ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑4 years ago
I always go by card type even though technically speaking cards do have multiple functions. My issue with sorting by role is that as someone reading someone else's list no two people will organize by function the same so I have a much harder time seeing what is and isn't there. I also hate that in a lot of cases the sorting by function has some sort of catch all section and that drives me crazy.
When I see a list organized by function, 90% of the time I will immediately walk away because as a reader, its more work on me to see what is and isn't there.
Ew.
I am the exact opposite. If I see a list sorted by type, I have NO IDEA what the deck is trying to do. When a list is sorted by function I see what sorts of things you want to do, and what your priority is for each.
For example, my latest list is Gargos. Looking at my list for 5 seconds, you can see that I've got 38 lands and 21 ramp - so getting to a decent amount of mana quickly is obviously a big priority. Then you can see that I've got 29 targeted spells to trigger gargos. It's very clear from just a moment's glance what this deck is trying to do - ramp to gargos, then trigger the crap out of him. And then the list of gargos buffs makes it clear that buffing gargos via equipment is a present, but minor theme of the deck. Sure, there are a few spells that don't fit neatly into a major category that sometimes get their own, but now we're talking about a couple stray cards that clearly aren't a major function of the deck - much easier to process than an entire list.
Sorting by type is fine if all you want is superficial help like "are you running X" (although you could just control+F if the most you have to offer is suggesting a couple cards). But how in the bleeding hells are you supposed to offer any systematic critique of the deck when they're sorted by type? Say my gargos deck was the same, but instead of having 21 ramp, I had 4 ramp and then a bunch of equipment that I wanted to put on gargos instead, or something like that. You'd have to look through the ENTIRE LIST to figure that out, and spot the horrible flaw in my deck, that I'm dedicating the whole thing around gargos, but I haven't adequately focused on ramp to make that a viable strategy.
Occasionally I'll make a decklist with no coherent plan, where sorting by type is really the only logical way to do it. And if that's you, then that's fine. Goodstuff is sometimes fun too. But for any deck with a focused plan, sorting by function is EXTREMELY useful, and sorting by type...well, I'm almost certain to walk away unless I'm REALLY interested.
It also helps YOU think about the deck. It would be easy to build a gargos deck throwing random things in that are cool and sorting by type, but sorting by function forces you to think about what your decks priorities are. If it's just a goodstuff deck, maybe that's not important, but if it's a focused strategy where you have a plan in mind, it can be really eye-opening to realize "oh hey, that super important thing I absolutely need to do only has 5 slots dedicated to it...that's probably going to mean my deck often doesn't do what I want it to do". And you can correct accordingly. If you build the deck FROM a list of functions, well so much the better.
As far as the OT: pick the part of the card that's more important. In both of those cases, I'm almost certain it's the one that isn't lifegain. But maybe it could be, if you're a lifegain synergy deck, and that's your primary focus. Depends 100% on context.
Sometimes I'll have a card that perfectly hits two critical categories - for example,
commit // memory is both a counterspell and targeted removal in Phelddagrif. In that case I usually just pick one. You might create a "does both" category, especially if you have a decent number that fit into both, but if you already have a lot of categories it can become harder to decipher. Usually just picking one suffices, I think, because it still preserves the overall structure of the deck the most clearly.