How long does it take you to initially build a deck?

[DirkGently]

To be clear, I'm not talking about perfecting it, just how long it takes for you to go from not having a deck, to playing it for the first time.

[Mookie]

I haven't measured (or built many decks recently), but I'd estimate somewhere between two and three hours.

• around 1 hour to go through my collection and pull out every card I would consider for the deck.
• around 1-2 hours to cut cards
• plus another half-hour or so to sleeve the deck

That said, it depends on what we define as the start and end points - there are plenty of deck ideas and rough decklists I've had for ages but not built, and I could also see a situation where I have a rough decklist and need to wait several weeks for singles to be delivered before I can finalize it. That said, I don't think the amount of active deckbuilding time would actually vary that much - those situations just add lots of waiting time.

[DirkGently]

I think it's 10-15 for me.

• It takes probably 30-60 minutes per box, and each color has 2 (closer to 3 at this point) boxes, plus colorless and multicolor. So a 3c deck takes probably 6-7 hours to go through the boxes. More like 4-5 for a 2c, 3 for a mono, and an eternity for 5c.
• Separating the cards by function takes maybe an hour or less.
• Whittling each pile down can take at least a couple hours, depending how much I agonize over it.
• Lands is maybe another hour.

I'm pretty sure there are decks I've spent a lot longer on but they're balanced out my the relatively quick monocolor ones.

[folding_music]

mmm ages
a long time to look through my cards
a long time to reexamine the cards i pulled out and ask myself, "why on earth did I think I'd need this card for this deck"
inevitably order some nerfed dual lands for it and sit around waiting for 3 - 13 days
finally test it, pull out half the cards that seemed fun and replace them with more land and digging spells
create something that never gets good opening hands, only ones that promise a lot of digging
never play it against anyone, put it in a box
and curse the whole format of commander

[DirkGently]

never play it against anyone, put it in a box
and curse the whole format of commander

lmao been there buddy.

[Dunadain]

It takes probably 30-60 minutes per box, and each color has 2 (closer to 3 at this point) boxes, plus colorless and multicolor. So a 3c deck takes probably 6-7 hours to go through the boxes. More like 4-5 for a 2c, 3 for a mono, and an eternity for 5c.

You thumb through your entire physical collection for each deck?!?!? Yikes.


I just do a couple relevant scryfall searches. I still probably look at a couple thousand cards, but I can't imagine looking at every on-color card for every deck. Especially because you have a very extensive collection.

[DirkGently]

You thumb through your entire physical collection for each deck?!?!? Yikes.

My collection is roughly 1/2 of all cards (a bit less - 11,411 currently out of the 25,260 currently legal commander cards).

It does take a while but I don't think it's really that different from building the list via scryfall/edhrec/etc and then needing to actually find those cards. If anything it's less frustrating because it's easy to do a pass-through of my collection looking for the cards for a completed decklist, realize that I missed two cards, do another pass-through, find one, do another pass-through, realize the missing card is in some half-disassembled deck from two months ago, etc. If I just pull out everything I might need on the first pass, it's a slow pass, but I have all the cards I want ready to go.

It also means I see cards that might not necessarily occur to me, and perhaps most importantly I find it much much easier to think about cards in piles than cards in a list or god forbid a deckbuilding app. Like trying to sort a list of cards by function, or sort them by preference within that function, is an obnoxious copy paste extravaganza on my computer but it's trivial when I have the cards in front of me.

[Dunadain]

to each their own

[TheGildedGoose]

Like trying to sort a list of cards by function, or sort them by preference within that function, is an obnoxious copy paste extravaganza on my computer but it's trivial when I have the cards in front of me.

Archidekt. Moxfield a %$#%.

Hours to months. It depends on how ambitious the deck is and how much of it corresponds to what's in my inventory.

[PrimevalCommander]

My deck building comes in two phases now.

Phase 1: Brewing. Which takes a month or more depending on how many cards I don't have and how expensive those cards are. Currently in the brew phase for 2 decks. One will be completed probably in October and the other could be next year's brew since I have enough decks and I'm missing quite a few cards. To maximize my dollars spent I have gone to building a full decklist before sleeving up the paper cards. Keeps me from ordering too many cards I won't use. It still happens with every deck, but I like to think I spend a bit less. There are still cards I spend good money on that get cut after the first paper game, but that is part of the process.

Phase 2: Assembly. At this point I have made 2-3 rounds of online purchases for the cards I need. I have a completed decklist plus 10-20 additional cards for modification during the building process. This part is maybe a 2 hour process with an hour of goldfishing to get a rough feel for the early turns in the deck.

I did get inspiration recently and throw together a deck without doing a whole lot of brewing, but after I sleeved the rough draft it went through some aggressive optimization as I started finding the gaps in the strategy. That deck did not require a big investment so it was easy to sleeve up and get a couple reps in before tuning with new cards.

My last heavily brewed deck was a dragon deck. I proxied the more expensive dragons to try it out and realized it didn't give me what I want. Played it 1 time and is now scheduled for disassembly once I get all the Sliver stuff I need.

[duducrash]

100 + Hours, but not of active building. I usually get an idea I think it would be cool, sort trough the collection pulling cards that are cool with it, brainstorm a bit about cards that would be cool to have in it and some cards that are great but to expensive for a first draft. Then I spend the next few months slowly ordering stuff whenever I can/remember. Then I look at that fat box with a pile of 250 cards and postpone until I can't anymore. I'm in no rush since I barely play the decks I have together. And sometimes I want alters or specific arts I don't have, so I just wait and wait. I have like, 2 WIP decks, that I just casually get cards whenver I put an order in. and 1 that I'm waiting for the alters I ordered to get ready

But thats on average. Sometimes its real fast, one time I was like "What if I played all mana dorks I have avaliable on chulane" and it was probably <2 hours idea to sleeves, but thats an outlier.

[pokken]

It depends a lot on what I'm doing. I don't think I could "average" it since every deck approach is different. If I get super motivated I can scratch build a deck in a couple hours from stuff I have on hand. but typically I brainstorm for a while, figure out all the cards I'm missing that I might want to play, place an order, then spend a while building.

I dunno, I guess like 10 hours for a brand new deck across multiple sessions? Just guessing.

[Avacyn Believer]

I went with 4-6 hours because I tend to spend half a day when going through my boxes, but it really depends on how difficult the concept is. Most often my process is to throw something together from the cards I have, play it, see if I enjoy it and only then start tweaking it... which usually never stops

[3drinks]

Actual weeks easy, if I'm coming from scratch. These days it's more theoretical than anything. Brew up a list, put on moxfield, then don't buy because prices are quite high for an unsanctioned format so I go back to Modern/Pauper/Legacy burn.

[PrimevalCommander]

I changed my vote to 30-50 hours to account for the brewing phase which is 95% of the time I spend on a deck. This is probably more representative of how much time I spend thinking out, pulling cards, and working on the deck before it gets sleeved and played as a finished deck.

[ISBPathfinder]

In general its probably in the 8-12 hours range for a new deck.

4-6 hours deckbuilding electronically.
2-4 hours assembling what I have on hand into the deck. (the more common chaff I have to run down the longer this adds)
1-2 hours going over any feedback if any and nitpicking over things I missed in my first draft. (sometimes this one can get out of hand and spiral my time up)
1 hour ordering cards / opening mail / final assembly

I tend to poke and prod here and there as I wait for cards to come in the mail before the first play through. I would say that there can be more time lost on the process but its a bit more passively rather than me actively doing anything. I will just keep looking at it until I get that first play through or two.

[materpillar]

I think I'm at the 2 hour mark or so myself. Usually I see a general that I like. Throw together a few linchpin cards. I'll scryfall for synergy cards for those linchpin cards and then I scan EDHrec to pick out anything obvious I missed. My first list is usually pretty quick and dirty. I'll give that really rough list a go and see how it plays. Mostly to find what synergies and what not that I liked and what doesn't actually work in paper. Then I'll refine it years and years.

I prioritize getting a rough list together and then a play or two. I find excessive theory crafting to not be ideal for creating deck lists myself. I tend to reach for the stars a bit much and end up with crappy piles.

I did once build an EDH deck out of a friends pile of trade chaff in 15 minutes when I forgot to bring my own. I then proceeded to dumpster everyone with it. That was a delightful day.

[Jemolk]

Once I actually start assembling the deck, it doesn't tend to take long at all anymore. A few hours at most, sometimes more like 15-20 minutes. On the other hand, it can easily enough be a year or more in between the part where I have the idea and start setting aside cards for the deck, and the point where I actually start building it. I have no possible way of measuring how much time I spend actually thinking about any of my deck projects these days, because they span such a long time. I used to have an idea and immediately throw it together a lot more often, but now, with around 45 decks put together and another 20 or so in various stages of assembly, it tends to feel a lot less urgent.

[BaronCappuccino]

When I build a new deck, I sell my old one to Card Kingdom and buy the new one from TCG. I don't keep a collection. If we want to count that towards total time from brainstorming to shuffling up, add one to three weeks to the total. Building a deck occurs entirely on Archidekt, down to the choice of card prints. It's very important to me that my deck not want cards I can't afford. I often play mono-color decks for this reason, because I can devise thematic reasons for excluding various swaths of cards, but it's hard to do so with lands. For example, in the Azami deck featured I decided ramp would consist of cost reducers rather than mana producers. Once I have a commander that doesn't immediately strike me as needing something I can't afford, I come up with the broad categories of cards that the deck will consist of - in Azami's case, wizard creatures with countermagic abilities, modal spells with countermagic as at least one node, artifacts or wizards that reduce costs of deck-relevant cards (wizards, instants, blue cards, etc), and win conditions, in this case, labman/oracle and mind over matter. Once I know my broad search parameters, I typically just do a relevant search on gatherer and literally put in all the cards that fit. All my decks are that way. I found 24 wizards that have the words counter target in the rules text and perform as intended, for example. My decks largely build themselves. After I find all the broad categories, I tailor the land count by upping or dropping basics. The remaining slots go to win conditions and flavor cards. When it's done, I decide whether the estimated effectiveness is worth the cost. I'll spend a few days goldfishing it on Archidekt, and either scrap it and start over or buy it. Waffling over what commander to try next takes me forever. Building takes me an hour or two.

[Moxnix]

Once I have an idea I can build a deck on mtgo for the first test in 5-10 minutes. Then I play it and go these are bad I need this curve sucks here etc. I typically obsess over list for a week or 2 tuning it to where i think it does what I want as good as it can then move on to the next project but the first list I can make instantly

[Dunharrow]

I put 6-8 hours, but this is spread over the course of months most of the time.
Sometimes years.

I get an idea, and put a few cards that suit that idea into a box. Since I am short on time, I don't tend to look at my collection very often. Every once in a while I add a couple cards, or bookmark a couple cards in my web browser...
Then one day I get the urge to start building and I will spend about 2 hours searching for cards (online or in my collection), about 2 hours making cuts, and then I will often have an incomplete deck (too many cards, or a few lands short), and goldfish a few times before I make final cuts.

[Haman]

Some people have greatet inertia to deck building, but my favorite way to build a deck is to sleeve the cards. I will started sleeving with whatever i have, to get to a 60 card, 80 card deck and just playtest with friends. While getting the feel of the deck, i will continue to dig , buy cards to fill to 100

[Cyberium]

Two to three hours. The pick a commander and choose its theme takes up most of the time, but once it's decided it's just about bringing the cards out of collection.