I haven't made or played a wedge deck since I took apart my sexy Thraximundar EDH, and I think I know why.
Making a GOOD three-color wedge is so much more time consuming than mono or guild-colored decks.
Surely, Wizards will come out with some tri-color I'm gonna be inspired to play. I'm not saying I'm done with three-color Commanders for forever. Just, you know, for now.
There's a lot more to it than just time and effort. I put a lot of time into building a deck. I'd rather prepare than just throw cards together.
I've experimented with many different ways of building decks, and I'd like to share a little bit of the process that has produced for me, some of my better successes.
Part I- Pick Your Commander
I'm probably no different from you here. This is the first natural step.
Looking for a General, however, is a completely different story.
When I first started playing, I had a good talk with one of my friends about how to find good Generals.
His ideas were that the General had to have a competitive P and T and a mana curve that would give you incentive to cast and recast it.
When we talked a couple years ago, we discussed playing a Green-Black Commander. I was getting ready to make my first deck, and I was debating between Vhati il-Dal and Sisters of Stone Death.
While I respect the ideas of making sure your General can get you 21 damage, I've always been a bit of an "EDH Hipster," if you will.
So, although I took my friends advice and Sisters of Stone Death was my first EDH deck, things are a little different for me now.
I guess I'm saying Vhati might actually be the GB General for me. I don't know.
One of the reasons that I would consider Vhati is because playing my General has never been something I want to be dependent on. I know this because I've played Voltrons like Kemba, Kha Regent, and the token master, Rhys the Redeemed. I don't have fun with those though now.
Back then, those decks excited me, but they weren't very good. By good, I mean I don't necessarily mean I lost a bunch of games, even though that's probably true.
What I mean is that the quality of the wins, the senses associated with winning in those decks didn't feel nearly as good as it is now with my Momir Vig deck, or my sweet mono Green Isao, Enlightened Bushi Dollar General deck.
Picking the card that's going to lead my deck happens when I find a creature that seems really fun to play as well as something that could be potentially competitive in the right circumstances.
I feel placing value on your general, relying heavily on Niv-Mizzet for a combo piece or a Skithiryx to Voltron Infect damage just seems boring, regardless of its effectiveness.
My advice is not to use so much analytical skill when you pick your general. Don't know what cards you're going to use, or what sleeves you're going to put them in. Listen to your impulse, whether it's a goofy general like Boris Devilboon, or the Elder Dragon Nicol Bolas.
Part II- Deck Construction
The first piece of advice I can give you is that if you don't have any inspiration for the deck, don't build it.
What I mean by inspiration mostly, is that you shouldn't try to build a deck without having some cards that really, truly excite you.
The more work you do on this end, the easier it'll be.
This means researching cards and ideas for what other people are doing in decks- Then, with all that knowledge, choosing 99 cards and a general that you're stoked about.
On an individual card level, inspiration can really come from anywhere.
For a while, I was on a kick where I wanted to play some of the strongest cards I could get my hands on, so I went out and spent some money on a Bitterblossom and Umezawa's Jitte.
Honestly though, they aren't even the most exciting cards for me. They pale in comparison to the first time I realized I could tutor for Krosan Tusker with my Fierce Empath so I could cycle Tusker to draw a card and get a land. Collectively, those two cards cost less than $1.00.
I'm not saying I made a deck around that combo, it's just one of the many nice things about playing green, cause as you know, I can't stand missing land drops.
The deckbuilding process, as an act, mostly consists of me doing any of the following:
1. Going through binders or on The Gatherer, researching cards or pulling them out of the protectors and putting them in a pile.
2. Looking at my General for a while. I sleeve it up, put it in a card protector (cause I'm snobby like that), admiring the art and letting its abilities soak into my brain.
3. Looking up other EDH decks with your Commander of choice.
4. Sitting in a chair, staring at the floor, occasionally raising a glass of beverage to my face.
Sounds weird, but that's how the ideas come to me.
Inspiration, when it's apparent in a deck, shows through in the majority of the cards.
There are layers and structure and themes, and the deck functions fairly consistent, even though you may be drawing completely different cards.
There's a certain synergy in successful decks that extends beyond just deck mechanics and being an engine. There might be protocol, textbook cards like Kodama's Reach or Cultivate- but what those cards do works toward the end goal of the deck, which should be to ultimately win the game. In short, a sort of Snowballing effect that creates victory.
I was actually pretty fortunate with the deck I mentioned earlier, my Momir Vig EDH.
I think maybe less than 20% of the original spells are left from my first draft several months ago.
My friends and I were looking to create fun decks that were a little more chaos and group hug themed. Our playgroup, which had pretty much dwindled down to me and another guy, had gotten pretty competitive, and we were looking for something new.
So I made Vig, complete with a bunch of goofy card draw spells and a Stormtide Leviathan. That was basically the deck.
As we started to revert back to our old, "play-to-win-the-game" habits though, our small little metagame began to get competitive.
Vig soon became a way to test resolve in a deck. It was a slow-paced blue deck, but with the power of Snapcaster Mage and Venser, Shaper Savant bouncing up and down with Riptide Laboratory, I was able to make an extremely resilient deck.
Then I added my Crucible of Worlds and a Land Destruction package, upping the land count to 42 because of utlity.
Then I got a real strange inspiration, one that's pretty atypical of the Vig builds I'd seen.
I threw in an artifact creature package. It really isn't that big, but it's enough. Solemn Simulacrum, Myr Battlesphere, Wurmcoil Engine, and Phyrexian Metamorph. They deviate because they're colorless, which means that they don't create value when Vig's on the table.
However, if people are expecting you to play Vig so you can toolbox and get value, you have an advantage in being able to rely on him only in select situations.
Then the deck had incredible targets for Rite of Replication and Spitting Image, not to mention plenty of land to copy my new creature base.
I know I've mentioned a bunch of great, expensive cards that really are great in a lot of decks- but I made them great with Momir Vig at the helm. That's my point.
Your deck is a constant process, one that you have complete knowledge and control of at the conscious and unconscious level. You've just got to figure out what pieces fit right and sit well for you.
Part III- Uploading Your Deck To The Interweb
I used to wait a couple weeks before I did this, and it's something I regret. After you finish your rough draft, you should immediately go to TappedOut.Net and put the list up.
Mostly, this will help give you a quick statistical analysis of your deck. It might not sound vital, but knowing things like your average converted mana cost and the color distribution in the deck will really help you appropriate your lands and spells more effectively.
Additionally, you'll get to see your cards in a list, in a more big-picture way, which will help you see as you go along.
Sometimes, when pulling out cards for decks, it's easy to forget what you sleeved up and what didn't make the cut, because you've separated the cardpool into a dichotomy of what isn't going in and what might go in, not what's in and and what isn't.
For me, it acts as a checklist, and playing Dollar General has really helped me with this habit, because I have to put the deck into tcgplayer.com to check the prices anyway.
Part IV- The Test(s)
So if you haven't done any sample drawing of the deck by now, you should be.
What I like to do is draw my seven cards and play out maybe five turns or so of Magic Solitaire, making sure I'm playing lands and drawing into useful cards, playing my Rampant Growths and my tutors or whatever. You know, "shuffle practice."
If you do this kind of stuff beforehand, I've found that I have better recollection in-game when I'm trying to pick out a line of play.
So after I've done this probably 10 or 12 times consistently, or enough to make me happy, it's actual battle time.
During the first match or so (best of 3), I'm usually very tough on the deck. I try to pay super-attentive to how it reacts and what are the problems it's going to face in the boardstate.
When I first started out I had trouble remembering the situations I was getting myself in, so I took a few notes. Don't be afraid to do the same. It'll only help make you a better player, and your recall will get super good once your brain figures out how to organize moves and turns.
Mostly, I focused on the bad plays, whether it was user error or a problem in the deckbuilding process. Either way, you'll have to either pull it up on the computer or spread the deck out on a table and give it a look.
This is because playing in your own style will create nuances, so you either fix the deck to do what's natural or you adapt to the way the deck needs to be played.
The best example is the fact that I'm very much a "hold mana up" kinda guy. I don't feel comfortable tapping out on my own turn unless I've got a little momentum and I don't think people are going to respond. That said, I play a lot of spells on other people's turns because it's easier to be a little more unpredictable.
Anyway, after the first match you'll probably get a good feel for a good portion of the deck. Hopefully, it's the cards you need.
If it isn't, this is where you might have to go back and switch out cards. If your strategy is falling flat for some reason, you might have to put it back on the drawing board and find something different.
When I was in school, I was writing short stories every two weeks for a writing professor. We would go to the class, he'd critique our papers, and at the end of every class, he'd tell us to take the critiqued story, "put it away, and never look at it again."
I'm not going to tell you something like this, but I think the lesson here is good. Don't be afraid to take a deck apart if you're not having fun with it, or you don't like it. And don't be opposed to putting it in the back of your mind, even if it's good. Make sure you catalog it though, in case you ever feel like you want to come back to it.
I've had to do this several times, and I'd wished on some of them that I'd put them on the Internet.
The ones I have though are great reference points to see where you've come from and how you're moving forward.
Well jeez. I've talked a lot.
Let me know your thoughts!
Pass Turn.
-Uncle Landdrops
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