A good curve is something that is often brought up in deck design, but I don’t often see explanations for it, except maybe the reasoning that you should have something to do in each part of the game. Well, its a bit more in-depth than that.
There’s been a nice influx of new players on the scene in our FNM, and I noticed they play lands whenever they can, so I thought this might be an interesting topic to discuss as a sort of primer on the subject, because it might not always be clear when to keep those lands in hand.
A month of so back I lamented on how people don’t really design decks anymore, so I guess I have to do it myself.
Of course, I’m not a real expert on the subject, but I do have some experience on. Furthermore, I am quite experienced in the field of software development and teaching. These two disciplines are actually quite similar and use a lot of the same principles.
I’ll be using an example of current standard, which might not be very timeless, but it is a way to showcase the process (or at least a process, because there are obviously many ways to do stthis).
I was at the Nordic Judge Conference this weekend and slow play was one of the topics raised most often. Its a difficult area and there are no hard lines you can follow. PV wrote an excellent article on the subject of the inherent problems (with very good examples), so I’m not going go deeper into that, but I’ll offer my ideas on how to avoid going into time.
The intricacies of the Stack came up yesterday again in our EDH games. To me its natural, but that’s probably because it was actually a big part of my education. However, since not everyone has a master’s degree in software engineering, I think this is something that needs a bit of explanation. It is probably the most difficult part of the rules that you actually need to know.
Based on my experience. Of course, there’s plenty of rules mistakes and deck building mistakes, but I’m focusing on easy-to-fix problems. Also, even though I’m giving specific examples, I’m trying to fix larger problems.
In order to make their game more approachable to new players and to keep the game fresher, Wizards’ R&D began to emphasize creatures over spells. This has been good for the game, as now those cards that appeal to new players are actually good, and not just heartbreaking as they are easily dispatched or countered as they used to be.
There’s an old article from last millenium by Mike Flores called Who’s the Beatdown?, which is still available on SCG.com. Its about assignment of who is the beatdown and who is the control and what can result from not understanding this.
What I’m talking about today, are the decks that want to be the beatdown in most situations.
There’s plenty of daily strategy content on the Mothership, Star City Games, Channel Fireball, and other places. However, those are targeted at people, who are generally not that interested in deckbuilding, and who are fairly familiar with the game. Here I’m going for the beginner audience.
Taking a mulligan is always a hard decision. Every time. We do our best to justify keeping our hands, because going to six and not knowing what you are going to draw is scary. However, its not that bad.