My friend Erin recently made a post that really resonated with me:

One is the loneliest number, but nothing is the most intimidating place to start. When I start writing my articles, I fill the first row of the document with random words and phrases just so the screen isn't so blank! When I know I'm meeting someone for the first time, I try to think of conversation starters for fear I'll be left with awkward silences. I'm the guy that writes "clean me" on dirty windshields, just so there is something there.

Suffice to say, I know what Erin (and many others) are feeling!

So how do I get around this *head explode* problem? As someone who has been building decks for well over twenty years, I have a small arsenal of ways to get through the blank slate. For Commander deck-building in particular, I have a few ways to get the building kickstarted.

The Collection

This one won't work for everyone, but it used to work for me. I would go to the closet that held my cards, take them out and start looking at them. My collection at the time was barely a thousand cards, so putting the cards on the dining room table and just looking through them was often all it took to get started. My funds were limited, so these were all the cards I would be using to build a deck. I would flip through the cards and find something interesting and go from there. With a limited collection, this led to several bad decks and restarts when I found I didn't have the other cards needed to make that one work. While this could be frustrating, the blank slate wasn't a concern.

This style of deck-building led to a Rabid Wombat deck, a deck loaded with all variety of Tim creatures, and a White weenie deck with Samite Healer effects all over the place. Admittedly, none of these were particularly good, but limiting your starting position makes getting started so much easier. Instead of the thousands upon thousands of Magic cards ever printed, you can reduce it to something more manageable. Whether you have some idea of where you want to go, or just arbitrarily grab a handful of cards and start there, it takes the overwhelming and brings it down to just... whelming.

The List

My brain is like a steel trap... trying to hold jello. Whether it is concepts, numbers, names, lists, etc., I forget most things as fast as I learn them. This means that if I want to remember things, I need to write them down. This goes for deck-building as well. I have a list saved on my phone, titled, "Deck Ideas." Most of them are just commanders that happened to catch my fancy (that's right I just used "catch my fancy" in an article). Some of them are deck ideas in need of a commander. The more interesting ones are the ones that have a commander and a couple of cards that do something that intrigues me.

This list is where I go to avoid the blank slate. Often, this is all the prompting I need. I have a commander that does something, and I start searching from there. "Pramikon sounds like fun, but wouldn't it be much better if I could flicker it at will to make sure no one could ever attack me? Let's check on Scryfall and see if I can actually make that happen..." and we're off to the races!

I maintain the list because too often I find that my brain is abuzz with ideas at times when I don't really have time to properly explore them. I write it down and save it for another day. The lists provide me with most of my decks, and several articles too! The list of deck ideas is a great place to go when the blank slate is threatening another head explosion!

The False Decision

Another issue I have when trying to start from a blank slate is making the initial decision. I just can't choose what color or combination of colors to start with! I find the best way to get around this is to choose at random. I may start out saying that I don't care which color, but when the choice is forced on me, I tend to discover pretty quickly that I really do have preferences.

I was recently looking to build a deck in color pairs that I haven't done in a while, so I had narrowed it down to Orzhov, Golgari, and Selesnya. When I randomly chose Golgari, I knew immediately that I didn't want to do that. When the next random selection was Orzhov, I knew right away that Selesnya was the choice I actually wanted. I just needed to be forced to choose my preference. This is likely just my Canadian agreeableness needing to be overcome, so it might not work for everyone. However, letting Fate make the first decision for you may just be that first big step you need to getting your brain kickstarted past the blank slate.

Controlling the Overwhelming

Another way to deal with the blank slate is to reduce it into parts so that it isn't as vast as it appears. It is easy with Commander to feel like you have 100 slots where you can put anything! You need 100 cards! One hundred is a big number, especially when starting at zero.

This is when I try to control the anxiety. I'm not trying to come up with 100 cards. Forty of those cards are going to be land. Yes, I said 40, not 36 or 38. Forty. Trust me, your decks will be better. Anyway, that is a tangent we don't want to talk about right now. You'll have to pick forty lands eventually, but it is pretty easy, once you know the other sixty, so set those aside. Finding sixty cards is easier than a hundred.

And those sixty cards can be reduced too. Just knowing the colors you are building in means you probably know a handful of cards you want in your deck. I'm not just talking about Sol Ring here. You have cards that you prefer in various colors. Whether they are pet cards or Standards that you love, they can go in. You don't even need to list them now, you know they are filling slots. You are probably already down to fifty cards.

At this point, things are getting manageable.

Deck-building Tricks

This is another way to group cards to eliminate the overwhelming sense of 100 cards. Standard decks are only 60 cards, but once you eliminate lands, you are down to 36 cards. With four copies of each, you only need to pick nine cards. Nine cards!? Easy!

Now Commander is a 100-card singleton format. You aren't looking for only nine cards, you are looking for 100! However, you can use the tricks of Standard in Commander. I have discussed this in another article, but the gist of it is that you end up ends up only needing to find nine different effects. Once you have determined that, then you find seven cards for each effect. This breaks down the intimidating 100 empty slots of a Commander deck to only nine slots. Much easier to handle!

Filling the Space

Once I at least know which colors I'm running, things tend to get a lot easier. Knowing I'm going with a Selesnya build means that a few deck slots are pretty much already chosen. Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Temple of the False God, and Sol Ring can all take a place. I'm not saying these cards are auto-includes (okay, they are auto-includes, but that is another article) but put them down so you aren't staring at the blank page. Set aside 40 slots for land. Add Acidic Slime. Have you thought about your commander? For my Selesnya example, I search a list of commanders and quickly discard boring stuff, stuff I've already tried, overcosted stuff, and get to a few options. In this case, my love of Conspiracy cards kicks in and Selvala, Explorer Returned gets the call.

At this point, within a couple of minutes I've filled in half of the hundred slots, and know my commander. Now it is just a matter of building with the commander. You have created several restrictions and your brain sees where to go from here. Selvala lets you see cards that will end up in your opponents' hand, gives you extra Green mana, gains some life, and draws you extra cards. I can choose to try and abuse the card draw or include cards that will give me a slightly higher mana curve than normal.

I'd be curious to hear your methods for getting past the blank slate. Hit me up in the comments or on Twitter!

Bruce

@manaburned