Giant in the Playground Forums - View Single Post - Magic: The Gathering Thread XIV: Instant Annoying, Just Add Hexproof

tgva8889 · 07-01-2012, 10:07 PM

Past topics since the first post takes up too much space:

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List of MtG-related websites put together by Johnny Blades and others:

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GITP Magicgroup play-by-post

Card Design Challenge Thread

Requested: A short commentary on sorting your deck, by tgva8889:

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When building a deck, sorting your cards is very important. While the following advice applies mainly to Highlander formats (specifically Commander), you may find it useful in other formats.

The largest problem I’ve observed in deckbuilding is cutting cards. We all know that you have the best odds when you play the smallest number of cards. The difference may seem small, but every difference matters. When you’re trying to remove cards from your deck, you are trying to find the cards you don’t need. However, if your methods of sorting are inefficient, it’s very hard to see what exactly you “don’t need” in your list. I mean, looking at a random pile of 80 cards, which 20 cards don’t you need? You couldn’t know without knowing some aspect of those cards. Sorting allows you to classify your cards by some useful characteristic, so that you can tell whether or not you do have parts that are in excess of what you need or cards that you actually just don’t need.

While there are many methods of sorting, I think the first method of sorting everyone is most familiar with is Type Sorting. This is where you sort your deck list by whatever card types you happen to have. The most common is Land, Creatures, and Non-Creatures. While it is a useful rudimentary step, this form of sorting is fundamentally flawed. Most of the time, this doesn’t help you. For example, let’s take two cards that share a type: Sakura-Tribe Elder and Woodfall Primus. Now, obviously these are both Green creatures. But that’s where the similarity ends. One of these cards is a land-accelerator only pretending to be a creature for long enough to block, while the other is a huge 6/6 that eats a permanent. These things are not very similar. However, a sort by Card Type puts these cards in the same classification category. On the other side, Flame Slash and Flametongue Kavu don’t share a card type, but it’s hard to deny you wouldn’t use both to kill creatures given the option. These cards would be in totally different parts of your list, though!

It is much easier to see a flaw if cards are sorted in a different manner. The manner that I suggest is the Function Sort. Sort all your cards by their intended function in your deck. For example, Sakura-Tribe Elder is a card you play for Mana Acceleration, so I sort it into the Mana Acceleration section. Woodfall Primus ends up in my Kills Non-Creatures secton. Both Flame Slash and Flametongue Kavu end up in my Kills Creatures section. This method allows you to see the cards by the purpose they serve in your deck, rather than by an arbitrary category. (You could sort your Lands this way, too, but I consider “Land” to be a Function, as lands are very special cards.) Some example categories pretty much every deck should be considering:

Win Conditions
Mana Acceleration/Fixing
Card Drawing
Library Manipulation
Kills Creatures
Kills Non-Creatures
Kills Lots of Stuff (Wraths)

Now, you can also condense those categories if you want. For example, “Kills Creatures” and “Kills Non-Creatures” could just be listed as “Kills Stuff” if it’s not really significant that you have a certain spread.

(I’ll add an example, but this is the bare-bones of the suggestion.)

Also, please let us know if you want something in the first post added, edited or removed.