How to help a bad deckbuilder?

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RxPhantom
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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

As you may have read in this thread, I recounted how I faced off against a five color shrine deck last week. You may also recall that the shrine player had a pretty uneventful, even sad game one. So here's what happened that game:

He played four lands the whole time. That's it. And you know, we've all had mana issues; we've all been there. His early game:

T1: Swamp
T2: Isolated Chapel
T3: Reliquary Tower

At this point, I stop and say "Whoa whoa whoa. You squeezed Reliquary Tower into a 5-color deck?" He's like "Yeah, so?" I say that a five-color manabase is tough enough without throwing colorless lands in the mix. He says he's never had a problem. I shrug, say "ok," and the game continues...for three of us. Mister five-color shrines wouldn't make a land drop for several more turns, but did receive plenty of gentle ribbing from the rest of the table ("No land drop again? Hey, at least you've got Reliquary Tower!"). He insists that he's never ever had a problem like this. Much later in the game, it finally happens...

T?: Temple of the False God! WHAT?!

I say "So you managed to not only fit Reliquary Tower into this deck, but Temple of the False God, too?" He reiterates that this has never happened and that the deck has plenty of mana rocks. I tell him that he can't play mana rocks without lands first (ok, most of the time; sue me). He does nothing for the rest of the game. I ask him, out of sheer curiosity, how many lands he's running. He says "Like 25 probably," and the whole table recoiled like he had just said the n-word or something. We were in shock. He counted them after the game and it turned out to be 30. The table tries to convince him to run at least 35 to no avail. He keeps insisting that it always runs fine, etc.

Clearly, my fellow Commander players, 30 lands is crazy low, not to mention playing lands like Tower and Temple in a five-color build is inadvisable to say the least. I really just wanted to help the guy. It should be stated, though, that he had zero mana problems in game two, and I think his denial of the problem comes from confirmation bias, i.e. he tends to only remember when the deck ran well as opposed to when it didn't.

Thoughts?
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Post by void_nothing » 3 years ago

You know the sayings about leading a horse to water and Muhammad going to the mountain. Well, at some point, the mountain's going to come to Muhammad, where in this instance Muhammad is this player and the mountain is a mountain of games where his mana situation is exactly like this one. Confirmation bias is a fragile, tissue-like thing when it's no longer being confirmed. And at that point, just keep giving sensible advice about what kind of mana a five-color deck needs, try to avoid "I told you so"s, and consider playing, as applicable, Patrician's Scorn, Reverent Silence, and most fun of all Aura Thief.

Tl;dr if this person is being stubborn you can't force him to rebuild his deck but after some time he has to come to his senses.
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RxPhantom
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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

void_nothing wrote:
3 years ago
And at that point, just keep giving sensible advice about what kind of mana a five-color deck needs, try to avoid "I told you so"s, and consider playing, as applicable, Patrician's Scorn, Reverent Silence, and most fun of all Aura Thief.

Tl;dr if this person is being stubborn you can't force him to rebuild his deck but after some time he has to come to his senses.
I'm generally not an 'I told you so' kind of person, so that won't be a problem. Oh man, funny you should mention Aura Thief; I run it to great effect in one of my favorite decks. I'll make it a point to run it against him next time. Oh man. How backbreaking would that be?!
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Post by WizardMN » 3 years ago

I don't think the inclusion of Tower and Temple were that big a deal to be honest. Sure, they are obviously not ideal (I do tend to run Temple more than I probably should) but having them included isn't the end of the world. I will admit that neither one would make it in a 5 color deck of mine because that is really stretching things, but still, not the biggest issue.

I agree that only including 30 lands seems like a problem. I think the lowest I ever went was 29 lands and that was a dedicated combo deck that tried to win as fast as possible and played a ton of free and cheap mana rocks to balance it out. But I refuse to go below 36 lands and even then is super hard to justify. Windgrace is at 44 and Karador finally settled at 38. And both do quite a bit of ramping. Though, Windgrace has other reasons for that many lands.

At the end of the day though, this format is about fun and if he is having fun in most games then I don't really see there being much of a need to educate him anyway. Perhaps his deck really is well equipped to run that number of lands and he just got unlucky (RNG can get any of us) and as such, going outside the norm isn't necessarily a huge issue in this format if it works often enough for the pilot to be satisfied with the deck.

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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

Funny, I also had someone running few lands (I think it was 25) and who also, surprise surprise, guttered hard from a lack of land drops. Once they told the table what their land count was, we unanimously recommended he go to at least 35. He did so immediately (he was playing mono-color so just grabbed some basics from the store) and the next game went much better for him.

Obviously the generally recommended land counts have been ironed out over millions and millions of games. Any individual person based on their tiny handful of experiences is being pretty foolish if they think they know better (barring some particularly unusual build, perhaps). You can try to do some quick math (30 lands means you're only averaging 3 in the top 10 cards, which means you miss your third land drop pretty often...) but beyond that and explaining the collective wisdom of millions of players, that's about all you can do really.
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Post by Treamayne » 3 years ago

Concur with all of the above.

I have Tower and Temple in a few of my WUBRG decks, but only if there is a reason. Also, none of my WUBRG decks run less than 40 land*.

I would recommend to him a goldfish I run with my WUBRG decks - I goldfish to turn 5 ten times in a row. If I finish with less than 5 lands (including land drops and ramp) more than once - then I increase land and/or ramp (something that puts a land on the board).

I'd be interested to see the results of this test with his deck. How many test games can he field 5 lands by turn 5?



*My personal start point when building is 35 land plus 1 for every color in the deck. I only go below that if play-testing and playing validate that I can safely try out 1-2 less lands. I think I even run 36 or 37 lands in my mono-brown Golem deck.
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Post by UnNamed1 » 3 years ago

In all of my decks, the highest land count I have ever had is 36. And this is only because I am using "bad" lands that come in tapped and the like. Most of my decks run between 29 and 32 lands, and very very rarely have mana issues. RNG is a thing, but the majority of the time I am able to get my lands and colors as needed.

Lets look at my different current decks. My 5-C Najeela deck runs 30 lands, and I am more than comfortable in every game with mana. My B-Krrik deck runs 33 lands, simply due to a high mana curve. My U-Thassa deck runs 32 lands and is on the fence to be cut to 31. My G-Beast deck runs 32 lands and majority of the time outramps the table. My 5-C Kenrith deck runs 32 lands and still rarely has mana issues. More-so a lack of color fixing in that deck that needs to be addressed. My 3-C Elsha deck runs 28 lands now, still never has an issue.

My point is there should never be a set mana count. I tend to go low on land count and hard on ramp and color fixing if needed, so my deck can be more focused and i get less dead draws of land. You don't want to be top decking land on turns 6/7 with an empty hand.

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

I have had similar discussions in limited. My opponent didn't get past 3 lands in two consecutive games. I ask how many lands they are running. They answer 14. I tell them I would not play less than 16 unless my curve topped out at 3 (maybe one or two 4 drops). They say they never had trouble before.

nothing you can do but continue stomping the player. If they don't want advice from more experienced players then don't overthink it.
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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

Couldn't even imagine it. I feel too low with 3 6 in Kaalia. I don't run anything fewer than 42 in Grixis (and that's not counting Maze of Ith or Tabernacle). I think Vorinclex might have been around the same, 42 - 44.

But Mr 5c shrines can afford to play these expensive spells with derp all mana fixing, and then expect to flawlessly hit everything needed, every game. They're only fooling themselves, and tbh with the comments they made back to you, you can't help them. They've made up their mind, and you can only watch them wallow in their ineptitude. No sense giving it any more thought, because surely they aren't.

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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

Part of the difficulty is that, even something as crazy low as 25 or 30 lands, you'll still get a sufficient number of lands that you won't be bothered by it a DECENT percent of the time. Like, with 30 lands you're probably fine more than half the time.

It's no secret that the goal of mana/spell balance is to minimize the number of games you lose to mana flood and mana screw. That doesn't mean you should never get flooded or screwed of course, it just means that you should lose to flood and lose to screw in roughly equal proportion. Note that I don't say get flooded or get screwed - some decks can tolerate flood better than others (i.e. decks with good mana sinks) while others tolerate screw better (i.e. low-curve aggro). What matters is whether you're actually losing because of it. If you flood, hit a huge draw spell, and win, then it's not really a problem.

The closer you get to a good balance, the fewer games you'll lose overall. i.e. with 0 lands you always* lose to screw, with all lands you always* lose to flood. When you're at a perfect balance, you're probably still losing 5 or 10% on each side to flood/screw, although it's more likely to be a contributing cause than the one core cause. When you're at 30 lands, maybe you lose only 2% of games to flood, but you're probably losing 30%+ to screw, which is overall much more games lost than if you had a better balance. Sure, you still USUALLY don't lose to screw, but your mana balance isn't "fine". There's no such thing as "fine". There's optimal, and there's working towards it.

*don't get pedantic, I know manaless decks are a thing and my 98 land thrasios was pretty ok, but we're talking normal decks here.
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

30 lands in a 5c deck has room for a single colorless land if you're running all the best rocks and dorks in a cedh deck.

No way it's right to have two colorless lands one of which needs to five lands to function.

Chances are better your pile playing temple is a 40 land deck than a 30 land deck since odds are pretty against people who have temple in their deck having all the busted rocks.

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Post by duducrash » 3 years ago

So, there are this two dudes that are heavily studied in psychology and pedagogy. Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget, And I think the answer runs with them.

The errors, mistakes are vital in learning. From them we can see what went wrong and improve. %$#% it up is part of the process of getting things right and learning. Piaget has one of the best works ever written on this.

Awesome, right? If someone %$#% up enough they will learn eventually. Well not quite, thats where we get Vygotskys concept. Zone of proximal development. It's a larger concept, but there are things we can only learn when we have achieved a previous level of maturity on the subject or get assistance. No matter how many times you try and fail exponentiations if you don't know multiplication before. Theres a bunch to be explored here about how teachers should approach students and all that.

Why I said all that? Shrines player needs to know what they have done wrong, why is it wrong and how to fix. And this process more often than not isnt doable alone. so if I had to answer your question it would be something like

"Step 1 they need to understand that there is a problem. play enough to see what are the flaws, try to do % of lands, etc. Step 1 is vital if they don't see this/agree there is nothing to do.
Step 2 help them fix. Open the deck, tell them what you would do, show some online lists play some goldfish and etc
Step 3 Let them tune up."

now they have aquired a new ability. Probably wont be perfect or even very good at first, but now that they are in this level they will improve over time most likely

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Post by Hawk » 3 years ago

I wonder if WotC is to blame for this problem? A few weeks ago I was playing with my sister-in-law. She's...not great (learning, but not great) and instead of playing a deck I carefully tuned and calibrated and built for her, was playing off-the-rack Anje Falkenrath.

She was so fed up game one when she ended up drawing nothing but land, and this is because WotC put 40 lands into a deck archetype that often runs on 34-35. Afterwards she was tempted to cut down to 30 - she was so flooded and it felt so bad! I convinced her to be reasonable and just drop 4 lands (all EtB tapped lands) for four cards, among them Read the Bones and Thrill of Possibility to have smoother draws in the next game, but if she was just playing at home she would have learned the wrong lesson and cut the deck's land count to nothing.

I get that WotC goes nuts on land because Flood >>> Screw and because newbies are likely to drop lands first to add their exciting new dragons and angels, but I feel like the last few years have overcorrected too much in that direction and taught players the wrong lessons?

To your question though - some people have to learn themselves. I'm not sure you can help a bad deckbuilder if they don't see their deckbuilding as bad.

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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

Hawk wrote:
3 years ago
She was so fed up game one when she ended up drawing nothing but land, and this is because WotC put 40 lands into a deck archetype that often runs on 34-35.
The commander loots excess lands away, so is 40 really that excessive?

Personally I run ~40 lands in a lot of my decks and I feel it's a good way to go for many archetypes (although the newest mulligan does reduce the important somewhat). Drawing out of flood is very doable, drawing out of screw is all but impossible past a certain point. The key is in having good mana sinks and card draw so that you can utilize that reliable mana.

Variance is a thing that's built into the game - it could easily have gone the other way if she only drew 2 lands and then wanted to put in a ton. 40 lands means you're averaging 4 in the top 10, which is pretty much where you want to be. Back when I first started playing I think I was at 50% lands in my ~80 card casual deck because I hated mana screw so much and ignored the games I lost from flood. You can't really avoid people learning the wrong lessons from limited experience.
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Post by schweinefett » 3 years ago

If you wanna help someone brew more effective decks, take the time to talk to the person after and ask those reflection questions. How did it go? problems? and if there were problems, what were they? how to solve them?

If they don't listen/take that advice/suffer from confirmational bias among other biases, just do it again after the next game. and the next. Sooner or later, you can point out that the probabilities are on your side; they play too few lands. One other tip is that people are hard to convince if they feel like it's them in the wrong/you're in the right. What you need to do is convince them to answer your reflection questions - i.e. make them feel like they came down to that conclusion that they don't run enough lands themselves. this isn't restricted to only lands though; i've done the same helping peeps increase removal/answers in their decks.

I think my greediest deck is running 33 lands in a GW deck. But the average cmc is 3, and that's only cuz there is a 5cmc guy and a 6cmc guy. the rest of the deck is heavy on 2cmc dorks, and other spells. But that is most definitely an exception rather than the rule.

Another good metric are those 80-card yorion legacy decks; mine runs 25 lands, but has 8 strixes, 4 arcums astrolabe, 4 brainstorm, 4 ponder as cantrips. It's approximately 1 land drop you can count per 2-3 cantrips you run in your deck. so counting those in, we're sorta between 32-35 lands in an 80 card deck.

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