Making sure you have a draw engine in your opening hand

kraus911
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Post by kraus911 » 3 years ago

I've always built my decks with a good amount of draw, but recently I'm prioritizing it even higher. In crafting and testing decks I used to be happy if I could (depending of course on the commander and average cmc of the deck etc) consistently get 3 lands, 2 pieces of ramp, and a couple of cards I can play early on in my hand. 3 lands and 2 pieces of ramp was an automatic keeper. But I noticed multiple times I would vomit my hand on the table and then have nothing to do by turn 3 aside from casting my commander. If my commander has the words "draw a card" on it somehow, that's not a problem of course, but if it doesn't, then I'm not only drawing attention to myself with ramp and a deceptive early board state, I'm slowing down the engine of whatever my deck does.

So speaking of engines, I'm setting a new rule for myself - craft my decks in such a manner that I have a draw engine of some kind in my opening hand on a consistent basis. Maybe that's Skullclamp or maybe it's Open the Armory to get Skullclamp, but some path toward a draw engine. It could be argued that one shot draw might be fine if the deck has a decent density of draw, Ponder or Magus of the Wheel especially, but I'd rather a Lifecrafter's Bestiary or similar. To me this also means focusing more on draw at the beginning of deck building instead of an "oh yeah I need draw, what do I remove for it?" at the end.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any rules like this for yourself?

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

kraus911 wrote:
3 years ago
I've always built my decks with a good amount of draw, but recently I'm prioritizing it even higher. In crafting and testing decks I used to be happy if I could (depending of course on the commander and average cmc of the deck etc) consistently get 3 lands, 2 pieces of ramp, and a couple of cards I can play early on in my hand. 3 lands and 2 pieces of ramp was an automatic keeper. But I noticed multiple times I would vomit my hand on the table and then have nothing to do by turn 3 aside from casting my commander. If my commander has the words "draw a card" on it somehow, that's not a problem of course, but if it doesn't, then I'm not only drawing attention to myself with ramp and a deceptive early board state, I'm slowing down the engine of whatever my deck does.

So speaking of engines, I'm setting a new rule for myself - craft my decks in such a manner that I have a draw engine of some kind in my opening hand on a consistent basis. Maybe that's Skullclamp or maybe it's Open the Armory to get Skullclamp, but some path toward a draw engine. It could be argued that one shot draw might be fine if the deck has a decent density of draw, Ponder or Magus of the Wheel especially, but I'd rather a Lifecrafter's Bestiary or similar. To me this also means focusing more on draw at the beginning of deck building instead of an "oh yeah I need draw, what do I remove for it?" at the end.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any rules like this for yourself?
I hate playing card draw effects in my decks so I tend to gravitate toward commanders who fix that aspect. My favorite thing to do in EDH is play a commander who fixes card draw so you can jam all kinds of nonsense.

On the occasion I have played a commander who doesn't draw cards (can't think of the last one honestly, maybe mimeoplasm I guess although he provides his own brand of CA:P) I absolutely start build with way too much card draw and go from there.

Lately my focus has been mostly on making sure my opening game is consistent - playing more effects like Ponder and Tithe and Faithless Looting to ensure my decks hit their land drops, and skipping ramping so much. When your deck isn't loaded with ramp you don't have to play quite as much card draw because your average card quality is higher. The nice part about card draw is if it's cheap enough it also fixes your lands, so you get to play stuff that functionally both makes mana and draws cards. I realize that runs quite against the grain that is popular these days but it suits my play style :)

In decks where I need to be able to draw cards without the commander I have a few go to engines that I like:

Life from the Loam is my absolute favorite card draw effect.
Intuition is another favorite engine of mine, which coincidentally goes well with Loam

I'm not sure it's a rule exactly but my basic guiding principle for decks is that they be pretty consistent - I don't like my decks to flame out or what not. So I'll even play crap like Thaumatic Compass // Spires of Orazca or Thrill of Possibility if it helps make my early game smooth.

I guess you could distill that down to "try to make sure you have a critical mass of ways to see a bunch of extra cards at 3 cmc or less" -- so ~10 effects - if your commander isn't drawing cards. Cheap.

I'm less high on the ramp/bomb card draw Rishkar's Expertise / Regal Force / Recurring Insight strategies and higher on the Oakhame Adversary / Mulldrifter approaches.

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Dunharrow
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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

I started playing more 1 and 2 mana draw in my decks... for consistency and digging.
I don't think I make a conscious decision to put more card draw in my decks. I will usually goldfish them and get a sense of whether I need more card draw or not.
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Post by Swift2210 » 3 years ago

My rule for deckbuilding is 20-30 pieces of draw and tutors depending on the commander. Azusa, Lost but Seeking obviously needs to be at the high end while Edric, Spymaster of Trest would need much fewer and sit on the low end. There will always be games where your deck doesn't love you and you whiff.

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Post by folding_music » 3 years ago

to the people playing a billion card draw spells, what sort of power level do you play at? I feel like cantrips beget consistency begets decks that just exist to win asap, is that how you're playing?

The deck I'm working on basically has a handful of land fetches and then a Fecundity... lot of the cards can replace themselves (Yavimaya Elder), or become engines that aren't draw engines, IE Fiend Artisan and Knight of the Reliquary, but the phrase "Draw a card" barely appears in the deck. sounds outmoded?

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Post by Mookie » 3 years ago

I don't have any hard and fast rules - I usually rely on experimentation to determine how many sources of card draw I need.

More abstractly, I generally think of deckbuilding as balancing three different attributes: mana production, mana sinks (often card draw), and proactive plays (to actually win the game). If I have more mana than I can spend, that's a sign I need more card draw. If I have more cards than I can cast, that's a sign I need more mana. And if I find myself durdling too much, that's a sign I need more proactivity.

For my own decks... Tasigur represents one extreme of the spectrum - the commander represents a black hole mana sink to convert ramp into card draw, so I'm running 20+ ramp effects and only five or so card draw effects. On the flip side, Animar effectively generates a ton of mana if I can keep casting creatures, so I'm running 25+ card draw effects in that deck. My decks that have neither ramp nor card draw in the command zone (ex: Teysa, Sharuum) usually end up running around 15-20 of each.

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Maluko
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Post by Maluko » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
Lately my focus has been mostly on making sure my opening game is consistent - playing more effects like Ponder and Tithe and Faithless Looting to ensure my decks hit their land drops, and skipping ramping so much. When your deck isn't loaded with ramp you don't have to play quite as much card draw because your average card quality is higher. The nice part about card draw is if it's cheap enough it also fixes your lands, so you get to play stuff that functionally both makes mana and draws cards. I realize that runs quite against the grain that is popular these days but it suits my play style
I guess you can put these spells under the card draw category, but they're really more card filtering spells. And I replicate your sentiment, card draw/filtering trumps mana ramp, pretty much always. The reason, I think, people get so obsessed about mana ramp is yet another case of confirmation bias: they remember better the games where a turn 1 Sol Ring gave them a huge advantage and forget the games where drawing that Signet cost them two precious mana that might as well have been a land.
folding_music wrote:
3 years ago
to the people playing a billion card draw spells, what sort of power level do you play at? I feel like cantrips beget consistency begets decks that just exist to win asap, is that how you're playing?
Not necessarily. Consistency is essential if you want your deck to do what it was designed to do, no matter what power level you're playing at. Card filtering and card draw are necessary for this. And don't forget playing card draw/filtering spells has a tempo cost: it may feel good to cast that Mind Spring and have all those options in your hand, but that leaves you vulnerable to a counter-strike. And experienced players that know the value of card draw in a game of Commander won't hesitate in making you regret that :P

Tutors, on the other hand, I feel are unnecessary and counter-intuitive to the singleton design of the format. And I would argue they are reserved for higher-power games. I don't see the point in running tutors below 7 power unless you're playing a really wacky deck that needs some redundancy to cast, say, Sanctum of All.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Maluko wrote:
3 years ago
yet another case of confirmation bias: they remember better the games where a turn 1 Sol Ring gave them a huge advantage and forget the games where drawing that Signet cost them two precious mana that might as well have been a land.
Duuuuude. That's what I'm always saying. :)
Maluko wrote:
3 years ago
I guess you can put these spells under the card draw category, but they're really more card filtering spells.
But yeah you're right they aren't really card draw - although they function pretty similarly in EDH where card quality is usually more important than card quantity. I tend to put them in a similar category as card draw but it's not exactly the same.
folding_music wrote:
3 years ago
to the people playing a billion card draw spells, what sort of power level do you play at? I feel like cantrips beget consistency begets decks that just exist to win asap, is that how you're playing?
Maluko mostly nailed it.

I play from powerlevel 5-8 or so mostly (I do have a CEDH deck but I kinda wore out on it).

I tend to not play a ton of tutors in my mid-powered decks but for me the #1 goal in a deck is to never mana screw. Playing lots of cheap draw and cantrips really helps make that work.

I really have been trying hard to cut the volume of tutors way down in my mid-powered decks, and playing lots of Thrill of Possibility and Night's Whisper can really make those decks hum while not having to play quite as high a threat density and more synergy.

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Post by folding_music » 3 years ago

Maluko wrote:
3 years ago
Not necessarily. Consistency is essential if you want your deck to do what it was designed to do, no matter what power level you're playing at. Card filtering and card draw are necessary for this. And don't forget playing card draw/filtering spells has a tempo cost: it may feel good to cast that Mind Spring and have all those options in your hand, but that leaves you vulnerable to a counter-strike. And experienced players that know the value of card draw in a game of Commander won't hesitate in making you regret that :P

Tutors, on the other hand, I feel are unnecessary and counter-intuitive to the singleton design of the format. And I would argue they are reserved for higher-power games. I don't see the point in running tutors below 7 power unless you're playing a really wacky deck that needs some redundancy to cast, say, Sanctum of All.
hmm, okay! I use to rule out cards that tutored altogether, but lately I've been trying just to rule out tutors that search directly to hand. I feel like there's a big difference between utility creatures which can fetch things if they get to live, to Demonic Tutor! but vice versa I've been cutting out cantrips, so that every hand I draw is assessable as itself, to see if contains some sort of plan without necessarily a way to move to Plan A. so individual cards in the deck can hint at consistency but without constructing something repetitive. that's just me, though!

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Post by kraus911 » 3 years ago

folding_music wrote:
3 years ago
to the people playing a billion card draw spells, what sort of power level do you play at? I feel like cantrips beget consistency begets decks that just exist to win asap, is that how you're playing?

The deck I'm working on basically has a handful of land fetches and then a Fecundity... lot of the cards can replace themselves (Yavimaya Elder), or become engines that aren't draw engines, IE Fiend Artisan and Knight of the Reliquary, but the phrase "Draw a card" barely appears in the deck. sounds outmoded?
I think about this too, and of course it depends on the goal of the deck, but even for more casual decks that don't want to win the same way each time "small draw" and cantrip effects can smooth out a pocket of lands in your library, or find you those lands you need to play your more casual cards.

@pokken I think about prioritizing land drops over ramp too. I'd rather play my land for turn and then something interesting that progresses my board state than a mana rock for sure, but aren't ramp effects that pull lands from your library setting up your next draws to be more efficient? Again it also depends on what you're wanting to do. I've spent some time studying your Ephara deck and had my own version a year ago and the tightness of the curve makes mana rocks clunkers for sure. (And obviously you don't need a lot of draw in the deck, just things that trigger Ephara)

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

kraus911 wrote:
3 years ago
but aren't ramp effects that pull lands from your library setting up your next draws to be more efficient
It depends. If you cast Farseek then miss your land drop on turn 3, it's worse right? (You spent 2 tempo to get where you would have been on turn 3 anyway if you hit your drops).

I tend to only play those 2 cmc ramp spells if they are mana positive (Nature's Lore and Three Visits) or recurrable (Sakura-Tribe Elder), or if the deck has some really important reason to make 4 mana on turn 3 and I'm playing enough lands and other effects to make it pretty likely I get there.

They're not bad for sure they're just not quite as good as they are regarded I think?

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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

In my hand? Nah. I play fast and loose with "I see lands and spells, we're good. Let's see what the deck brings us!"

But I play mostly mono-r these days, I'm deep in that red mindset.

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Post by PrimevalCommander » 3 years ago

It comes down to knowing what your individual deck wants to do. As you said, if your commander draws cards, or effectively creates card advantage, draw effects aren't near as important. In some decks, as long as I have some sort of early game action and a game plan to the mid-game, I will keep a hand if it is not perfect. You won't find me over-mulling just to get the best opening hand. I do really like drawing cards more so than any time before. I have seen what lots of card draw can do if you have the mana to spend on those cards. If you have opponents that don't bother playing card draw, you can easily overwhelm multiple opponents even outside of blue/counters.

But personally I don't HAVE to have a draw spell opening hand. As long as the hand looks like it could get me to turn 5-6 with some interaction or proactive plays then I'll see what I draw. My decks are typically not fully dependent on the commander, so I don't get creamed if it gets answered quickly, and in some decks, the commander doesn't make an appearance until the late game... Looking at you Karador.

Though if I don't have any ramp OR draw in opening hand, then I really need to like something in it to take that risk.

I have been testing Kalamax lately, and I have found that if I don't have some form of instant speed draw in opening hand, he is almost not worth casting early game. When the board is developing, that is when I want to be playing my draw spells, and fill my hand with removal and combat tricks for later after the bombs start dropping. Need to shove 1-2 more instant draw effects in it for this reason. I'm learning this deck better every game.

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Post by Toshi » 3 years ago

Outside of my highest powered decks i consciously made the decision against generic draw and tutor heavy builds.

Sure, i could cram Brainstorm, Impulse and Opt in each deck, but there are only so few slots and i enjoy drawing off Kindred Discovery, Liliana's Standard Bearer and Ohran Frostfang a lot more - even if that means sacrificing some consistency.

Ultimately, i'm playing a hundred card singleton format. If i were to run the above blue suite or Faithless Looting, Thrill of Possibility and Tormenting Voice wherever i can, my decks and starting hands would look too much alike for my taste.

Same goes for so called staples, i'd much rather enjoy the depths of the card pool.

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