Large deck strategies

[Slugger]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy (More info?)

Does anyone know of any good links for large decks or have any ideas
for some? I am using a chromatic 150+ card deck but I'm not sure of the
ratios, of creatures and multi coloured lands etc. so it comes up short
sometimes.

Any ideas?
Cheers.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy (More info?)

To expand on what Klaus said
- Use cards that will give your deck some "movement." By that I mean
card drawing, cycling, card selection + shuffling, and tutoring. Giving
your deck movement will make it seem more consistent.

- Use cards that have a redundant effect. For example, if your 60 card
deck would use Terror, your 150 card deck should use Terror, Rend
Flesh, and Dark Banishing.

- Another way to get a redundant effect is to use non-land spells that
can get you land. The land-cyclers like Twisted Abomination can get
land or if you already have enough, serve as big beaters.

If you want to see how the pros do it, go to one of the strategy sites
and look at Battle of Wits decks. They generally run about 250 cards.
Casual gamers may play five-solor which is a very specific deck
building format, but still may be useful to see which cards get picked
for the deck and why.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy (More info?)

Slugger <upyer@bumbum.com> wrote:
> Does anyone know of any good links for large decks or have any ideas
> for some? I am using a chromatic 150+ card deck but I'm not sure of the
> ratios, of creatures and multi coloured lands etc. so it comes up short
> sometimes.

> Any ideas?
> Cheers.

Well, first off, I haven't *actually* played any large decks myself
unless one counts the seventy-odd card creations of my early days...
or occasional experiments in solitaire Apprentice mode. I just find
sixty-card decks convenient to carry. That said, I have thought
about trying nonstandard size decks on occasion before and I'm in
a talkative mood today, so here are some ideas...

-- First off, the obvious problem with a large deck is that your
chance of topdecking any particular card you need right now
goes *down*. Also, if I remember my statistics class correctly,
the bigger your deck gets, the more likely you are to encounter
clumps of some kind (and the bigger they'll be, on average) even
if you manage a perfect shuffle.

-- I'd keep the general mana ratio about the same as normal -- that
is, around 40% of the total deck size modulo circumstances. If
playing multiple colors, I'd also include more multicolored
mana sources than I normally do because it'd be harder to just
draw into the basic land I might want most.

-- Since the deck's so big, the regular four copies of a given card
won't go as far. You can't break the four-copy limit except for
basic lands and Relentless Rats (not without drawing complaints
when caught, anyway ), so if a given category of cards is
important to your deck, go looking for alternatives -- not to
replace your usual favorite cards, but to use in addition and
improve the chance of drawing *something* when you need it.
Again, if nothing else suggests itself, I'd try to keep the
relative proportions about the same as for a smaller deck and
experiment from there. (That is, if I thought a sixty-card deck
could run with eight anti-creature spells, then for a comparable
150-card creation I'd try to scrape together roughly 8 * 150 / 60
= 20 suitable ones. I'll freely admit that there may well be
themes for which large decks are uniquely suited that don't just
reflect 'smaller' deckbuilding principles, but I have no idea what
they might be, so far.)

-- Definitely use tutors, and whatever other card drawing you can
comfortably fit in. Your large deck is going to need them more
than a small one, and it has the room to spare.

That's about all I can think of for now. Well, that and "Don't take
your large deck to any tournaments unless you're really, really
sure what you're doing", I guess. The people there optimize their
Killer Dexx (tm) down to 60 or *maybe* 61 cards for a reason, after
all.

Hope this helps, or at least wasn't too boring to read.
--
Klaus Mittag (mittag@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de)
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <fancysig.h>
spam > /dev/null

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy (More info?)

Klaus Mittag <mittag@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de> wrote:

> -- Definitely use tutors, and whatever other card drawing you can
> comfortably fit in. Your large deck is going to need them more
> than a small one, and it has the room to spare.

I remember one virtual deck a friend created with about 1735 cards in
it. His tutor-type cards included some copies of Mangara's Tome. His
goal involved a mana loop and Prosperity ("Okay, we each draw 1001
cards.").
--
Daniel W. Johnson
panoptes@iquest.net
http://members.iquest.net/~panoptes/
039 53 36 N / 086 11 55 W

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy (More info?)

mypetrock@yahoo.com <mypetrock@yahoo.com> wrote:
>To expand on what Klaus said

And one more expansion: it's more important in big decks to make sure you LIKE
every card in the deck. If you're always at least moderately happy to draw
whatever's in there, rather than having some cards in there that are only
discard-filler or only in there because you can't think what else to put in
or only in there because you put them in before trying the deck out and never
took them out ... then your deck will work better. This is a consequence of
the "you'll have less of a chance to get to any individual card" lemma - if
you only really want to get to eight of your cards, you're going to be much
more unhappy with a 250 card deck than with a 61 card one.

A consequence of THAT is to make sure the cards you have generally work well
_with_ each other in multiple ways, also... because you're not going to be
drawing any given _combination_ of cards very often.

Dave