By BeachBodGod69
We hear it all the time: whenever someone starts pitching a new deck design, often, the listener starts off by asking the question: “how does the deck win?” Such a simple question, it seems trivial to not have an immediate answer, right? I mean, after all, the purpose of playing the game is to win the game… shouldn’t that be the focus of the deck?
Perhaps that’s all there is to it; simply putting key components together faster than my opponents could lead me to victory.
The question I’d like to present today: Is this the best way to approach building a competitive deck, or is there more to this than meets the eye?
Let’s take a deeper dive and find out what our Champions of the format have done to achieve their success.
As far as Champions go, at the time of this article, there’s a deck we simply can’t ignore. We see it in cPDH.guide’s Power Rankings and Top 4 Wins, we know her by name: Let’s begin with the most decorated deck in the format; our crowned cPDH GOAT: Gretchen Titchwillow.
At the time of this article: Gretchen Titchwillow boasts 8 Top-4 finishes with multiple pilots..
On the surface, Gretchen in the command zone provides the player access to an outlet before the game begins. This gives the pilot access to its key component immediately, allowing this deck to be stacked with Simic’s abundant draw-and-ramp package, its no wonder that a deck like Gretchen could simply outpace her opponents to victory, right?
Bobby (bfine), Gretchen’s most successful pilot to date, says otherwise; that the deck is successful due to its consistency and resiliency while playing a slower, “Draw-GO” kind of game.
When asked,
Why do you think that Gretchen has seen so much success in the format?
Bobby responded with:
“Gretchen as a whole is hard to attack, resilient and is redundant. We have so many untappers and combo lines, I just win out of nowhere due to sheer redundancy. It has tons of interaction, it lets me sit back and just win out of nowhere, even if Gretchen is shut down. Plus we have so much velocity and control pieces, it’s really tough to beat unless all three opponents take it out at once.” –Bobby “bfine”, Discord (12:42 pm CST 12/7/24)
There’s a lot to what Bobby mentioned here; a great deal of Gretchen’s success came not from its speed or focus to a few key components, but a redundancy of them throughout the deck’s build. He even expresses elements of patience when piloting rather than seeking a speedy win, as the deck ‘let’s him sit back and just win out of nowhere…’ …What I find more intriguing, he didn’t mention seeking a win at all; he mentioned redundancy and resilience.
Redundancy gives consistent results when decks are shuffled and cards are drawn in a game.
Let’s take a different example: A rising star of the format, winner of Sanctuary IV and most recently, Sanctuary VII: Hollow Marauder.
In his YouTube interview with Clay, pilot PapaPauper (the format’s 2nd highest ranked overall pilot), offers a jubilant exposé of how his deck flips “seeking the win” deck building premise on its head:
“This is an entirely fair beatdown deck… (and) when nobody has any cards, (with) their creatures have been eroded by edicts and sweepers, (winning the game) is pretty trivial.” -PapaPauper, Sanctuary Series VII Champion Interview (14:02)
Now we have a deck that focuses on everything but the win, taking the crown from all other players with a Champion Pilot stating how trivial the focus on how one wins the game might be… and that focusing on the process versus the outcome is his key to victory.
I want to thank the pilots and the community at large for their perspectives. Overall, there’s more than way to play this fantastic game which we all love.
In their own words, our champions stated that their success came from the process towards the win rather than the win condition itself. And that redundancy and resilience of the deck’s components are the factors for which champions build upon.
So, if you’re stuck somewhere in that new deck brew and aren’t sure what to do next, take a word from our Champions: look at the process versus the outcome, and confirm how redundant and resilient the deck is… so that you can achieve those consistent results we all crave.
BeachBodGod69 is an avid cPDH meta enjoyer and a true believer in the power of Mystic Enforcer. If you want to discuss his thoughts in more detail, be sure to ping him in server on the cPDH.guide Discord.
Be sure to watch this article’s companion video where we discuss peripheral concepts related to the article.
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