The first thing that I'd like to discuss this week is the Deck Clinic. While I've had a great time the last past eight months helping others tweak their decks, operating the Deck Clinic has slowly begun to take up more and more of my time. While that's not a bad thing, I felt the quality of the decks that I was turning out wasn't quite there and so the Deck Clinic is going to be on a bit of a hiatus for the immediate future. I appreciate everyone who has every emailed me and I apologize if I may have never gotten back with you on a deck-there where sometimes just too many!

After a brief chat with the powers that be at Daily Metagame, it was decided that I could have free reign to pick my next project. I've certainly given that a lot of thought but I haven't yet made up my mind. With a deadline soon approaching, I felt it would be a good time to share the process that I used for most of my Deck Clinic articles in a hope that it will help folks at home better able to tweak their own decks.

STEP ONE: Pick a Deck!

This step certainly seems easy but it is often the most challenging for a lot of us players. Most folks that are building decks at home fall into 3 basic categories: Net Decks, Net Brews, and Home Brews.

For the Deck Clinic, I would often only choose Home Brews simply because most had never seen the light of day and most people found that refreshing. Each of us has someone at their local Battlegrounds (perhaps that person is you!) that bucks the metagame and brings something completely original and off the wall. Sometimes it's the guy with the Alliance Grand Crusader or the young kid playing Solo Rogue as that's what he plays in the MMO. Whatever the case may be, Home Brews have the greatest potential for failure but they also happen to be the greatest surprise factor.

My next category for decks is what I affectionately call the Net Brews. I define Net Brews as version of popular decks that someone has tweaked substantially enough that the deck plays a bit different while still bearing some resemblance to the original deck. An example of this would be the Mage deck that I won my local Battleground with the week after the MetaMart Core 3k in Phoenix. I followed the coverage pretty closely but the Mage list didn't go live until later in the evening. Following the coverage, I guessed at the exact numbers of the deck and put it together hours before the deck lists went up. The crux of the deck seemed to be the combination of [Baxton, Herald of Flame], [Timriv the Enforcer], [Edwin VanCleef], [Miniature Voodoo Mask], and [Ice Barrier]. While my list shared a fair bit with the deck lists from the event that got published, I made certain local meta-game calls such as adding in more [Ripple]s and cutting back on the [Bottled Knowledge]s (not to mention not even running [Vanessa VanCleef]). The deck was around 10-12 cards different from the final lists but they both shared the same basic win condition.

The final classification of deck lists where the Net Decks. I've always defined the Net Deck as an exact copy of a popular and successful deck. A good example (and funny story) about this would be the individual that emailed me a version of [Grand Crusader] that was a card-for-card exact match for the version that Hans Hoeh won Worlds 2011 with. I read further into the email as the writer proceeded to tell me that he and his friends had been working on this deck for the better part of a month and that he'd appreciate any input that I could give. I honestly could not tell if the individual was joking or not so I never responded to the email but I know for a fact the writer was not Hans. Story aside, Net Decks serve a place in any TCG and I find them to be a very valuable tool, specifically for testing purposes. I've been known to net-deck most of the Top 8 of a tournament so I can not only understand the decks better (and how to beat them) but also give my opponent's a chance to test against a known commodity. While I generally don't take Net Decks to constructed events, they are the baseline of the meta and anyone who wants to make a Home Brew really needs a good understanding of them and have a game plan to handle each.

STEP TWO: Test Your Initial Idea

This is often the most difficult part of the Deck Clinic as it takes the largest chunk of time. With any deck list that was ever sent to me, the first thing I did before making any judgments or tweaks was to put the deck together on MWS and fire it up against my testing gauntlet-AS IS.

This is the step where either a good memory or a little bit of note-taking greatly benefits the tester. I have a testing gauntlet file in my MWS file that currently hosts 7 decks for the post-Crown metagame. As I put each deck through its paces against my gauntlet, I take notes on what in the deck is working and what isn't. Perhaps the deck that I'm testing is super aggressive and is packing some three cost reveal quests that I never get around to using or I'm possibly playing a slow control deck that is packing no quests. I'll take as detailed notes as I can and review them after playing against each deck in the gauntlet.

While reviewing my notes, I'll check for patterns such as “Drew card X and promptly died” or “Played card Y on turn 1 and was able to deal 12 damage with it”. A good example of this would be my notes from one of my latest Deck Clinics, Peace and Harmonize. The deck was a Horde Harmonize deck looking to abuse [Karkas Deathhowl] for a couple of different infinite combos. The deck was sent to me as a Shaman deck but my testing notes turned out like this:

[Monstrous Totem] was removed as soon as it hit play by [Righteous Cleanse].

Turn 1 [Keeper Sharus] killed by [Sava'gin the Reckless] trigger.

[Monstrous Totem] killed by a [Grand Crusader]-pumped [Rosalyne von Erantor] on turn 4. Totem unplayable against [Grand Crusader] on any turn.

[Keeper Sharus] allowed me to go off on turn 3.

[Keeper Sharus] killed by [Sava'gin the Reckless] trigger.

Resolved and kept [Monstrous Totem] in play but only had Unique Monster in hand.

Drew into double [Keeper Sharus] and went off turn 4.

[Flame Lance]d my [Keeper Sharus] and [Overload]ed my [Keeper Balos].

Looking at those notes from my testing against two decks ([Grand Crusader] and Mage) leads a person to two very simple conclusions:

1. [Monstrous Totem], while packing a strong effect, is very hard to both keep in play and use effectively in the deck that I'm testing.

2. [Keeper Sharus] is both necessary for an early win and pretty easy to kill off.

   
   

Those two simple concepts led me to examine the deck a bit further, questioning the reasoning on keeping the deck Shaman. While I liked [Monstrous Totem] I ended up cutting it and moving the deck to Paladin, largely for access to both [Grand Crusader] and [Bottled Light]. Both of those Paladin abilities allow me a better chance to have a [Keeper Sharus] in play for a longer time, thus making it easier for me to continue with my deck's plan and win the game.

The initial testing phase is also a good place to try out certain lines of play. For example, in testing Mage decks one has to decide what the best play is for turn 2. There are usually two options: either play [Mana Agate] that will net you cards at a later turn or hold two resources open for an [Overload]. Against a deck like Solo Warrior, the choice is pretty clearly go with the [Mana Agate] but what do you do in the mirror on the draw? Do you [Mana Agate] and allow your opponent to stick a [Baxton, Herald of Flame] and damage you? What if he doesn't have the Baxton, what if he's running [Kagtha] and now can [Flame Lance] your turn 4 [Edwin VanCleef]? The best players have their lines of play already tested and memorized before sitting down for an event so the more experimenting you do before the big day, the better you get at making those calls as well.

This week's article has already gone a bit long so tune in next week for the nuts and bolts of the actual tweaking process for the Deck Clinic. Thanks again for all the supportive emails and remember, just because I'm not writing the Deck Clinic anymore doesn't mean I wouldn't help you with your deck. Feel free to shoot me an email to aquestionofgluttony@gmail.com.

-Sean