Topic: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

I was wondering how you guys sorted your cards. I've spent an inordinate amount of time sorting my cards by colour, when a friend of mine suggested I refine it further. I'll be sorting the coloured sections into their rarity and then mana cost.

He stated the reason for sorting by rarity was because every deck needs a few uncommons and a rare or two, but that just brings the question: What do you guys consider when building decks? I've plenty of cards ranging from weatherlight to the ones you'll see floating around on the shelves in EB these days courtesy of a friend of mine moving away and no longer needing them, but I honestly look at the pile of cards and just decide to play with the decks I've already got.

Any advice is appreciated!

When life gives you lemons, squeeze 'em till they're stupid.

Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

My cards are probably a little too meticulously sorted, first by set and then by collector number (which equates to sorting each set by colour, and then each colour alphabetically). I do this because when I'm looking through my boxes, I'm usually not just browsing. I'm looking for a specific card, and this system makes it as easy as possible to find.

I think your friend's logic is a bit flawed; not every deck "needs a few uncommons and a rare or two." Equating rarity to quality presumes that WoTC always makes all rare cards better than all common cards, and that's just not true. Lots of hugely powerful cards use many commons, and I've seen a lot of decks that are filled with rares and are still useless.

There are probably a million or so articles on deckbuilding that I won't bother re-hashing, but I will break down why why I think my sorting system is the best. When I build a deck, I:

- Find a deck archetype online that sounds interesting, or find a card that seems fun and/or powerful. For example, I see Mindcrank in the NPH spoiler list, see that it combos well with Bloodchief Ascension, and try to make a combo deck out of them.

- Scour forums and blogs for people who have had the same idea, and figure out what would be needed in such a deck. To make this combo work, I need to do a few things: find both parts of the combo, get them into play and protect them, get counters on the Ascension either through burn or proliferate, set off the combo through discard or burn, and I have to protect myself until the combo is set up.

- Given that information, I start to put together an initial decklist using Gatherer. Because the combo uses black anyways, I look up black cards that provide the abilities I need (e.g. Duress, Despise, Inquisition of Kozilek, Sign in Blood, Dark Tutelage), and since I likely need both card draw and burn with proliferate as a bonus, I start to splash red (Volt Charge, Staggershock, Ember Hauler) and blue (Tezzeret's Gambit, Mana Leak). I pick 9 cards to run 4x each of, figure out my mana base with basic lands, and I have a first list.

- NOW, I go to my box and get the cards that I'm going to use out. I whip up some proxies for anything I don't have, head off to the local shop or MTG Online, and playtest until my eyes fall out. Every game, I take notes of what worked and what didn't. Any time I had a card sit unplayed in my hand, that's may be a sign that it should be replaced with a different card that fills a need you didn't have before. Maybe I'll decide that I'm drawing cards fast enough from Dark Tutelage that I don't need blue after all, and I replace those cards with more burn because I didn't get enough. As you play the deck more and more, you refine it further and further until you're happy with it. Then, and only then, I go out and trade/buy the cards I'm missing.

- If you want, you then figure out what kind of decks you're likely to play against (the metagame), figure out how those decks might throw a wrench into yours, and build a sideboard to throw a wrench into theirs first.

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Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

LootPinata:

Sweet this helps a lot! I somehow doubt I'll be looking for cards in the same way but your deck building methods seem to be very thorough. So far I've learned two things from this: I don't have to make a 'theme' for my deck despite what the interwebs tells me and I should be paying attention to what other people play. That second one seems a little harder since I only really know a few cards, but I suppose that'll come in time.

Cheers

When life gives you lemons, squeeze 'em till they're stupid.

Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

I guess it depends what you mean by a 'theme'. A lot of theme decks specifically work because the cards in them work together to create effects that neither one has on their own. Elf decks can quickly generate large amounts of mana to drop huge creatures, and merfolk/sliver/myr decks work because they contain cards that give every creature of that type bonuses. Three normal creatures may be OK, but three flying trampling creatures with vigilance are a heck of a lot better.

I think it's more important to have focus. Figure out what you want your deck to do and let that guide your building, as opposed to flipping through your library, grabbing whatever looks cool and calling it a day.

As for watching what other people play, just ask them. I've found most players are happy to explain what their deck does and why, even if it's just to brag about how awesome they are. smile

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Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

Heh, well I had a game with a few friends recently and paid more careful attention to what they were using and how it worked with other cards than focusing solely on obliterating whatever they had now, and it's beginning to make more sense. I was a bit of a noob in the beginning of playing this game, but now I'm hopefully learning how to play a little more tongue

Once I'm done sorting my deck out I'll be leveling my sighs on making up a new deck though. Thanks for the ideas :3

When life gives you lemons, squeeze 'em till they're stupid.

Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

I have always sorted my cards by Block/Edition > Color > Alphabetical

If you are building decks and playing with the cards, I have found this the easiest way for me to find the card I am looking for because I know where it is.... regardless of whether it is a C, Unc, or Rare

If you were Trading cards, though, it would probably be better to sort the cards by Edition / Color / Rarity as it would make it easier for the people you are trading with to just look through your Unc or Rares in the edition and color they are looking for....

As far as deck building goes, there are just so many ways to put decks together.  What it comes down to is what kind of play are you doing with your friends. 

Are you playing casually and just for fun?  If so, then if can be fun to build decks around a theme and see how they play... build decks with nothing but commons, or no more then 1 of each card, or pick a card and build an entire deck around that one card... there are a lot of things you can do.

If you are playing with friends that just like to crush each other then it would be a good idea to jump online and look up some of the nastiest combinations out there right now and build a deck round those.  I played a guy the other day who had out several Myr cards by turn 4, I didn't have any removal in my hand, and because of the combination he had out, he was able to make an infinite amount of 1/1 Myr Tokens on his turn... well, I couldn't block a million Myrs.... that game wasn't all that fun.... at least for me.... but to each their own.

J

Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

First, I sort everything by what it costs to cast - each of the five colors, colorless, multicolor, land, and basic land. When building a deck, I'm always going to know what mana I'm going to have and therefore which cards can be ignored. Hybrid cards, split cards, and now phyrexian mana make things complicated. The ones that ultimately require multicolor mana (like Jund Hackblade) I mix in with the other multicolor cards. Those that can be entirely one color mana (like Kitchen Finks) ... they get their own special section. Those that can even be colorless (like Beseech the Queen, Reaper King, or phyrexian mana) ... also separate.

After that I sort everything by creatures and non-creatures which leads to around a 50/50 split, and then everything sorted alphabetically. It's all a big hassle the very first time, but after that it's very easy to find specific cards. I wouldn't really sort by edition. If I'm looking for a Disenchant, I don't want to have to potentially look in multiple different spots.

If you're interested in trading with people, you're going to want to sort out your rares and your very best uncommons for them to look through.

Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

Okay, so I've finally decided on what I'll be doing thanks to you guys.

I'll be sorting by color first off, separating the multicolor and split cards into their own category, then alphabetically. I wanted to make this as easy on my brain to enter into the system once I'd done sorting them out, and so breaking my collection into slightly more bite sized chunks seems logical :3

Thanks everyone for the input!

When life gives you lemons, squeeze 'em till they're stupid.

Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

I sort my multiple color right before my artifacts fwiw. There are so few of them that it makes them easy to find.

Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

I sort by color, then by rarity and inside rarity by edition (from newest to oldest, if they are reprints I put them to the newest print available). I use this sort because most of the times u are interested in the rares and uncommons smile

Re: Card sorting (the paper kind) and deck construction tips

My cards are sorted in a completely different manner.

1) Artifacts (including those with colored mana in their casting costs) are sorted separately from artifact creatures, both are sorted alphabetically.

2) Colored cards (not including colored artifacts) are sorted by color, then by type (creature, sorcery, instant, enchantment, planeswalker), then alphabetically within those types.

3) Colorless cards (Eldrazi, Karn Liberated) are sorted by type and then alphabetically.

4) Multicolored cards are separated into color groupings (blue/green, white/green, black/red, blue/green/white, black/green/red, etc.), and then are sorted by type and then alphabetically.

5) Non-basic lands are sorted alphabetically.

6) Basic lands are sorted by type.  Most wind up in general population, but foils, foreigns, alpha/beta/unlimited and full-arts are pulled out for use in EDH decks.

7) Silver-bordered cards are lumped together regardless of set and are, for the most part, unsorted.

This is a complicated scheme to maintain, but it allows me to search my collection quickly using limited criteria.  If everything were just sorted alphabetically and by color, then it'd be very hard to find a card without knowing its name.