Road to Gencon Part one: Competitive deck building.

Today I start my first article on helping players prepare for Gencon.  The hope is that both new players showing up, and veterans of UFS and Gencon itself will be able to take away at least something from this article.

Alright, you've bought your badge, gotten your hotel room with your friends.  Now for the most important step, what do I play?!  There are many ways to approach this question and I'm going to go through them as best I can.

Option one: Finding a good deck online.  

In some circles known as "net decking," this is a very popular option in many card games, with many upsides and downsides.  If you just want to go to Gencon and have fun, or don't have the time to test, this is a good option.  Another good reason is you're an excellent card game player, but you just can't build decks yourself.  The downsides are you may come across strong opposition if you build the "deck to beat."  Also, who says what you're copying is even the optimal build?  Maybe the original creator after winning found some flaws in his deck and is already adapting his deck for the next event. Building your own deck can make you a better player, or make you come up with your own personal strategies for the deck, but for some people, they'd rather have a deck they know works and run with it.

On a side note, I dislike the term "net decking."  People make you think its an awful thing to do and that it's bad for card games.  Its far from that.  When a deck that wins gets posted, it gets seen by a larger amount of the community.  People can dissect the deck, see what made it win, what it could have lost to, and basically turn it inside out poking at it.  This alone can cause a lot of discussion, and that alone helps grow the community.  It also gives newer players a baseline on where to go to on what is considered "good" in this game they picked up.  Again, some people don't have the time to dedicate to figuring this out themselves.  But after they get to play the deck, maybe they'll have something new to contribute and further the deck.  Along with all these pluses for growing the community, it has the bonus ability of finding out if a card or set of cards is too good in the format a lot quicker than if we keep each tournament hidden.  If people keep playing our "good deck" that got posted and it keeps winning when this deck is public knowledge, we can devise that something is wrong and it should be fixed.

Option two: Build your own deck

This is the much longer option.  Innovating and making your own deck can be very rewarding.  You can think to yourself that "I won on my own without help", or be proud when other people try your deck afterward.  To make your own deck though that can win requires having multiple skills.  You have to have knowledge of the whole card pool and the known quality of all cards in said card pool.  You have to be able to notice interactions and synergy with cards and form what works best together. You have to be good at math; UFS ultra helps with this.  In fact, UFS ultra, or other deck builder programs in any game, can make you a better deck builder.  Without getting into the more technical stuff the site offers, just being able to glance at what your blocks, difficulty and checks in your deck can help so much with a deck.  I myself have been able to notice and fix issues with decks by putting them in.  Either I had way too many high difficulty foundations, or not enough blocks, etc.  So, taking all of these skills together, you have to construct a deck that can win against the format.  Which leads into option three, which I think is the best plan..

Option three: Build your own deck, with using online decks as a knowledge base

Option one is for people who want to play and don't have time.  Option two is for people who like to innovate and come up with something (hopefully) out of nowhere.  The third option is for people who want to win.  Building your own deck is a lot of work.  So is solving a meta game.  Trying to build your own deck to win a tournament without researching the meta game is near impossible.  You either get lucky at that point, or you had the time with a group of friends to build, test, test and TEST to solve the meta game on your own.  The best way to win is to use all knowledge that is before you.  Look and see what has been winning recently.  If a new set has come out (which will for us,) look at the winning decks and see if the new cards add anything to those decks, or even better, if a card already out or a card in that new set stops the winning decks.  With the knowledge of what's out there, you can either take a deck that exists, tailor it to your own needs by shoring up a match up you feel uncomfortable with that you know you'll see, or you can be an innovator from option two and use all your skills to create a monster that can beat those recent winning decks, and hopefully be strong enough to come up against the random chaff you'll inevitably come across.

Honorable mention four: Build the deck you want to have fun with

Sometimes I hear, people want to just go hang out with friends and have fun.  They don't care if they win or lose, they just want to play a deck they like and have fun.  This is usually at a more local level though.  Going to Gencon is a huge commitment time and money wise, and I would suggest to at the least use option one and take the game a bit more seriously at this level of event.  However, if winning just doesn't matter to you, and you just want to have fun at the best 4 days of gaming with your friends and get some sweet convention stuff, this is perfectly acceptable.


In conclusion, the most important thing about building a deck is transparency in the community.  It helps players that aren't the strongest deck builders (either because of inability, or new to the game), and it helps the pros and innovators that want to win by giving them something to prepare against.