A tl;dr version is in bold below.
To add some context to my request for advice, here's a brief story about my time with Magic. My older brother taught me how to play in 1994. I was 6 and he was 14. I played casually with him and with folks at a local game shop until Prophecy (in June 2000), then stopped. In 2017, a coworker introduced me to Commander and I fell back in love with the game. Within a month I'd built my first EDH deck (Kozilek, because I thought then that it would be "easy to build" because of the color restriction). A few months later, I had three decks. I started using a staples system including Revised duals, pricey rocks, and generally good cards like Rhystic Study, tutors, etc. I became obsessed with brewing. Within 16 months of playing my first game of EDH, I took on the 32 deck challenge—but stalled out at 24 decks. I decided to stop building, primarily because I realized I don't really enjoy certain archetypes (combat/aggro and stax, mostly), though I also wanted to buy fewer Magic cards and thus be more deliberate about the cards I'm actually interested in owning and playing.
Since then I've cut down to 13 decks, disassembling and selling the others. (Decklists in my signature.) I use a safe, compact, and custom storage system that perfectly fits this number of decks. I know only a handful of my decks inside and out even though I've built many from scratch, mostly because my memory for decklists and lines of play is so-so. My decks range widely in power level—from a jank/theme-only deck to two cEDH decks—though most are explosive. Only a few truly durdle.
My regular playgroup is big, active, and enfranchised. One player has 52 decks, and most of our other players have over 5–20. So there's not much of a "meta" to which my decks could be tuned; players swap between their numerous decks each game, and those changes are mostly based on Rule 0 conversations. Mostly I try to match power level (which trends nearer to competitive than to battlecruiser), play my decks to the best of my ability, and get better at playing my friends/opponents.
Lately, though, I've felt a desire to cut down to around 5 decks. Why? Because I still feel that I haven't gotten very good at piloting all of my decks—I'm very confident at the helm of maybe 2 of them (including my dearly beloved and hopefully soon-to-be-Primer-status Kruphix deck, link in my signature). And my desire to cut down is related to my desire to be a confident and creative pilot. And because of my so-so memory, my hunch is that I wouldn't be able to consistently and creatively pilot more than a 5 lists.
But here's my worry: I cut down to around 5 decks. I play them very often. Within a few months, I get bored. And then I slip back into obsessive brewing.
So, two sets of questions that I'd love y'all to answer:
- 1. How many decks do you regularly play? If you've similarly expanded then shrunk your collection, do you have any regrets? And how confident do you feel piloting your decks?
- 2. Given the context above, what would you recommend I do?
Zacama
