I.GOALS

I have been in leadership training this last week and a half. Yesterday in leadership we were talking about setting goals and accomplishing objectives.  The lesson brought with it an interesting ratio.  When you try and accomplish any given task, you should spend 75% of your total time on the task planning.  This lesson is very relevant to Magic the Gathering.  The biggest difference between professional Magic the Gathering players and a PTQ grinder is the time spent preparing for events.

You can see the same phenomenon in Commander players.  The most dangerous decks you will see have been planned.  Decks that are thrown together rarely put up much of a fight in comparison to a well oiled machine.  It takes so much longer to tune a deck that had no goal it is trying to accomplish.  When you decide to plan and build a commander deck, you should have specific goals in mind. Today, I will use the Arcum deck as an example as I use a basic I.G.O.A.L model for planning a deck.

Issue: I would like to win Commander games with Arcum Dagsson as my general.

Goal: Achieve an infinite combo or win with Blightsteel Collosus as quickly as possible

                After you figure out how you want to win, you can put in cards that support that win condition.  In Arcum it is combinations of cards like Mind Over matter + Temple Bell or Planar Portal + Beacon of Tommorows.  In decks like Isamaru, it may just be equipment + Isamaru.

Obstacles:

At the phase in planning, you are wondering; what am I afraid of? What will stop me from winning?

1. Singleton format
2. Other players’ disruption
3. Playing 1 land a turn
4. Other players winning before you

Action:

When you are setting up a plan of action, you want to focus on finding ways to get around the obstacles you have outlined.

1. Singleton format
1. Card Redundancy
1. Hall of the Bandit Lord
2. Thousand-Year Elixir
3. Lightning Greaves
2. Tutoring
1. Kuldotha Forgemaster
2. Reshape
3. Transmute Artifact
4. Fabricate
3. Card Draw
1. Blue Sun's Zenith
4. Library Manipulation
1. Scroll Rack
2. Sensei's Divining Top
2. Other players’ disruption
1. Counter Spells
1. Counterspell
2. Force of Will
2. Protection Artifacts
1. Lightning Greaves
2. Darksteel Forge
3. Haste
1. Hall of the Bandit Lord
2. Thousand Year Elixir
4. Recursion
1. Academy Ruins
2. Scarecrone
3. Myr Retriever
3. Playing 1 land a turn
1. Cheat in Lands
1. Solemn Simulacrum
2. Artifact Accelerant
1. Sol Ring
2. Mana Crypt
4. Other players winning before you
1. Counter Spells
1. Hinder
2. Stoic Rebuttal
2. Spot Removal
1. Brittle Effigy
3. Mass Removal
1. Nevinyrral's Disk
4. Lock Down
1. Ensnaring Bridge
2. Winter Orb
5. Control Magic
1. Memnarch
2. Vedalken Shackles

        

Leverage:

Normally leverage would mean find people who can help you with achieving your goal.  In terms of deck building, this means adding the basic cards required to make your deck run.  For Arcum this means adding the lands and other cards required to make the deck run.  These are cards like Islands, Nuisance Engine and Blinkmoth Nexus.

I hope you find this model useful for building decks for any format. That is all for today. Thank you for reading!