Readers!

This looks like it's going to be just another "2018 year in review" article but I think this exercise has merit because over the course of the year we made a lot of decisions about what 75% means, evolved our views on a variety of concepts, and identified some of our own biases. This series has been going for quite a while and it continues to evolve, so it behooves us to take a look at 2018 and see if we can codify any of what we covered this year. It's been a big year for me with the transition to CoolStuffInc, launching articles on EDHREC.com and a personnel change on Brainstorm Brewery. We had an encouraging release in Battlebond, a discouraging release in Commander 2018 and an insane release with Ultimate Masters. We went from dinosaurs flying airplanes to returning to returning to Ravnica.

I really liked Bruce's article this week - he covered the Top 10 cards for Commander in his opinion from 2018. If you're interested in my list, I made a list on EDHREC along with some of the other writers and I agree with Bruce to a large extent. Instead of talking about cards from 2018, I want to talk about the Top 10 lessons I learned about 75% deck-building this year. There was a lot of articles to go through, but it was worth it. Without further preamble, here's my list.

10. Building a deck with a "Secret Commander" is a ton of fun

It's become very fashionable to take 100% of Josh Lee Kwai's advice (and he says to listen to my MTG Finance tips so he must know what he's talking about). However you feel about always including Vedalken Orrery in decks, I think we can all agree that his approach to dekbuilding where he'll occasionally have a placeholder commander for the purposes of color identity and bury the "real" commander in the 99 somewhere is a very fun one. I never brewed a deck like that until this year, but it's something I am happy to repeat in the future. A hidden commander allows you to bury some complexity in the deck, allows for some variance which is my favorite way to attenuate a deck and it obscures your plans until it's too late. It's a very 75% thing to do and I wish I had embraced it sooner. Since there is a non-zero chance you don't know who Josh Lee Kwai is, he's a cohost of Game Knights and The Command Zone and a pillar of the Commander community and I envy you being able to discover his work for the first time today.

9. Building Fat Stax

I continued to refine how I think a 75% Stax deck should work. In general, I like cards that punish people for using their mana rather than preventing them from using it, and I like cards that make permanents come into play tapped. If you're playing against a table of tougher, better-built decks, you can slow them down enough to win but it's tougher when the table is a little less cutthroat in their builds unless you use cards that tax the rich the most and tend to even the playing field rather than put the furthest behind person even further behind. We're still refining how we approach Stax builds, but if you had asked me a few years ago if I would even attempt them, I would have said categorically it didn't work for a 75% deck and I'm glad to have evolved my thinking.

8. 7.5 Thoughts is a great format

I wrote two separate articles about things I learned after an event and I think I will continue them into the new year. Predicting things is fun but actually playing with the cards and seeing what over- and under-performs is very useful and worth writing about. I don't like the set review format for a 75% column a ton because I'm mostly reviewing bad cards that won't get there or talking about the same obviously good stuff everyone uses. I think a little retrospective after a prerelease or MagicFest will be more useful than me basically guessing. I'll still target cards I think are good in 75% builds but I won't subject you to the same format of set review as years past and it will be for the better.

7. Embrace Chaos!

We like a little bit of variance in our decks because that means we can still make them powerful enough to beat serious players and lose to our more casual friends. The goal of 75% is that we don't always win or always lose and if we can inject enough chaos into a game, we can even disrupt other players' "always win" or "always lose" decks and that's important, too. Where possible I will be doing chaotic things and the Vaevictis deck I built this year exemplifies that perfectly. Use Chaos Warp, Gamble, Temporal Aperture, Goblin Bomb. Make a Zndrsplt and Okaun coin flip deck. Steer into the insanity and watch how much well-laid plans being upended can actually delight a table of friends. Predictability breeds familiarity and familiarity breeds contempt. Why not breed some hilarity instead?

6. Magic's 75th Expansion Set

This year was a big one for Magic: The Gathering as they released their 75th expansion set. The opportunity to try and include one card from each of those sets was too tempting to pass up. Whether or not the deck was amazing (it wasn't) it was fun to build and it got me thinking about forgotten cards in forgotten sets. Older sets deserve a look and even old cards are new again when they're discovered by someone who didn't know about them. I didn't actually learn much I can use in 2019 from writing this article but it was fun and I'm going to continue to write fun articles next year.

5. The Heat Index Has Gone Cold

My Heat Index articles were very popular but for some reason I didn't do one between January 4th 2018 and... last week. That's too big a gap. I'll do these with more regularity, especially on weeks where there are no new commanders to write about and I'm complaining about a lack of inspiration. What could be more inspiring than giving the people what they want?

4. I'll Make Decks My Own More

Sometimes I make pretty generic decks. I don't mean to - the point of this entire series is to make decks that are tailored toward 75% metas (which is a thing now, my readers tell me) and were built using our building process following our tenets. If I make a deck anyone could have made, why did I write the article and not someone else? In 2019 I will try even harder to make sure I'm giving you a unique offering and I think the deck most emblematic of that failure on my part was the Etali article I wrote in February. If I had it to do over again, I would have done something less obvious with Etali to really showcase how unique a 75% build can be. I could have run a ton of Wildfire effects, for example, to really make sure my free spells are the only spells being cast. Other people have had that same idea, but I didn't know that back in February when I considered that idea and ultimately rejected it in favor of something more "contemporary." Later in the year I began to add ways I would take the decklist I came up with and make some changes to let the deck go in a direction the reader preferred. I'll do more of that next year but I'll also strive to make sure the base deck is something I am proud of. I have brewed a deck a week since February 2014 - I should know what I'm doing by now. You trust me to build a fun, creative deck that will be at home in a variety of playgroups. It's time I trusted myself.

3. Go Back and Refine

To that end, I will revisit decks more. It's fun to reinvent the wheel but if someone builds one of my decks or finds an article from a few years ago, I want them to have the best information. I am constantly learning things and refining how I build 75% decks, the decks themselves need not be immutable. I liked my Xantcha Mindslaver deck so much that I went back and fixed it with new cards. You don't always need a brand new commander to showcase a new card or synergy - sometimes something we already built is the best possible showcase. In addition to making sure I try to nail it the first time like I learned with Etali, I won't be afraid to go back and take another look.

2. Don't Just Make a Bad Version of Something Else

Zacama is a bit of a Blueless Palinchron but once people figure out what you're up to, you may just end up a bad version of a better deck in better colors. I don't think that's exactly what this deck is, but I want to be very mindful that I'm not just doing something quirky for the sake of being quirky. 75% doesn't mean "weird" or "suboptimal" - it's a way to build a deck that can work in a variety of settings and a bad version of a good deck isn't always the right deck. If you can't win without them leaving you alone because they didn't know your plan, it's time to try a different deck. Not every 75% deck always works and some get torn apart, some get made into casual decks and some get tuned until they don't work at casual tables anymore. However, if you can tell at first blush if a deck should have been built as a different commander instead, it's worth questioning whether you want to be doing that.

1. Start a Series, Finish It!

I did a "How does _____ win the game?" article for each Ravnica Allegiance guild and it's time I discussed Gruul. The reason I saved Gruul for last is that the Riot ability is not close to any other Gruul deck out there, really. You have Mina and Denn, Wildborn, Omnath, Locus of Rage, and Borborygmos Enraged "Lands" decks, you have Radha(s), Rosheen Meanderer, big mana decks and you have a few 1-of strategies like Wort the Raidmother. If we're trying to figure out which deck Riot cards might work in, we're going to have to look at a deck that cares about +1/+1 counters. Of the popular Commanders currently in Gruul, Thromok, Hallar, Ulasht and Borborygmos care about the counters the most. Since I think there could be a Gruul card or two that grants abilities to creatures you control with the +1/+1 counter on them given how Riot works, I think we could take a look at Borborygmos since he loves to spread the counters around.

Of Riot, I believe it was Sam Black who said "You get to choose if you creatures are Red or Green" and that's a pretty funny way of looking at it. Since I don't think they'll make cards that grant abilities to creatures with Haste, we should assume only creatures with +1/+1 counters on them will get some sort of benefit. It makes sense since Simic will also have creatures with +1/+1 counters if Zegana and Simic Ascendency are any indication. Gruul wins the game a variety of ways, but I think it's likely that a Borborygoms deck will have the infrastructure to immediately incorporate some of the new Gruul Riot cards, Simic cards that deal with counters in Mono-Green, cards like Pelt Collector and more. Check out the Bobo page on EDHREC for deck ideas.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope your 2018 was as rewarding professionally as mine was, I hope you continue to read my work and I hope this article finds you a few days into the new year making goals and reaching for them. Until next time!