, with the occasional nod (Trade Routes, The Gitrog Monster) to some actual land-changing-zones-and-benefiting kind of thing, but it wasn't really a "landfall" deck anymore.
Another case was certainly Ephara, God of the Polis spirit deck. The initial idea was just to play all the cards that make 1/1 flying spirit tokens. From my previous incarnation of Azorius and from few spirits that do the thing, the deck had a 'freeze creatures' theme. That plus generating a lot of flying tokens led to planeswalkers. And good ETBs on some of the spirits led to Astral Slide and blink shenanigans. And now the deck kind of wants to do all of that. Somehow. Come to think of it, it might warrant a look with the deck, haven't tinkered with it in a while...
..now, it's half revolved around blind seer/hydroblast and didgeridoo/artificial evolution. There's something extremely rubbish but deeply satisfying changing my didgeridoo to fly in king crab to 'combo' with my trait doctoring guy.
but it's also made the deck go from wonky to outright bad. It even loses to vanilla beaters.deck!
Other than that though, most of the decks i have have been pretty pin-point focussed to a specific strategy. I've even taken cards like sol ring out just 'cuz it doesn't fit with the deck's mantra/strategy without double-thinking myself.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Just wanted to point out that Painter’s Servant is banned in multiplayer EDH.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
But it (and lots learned from videos and threads here) eventually taught me to look at the deck as a whole, somewhat by card type but mostly by function, when considering where a new card should go.
old thread
old thread
old thread
R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
How is this working out with so many six+ drops and 32 land with barely any ramp? It feels like you're over relying on Alesha here which makes you too sawft to removal.
On-theme, have you considered Guiltfeeder with its built in evasion, Aleshability, and potential for massive swings? I like Workhorse a lot, but Guiltfeeder is better, from this Alesha connoisseur's experiences.
On artifacts: you probably couldn't go wrong with a Vault Skirge and Signal Pest. Other modular creatures look good too (hi, arcbound worker).
Additionally, Siege-Gang Commander is considerably stronger than the Marionette Master. 😎
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
magicjudge.tumblr.com
GWU Angus Mackenzie's Fog of War GWU / B Sheoldred's Sleepless Cemetery B / R Ashling's Purifying Pilgrimage R
U Unesh's Sphinx Storm U / R Ib's Goblins: What It Says On The Tin R / UR Okaun & Zndrsplt Flip Out UR
Oathbreaker: UB Ashiok's Persistent Nightmare UB
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
I know.
I'm currently testing how 'broken' painter's servant really is. So far, it's been completely fine. And I figured putting it in a deck that tries to break colour-interactions would show the more broken interactions. My playgroup has been far from impressed, but then again, they're not really all that worried about the official banlist.
Another deck i realised that has this weird split-focus is my teshar, ancestor's apostle deck. It used to be a combo deck based off teshar, sac outlets and 0-3 cmc artifact creatures, but it also happens to have the bomberman combo in it just because... i've no idea why really, but it doesn't actually fit in with the rest of the deck all that well. it feels like it does though.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Could not have said it better myself. This tends to be what I aim for, somehow. I've always found when I go too deep into a particular theme or strategy I end up with a deck that has significant weaknesses that are easily exploited, or something that looks great in a vacuum but ends up as a glass cannon in reality. Keeping a broader view while taking the strengths of different strategies often gives a deck more resilience to disruption and a few more avenues to take towards a win.
While this is some great advice and a good perspective to have, be wary of taking this approach too far as this can lead to decks devolving into just "good stuff" piles which end up boring and flavorless.
magicjudge.tumblr.com
GWU Angus Mackenzie's Fog of War GWU / B Sheoldred's Sleepless Cemetery B / R Ashling's Purifying Pilgrimage R
U Unesh's Sphinx Storm U / R Ib's Goblins: What It Says On The Tin R / UR Okaun & Zndrsplt Flip Out UR
Oathbreaker: UB Ashiok's Persistent Nightmare UB
Agreed. When I made my Varolz deck, I wanted to build a deck that could win from the position that my entire library is in my graveyard. This leaves me with a fairly narrow way to interact with certain strategies, but I’d be diluting the deck if I decided to add in Doom Blade, Damnation or Kodama’s Reach.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
This is pretty much the primary danger of allowing multiple goals in deck building to go too far. While there’s nothing wrong with ‘goodstuff.dec’ per se, often they end up trying to do too much and achieving none of it. I’ve definitely been guilty of this, it’s a fine line to walk sometimes.
This is a non-issue, really. The answer is simple - play interesting commanders and make sure that the deck is actually about the commander This may be a personal thing though, I'm needlessly picky with regards to my legends.
Kevin BaconSynergy". Lets use as an example my first Toshiro Umezawa deck, which I didn't like how it turned out.The primary synergy with Toshi is instants - without those, Toshiro does nothing, and he needs nothing else to have synergy.
Then you have stuff that supports that synergy but doesn't have synergy on its own, such as self-mill to get instants into your grave without casting them, or non-instant removal, which can trigger toshiro. So that's the second degree of synergy.
Once I had the self-mill, suddenly self-recurring creatures like reassembling skeleton were better. Now we're up to three degrees of synergy.
And once I had a bunch of self-recurring creatures, I needed something to do with them to get decent value besides just chump blocking. So then I threw in grave pact and dictate of erebos and the like. Holy crap, we're up to four degrees.
And finally, now that I've got a grave pact engine going, I need sac outlets to reliably trigger them instead of relying on blocks. Five degrees of synergy at this point. Yikes.
You can see where this went off the rails. By the end, there were a lot of cards that had no direct synergy with my commander, and I was spreading myself way too thin across many different functionalities of cards. The odds of drawing cards that didn't work well together was way too high, and a lot of my cards were very low-impact without synergies.
So I think it's worth analyzing card choices in this way. Think to yourself - "why is this card in my deck, what makes it good here?" And if you find that it takes quite a few degrees of synergy - by which I usually mean more than about 3 at absolute maximum - then you should probably reevaluate and try to refocus your deck.
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
This is the best explanation of this phenomenon that I've seen. Also pretty much sums up what happened to the deck in my op... It was a Sigarda humans and small useful dorks matter deck, so Skullclamp was super important as it's the best draw engine in the deck. So I put in Stoneforge Mystic to get clamp and to activate Bygone Bishop and Champion of Lambholt and others. But then I would draw Stoneforge Mystic when I already had clamp out and be like, wouldn't it be cool to have other equipment to go fetch, especially with beaters like Sigarda, Gisela, and Avacyn... And so how I end up split between a humans/dorks matter deck and an angels with swords deck.
Does the drifted deck play badly? No, but I consistently find myself wondering mid game what it is I'm trying to accomplish. I have good cards in my hand and on the battlefield, and I can do some decent damage, but part of the fun of playing a deck for me is piloting a well-tuned engine (is that a mixed metaphor? it might be).
If your deck drifts to good stuff and it's still fun to play, hey, cool. But that's not my jam.
The lesson for me here, and Dirk puts it so well, is not to mistake my support engines for the goal of my deck. If you're really digging that 4th level of synergy, then that's a sign you should build a deck that makes it a higher level of synergy, especially if you're frustrated at where the original intent of the deck has gone. Which is why my current project is to develop lists for both ends of the spectrum of my deck and decide which one is actually more fun to play.
WUBRG Some of these decks can actually win games...WUBRG
How I know I should build a deck:
I appreciate this thread.
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko