DJ Gray joins us today to cover some of the strategies he uses to build his decks. Creator of over 65 Mythgard decks (and that's just what's on the hub!), I'd say he has some experience in the area. Follow him on twitter at @DJGrayMTG for some great decks.
Mythgard is a unique beast of a game. It shares a lot of traits with other games, but others it stands out as almost completely original. Because of this, building decks in Mythgard can be a challenge with typical factors like curve or having enough win conditions, as well as other attributes that are unique to Mythgard. While I do not claim to completely have it all figured out, I have theorized and built a lot of Mythgard decks and believe that I have some pointers that I can share with you in this article.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO NETDECK
Yes, you read that correctly. Netdecking is a pivotal part of card games as it’s one of the fastest ways to gain information such as meta analysis, how people are commonly building decks, or what specific cards are good to craft because they show up in a lot of decks.
In case you are unfamiliar with this term, “Net decking” is taking a deck list that you didn’t come up with and playing it. For the entire history of card games, the idea of Net Decking has been presented as the opposite of coming up with original ideas. I strongly disagree with this. A huge part of successful deck building is identifying strengths and weaknesses of your deck idea, and net decking is simply the best way to identify what cards you will play against.
When I have an idea for a deck, the first thing I do is head over to MythgardHub and find what I think will be most popular on the ladder. I then play with those decks to get a feel for play patterns and key cards so I can understand the card choices that will give my idea the highest percentage of success.
There are downsides to netdecking, as when someone puts a lot of time into a deck their card choices might not make sense because they are in response to a particular meta. But if you identify that then you are actually using deck building skills so there are still small advantages even in this case, it just means you might lose some games because you don’t quite grasp why those cards are there, which is just part of the game. With all of that in mind, net deck your heart out and gain as much information about your meta game that you can.
IDENTIFYING THE META GAME
As stated before, what decks you play against plays a huge part in how well your deck idea will do. If you have an idea for an aggro deck but you see a lot of decks with Misanthropia, Scourge of Serpants, Meso Libre, and Wonder Drug your aggro deck most likely will not do well.
This does lead to one of, in my opinion, the most fun parts of deck building which is tuning decks to beat popular decks. Sometimes, however, it just isn’t meant to be. So, it might be correct to lay the aggro deck down and wait for the meta to change into something more favorable. This is the hardest part of deck building, but sometimes you just have to put an idea on the shelf for another day.
Most people take either not enough time or too much time to reach this conclusion, but that’s part of the fun of deck building. Pay attention to what cards you frequently play against and make adjustments to your decks accordingly.
GAME PLAN
All decks have a game plan, and some are more straightforward, or linear, than others.
Aggro decks, as a baseline, have a game plan of playing to the board as early as turn one and deal as much damage as fast as possible.
A control deck's base line game plan is to answer what the opponent is doing and land a threat that is hard to kill or accrues value over time to win the game.
A midrange game plan is in the middle of the two aforementioned game plans. It pivots from game to game and can assume an aggressive role against control decks or a controlling role against aggressive decks.
So it’s important to figure out what role your deck idea will assume and evaluate if your card choices are appropriate for that role.
If you are building an Red/Yellow aggro deck, then your deck doesn’t want cards like Sapo because they are expensive and don’t really facilitate the decks game plan.
Paths and Powers are something unique to Mythgard because you can pick and choose what combination of the two you want to play and these should factor into your game play.
If you are playing a Hopeless Necromancer deck you won’t really want Journey of Souls because it operates mostly in contrast with your strategy. Mythgard also has a unique attribute in it’s resource system which is our next point.
RESOURCE RELIABILITY
Mythgard draws a similar comparison to games like Magic: The Gathering in regards to it’s resource system. Along with resource variance, there are also specific requirements to playing cards which means you don’t always have a 100% chance to play your cards on the turn they appear to be intended to play. An example of this is a card like Xerian Recruiter. It might cost 2 mana, but Xerian Recruiter will most often get played after turn 2 because of it’s double orange requirement.
A very different aspect of Mythgard from MTG is that the actual cards are the resources instead of having to play seperate cards. This means that you not only have to consider what colors you want to play, but also how many cards of that color so you can play your cards when you want to.
A card like Xerian Recruiter is almost always good wherever you play it on your curve. However, a card like Hopeless Necromantic, which costs 3 and has a requirement of 2 green gems, has specific windows in which you will want to play it, and it is important to remember this while constructing a deck playing the card.
Look through your deck list and think about when you want to play your cards, while keeping in mind how often you can play that card when you want to. Establishing how well your deck can manage its resources goes straight into the final point of this article.
PLAY TESTING
Play testing is just simply the only way to see just how well your deck will play. Play testing is also the way to find out just how good certain cards are and can lead to surprises such as card performing better than anticipated or cards performing worse than anticipated.
A good number of games to play when play testing isn’t something that is necessarily easy to quantify nor is it easy to actually do. However, just as a general idea, I play at least 10 games when really trying to figure out how my idea is working. This is mainly because of time being limited and you should definitely always try to play as many games as you can until you think you have a decent idea of how the deck is working out, or you just want to move on to something else for the time being.
Things to look for in play testing are:
How reliably you can play your cards when you want to?
What cards are good against you and how often you are seeing them?
What are popular decks and cards in the meta that you can target and tune your deck accordingly?
How well is the game plan of your deck working and access if the game plan is worth going for?
Play testing is perfect to wrap up as the last point of this article because it perfectly wraps up the deck building process. Everything mentioned can be theorized, and play testing does exactly what it’s title would suggest. It tests what you have theorized and shows you whether you were correct, wrong, and where weak points in your deck idea are.
CONCLUSION
Building decks is insanely fun and if you want to get good at it then you have to practice. Just like any other skill, mastery of deck building comes from repetition.
I’d rather play against an opponent that has played 1,000 decks than an opponent who has played their deck 1,000 times.
One part of deck building unique to Mythgard is Paths and Powers. I very briefly spoke on this subject because I realized that I have a lot to say, so I will turn that into my next article!
Good luck in building your decks and I’ll see you on the ladder!