Deckbuilding tips and approaches

[Joblin Velder]

My wife and I have been interested in starting EDH in our casual group for a while. We decided to write up lists this week and head to the local store this weekend to play a few games and get others interested.

I underestimated how intimidating building a 100 card Highlander deck is. There are so many options and so many slots to fill up, I'm completely overwhelmed. That being said, I've got a few questions:

1) About how many mana sources do you find yourself running on average?

2) How much of a role does the general play for you in deck construction?

3) What are some of your favorite "staple" EDH cards?

4) How do you go about deck construction in general?


Thanks, guys!

[Harlequin]

1) I usually try not to play games with my manabase.  So 40 is a minimum, and usually somewhere in between.  Esepcailly if you add "big mana" like Gauntlet of Power, Gilded Lotus, Etc...

2) It all depends on the build of the deck.  

Some generals are a one-man-show, meaning the entire deck is built around the general.  Your entire plan is to stick the general and accomplish something (like Zur or Arcum Dag).

Other generals are simply a showcase for the colors you want to play and almost never get played.  You might see anything here... Progenitus, Child of Alar, or just some cool looking card from Legends.

Most EDH decks are somewhere in between where the general is really good along with the theme of your deck, however the theme of your deck could stand alone without the general.  So like Stygg, Azame, Golden Tail.  

4) When deciding on an EDH deck you need to decide if you want to pick a chicken or an egg (so to speak).  You can either Pick your general, and then design a deck around them; or get a basic theme and color scheme - then find a general that brings it together.

The two lists I put up are examples of iether school.  The Arcum deck started with the general.  I thought to myself "hrmm, this seems like a really broken effect..." and I went with that.  I sectioned off mana, and made an effort to run as few creatures as I could get away with.    The Ghost Coucil deck was the opposite.  I thought "What can I build for Multiplayer... I know run a deck with 25 board sweepers!" So I started to look through some card filters and made a list (separted by color) of all the sweepers.  Then I decided "ok, White for sure, black is solid, green or red are good fillers".  So I started to look at generals who had some white in them.  Spesficially searching for ones who could dodge a sweeper effect.  And thus, I ended up with Ghost Council(WB).

3) I'm probably not the best for EDH staples...

From what I've found you can't really go wrong with running "good cards" from other format.  So stuff like Jitte, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Sensies Top, etc, etc the list goes on for a while.  I would say almost any "competative" EDH deck should be running those 4 cards.

Also if you play in multiplayer, there are always cards that are amazing in multiplayer: Mind's Eye, Rystic Study, Syphon Mind, etc.

So those cards asside, I'll focus on this with a few diamonds in the rough, of EDH Gems that arn't very good in other formats.

General Damage  Cards that can give obscene amounts of Power to 1 creature are really good because of general damage.  Some examples might be Sigil of Distiction or Cranial Plating.

40 Life Cards that involve Lifepayment are slightly stronger in EDH.  It's usually not enought to turn any card with a life payment into gold - but cards that are sorta good in other formats that involve life payments tend to be very strong.  A great example is Sylvan Library, or to a lesser extend Phyrexian Arena.  Every time my general has some green, my list starts wtih Sylvan Library!  

Command Zone Cards that move generals to locations other than the GY or Exile are powerful.  Especially if you can get those cards on the bottom or shuffled into thier owners library.  the Green Command, and Condemn are cards that can do this - and are commonly played.  There's also a blue one but I can't remember the name.  According to the rules, if a general would be put into the library or into its owners hand, they cannot replace this effect.

Color Hosers You know your opponent is going to be played cards of a spesific color.  So Cards like Mother of Runes, or Even Akroma's Memorial see alot of play.  

Name a Card Name a card effects are often very week in highlander formats.  However in EDH you've got at least 1 card staring you in the face that you can name to cause alot of damage.  So Pithing Needle, Meddling Mage, and even Declaration of Naught can be solid anti-general cards.  Along those lines, cards that hate on Legendary cards are powerful as well.

By no means do you need to include all of these concepts in one deck, but hopefully that will get you thinking like an EDH player.


* as an asside

This gets down into the strategy of each type of general.  EDH has a unique feature when compared to other formats in that you ALWAYS have ONE spesific card in hand.  This is a tremendous power when it comes to construction.  Also not only do you always have your general in your opener, you have an un-ending supply of generals.  So you really CAN focus your deck on this one dude.

However in that lies a danger... If you focus too strongly on your general, you run the risk of having a dangerous lynchpin to your deck.  Cards that revoke access to your general can shut your deck down completely.  Losing the game to pithing needle is a rough way to go. 

Obviously there is no right answer here, its all preferance.  Balancing the power of the Command Zone vrs the danager of losing to General-hate, is part of the fun of choosing a general.  As I see long-time vintage friends pick up EDH its really interesting to see what generals they pick, I feel like we project some of our own personaility on our General selection.

[Matt]

First off, Harlequin gave a lot of really good tips. I agree with basically all of them, it's going to be tough to add to that list!

1) About how many mana sources do you find yourself running on average?

2) How much of a role does the general play for you in deck construction?

3) What are some of your favorite "staple" EDH cards?

4) How do you go about deck construction in general?

1. Usually 33-35 lands and 5-12 other mana sources (green "ramp" spells, artifact mana). It's proibably not enough though, I get screwed a lot, I just can't bring myself to cut some of my favorites! Also, if your general is mono-colored or cheap (Gaddock Teeg), you can probably use fewer. I have a Kuon, Ogre Ascendant deck with basically just swamps for mana.

2. I like to take a mid-range approach, where the deck works fine without the general, but th general has a strong effect, not just being used for colors. For example, Sharuum the Hegemon: the deck has plenty of internal Esper-synergy, but Sharuum's zombify effect synergizes even more. This is my favorite approach.

My Kresh deck is slightly more built around the general. Many cards (sweepers) are suboptimal without him on board, and a few like Whispersilk Cloak and Shizo, Death's Storehouse are almost exclusively for use with Kresh.

My Kuon deck is built 100% around the general. I always plan to have him in play and flipped, so I make the deck essentially creatureless (There's a Snake Basket and some things like manlands).

I don't really ever pick a general just for the color scheme, although I am considering a Horde of Notions deck primarily so I can play Maelstrom Nexus.

3. The green ramp package (see my Kresh list) seems like it should go in almost every green EDH deck. Beyond that, Hinder is one of the best counters. The #2 card I think should/could be in every deck though is Solemn Simulacrum (#1 is Sol Ring of course). I'd probably even put SS in Kuon!

4. Deck construction for me begins with thinking of something I want to do: for example, I want to play with Maelstrom Nexus, so I had to pick a 5-color general. Or another project I'm tinkering with: I want to play CIP creatures, sacrifice them to some profitable effect, and recur them with Oversold Cemetery or Phyrexian Reclamation. So I picked Thraximundar as general, and pulled out a list of about 200 potential cards to use, and am working on paring it all down into a usable decklist.

[Joblin Velder]

Thanks for the help, guys! It made things a lot easier.

[Anusien]

The easiest way to build an EDH deck is to get a theme and 3 colors.  Ironically I find it easiest to build more highly colored decks because it's easier to get 100 solid cards.  Better to be overwhelmed with choice.  The problem with building an EDH deck are the last 20 cards, not the first 50.  You may find it easy to start with two colors and find which third color works best for what you're trying to do.

My favorite cards:
Colorless: Solemn Simulacrum, Mindslaver, Mind's Eye, Darksteel Ingot, Coalition Relic, Nevinyrral's Disk, Oblivion Stone, Winding Canyons
Green: Woodfall Primus, Tooth and Nail, Survival of the Fittest, Primal Command, Seedborn Muse, Genesis, Eternal Witness
Black: Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni, Cabal Conditioning, Myojin of Night's Reach, Makeshift Mannequin, Torrtured Existed, Puppeteer Clique, Kagemaro, First to Suffer, Decree of Pain
Blue: Mystic Remora, Commandeer, Misdirection, Spelljack
Red: Recoup, Wild Ricochet, Reiterate, Vicious Shadows, Stalking Vengeance, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
White: Martial Coup, Mirror Entity

Other: Memory Plunder

[Epoch16]

I love EDH and play very often.

1)  About how many mana sources do you find yourself running on average?

     I always, always, always start with at least 36 lands and adjust from there. Most of my decks end up running 41-38 land. The more expensive the cards in your deck, the more mana sources you will need. Also as others have mentioned, you should look into using cards to help ramp up you mana development. Things like Rampant Growth, and Kodama's reach are good, just as some artifacts that can tap for mana are good. But a word of caution:  Too many signets/talismans become a liability when someone decides to destroy all non-land permanents. Keep your signet/talisman count to less than 5. I normaly only run 3-5 signet type artifacts.

2)  How much of a role does the general play for you in deck construction?

     That depends on whether I am building around an idea, or whether i am building around a card. I have deck that uses Numont, the Devastator as a general, but has no intention of ever playing its general. And just the opposite, I have a deck that is built around Adamaro, First to Desire that is focused on a brutal frontal attack led by massive quantities of general damage. It depends heavily on your personal style.

3)  What are some of your favorite "staple" EDH cards?

     Sensei's Divining Top. Lightning Greaves. Any card that provides 2 for 1 card advantage.

4)  How do you go about deck construction in general?

     Same way I build a deck for any format. Research, research, research. Playtest, playtest, playtest. Refine, refine, refine. To be more specific, once a have written everything out on paper, I study it for a couple of days to give me time to think about card interaction. It is also at this time I do most of my research to make sure I haven't missed anything obvious. Please note I don't limit myself to only cards I own. If the card exists I might as well consider running it. Even if I can't afford that peticular card, there might be a cheaper compromise that I can aford. Once I am happy with this part of my brainstorming, I construct the deck, using proxies as nessasary. I then playtest the crap out of it making cuts to help focus, or speed up the deck if possible.


     One thing to mention:  No matter what colors you choose to play be sure that you have several ways to destroy or RFG each of the different permanent types. And if possible be sure to pack at least 1-2 cards for GY hate. Remember that your 100 card deck doesn't have a sideboard. So you will need to be prepared for other various stategies that may pop up out of nowhere. Think about it like this:  If you decide to play mono-red, and one of your opponents decides to play Circle of Protection: Red, are you going to scoop? Or are you going to laugh and play a kicked Urza's Rage? Don't lose to single card strategies.