How to Find the Perfect Card for Any Deck

#mtg #thetrinketmage #trinketmage
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Decklist:
www.moxfield.com/decks/VnG9SD...
This was a really fun deck building session! I think the deck is shaping up to be really fun!
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[@astanix]

I also find that playing my deck against various people results in people saying 'oh, are you playing X or Y in that deck, it would be great in it!' which is often helpful.

[@MetallicMutalisk]

I'm kind of the opposite, usually the suggested card is out of my budget, or I had it and it didn't work, or I specifically just do not like using the card.

[@WoodWisp]

​@@MetallicMutalisksimply have a bigger budget

[@commanderpower99]

Just be careful how you say it as some people don't take it well. I'm sometimes that guys saying "you should play this and that" with the best intentions and people get a little upset.

[@garbonzo_bean1532]

Scryfall is a savior for janky decks. I'm building a Isperia deck where I want people to attack me, and scryfall has helped so much finding stuff that forces players to attack me or synergies with it

[@thetrinketmage]

That sounds like a really fun deck! You got a deck list online I could look at

[@MetallicMutalisk]

Learning to use that scryfall syntax has made me find so many good cards

[@solarupdraft]

I like to refer to removal, ramp, and card draw as the fruit and veggies of a commander deck. Might not be as fun, but you won't grow big and strong without them.

[@thetrinketmage]

But there are ways to make those fun! Playing on theme removal and ramp can be bonus synergy and a lot of fun!

[@sarahbuck2506]

You do an excellent job of showing people how to best use the resources available for what they want to do.

[@Dunkosaur]

The One Piece… IS REAL!!!

[@TheUltimateRey]

“Can we get much higher!?”

[@marcodaddario3965]

@@TheUltimateRey Can we get much jankier?

[@jaysuede2627]

Good episode. I was wondering if Convoke would show up, but completely forgot about Complete the Circuit. That's a dope play.

[@christophknorr4635]

This is very similar to my own approach. I like to start with the "vegetables" of my deck. That means I make sure I have enough Ramp, Card-Draw and Removal. Than I add the cards I definetly want to play for my strategy. Afterwards I make Scryfall-Searches for other cards that match my strategy. For example I recently built a Tesak, Judith's Hellhound Deck. After I got the essential parts down, I searched for red dogs on Scryfall and picked the ones that were the most interesting ones. Afterwards I went to EDH-Rec to search for good Red cards and red Tribal cards. Once I had my draft finished, with around 80 non-land cards, I removed cards one by one, while making sure to not remove any Ramp, Card-Draw and Removal cards.

[@googloocraft1217]

I don't do that because there's a lot of ramp, draw and removal that can synergys with your deck, but if you don't know what's in your deck then you can't pick the right one and you kinda just pick the basic ones which are not always the best one

[@zaklawrence-earey6832]

You don't always need Ramp, and your commander will really vary how much of any other type/style of card you need so it has to be more flexible than that

[@christophknorr4635]

@@googloocraft1217Of course you can have Ramp, Draw and Removal that synergizes mroe than the standard suite. And if my search for good synergetic cards come up with such cards I add them to the draft and remove the cards from the"standard" ramp suite later on. i just want to make sure that my initial draft has enough Ramp/Draw/Removal, before I start picking synergetic cards. In the final lsit I than use synergistic pieces over the standard pieces.

[@christophknorr4635]

@@zaklawrence-earey6832I can't think of any deck that works without Ramp. An Elfball-Deck might not need to run Land-Ramp in form of Cultivate and others, since it uses many Manadorks. But these are at the end also a form of Ramp.

[@zaklawrence-earey6832]

@@christophknorr4635 Almost every 3CMC or less Commander that wants to be out early/doesn't care about extra mana doesn't need ramp. Rigo, Raffine, Kutzil etc would all rather have creatures played on 2 than a signet or Rampant Growth. Pia Nalaar, Bartolome, Jadar etc want to come down on 2 which is the same slot as a signet. If your commander is cheap and cares about a certain condition its almost certainly better to play towards that condition rather than ramp

[@chrism7067]

they people who say "i dont look online" or "i dont use EDHREC" are trying to be some kind of elitists. Like bro, i build my decks from scratch but if afterwards i want to check out the deck average or search up a keyword to find some bangers to slip in, its all good.

[@sarahbuck2506]

Exactly. I wasn't fortunate enough to have known about the game since Alpha, and there's a good 27k or so unique cards out there. As I am not a savant with an eidetic memory, if I want to know what cards I could possibly use for any given deck, I'm gonna have to rely on these resources.

[@Ox7moron]

I love this method! I might have to do something similar for a deckidea i had earlier

[@giocanz5222]

great approach with even a greater example

[@peterlof]

Fantastic video, and I absolutely love the deck list! Theorycrafting a deck and searching through the thousands of available cards for that one gem is a big part of the fun imo, scryfall especially is a treasure trove. EDHRec is nice for the most obvious synergies, but - as many people have pointed out - it recursively feeds itself into a common list of suggestions that are way too generic and often don't synergize very well. The other day I was looking for upgrades to my Strefan vampire deck and stumbled apon Lim-Dul's Hex for instance. Only 29 of 5.5K decks appear to play it, so the card is not even suggested if you look Strefan up. The same goes for Mardu Shadowspear, which is in just 18 decks! The best part? If you check the handful of decks that contain that little gem you found, you'll likely find even more obscure gems that failed to be suggested by EDHRec, as those decks were made by players that look for niche cards too :)

[@ildlyn8966]

You are just bad at mtg in general.

[@Draconior87]

amazing content as usual, thank you so much. i'm 37, never stopped playing since i was 15. and i learn a lot from your videos.

[@thetrinketmage]

I’m glad you are enjoying the content!

[@savinobalducci6148]

very good video about incentives and tools to diverge from standard decklists!

[@awesomedude202]

Great tips! I'd love to see what you have to say about a commander as interesting and unique as Sekki, Seasons' Guide. Cuz everyone under the sun reads it and then builds +1/+1 counters, failing to realize that if you buff its toughness by even 1, it's now completely immune to all damaging effects and generates 1/1 spirits equal to however much damage it takes at any time, NOT just how many counters get removed from it. I've had a fun time experimenting with it haha

[@nicolajsalblbrandt7997]

This is how I decided on making a jeskai flicker deck.

[@thetrinketmage]

Who’s the commander?

[@somedude4912]

Thats actually insane that you say that because ive been going crazy trying to homebrew my own jeskai flicker deck, but i cant decide on a commander. I play jeskai ephemerate in pauper and absolutely love it, and wanted to translate it into edh, but its definitely harder than expected. What is your deck like?

[@denic.6741]

loved your video. had to share it with my friends and loved ones!

[@thetrinketmage]

Appreciate it!

[@beckhamjenkins4798]

This is awesome. This is basically how I build my decks, I just don’t use scryfall. I also think that there are two was to build a good deck and you should probably be using both strats. The first as you describe, picking an identity first. The second is to just build a generic deck then as you play find the ways you win and rebuild around those. This is especially true with decks that have side combos. If you win 10% of your games with a combo early and 90% late game with value, cut the combo. If it’s flipped (and you like the combo) cut the crap and build that combo deck

[@TheUltimateRey]

Yeah my issue with this way of brewing is I end up with all these ideas and have a hard time choosing which one to stick with lol but when I do I try and make it as simple and functional as possible, ramp, removal, card draw

[@thetrinketmage]

Narrowing down to one idea is a challenge I face too but it’s also fun!

[@TheUltimateRey]

@@thetrinketmage yup brewing and building in unique ways I believe is part of the fun of EDH! Who needs staples lol

[@Iweleth]

This is kinda what I did with my most recent brew. I wanted to brew around Lurrus as a companion and saw ny Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim. So I filtered on Scryfall on clerics in Orzhov colors small enough for Lurrus, noticed synergy with both aristocrats and lifegain, and from there combined Scryfall searching and some Edhrec to put together an initial brew to start experimenting with. The result was a much more put together aristocrat deck than my previous one.

[@NateFinch]

Some of my all time favorite commander decks have come finding a cool card and looking up on EDHRec for what commanders use that card. For example, I saw Doors of Durin somewhere, and was like, that sounds cool, I wonder what deck that would work in. I looked it up on EDHRec and found Samut, Vizier of Naktamun. And whoo boy, that deck is fun! And it's unique and not expensive to build.

[@SwedeRacerDC]

I think this is absolutely a great way to use these resources. However, out of the box thinking is very challenging for some. They're not wired that way. They might build the deck with everything that makes tapped creatures and use a 5 color commander like Kenrith, because he's popular and can helm the deck of their dreams. But you focused it down to just creating tapped zombies and thought of the perfect commander. You also had the knowledge of using vehicles to force taps and things like Convoke (conspire is great too btw) and recognized that if everything is tapped, you need to pillow fort to protect, because otherwise, someone swings in and kills you before you can take them out. Others might get here from trial and error, but many people with less than a year of experience will have a very difficult time doing what you did. Even with a few years it might be tough without that natural spark of curiosity and out of the box thinking. I really wish magic would slow down, because it's making it even more overwhelming to enter without using one of the make precons to build off of. This then takes you back to trial and error to see how the deck performs and then take out things that don't work and put in things it needs.

[@buddhathegod]

I did this for my Quintorious, Field Historian deck. I saw most of them on EDHREC either ran cycling or artifact rescrapping, and for some reason I've never been a big fan of Myr Retriever decks. I found the really old card Alms that I for some reason kept since I first played magic from like when I was 13, and then eventually I started building the deck around single graveyard resurrection or interaction. With Altar of Dementia and Mana Echoes, I could suddenly get through my deck pretty quickly and flood the board with tons of attackers. Eventually I also noticed that I also had Reito Lantern, and with Altar of Dementia and Mana Echoes, I could go infinite spirits with Quintorious, but I kept Alms just because of the flashback to my old retro magic days; additionally, it's just a card that is so bad in general, but at least isn't worthless in Quintorious, so it's just fun to see an old card like that interact with it. It also does do some more conventional stuff, like putting Gift of Immortality on something like Kami of False Hope, Selfless Spirit, Cathar Commando and Burnished Hart which will net you two spirits + an effect every turn. It also runs stuff like Sun Titan and Emeria Shepherd, and with stuff like fetch/thawing glacier you can surprise, if you have them in the graveyard, flash some sunblast angel or angel of ruins. It's also running Sunforger, and along with Reito Lantern you can reuse Boros charm/Comeuppance/swords/path/etc. It requires tons of set-up, but idk it's just fun to see the full jank come to fruitition in its full glory sometimes.

[@saleen12]

Thanks for posting the list so I can net deck it

[@thetrinketmage]

No problem

[@noise.s]

The throne idea is great but I would change commander to Archelos which I think opens up so many avenues

[@whitesmith5985]

Feel like I've gotten a lot better lately at building decks. Almost finished building a golgari landfall lifegain aristocrats deck, started off as just landfall, but through these steps you meantioned or similar, I came to the deck that is currently is. Sounds like a mess being 3 archetypes, but they synergies increasingly well once it gets going.

[@denic.6741]

still in love with your/patreons deck. do you think that maybe High-Speed Hoverbike would be a slightly cooler vehicle (it taps a target too)

[@Snipfragueur]

Hey you know how you can find that one piece ? Add more tutors!

[@jaredwright1655]

Can't get enough of your content. Love the avatar and its emotes

[@snowdazeTV]

i think it's overall good but there should probably be more payoffs than just the throne with all those different effects going in the deck

[@ildlyn8966]

4 mana rock dimir deck. Yeah gl with this lmao im sure u will get to cast army of the dead often

[@salmondelicious]

Thanks dunkey

[@thetrinketmage]

No problem, really another Dunkey classic

[@volosguidetomonsters3440]

One time I made a Goreclaw Storm deck It was very funny

[@eebbaa5560]

well now i have to find a way to build a scarab god deck that isn't zombie tribal, reanimator, spell copy, vehicles, or pillowfort... seriously though, how do you come up with the initial idea? i see how everything cascaded once you figured out the throne/army combo, but the part i struggle with the most is that first push.

[@doctorrobz]

The one piece is The one ring … nuff said

[@thetrinketmage]

Sadly you are not wrong… might need to make a whole video about generically good cards

[@Kydrou]

3:00 The real problem with Throne of the God Pharaoh is you have only 1. Without redundance, you need tutoring or protection. Pillowfort is too weak and enforce the "Gang up Mentality" So does Intruder Alert: Half a combo piece is "Archenemy Signal". No one will believe you are only going for the "Surprise" part of the phrase "Surprise B°tts°x" *NOW* , Faces of the Past? * Slow Clap *

[@User_N8]

What about if I'd want to make a deck where I can not find a sub-theme on edhrec. Like proliferating, but without ever using poison counters. I know I would love to combine Urabrasks Forge, Chromehost Seed Shark and either Vat of Rebirth or Norns Wellspring. I simply can not find a "proliferate" theme without poison though, so it's hard to build around it especially in commander being the singleton format it is

[@thetrinketmage]

It might take a minute but searching for the word “proliferate” on scryfall and narrowing your search by color can help. You just need a counter to proliferate. So +1/+1 or -1/-1 works well

[@User_N8]

@@thetrinketmage Hey appreciate the reply! So I guess my problem is less finding proliferate cards and more finding cards that would go really well with proliferate that are not poison themed. I found incubator tokens are really well, since they start with +1/+1 counters, but everything I build so far just lacks consistent options. I know I could go green for the counter theme, but I'd like to make more use of different counters that actually do a lot like urabrask forge and not rely soley on 1/1s

[@loganblackblood6713]

Do you have a server of your community? Ive tried looking for it on youtube, and i don’t find anything…

[@thetrinketmage]

I do but it’s just for patrons. Since I’m a 1 person team it would be difficult to manage a public discord. But you can join the patron one for as little as $2

[@loganblackblood6713]

@@thetrinketmage ooo got it! Guess it’s the perfect time to make a patreon account ;D

[@thetrinketmage]

@@loganblackblood6713 hope to see you there!

[@tylerrassi4148]

Meanwhile, I have an issue making my deck work at all. It was the first deck idea I ever had. 😅

[@thetrinketmage]

What deck?

[@tylerrassi4148]

@thetrinketmage it's a unique twist on a voltron deck. Basically, a hybrid between a Voltron and token deck where the token creatures block for me while my big heavily enchanted/equipped creatures swing for big damage. (Human tribal focused but not exclusive) I've found plenty of cards but narrowing it down below 100 is really hard for me as there's so many cards that work with this and I keep finding more and more. 😅😬😢

[@bayutrismienantha2830]

​@@tylerrassi4148 Use what you have don't buy what you don't have , use only the most cheap cost card with better effects. Then try it

[@B1ngusD1ngus]

The thought that someone would intentionally avoid edh rec because they dont want to play competitive is so funny to me.

[@justStevenYaffe]

why do you sound like dunkey

[@thetrinketmage]

Do I? There is another person who has commented a few times saying I sound like him. I personally don’t hear it

[@isaack8146]

Wait, this has such unfocused inputs and outputs?!?!?!