The most important aspect of deck design is Inspiration. Where should you start? What will be the basic idea for your new deck? Obviously you could just watch what decks win events and then just pick one of those to play. However, someone had to come up with those decks in the first place. Wouldn't it be cool if you could do that?

There are some basic ways that I usually get Inspiration for deckbuilding:

1. An existing deck. Is there a deck out there already that uses an engine or a mechanic that I think could be used well in a new deck?
2. A mechanic or theme from a specific Magic set or block. Does a set or block suggest a deck or deck type with its themes? In Mirrodin Block, the Arcbound Ravager Affinity deck was pretty obvious after doing a few drafts and it dominated Standard for quite some time.
3. The metagame. While I obviously try to take the metagame into account with every deck I build, sometimes the metagame seems particularly vulnerable to a specific deck idea.
4. A card or cards that I really like or think that I can abuse. For several weeks recently that was Fauna Shaman, I just kept trying different deck ideas using it.

Last week, one of the decks I worked on tuning was a Red/Blue artifact based, card draw deck. One of the things I really liked about it was that it used metalcraft without using a bunch of lame, suboptimal artifacts. This led me to ask, what else can I do with metalcraft? First, I built a deck with the same basic framework:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Trinket Mage

4 Kuldotha Phoenix

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Galvanic Blast

4 Preordain

4 Prophetic Prism

4 Everflowing Chalice

2 Crystal Ball

3 Chimeric Mass

2 Brittle Effigy

1 Elixir of Immortality

1 Mox Opal

[/Spells]

[Lands]

4 Scalding Tarn

4 Halimar Depths

5 Island

10 Mountain

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

3 Mind Control

4 Goblin Ruinblaster

4 Tunnel Ignus

4 Pyroclasm

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

I've long been interested in finding a deck where Kuldotha Phoenix is a good card. As many readers have probably noticed, I also really like Trinket Mage. This deck has lots of deck smoothing: Halimar Depths, Preordain, Prophetic Prism, Crystal Ball and Trinket Mage. As a result, you can be pretty sure to get metalcraft when you want it and in general have pretty consistent draws.

So my Inspiration for this deck was based on three things:

1. I liked many things about the Red/Blue deck I tested last week and wanted to use some of the ideas from it.
2. I love metalcraft in Scars limited and I figured there might be a way to abuse it in Standard.
3. I'm really interested in abusing specific cards like Trinket Mage and Kuldotha Phoenix.

This deck turns out to be pretty solid against Red Deck Wins. If I draw burn early I can keep myself from being Overrun. Then using Trinket Mage to get Elixir of Immortality usually keeps them from burning me out before I can kill them with Phoenixes. A big Chimeric Mass can also be a bit of a problem for them. Bringing in Pyroclasm pretty much locks up the matchup.

Blue control is a little tougher. I have burn for their Planeswalkers and their guy lands. I also have Phoenixes as a recurring threat. Unfortunately, if they have a way to Exile Phoenixes, which they often do, it's a very hard matchup. Bringing in Goblin Ruinblaster can help, but it's still hard to beat a good Blue control player.

The real problem seems to be Valakut Ramp. The good news is that the popularity of Ramp decks seems to be waning a bit. The bad news is that they're a huge problem for this deck. This deck generally can't kill them before they start dropping Titans and Avengers. Brittle Effigy can help a little bit, but usually not enough. I've put Tunnel Ignus and Mind Control in the Sideboard to help against Ramp, but this would be a matchup I hope to avoid.

I also have wanted to use Ezuri's Brigade in a deck for quite awhile now so I put together this metalcraft list:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Ezuri's Brigade

4 Kuldotha Phoenix

4 Cunning Sparkmage

4 Lotus Cobra

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

4 Everflowing Chalice

3 Basilisk Collar

3 Chimeric Mass

4 Prophetic Prism

2 Crystal Ball

4 Galvanic Blast

[/Spells]

[Lands]

2 Raging Ravine

4 Rootbound Crag

4 Copperline Gorge

4 Forest

3 Verdant Catacombs

4 Mountain

3 Scalding Tarn

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

4 Tunnel Ignus

4 Goblin Ruinblaster

4 Arc Trail

3 Obstinate Baloth

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

The Inspiration for this deck was pretty similar to the first deck. While it wasn't as influenced by the Molten Psyche deck, it still has many of the same artifacts. It is another attempt to abuse metalcraft and Kuldotha Phoenix. While I don't get to try to abuse Trinket Mage, I'm excited about playing with Ezuri's Brigade. In general I find it's often a good idea that when a relatively cheap casting cost card is totally amazing in Limited, to then test it in Standard.

This deck also matches up fine against RDW. Basilisk Collar with Brigade or Phoenix is pretty much game over. Arc Trail and Baloths make the post-sideboarding matchup pretty favorable. This deck also matches up slightly better against Blue control. The Cobras and Brigades give the deck some early pressure and having Raging Ravine also helps. The ramping of the Cobras can also help slip more things past permission.

Valakut Ramp remains a big problem though. A fast Brigade can be really powerful in the matchup, but this deck doesn't get fast metalcraft as reliably as the Blue version. While the Green adds some punch, losing cards like Preordain and Trinket Mage makes for a much less consistent deck. The combination of Cunning Sparkmage and Basilisk Collar can help against Titans and such, but Valakut is pretty good at killing mages.

I enjoyed playtesting both of these decks, but I'm pretty sure neither of them is tier one. Working with them did help me focus my thoughts on some ideas that will hopefully help me move forward with future deck designs:

1. It's pretty easy to build a deck that beats RDW.
2. Decks that are good against aggro are generally bad against Ramp.
3. Aggressive Red decks rose to power in part because they were one of the most reliable ways to beat Ramp. When I was playing RDW in 5Ks, I pretty much considered Valakut Ramp and Eldrazi Ramp to be byes.
4. Blue/Black and Blue/White Control decks can sometimes struggle against Ramp decks, but they are a good answer to aggressive decks and many random decks.
5. With such a Rock/Paper/Scissors environment, judging the metagame is of critical importance. If your environment is mostly aggressive decks, then perhaps my Blue/Red Metalcraft deck is a fine choice. If you expect mostly Blue Control decks, then you would be better off playing Dredgevine. If you expect Ramp decks, you should play RDW.

Of course what we all really want is to find the deck that trumps Rock, Paper and Scissors. That's why we keep designing new decks. This brings us back to seeking Inspiration. In a new environment, the best ways to approach deck design will often be to build off of a specific card, mechanic or theme from one of the sets you are working with. However when the format is a little more mature like the current Standard environment, the metagame needs to be one of your primary considerations when designing new decks. If you can find a deck that beats Rock and Paper and you can think of a way to build a version that also beats Scissors, then you're in great shape.

The biggest problem with this currently is that in order to get the speed needed to consistently beat Ramp decks, you have to play aggro decks that usually run out of gas against Blue control decks. So we either need to build a control deck that's good against both Ramp and aggro (a tall order,) or an aggro deck that's good against Blue control decks. I'm pretty sure that both of these ideas are more realistic than building a Ramp deck that beats both control and aggro. Of course what I really want is to build a deck that's good against all three archetypes, but isn't one of them.

So we can find a good basic motivation in the metagame. Now we just need to Scour the format for cards that match up well against multiple of these archetypes while also synergizing together. Do you think there's a deck already out there that beats my basic metagame? What inspires you to design a deck? Next week, I'll take a look at some hybrid deck strategies.