April 12, 2021
limit – noun : the value that a function (or sequence) “approaches” as the input (or index) “approaches” some value; or, the sort of thing that made me hate math
Mark Rosewater, head designer for Magic, has often espoused the notion that “limits breed creativity.” I’m not sure who originally came up with the concept, but that person never tried to build multiple cohesive Magic decks using about 30 boosters worth of cards.
As last year came to a close, and with my son showing minimal interest in Magic, I grew weary of the growing stacks of cards building up on my desk. I’d made the decision at the beginning of 2020 to keep any packs I opened during the year separate from my established collection. This was partially to help me track what I opened throughout the year, and partially to use as a sub-collection from which to build low-power decks to play against the kid, who had a pitifully small collection of his own.
Except the entire year passed and not once did we ever build actual constructed-style decks to play against each other. The kid would build a sealed deck from a prerelease kit or a bundle, but after a handful of games he had zero interest in doing anything more with those cards.
Money will spent!
Convinced constructed Magic with the kid was wishful thinking, and tired of so many purposeless cards on my desk that hadn’t been catalogued or sorted, I trashed the “mini-collection” experiment. All of last year’s acquisitions were added to my online collection tracker, and then dutifully filed into my set binders. I kept only six packs worth of Modern Horizons cards separate, as I had no binder to put them in.
At last – my desk was clean (that’s a lie, it was still a mess, but not because of Magic cards), my collection was largely in order, and I could get back to playing with digital cards on Arena and dreaming of one day having a use for paper cards.
Both the kid and I got Ikoria bundles and Zendikar Rising gift bundles for Christmas, and in January we opened them to do what we did a handful of times in 2020 – make sealed decks. Per tradition, these new decks got minimal play. As the Kaldheim release approached, I decided I would not be buying prerelease kits for it. No more. If the kid couldn’t be bothered to spend more than an hour with $30 worth of cards, I wasn’t going to buy Kaldheim prerelease kits.
I bought Kaldheim prerelease kits.
(FOMO is a cruel bitch.)
The kid seemed to like the cards in Kaldheim, and we did our usual handful of sealed deck battles, and that looked to be the end of it – just like all the previous times. But as recounted in my previous post, I decided to push the kid to build two decks from his entire collection. And though it took far, far too long for him to do that, he did begrudgingly give in to my obnoxious badgering and do it.
He doesn’t have a ton of cards, but he’s gotten prerelease kits for every set since at least War of the Spark, and a few bundles over the past few years. And we’ve built a few sealed decks from my stash of older packs. I imagine he’s working from ~100 boosters from various sets.
He cobbled together two initial decks, one of which is a pretty potent Gruul creature deck with two Questing Beasts, Robber of the Rich, Shifting Ceratops, and at the top end…his Ugin (that I let him have from our Core Set 2021 prerelease prize packs.) Other than lands and a few removal spells, the thing is all efficient and strong rares and mythics. And if he gets sufficient lands early, nothing I built stood a chance.
So what did I build?
Here’s the full list of what I had to build from:
- 10 Zendikar Rising draft boosters and 1 collector booster (gift bundle)
- 10 Ikoria packs (bundle)
- 8 Kaldheim packs (prerelease kit and two prize packs)
- 6 Modern Horizon packs
Building from this modest base was both wonderfully nostalgic, and infuriatingly confining. I stretched my Ikoria pulls remarkably thin to make a Mardu (of course) mutate deck that feels like a sealed deck but is remarkably fun and functional. My second deck leans heavily on my Kaldheim cards, and is a jumbled mess of a Sultai snow deck with a light zombie/changeling sub-theme. Both decks suffer from craptacular manabases (which, yes, is to be expected from such a limited pool of cards) and both are mostly draft chaff commons. That I have been able to best the kid with them most evenings is less a testament to my decks and more of an indictment of the kid’s mulliganing skills. He has repeatedly kept 2-land opening hands and suffered from critical missed land drops.
After each evening of matches we’d open a few packs (usually 2 Kaldheim collector boosters and 2 other draft or set boosters from various sets) and use those pieces to upgrade our decks. I also suggested tweaks to the kid’s builds, such as removing The Ozolith from his Gruul deck since it had little +1/+1 counter synergies.
It was after a few weeks, when I suggested we each make third decks, that I began to see just how pitiful my remaining options were. I had a handful of angels in my “collection”, and decided to start an Orzhov deck that could strengthen over time. It played even more pitifully than I expected.
If only it were 1997 again, when I was blissfully unaware of just how wretched my first forays into deckbuilding were. In those naive days I didn’t understand – strike that, I had never HEARD of – the concepts of card advantage, deck consistency, or a workable mana curve. I was too busy giddily dropping such powerhouses as Lava Hounds, Jungle Troll, and Mist Dragon.
Has it been fun building constructed decks and playing them regularly? Indubitably.
Have I enjoyed opening a booster and getting excited by something as meager as an Ice Tunnel, because it’s an upgrade for one of my decks? Beyond question.
Has building from such a meager pool allowed me to stretch my creative muscles?
No.
In all honesty, not having enough cards to build around anything but the most basic themes (mutate, snow) is disappointing. I know I could cave and pull select cards from my full collection, and I probably should – the kid’s got at least 3 times the cards to use, and a couple of his decks outclass anything I’ve cobbled together. But what I’m doing now was what I’d hoped to do early last year – begin Magic anew (where possible.)
So far, limitations are not breeding creativity, they are breeding desperation. Why else would I be running mediocre combat tricks in a white/black “angel” deck that’s running more non-angels than angels, since I just haven’t seen many in my Kaldheim packs?
But with that frustration comes hope. Strixhaven drops shortly, and we’ll not only be playing with prerelease kits, but the kid agreed to spend his own cash on a bundle preorder. A set booster box from my LGS should serve as initial prize packs for our weekly battles, and a box of collector boosters will arrive shortly thereafter. My pool of cards is likely to get at least 25% bigger in the next few weeks, and while Strixhaven won’t bring any more angels to boost my W/B deck, I’m excited knowing the Silverquill college may provide enough upgrades to make the deck a bit more threatening.
And in a month or three, assuming the kid’s interest holds, I just may have enough cards to get…creative.
Next time: Strixhaven strikes.
Casual Magicking 