This is an unfinished article on deck-building.

Deck-building is arguably the most enjoyable part of Magic. For myself and many others, it is an outlet of creativity of self-expression not found in most other games. Interestingly, one can be a great deck designer but not a great player, and vice versa, much like one can be a great composer but not a great musician, and vice versa. I will not claim that I am better at deck-building than playing (or that I am notably good at either), but hopefully I can present something of value in this article.

Concerning Archetypes

You will frequently hear that there are three archetypes in Magic:

• Aggro
• Combo
• Control

The problem with these archetypes is that they quickly start to blur once you look at actual decks. There are some decks that can strangely enough, play aggressively and simultaneously control you. There are some play control until they set up their combo. There are some that fall back on their combo if their early aggression fails. To give you a simple example: Thoughtseize. You’ll see this in aggro decks all the time because it disrupts both control and combo decks. Yet it is a control card. In many matchups, the aggro deck has to spend resources disrupting the enemy’s control or combo so they can continue playing aggressive.

The three archetypes remain a popular way to think about Magic not because they are accurate but because they simplify the game into a rock-paper-scissors relationship:

• Aggro decks beat control decks (because they dispatch threats faster than the control deck can respond to them).
• Control decks beat combo decks (because the control deck can target the critical combo pieces).
• Combo decks beat aggro decks (because the combo deck can ignore the aggression of the aggro deck).

In reality, there are no archetypes, there is only a spectrum, with aggression on one end and control on the other. Aggressive decks want to kill you before you can set up your win condition. Control decks, or “permission decks”, want to control you until they can set up their win condition. Likewise, combo decks will always have to settle on a certain amount of control or aggression. They don’t actually have the luxury of ignoring aggressive decks because, as mentioned earlier, an aggressive deck isn’t going to ignore them. It will find ways to disrupt their combo, even if it means applying so much pressure that the combo deck is forced to make awkward plays.

Mike Flores is fond of saying that he wrote the most important Magic article of all time. Pretty humble guy, huh? Well, he’s right. He did write the most important Magic article of all time. Its called “Who’s the Beatdown?” and you should read it now if you haven’t already. The point he makes, which applies to every game regardless of where your deck lies on the spectrum, is that one player always ought to be playing offense and the other player ought to be playing defense. Countless games have been lost between a player misidentified their role in that game, especially in a mirror match.

Where am I going with all of this? When you build a deck, its not helpful to ask, “Is my deck an aggro / control / combo deck?” according to some Platonic ideal, because you’re not going to play an abstract game of Magic but a real game in a real meta. Even if you insist on playing an aggro deck due to personal preference (as I do), you’re still better off starting off with the meta and asking yourself, “Just how aggressive or just how controlling should my aggro deck be?”

Enter midrange decks. If a aggro-control spectrum is more useful than the aggro-combo-control trifecta, its worth noting that Magic players have already named the type of deck that fits comfortably between the archetypal aggro shell and the archetypal control shell: the midrange deck. Unlike aggro decks, which are usually trying to “curve out” and play their threats as efficiently as possible, and unlike control decks, which are often-times waiting for the opponent to play spells so they can respond, the midrange has a more versatile gameplan: play control against aggro and aggro against control.

To be continued… or not…