Magic the Gathering

Constructed

The Magic Walkthrough: Netdecking – Tool for Fools?

By Lauren Lee ⋅ January 5, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

You are a level one Kraken Hatch­ling. You are on a jour­ney to become the Ulti­mate Magic Player. (At the very least, you want to stop being a level one Kraken Hatch­ling.) In order to do so, you must level up and undergo a series of trans­for­ma­tions. Until you become a force to be reck­oned with…

But every­one has to start some­where. This Walk­through is here to help you grind out those lev­els, one mini-boss at a time.

As you start out on your trek through the Magic land­scape, you have some ques­tions to ask your­self – what deck should you play? Do you build one from scratch? What are your alternatives?

Before you answer, you should real­ize one thing: most peo­ple suck at deck build­ing. Deck build­ing requires innate skill and copi­ous amounts of hard work and test­ing; it’s not some­thing you can pick up in a month, or even a year. It is a skill that one needs to learn, but the learn­ing process is grad­ual. Some peo­ple never get the hang of it.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Nei­ther was any deck­list that is cur­rently per­form­ing at a high level. Some decks take months to refine. You don’t really have months to waste; you need to get out there and start play­ing real Magic.

There is lit­tle rea­son to build a deck­list from scratch. Back in the day, the game of Magic used to be equal parts deck­build­ing and play­ing. Win­ning deck­lists had no way to be shared amongst the whole player pool, and thus you had to come up with your own ideas to try to beat an unknown field of decks. Magic has passed the time of those Dark Ages. We are expe­ri­enc­ing Magic Renais­sance. We have more infor­ma­tion than we know what to do with!

Tour­na­ments are cur­rently skewed in favor of those who play well, not nec­es­sar­ily those who build well (out­side of Lim­ited). In other words, if you want to build your own deck to win a tour­na­ment, you bet­ter be damn good at it. But if you’re a Level One Kraken Hatch­ling, you’re bet­ter off find­ing a deck­list some­one else has already refined. Most of your time should be spent learn­ing how to play well, not build well. The lat­ter is an excel­lent abil­ity that you will even­tu­ally pick up, but the first is essen­tial to have. And the sooner the better.

Thanks to our cur­rent pool of knowl­edge on the world wide web, there is a short­cut to find­ing a deck avail­able to every­one. The Wall is not really a wall but an illu­sion that you can walk through. Find a deck­list online that has good per­for­mances. Build it. Tweak it. Play it until you can play it in your sleep.

Eas­ier said than done. But it’s a very straight­for­ward process, unlike build­ing your own deck, which looks more like this:

1. Have an idea for a deck
2. Build a prototype
3. Test it
4. Rework idea and build another prototype
5. Test it more
6. Rinse and repeat until you have a fin­ished decklist
7. If the deck is good, con­grat­u­la­tions! If it isn’t, scrap the idea and start over.

Net­deck­ing is its very own process. It’s just faster and eas­ier and more con­sis­tent. So start with that. The deck build­ing is just a side quest. For now. You don’t need to know deck build­ing to progress through the game. Although if you want to max out your lev­els, you may want to trek back to it and com­plete that side quest at a later point.

How do you net­deck? What’s the most effi­cient way to go about it?

First, you need a pool of deck­lists to choose from. I rec­om­mend find­ing the results of the last big tour­na­ment: Worlds, a 5K, a Grand Prix, a Pro Tour, etc. These can usu­ally be found on deckcheck.net among oth­ers. I would look to take a deck­list from within the past month or two; the meta con­stantly changes, and there­fore, lists can become quickly out­dated. I would avoid lists from smaller events like States or events out­side the coun­try (as their metas tend to dif­fer greatly from those in the U.S.). Some States lists are fine, but you have to know which states are com­pet­i­tive and which ones aren’t. For instance, Hawaii and Alaska are both known for their small show­ings at tour­na­ments. Which means sub­par lists are likely to make Top 8.

Another decent resource is an online forum, like the Wiz­ards forum or MTGSalvation’s forum. I wouldn’t pull deck­lists from these sources, but you can read the dis­cus­sions on each deck arche­type and learn more about the var­i­ous decks you find online. Don’t believe every­thing you read though. Pay atten­tion to posts backed up with some kind of data, match report, or test results. These are more reli­able, and the rest is likely garbage.

If you can find arti­cles detail­ing a spe­cific deck, writ­ten by pro­fes­sion­als, those are even more reli­able and pro­vide the best sources of information.

You prob­a­bly also want to know about the meta before choos­ing a list.

The MTG Metagame, or ‘Meta’ for short, is a term used to refer to what decks play­ers are likely to run into within a com­pet­i­tive tour­na­ment. In gen­eral, “metagam­ing” means using strate­gies beyond what’s found dur­ing actual game­play. In this case, fig­ur­ing out what decks peo­ple are likely to bring to a tour­na­ment, and then prepar­ing your own deck to beat their decks. Metagam­ing was very dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, dur­ing the Dark Ages of Magic because there was no reli­able source of data on the Metagame. But now every­one knows what the Metagame is at any given point. There­fore, if you aren’t metagam­ing, you are prob­a­bly behind in the race. Every­one is using this infor­ma­tion to get an edge, so you should as well. Ulti­mately, the per­son who is Most Pre­pared for a given Meta, will likely per­form bet­ter than every­one else at that venue.

To play the game beyond the game, first know what you’re up against. This data from States is pretty use­ful for see­ing what’s pop­u­lar and what’s doing well in Stan­dard. All of these lists made Top 8 at their respec­tive States event.

What pops out is imme­di­ate. Jund is num­ber one. It makes up 38% of Top 8 place­ments, and 17 Jund lists made first place out of 37 recorded events. That is a 46% win rate. What this means is, that given any Stan­dard event, Jund has the high­est chance of win­ning that event out of all deck types. This does NOT mean nec­es­sar­ily, that if you bring a Jund deck to a tour­na­ment, your chances of win­ning are greater.

What this gives you is an option. Join the Big Bad Men­ace that is Jund. Or beat it. It’s Red Pill, Blue Pill time.

If you take the Blue Pill, you choose Jund. This is not a bad option. In fact, it is the “best” option. Because Jund is the best deck avail­able. It has a very strong power per card ratio. It also CAN beat any deck in the for­mat, given that cir­cum­stances are in its favor or its side­board is well pre­pared. Even decks designed to beat Jund do not beat Jund 100% of the time. Spread­ing Seas is pos­si­bly the only deck that kills Jund reli­ably, but this stops when the Jund deck has a good side­board plan against it.

Jund is pow­er­ful because the mechanic it is designed to take advan­tage of is pow­er­ful: Cas­cade. Read the card that is the blood life of the deck: Blood­braid Elf.

Free spells are gen­er­ally good in Magic. Free spells are not only spells you don’t have to pay mana for. Free spells are spells that do not cost you a card from your hand. This is impor­tant to real­ize. Hold­ing a Blood­braid Elf in your hand is essen­tially hold­ing two spells packed into one. Some peo­ple say it’s broken!

But for­tu­nately for Red Pill guys, it’s not unbeat­able. There are many viable decks in Stan­dard. Net­deck­ing does not imply you choose the best option. Net­deck­ing is more like choos­ing from a menu at a restau­rant.… An expen­sive restau­rant.… Where you can’t eat what you order.… But anyway.

It’s all part of metagam­ing. If you choose a deck with a good matchup against Jund, and every­one is play­ing Jund, maybe you will win because of that.

Another rea­son to avoid Jund is that you will play a lot of mir­rors, or other Jund play­ers. The mir­ror match often fails to give either Jund player an edge, and the match falls almost entirely into the hands of Lady For­tune. That fickle bitch.

If you choose to go down the rab­bit hole, as it were, you’ll start to see that many of the lists dif­fer wildly from one another in terms of card choice. Most Jund decks are exactly the same, minus a few well-known vari­a­tions. This is where your per­sonal pref­er­ence will prob­a­bly fac­tor in the most. Just choose a deck that suits you. You can tweak the details later.

Once you are sat­is­fied, acquire the cards for the deck. This can take a while, given your card­pool avail­abil­ity and how much open money you have. Trad­ing is a good way to get the deck pieces you need, but often, more expen­sive cards will be hard to find even among traders. Even­tu­ally you’ll have to put down some cash. I rec­om­mend buy­ing sin­gles from eBay or TCG­Player or some other online retailer with good prices. Do not use StarCi­tyGames. Save your wal­let a lot of grief. Avoid buy­ing indi­vid­ual booster packs, as you will not find what you want in them. Even for com­mons, it’s a sketchy endeavor. Just buy com­mons or find peo­ple will­ing to throw them away at you (since there’s an over­load of Zendikar, lots of peo­ple no longer want their com­mons). You can even trade for uncom­mons, but most peo­ple will say “I didn’t bring that with me.” Tell them to bring it next time and fin­ish the trade.

If trad­ing is hard for you, then I rec­om­mend just buy­ing all the sin­gles you need. It will be cheaper and faster than any other method. The invest­ment is good because you’re buy­ing a strong deck (hope­fully), and Stan­dard will be quite sta­ble for the next 6 or 9 months. To play this game, you need to spend money; that’s just how it is!

You want your deck to be opti­mal. I would try not to skimp. Play­ers chose these cards in their decks for good rea­son. Using sub­par choices like Ter­ramor­phic Expanse for fetch­lands is not what you want to do if you want to play the game every­one else is playing.

Learn the deck inside out. If you dis­like cer­tain card choices, switch them out, and try some­thing else. Keep try­ing things. Play as much as pos­si­ble. Build a proper side­board. (Oh that is another thing, don’t copy side­boards 100% when you net­deck since those should be entirely depen­dent on your cur­rent local meta. Not last week’s meta and not the meta from across the country.)

The point is to know what peo­ple are play­ing. Why are they play­ing this deck? What’s so good about it? What are the var­i­ous strate­gies it employs to defeat the oppo­nent? What hid­den syn­er­gies exist between the cards? What decks does it lose to? What are the good matchups? To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy. To grind lev­els, you must gain expe­ri­ence points. To do that, you must play with as many decks as you can get your hands on. But this first net­deck you make will be your first major step on the road to greatness.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, you have gained a level!

Lauren Lee, editor of Mulldrifting, has been playing Magic competitively since Conflux and in that time has developed a strong passion for the game and in teaching others to be the best players they can be. Sightings of her have been recorded at various events around NYC.

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