Today’s article comes from one of the lesser known songs from Frozen, “Fixer Upper,” and we will explore the concept of tweaking one’s deck.

This article will be less specific to T2 as it really applies to any constructed deck whether it’s T1 or T2. In our last article we talked about the importance of “Letting Go” — cutting cards to make the tightest list possible without leaving your deck completely vulnerable to certain strategies. The main focus on this article will be how valuable it can be to receive constructive criticism from other players, regardless of whether they are experienced players or newer to the game. Whether your deck has been finely tuned or it’s in “fixer upper” mode, I’ll share what I think are the keys to tweaking a deck.

Before I dive into that, I actually want to share a bit about myself that will serve as a disclaimer of sorts. Growing up I was home-schooled by my mom. For the most part, I loved it; but the one part I did not enjoy was having my mom grade my papers. You see, my mom didn’t just give me a grade and allow me to move on to the next paper or project. She found the grammar errors, the spelling errors, the poor sentence construction and/or the weak ideas, and she expected me to rewrite it until I had an improved finished product. I hated seeing her red marker tearing apart my hard work so much that it got to the point where I didn’t even want her to read them anymore. I hated getting criticism even if it was completely constructive.

When I joined a public charter school in 8th grade and then attended a public high school the following four years, I began to realize just how valuable her constructive criticism had been. I was way ahead of my fellow students in terms of writing because my mom had not let me settle for average work, but instead had pushed me to improve my writing. Ironically, the same type of thing happened a few years later in 11th grade when my English teacher gave me some “tough love.” I had pretty much aced every paper for the past 3 years but she ripped my first couple of papers apart just as my mom had and forced me to become an even stronger writer, which I did. I am truly thankful for that experience even though at the time it was a shock that a teacher dared give me back a paper to rework.

The point of all this is that no one really enjoys having their work critiqued because when you invest a lot of time and hard work into something the last thing you want (at first anyway) is someone coming along and in a few brief moments saying “well this could be better and that really won’t work out like you think.” In my earlier years of deck building, I was much the same as I was in my early years of paper writing. I never really wanted anyone’s feedback, and if they did offer suggestions I typically rebuffed them with the reasons I thought their ideas would not be beneficial.

Sometimes I was right and I had a good explanation for the card choices I made but other times I was too proud to allow someone else the chance to improve MY deck. After all, if I did that, could I really claim it was MY deck? As I have grown as a Redemption player and deck builder though, I have realized the huge advantage of getting feedback and bouncing ideas off of other players. While sometimes I still try to keep a deck idea or strategy a secret until a major tournament, even then I will often try to seek out someone I know won’t be going to that tournament, or that I know wouldn’t be playing against me in Type 2, so that I can get ideas from them on how I might be able to improve my deck.

A recent example of this I actually referred to in my article “Return of the Widow” (Part 1 and Part 2) where I showed my Judge Widow deck to JD (also known as KairusVega), a fellow player who was planning to attend Nationals in Tennessee. He was planning to play T1 at Nationals but he was also just starting to get familiar with T2. After the first time he beat me in T2, I decided to bring out my best deck, The Judge Widow deck. The game ended up being pretty lopsided and he commented how strong the deck was and told me I should seriously considering using it again at Nationals even though it was the same deck I had run for the past two years.

It truly worked out well for both of us. He wanted to learn T2 by going against one of the strongest deck strategies out there and I wanted a chance to play against someone different who might be able to offer me a fresh perspective. The people I played against the most in my playgroup (mainly my brothers) both knew my deck very well and had adapted their deck building styles to where my deck was not quite as strong against theirs as it was against others who weren’t familiar with it. You can read the full story by clicking the links above.

Finally, let’s talk about the steps to getting good feedback. Good feedback comes in two ways—game experience and ideas from others. It’s important to actually get some test games in before asking others for feedback. Theory-crafting is an important part of deck building, but there are still things you’re going to miss until you actually play the game. Once you have a few games in, you’ll start to see what cards aren’t proving useful so when you ask for feedback instead of saying, “what cards should I add/take out?” you can say, “Card X doesn’t seem to be helping much, is there a better option that I could use?”

This will help others give you stronger and more constructive feedback. Another thing to keep in mind is that it’s important to test changes in small doses. If you make every change that people suggest and your deck does better, that’s great, but you don’t exactly know which change had the most impact and your deck may still be able to be improved. Assuming you’re not completely revamping the deck (which every now and then might be necessary), try swapping a few cards in and seeing what changes happen. Does the deck draw better (i.e. more consistently)? Does your hand feel more balanced throughout the game?

I won’t say it’s impossible to a have a perfectly tuned deck, but because of meta shifts and new set releases it is pretty difficult. After nearly every tournament I play in I find myself making small tweaks to the decks I used. Not every deck might be a “fixer upper” that needs a ton of work, but one of the signs of a good player is one who recognizes his deck could be better, uses game experience to get feedback on his deck, and then seeks and accepts constructive criticism from his peers.

That’s it for this article but be sure to check back daily for new articles on Land of Redemption, and look for the next article of our Frozen-themed, Do You Want to Build a Type 2? series in a couple weeks!

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By Justin

Justin began playing Redemption in 1997 with his brothers and a few other friends from his church though it was not until 2002 that he discovered and became a part of the wider Redemption community. While his involvement in the game includes being a tournament host, a playtester and a national champion player, the aspect he finds most rewarding is the amazing friends he has met through the game. "I am simply amazed at what God has done through the game of Redemption, both in my life and in the lives of others, and I am excited for the ways in which He will continue to use it."