How often do you tinker with your decks?

[WWolfe]

How often do you generally change out cards or reconfigure portions of the deck?

I've noticed the past few months since I've been out of work due to having surgery that I've been messing with mine quite a bit more than I did before hand (partially out of complete boredom) which got me thinking, how much do you generally mess with your decks?

Is it just when new cards come out? Are you constantly tinkering? Do you mess with them at times just for the sake of doing so?

[Aetherium Slinky]

Constantly. I have a lot of free time and I like puzzles so I'm tinkering with my decks all the time. Someone could say too much, even. My Merieke Ri Berit deck has 146 iterations at the time of posting this so needless to say I've done quite a lot of thinking and stitching pieces together. This is all virtual, obviously. Sometimes when I feel like a deck has reached a new stable configuration I go out and buy all the new cards I've added to it.

Am I overdoing it? Please don't tell me I'm cuckoo.

[CleanBelwas]

I find myself constantly brewing new decks rather than tweaking old ones.

I have a core of about 5 or 6 decks that I really love and that I keep together and it's very rare that I touch these at all. These only really get tweaked if a) something perfect for the deck comes out or b) I want to take something out one of these decks to put it somewhere else.

I get my satisfaction from trying out new things rather than tweaking old ones. My play group is very casual so we're not in an arms race of power creep, each trying to out do each other and take our decks a little bit further. This means I get to mess around with all kinds of stuff. I have a new deck to try out almost every time we play. These new brews tend to always be super budget and I have a decent sized collection so it's not too hard to do, and all my actually good, expensive cards tend to stick to the constant decks.

I tried building an EDH cube to satiate this desire to brew but it's kind of a pain in the arse to take the decks apart once you're done and randomise the cube again.

I'm one of those types of people whose collection is alphabetised and colour coordinated all that kind of tedious stuff, so I'll brew a deck at work on here and be able to knock it together in paper in about half an hour.

That's just how I like to do it. The other guys in my group are much more "we have a few decks and we tweak them rather than build new ones".


Also, I hope everything went well with your surgery WWolfe and that you're on the road to recovery. Best of luck and good health dude.

[WizardSpartan]

I edit and change based on the money in my wallet lol. I'm at the point with my current 2 decks that any changes I'm making involve more expensive cards. I also constantly look for more experienced players to take a look at my decks. Constantly.

Get better, WWolfe!

[WWolfe]

Let me just add, I don't think there's a right answer or wrong answer. I think people do what they have time for, can afford, or just flat out prefer.

Personally, before I had all this free time I probably averaged messing with mine when a new set came out due to work. My Sidisi deck has 77 revisions on it atm, and that's just the ones that made it onto the site. I think with all this free time I'm too quick to make changes out of it giving me something to do (thus explaining the decision to try out Bad River). I have 8 decks right now, two of which I mess around with the most (Sidisi & Varina, though the Varina updates rarely make it to the site). A lot of the tinkering with Varina is to try to have as little overlap as possible between the two zombie decks (which can be difficult at times with the lords and certain staples like Sol Ring & Cyclonic Rift), I think there's an overlap of 14 cards right now which I'm trying to get down to 8-10.

Certain decks haven't been updated in quite a while due to my fascination with those two decks. My Purphoros deck has been kind of neglected. Maybe that will be my next project.

[Slyvester12]

I mess with decks constantly, but only the ones I really like. My Omnath landfall deck got built, bought, sleeved, and has never once been altered. I like the deck, and I play it occasionally, but it was built at a lower power level than I prefer and I'm not big on landfall/token generation to begin with.

On the other hand, my Ezuri deck and my Scion of the Ur-Dragon deck get tweaked all the time. I love those decks more than I will ever love a human child. As a consequence, I'm always trying to improve them. Unfortunately, they're at the point where improvement isn't an obvious change. It's not like I can say "oh, I just need to buy four more reserved list cards and the deck is finished."

The only other deck that I'm constantly revisiting is my Atraxa infect deck. I want it to work SO BADLY, but good lord is it hard to come up with a consistently good infect deck. There just aren't enough decent creatures with infect, and people love blowing up proliferate engines. Still, I love Atraxa, and I'll be damned if I let the worthless incompleat stop the joyous work of Phyrexia.

[Elan Morin Tedronai]

I constantly try to update when new editions come in Modern prizma, as I am Tribal player in Magic: the Gathering. I own here Tribal Gallery and you are welcome to see it, but when I make new decks for once in a while, I try to constantly update and make them better, which e.g. when for my Adaptive Enchantment, received as birthday gift, I constantly tried to put new things, even going to latest Theros, when I put Transcendent Envoy and Siona, Captain of the Pyleas, and fine gift by a friend in special card as Starfield of Nyx, incorporated into the deck. Otherwise, when new editions come and I had quite good Satyr Xenagos Ghor-Clan deck and when Gallia of the Endless Dance came out, I incorporated her in the deck as well as looking brightly with red-green Centaurs as Nikya of the Old Ways and Stonebrow, Krosan Hero. Back again before Theros came I had lurking Centaurs, but they just updated the Tribe with Pheres-Band Warchief and put notion of Ravnica Call of the Conclave Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage tokening and the Pheres-Band hoardes from Theros that gave border and edge to this particular Tribe. So, yeah, I am always updating but probably it's safe to say, that Dinosaurs before Ixalan weren't featured much and they are probably one-of-a-kind addition. I bought the Huatli, Dinosaur Knight and then built on it and made it 3-coloured with the other version of Huatli, Radiant Champion. Then and now, I can't update much on this deck, but yeah: you give high scores to my Ula Kiorthassiya Scryoceanea and Serpent of Yawning Depths is fantastic tinker and update. I am always doing it and when new things on Tribal come around I always update. Thanks for much of the scores! Thes are my Modern Casual Tribal Themes and I welcome new scores to them. I am very grateful for the big scores on the "Sea Monsters" deck upmentioned and the "Angelic" Boros Angel Batallion that have made them very pleasent in playing, hopefully for new grades by people here. I hope to see some Tribals as there were even "alphabetic" user, but in fact, for me such A-Z Tribal arangements are too confusing and I structured them thematically. Thanks for the grades, people. They really make my decks special casual Modern experiences at FNMs.
With all due respect,
Chavdar

[ApothecaryGeist]

I used to build a deck and then never modify it until I took it apart.  For the past year or so, I've been updating each of my decks every time a new set comes out.  usually just one or two cards.  But somestimes 6 or 7.  Whatever new cards each deck REALLY wants to have.

[Xaarvaxus]

I go through phases where I'm tinkering constantly [making multiple updates in a week] and times where I don't make any alterations for quite awhile [which I seem to be at the beginning of such a phase right now].  It tends to depend on whether something else is drawing away the bulk of my creative energies or not. Some decks get tweaked more than others as the commanders tend to have a wider array of strategies and I'll usually end up trying to cram multiple strategies into that deck [to widely varying degrees of success]. 

[Morganator 2.0]

Typically if there is a new card that might work in one of my decks I at least try it out.

On average I'll look at each of my decks about once a month and decide what has/hasn't been working.