Every Magic player has tried to build the “next big deck” at least once in his or her time playing the game, and in most cases they fall short. Patrick Chapin, whom many of you may know as “The Innovator”, is in the small percentage of players who continually build Tier-1 decks. Chapin has had an incredible impact on the game, and his more than 4 Pro Tour Top-8s proves that he has the skill to back up his knowledge of the game. Nowadays Chapin doesn’t play magic as often as he used to, particularly after his run-in with the law back in 2007. His was tried and convicted for drug trafficking, though the specific details of his case are not public to my knowledge.
His previous mistakes aside, Chapin now commentates for Magic tournaments that are generally hosted by Star City Games, along with many previous pro players. In addition to his commentating gig, he also wrote a book called “Next Level Deck Building: The Ultimate Magic the Gathering Resource”. As the title suggests, the book goes into the specifics of how to build a proper deck from scratch, and the theories and numbers that show the method to the madness. Sometimes players will throw a random assortment of cards together and hope that they will do well, but players like Chapin have developed deck building into a science, and this book is evidence of it. Today, I want to expand and discuss some of the topics that Chapin writes about in his book, and talk about my thoughts on each.
Part 1 – The Art of the Mana Base
“The single biggest factor that makes decks clunky is a bad mana base.” I could not agree more. While some players argue that your choice of spells will determine your match outcome, a bad mana base will prohibit you from even casting those necessary spells in the first place. While there is no magic formula that will teach you how to build a good mana base, Chapin’s introductory chapter is probably the most important part of the book in that it describes the best guidelines to follow if you want to build one correctly.
Specifically, he talks about the importance of using your mana curve to guide your choice of how many and which lands you end up running in your 75. If the top end of your mana curve is 3 mana, for example, it would make sense to run fewer lands because you will only ever need 3 to cast the most expensive spell you run. Contrarily, running a lot of 8-mana spells will require more lands and/or more ways to find the lands you run. The introduction of the Scry Lands has been incredibly helpful in that sense for this standard format, as the ability to filter your draws when playing your land helps out decks of all styles.
In addition to lands, there are quite a few other ways to ensure you have access to enough mana to support your curve. Mana dorks are the most notable example, and such cards have always seen play across all formats. Noble Hierach, Birds of Paradise, and Deathrite Shaman are just a few notable creatures that can add mana to your mana pool, without the need of lands (aside from casting them). They allow you to “ramp” into bigger spells faster, since you get to effectively play more than one source of mana each turn. Chapin makes a great comment in this section, saying, “Every mana you don’t spend is a mana you spent on nothing.” This reinforces the need for a proper curve, because running too many or too few mana sources can leave you doing nothing but drawing and saying, “Go” during most of the game.
Part 2 – Deck Building Tactics/ Diminishing Returns
How many of each card should you use? Most semi-professional players will tell you that you should run 4 of each card you want to see every game, 3 of cards you want to see most games, and so on and so forth. Chapin almost argues the reverse: start with 1 card and see if that is an effect you want to see more often, and add from there. In some cases, like Delver of Secrets decks in Legacy, it’s a no-brainer to run 4 right off the bat. In other situations, especially in Standard when the format is always changing, it is a useful technique to try different amounts of cards until you find the sweet spot.
He explains that every card has a rate of diminishing returns: in essence, the more copies of a card you see, the smaller impact each subsequent copy will give you. For example, say you draw an opening hand that has 2 copies of Hymn to Tourach in it. Great! You can hit your opponent and they will lose those pesky cards you are worried about. However, by the time you cast your first copy, they only had 2 cards left anyway. That second copy has now become a dead card in your hand. While this situation isn’t the most optimal example, the idea of diminishing returns applies to all cards on some level.
Part 3 – Baneslayers and Mulldrifters
Before reading this book, I never had thought about creatures in the same way that Chapin describes. He describes two different types of relevant creatures: Baneslayers and Mulldrifters. Baneslayers are creatures that have value in the creature card itself, while Mulldrifters are cards that give you value outside the creature. There are, however, some creatures that fit into both categories. Chapin refers to these favorably as “Titans”, after the cycle of Titan creatures that plagued the standard environment for 2 years.
If you care about killing the creature, it is more than likely a Baneslayer. If killing it losing you value, it is probably a Mulldrifter. Why is this? Killing a card like Baneslayer Angel stops your opponent from killing you quickly with it, while using removal to kill a card like Mulldrifter is actually bad for you. Since Mulldrifter’s ability happens when it enters the battlefield, the player who cast it has already gotten the value needed out of the creature to make it worth casting.
Part 4- Sideboarding
I would argue day and night that sideboarding is perhaps the most difficult part of the game of Magic. Knowing how to properly construct one is a challenge by itself, but knowing how to properly board cards in and out of you deck can be even more difficult. Chapin argues that the games in which you sideboard are more important than those without, because in general you will play 50% more games after sideboarding than before, not including matches where 5 games are played (pro-tour level play).
A common sideboarding mistake is devoting too many cards to a specific matchup. It is important to diversify your sideboard to be optimal against all types of decks, or run cards like Golari Charm that have versatile uses against many different decks.
Furthermore, a good sideboard builds off what your maindeck wants to do. For example, it would make the most sense to board cards that will help against matchups that your main deck has the most issues with. As a BUG Delver player, my specific 75 is built to beat the combo and control matchups, as my meta is full of both. However, I do have some difficulty with the heavily creature-based strategies because of this. My sideboard is therefore full of cards like Disfigure, Umezawa’s Jitte, and Marsh Casualties to make up where my maindeck falls short.
Summing Up
Patrick “The Innovator” Chapin really does a phenomenal job of teaching players of all levels how to build decks. There is definitely much more material available than I covered, and I pretty much just scratched the surface. Even as a player of 5+ years I still learned mass amounts of information reading this book, and I would definitely suggest it to anyone looking to improve their game.
From a review standpoint, I give Patrick Chapin’s “Next Level Deck Building” an 8/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment