Casual Deckbuilding/Design and Power levels

[TheWakaEmu117]

First off I’d like to say hi everyone it’s been awhile. And I have an interesting problem. I play mostly with my friend Dylan. And his small card collection is comprised of prerelease boxes from Rivals of Ixilan, a few ixilan drafts worth of cards, the Jace Planswalker deck and a few packs here and there. And some random Amonkhet stuff as well.  His pool of rares/mythics is very limited. However I have a collection of large amounts of bulk and a couple old collections of stuff mostly from older sets but nothing before like 2005 I think I’m not sure. Nothing super valuable or particularly powerful. To say the least I have a larger and broader pool of cards than him. He doesn’t like it when I don’t play standard legal stuff since all he has is standard cards. But one of the decks I have a UG ramp value deck is comprised of both standard and non standard cards. His deck can beat that one in a pretty fair match however my Jeskai deck is build of playable competitive cards which he hates because it’s more likely for my deck to blow his deck out of the water so to speak.

We are both super broke college kids who don’t have a lot of extra money to buy cards with, especially for anything more than a standard deck. I want to build a cheap cool deck that I can put together with cards from my collection that aren’t standard legal but are super powerful. Most of what I can build is haphazard stuff with a lot of one and 2 ofs.

How do you guys approach building bulk decks or only shelling money out for certain cards that go in most of any one archetype. Counterspell for control, Lightning Bolt for red decks etc etc... I find that building like this is super hard because I have been watching standard and modern and have learned the importance of a lot of the deck building strategy. And I know that there are simply better cards I can use but those are more expensive or I can’t get a hold of them very easily.

I think I have rambled quite a bit more than anything but would love to hear what you think

[ApothecaryGeist]

It sounds like you are asking for some good methods to level the playing field between casual players who have modestly differing collections.

It also sounds like it is just the two of you.

The key is to have card pool and build rules that you have both agreed to ahead of time. 

You need not stick to the tournament designations of Standard or Modern for your card pool rules, although those are places to start.  You could use "nothing before Magic Origins".  Another idea is something like "Commons and uncommons must be Modern legal, but Rares must be Standard legal."  If neither of you consider yourselves to be rules gurus, I could also suggest: "Don't use any cards printed in the pre-Modern card frame."  If you neither rules experts nor ancient (I am both ), those old cards can be fairly tough to figure out the modern templating.  Also many creature cards have received updated/errata'ed types since then.

Another way to help level the playing is by modifying your build rules.  For people with small collections, I often suggest: build like it is a pre-con.  These usually have fixed amounts of rares and uncommons.  I could suggest a limit of 4 rares and a limit of 12 uncommons.  You could also modify the 4-of rule.  Perhaps only allow a maximum of 3 copies of a card.

Bottom line is: If it is just the two of you, do what works for you.

Happy Brewing

[Morganator 2.0]

Low budget yet competitive decks? Sounds like Pauper to me. In case you don't know, Pauper is a format where only commons are legal (as well as a small banlist). The good part: most decks are dirt cheap. My first Pauper deck cost me $20 USD (approximately, it's not my native currency, but I'm guessing it was that much). Despite this, you can still do some crazy builds. I'd suggest looking into it.

[CardAgain Sweater]

It sounds like you are asking for some good methods to level the playing field between casual players who have modestly differing collections.

Bottom line is: If it is just the two of you, do what works for you.

Happy Brewing

I'm going to quote (truncated) ApothecaryGeist and agree, with a specific recommendation: use proxies.

As college students, you should have access to computers and printers; you can youtube for tutorials on how to make them look pretty, but if you are playing with sleeves you won't be able to tell which ones are proxies as they sit in the library (no worries about 'marked cards'). Since it's mainly just you two, no problems. It's not against any copyright laws WotC is going to enforce as long as you don't sell them, and if you don't use them in sanctioned tournaments you'll be fine. If you are playing someone else in a casual format setting, I'd be surprised if anyone took issue with your use of proxies, especially if you announce it before play.

You may need to gin up some proxies too; if I was your friendly opponent under a potential new Pro-Proxy regime, my first build would be dedicated to hosing your Jeskai build

Good on you for being sensitive towards your friend's frustrations and being proactive in finding solutions.

[TheWakaEmu117]

Thank you all for giving your input I love these suggestions. And I do want to play pauper however I really want to play burn and it’s not particularly cheap unfortunately, I’m thinking of going with a midnight guard presence of Gond deck, but we will see. I do use proxies and am a interested in making better ones so I may seek that out. Idk I’ll talk to him and see what he thinks. My dad brought the approach of the second sun control and mardu vehicle challenger decks and those are a blast to play against each other.