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?
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
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.
Cutting down cards is always the toughest thing for me too.
What I’ve started doing if I have too many cards still in the pile and I like all of them too much to easily cut is to actually go from the other direction: keep the pile I have as the “ideas” pile and build from that pile up to 100. That way I’m not “cutting” so much as I’m building, which feels nicer psychologically I guess. So I’ll make sure I add x removal/draw/ramp/lands/creatures/etc. depending on the deck and then fill the rest with the best cards I really want, and just stop as soon as I hit 100.
If you only have a few cards to cut that’s probably not worth it. In that case I’ll usually cut out cards that are a worse version of the cards I’m adding, or failing that I’ll just scan through the cards to see which ones have disappointed me. If I’m really stuck I’ll post the deck list online and ask for help lol.
I use a “keep or ideas” pile too and switch them out as I play test new decks. I have a good idea in my head of how a deck is going to play but reality always seems to surprise me.
When I make cuts I tend to split my cards into categories, usually like this:
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Enablers
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Payoffs
*Selection
- Etc.
“Etc.” is usually things like ramp in EDH or goodstuff cards like tutors. This usually helps me cut out the fat but I still have a tendency to cut out more of the deck’s “glue” than I intend to. 😅
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