‘Ello ladles and jellyspoons! Today I’m bringing you a concept; a single aspect of deck building that I have been thinking about due to recent events.
As you know Pioneer was dropped on us a couple weeks ago and since then I’ve been brewing. With that I have encountered a timeless dilemma that I face associated with that process: To synergize, or not to synergize?
Early in my “Modern career” (not sure what to call it) after I had Burn built I wanted to expand my horizons by building a second deck. Some how I came across a list for BW Tokens, noticed it was pretty cheap, and thought it was pretty cool considering how Lingering Souls and Intangible Virtue were banned during their time in Standard. Me being still relatively new to the format thought to myself, “these cards were banned in Standard they must be good!” So naturally I wanted to build a deck with the former forbidden fruit. And this is where one of the deck’s “flaws” revealed itself to me.
Now, before I go any further let me make this clear: All decks poses an inherent chance to mana screw or mana flood you. This is what’s called a constant variable. Seeing as all decks poses this same characteristic I’m not going to factor it in the equation of deck building.
What I’m talking about today is…
Drawing the wrong part of your deck.
What I mean by this is drawing what would be a near perfect hand (2-3x lands maybe and about 4-5x spells) but those spells only enable half of your game plan. See below:
Now, some of you might be thinking keep it and pray for a Lingering Souls or Bitterblossom, or suck it up and just mulligan. But here is the thing: had the deck not been dependent upon drawing a token generating spell to keep this hand we wouldn’t have had to mulligan… Due to the nature of the deck, it’s at a disadvantage in that the deck requires you to draw part A + part B in order for it to function properly.
However, one can argue that this risk is worth the reward in that when you are able to draw part A + part B the synergy is so powerful it makes it totally worth it. I was reminded of this while I was testing Mono-Red Cavalcade for Standard the other day. The deck is REALLY good when you get an awesome combination of cards and I’m able to cast them on curve. Other times when I just draw five 1-drop haste dudes in a row and maybe a burn spell the deck feels REALLY bad and lack luster…
Combo is a weird exception to this phenomena. Because Combo is trying to assemble one (Scapeshift) or two cards (Splinter Twin + Pestermite) to win, it devotes the remaining slots in the deck to ensuring it finds just those combo pieces. There are still times where you dig 10+ cards deep and die before you can assemble the combo but it’s much less likely to occur than compared to BW Tokens being 100% dependent upon drawing part A + part B naturally.
Raw Power.
It would be years later, shortly after Bloodbraid Elf got unbanned, that I would build Jund and discover the value of cards being independently powerful regardless of what the rest of the deck was doing. With Jund every card is powerful in it’s own right, you don’t need to have part A in order for part B to be good. You can go from being dead on board to top decking a BBE, cascading into a Push killing their blocker, and you’re right back in the driver seat. Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t times where you need to draw certain cards playing Jund. There will be times where when going into game 2 that you will need to mulligan if you don’t have a Thoughtseize or an Inquisition in your opening hand vs. Bogles or if you can’t find Collector Ouphe vs. Thopter/Sword combo. Same can be said for Burn vs. Storm, you don’t just want to find those sideboard cards but you want to find every copy of Eidolon of the Great Revel that you can. My point is: in a vacuum game 1 these decks and the cards in them function independently of each other and are able to execute their game plan a higher % of time. By simply removing (or reducing to a minuscule amount in the case of Burn) the possibility of drawing the wrong half of your deck it greatly increases the consistency of the deck which is a strength in itself. The person with more cards usually wins (or at least has a higher chance of winning…) and by playing a deck that mulligans less you’re giving yourself an advantage before the game even starts.
So, to synergize and introduce the risk of drawing the wrong part of your deck but have a crazy powerful deck when the stars align? Or not to synergize and play it safe by just jamming your deck full of independently powerful BRG stuff like Jund does? That is the question.
Well thanks for reading and hopefully this article gave you something to consider as you’re brewing your next deck! 😀
And as always, if you’re in the market for some snazzy new sleeves be sure to cruise on over to the shop and use my discount code MADMAGIC for 15% off on your next purchase.
