Lately I’ve been getting back into magic after a 3-4 year hiatus and have been building edh decks but have been struggling to find cuts to slim down my decks to 100 cards. Currently I’m rebuilding one of my all time favorites the locus god. Got it down to 108 cards then sleeved them all up and gold fished until I cut it down to 100 removing the cards that felt lack luster that seemed to work well. What are y’all’s favorite ways to make final cuts or find new cards?
It’s tough because the 100 card count makes you feel like you’ve got unlimited options. Until you add in lands. Mana rocks. The must includes like Sol Ring. Oh yeah, don’t forgot that the commander and the partner count to the limit, so you’ve got to cut down 2 more.
I thought the hard part would be finding enough cards to fit whatever deck I’m building, turns out it’s picking which cards makes the pick.
A lot of my final cuts are cards that I thought would be cool, but they barely match my overall strategy in the deck. Like if I have a card that gives me counters when I gain life because I also have a card that gives me life when I make tokens. Cool, I make lots of tokens in my token deck. I only have that one lifegain card though. I’ll never draw both in the same game so might as well cut it.
Yeah I love throwing in some fun cards but sometimes they just don’t do anything for the deck so they get cut. For instance I really wanted possibility storm in the locus God cause it’s a fun card but it really actually hurts the deck so it got cut
“Quadrant theory,” as I believe it is called, has been a useful tool for assessing which cards stay and which cards can go.
Basically, you break down the game into quadrants (e.g., early game, late game, post-boardwipe, waiting-for-wincon, stalemate, etc.) and consider how a given card will perform in various stages of the game.
A card that can be useful in more game quadrants is obviously preferable to a card that will sit in your hand if you draw it at the wrong time. For example, a counterspell can serve as removal when an opponent drops a threat, or it can protect your board while you go for the win.
This approach favors modal spells at the expense of powerful niche spells, so it should be employed judiciously. But it’s a good way of considering to what extent a card can carry its weight.
I have this problem routinely, what I do is cut land until I can fit my glorious jank, play it once and discover the deck is unplayable due to lack of land, get mad and shelve it for 7 months