Snail's Guide to Drawing Less Junk

Summary

In Salubrious Snail's engaging guide, "Drawing Less Junk," viewers dive deep into the art of minimizing "dead draws" in Magic the Gathering. This video, curated by the knowledgeable Snail, equips players with robust strategies to enhance deck performance by emphasizing synergy, strategic card selection, and game stage analysis. While embracing Magic's inherent randomness, Snail offers insights into constructing decks that mitigate less useful draws, ensuring players maintain optimal gameplay momentum while enjoying their favorite cards. This meticulous approach invites fans to rethink traditional deck-building puzzles in both strategic and fun ways.

Highlights

• Synergy matters! By ensuring your cards work together, you can reduce those pesky dead draws and keep the game exciting 🌟.
• Effective deck construction hinges on strategic card selection and understanding game dynamics – tailor your deck for the best play 😎.
• Quadrant theory: A handy method to check your cards' effectiveness across different game situations. Think ahead, play smart! 🔄.
• Love your favorite cards but don't hesitate to prune the deck for performance. Magic is all about strategy meeting fun 🧙‍♂️.
• Card selection matters. Utilize your deck's velocity for better draws. More movement means less chance for dead cards 🏃‍♂️.

Key Takeaways

• Embrace synergy in your deck! Cards that work together can significantly enhance your gameplay and reduce dead draws 🎲.
• Focus on game stage utility: Know which cards thrive in early, mid, and late-games to optimize play strategy 🕹️.
• Use quadrant theory to evaluate cards based on various game scenarios – smart card analysis pays off 🃏.
• Incorporate card selection techniques: Increase deck velocity with scry, draw, and card filtering. More cards, less junk 🚀.
• Love your cards but choose wisely: Not every favorite fits every deck situation. Balance flavor with utility 🌌.

Overview

Salubrious Snail's latest video instructs Magic the Gathering players on curating decks to minimize dead draws—those unfortunate moments when drawn cards offer no contribution to gameplay. By utilizing deck synergy and prioritizing cards that harmonize well, Snail emphasizes creating fluid gameplay that stays fun without sacrificing strategic depth.

A significant point in the video is leveraging quadrant theory, a tool for evaluating a card's utility across different game circumstances. This method aids players in understanding how their cards perform under various scenarios, making it easier to decide what fits and flourishes at each game stage.

Lastly, Snail cleverly balances personal card preferences with strategic removal to boost deck performance. He invites viewers to evaluate their game plays critically, suggesting that strategic filtering through scry, draw, and card selection techniques can significantly enhance overall deck efficiency.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Magic the Gathering and Dead Cards The chapter introduces the concept of Magic the Gathering, a card game where cards are drawn from a deck, introducing randomness. It explains the notion of 'dead cards', which are cards drawn that do not contribute meaningfully to the game. The chapter acknowledges the inevitability of drawing such cards.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Synergy and Reducing Dead Draws This chapter discusses the issue of drawing lands when they are not needed or failing to draw them when they are. It acknowledges that while tools like MDFCs (Modal Double-Faced Cards) and utility lands can reduce this issue, variance will always be present to some extent in games. For non-land cards, the impact of dead draws varies significantly depending on the deck. The chapter promises to explore how the specific choices made during deck building influence the prevalence of dead draws.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Synergy in EDH Format This chapter discusses the concept of synergy in the EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander) format, particularly focusing on how to avoid 'dead draws' in your deck. It uses an example deck with non-land cards that includes 35 swamps and 64 rat colonies, emphasizing how each card synergizes without being useless. The chapter highlights the trade-off involved in such a deck-building approach, noting that a deck made exclusively of rat colonies and swamps has a very specific strategy.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Considerations for Adding Synergy Pieces The chapter discusses the concept of designing a game or a strategy with pieces that work synergistically to reduce the chances of drawing a card or making a move that does not contribute to winning. This is illustrated using the example of a board with high power, low toughness creatures that either win the game outright or don't, highlighting the importance of synergy. The chapter suggests focusing on eliminating dead draws by ensuring pieces or strategies complement each other and that all elements contribute positively to the overall objective.
• 06:00 - 08:00: Multicategory Approach to Deck Building The chapter "Multicategory Approach to Deck Building" begins with a discussion on the synergy in the EDH format. Due to the structure of the format, where players have 40 life instead of 20 and face three opponents instead of one, synergy becomes crucial. This means that cards need to accomplish more by interacting effectively with one another, rather than acting in isolation. The chapter introduces the idea that successful deck building involves thinking about how cards work together to create a more powerful effect.
• 08:00 - 10:00: Quadrant Theory and Card Usability This chapter explores the Quadrant Theory in the context of card usability, with a specific focus on a creature card example. It discusses how a card's power can increase with the presence of multiple copies in play, using Kyler Sigardian Emissary as a case in point. Kyler, a five mana creature, gains power when other human cards enter play and boosts the power of other humans. The chapter highlights Kyler's potential to significantly enhance a human-based board in games, though it also notes his limitations due to high mana cost and low initial stats.
• 10:00 - 13:00: Examples of Card Usability in Different Game Stages This chapter discusses how different cards are useful in various stages of a game, focusing primarily on the synergy within human-centric strategies. The chapter highlights Copper Coat Vanguard as an example; it is valuable when there are other human cards present, providing extra protection to important cards. Additionally, the chapter stresses its utility, noting that it rarely seems useless and serves as a strong anthem effect when token cards are involved. Increasing Devotion is also discussed as an effective large-scale token creator.
• 13:00 - 15:00: Importance of Card Selection and Filtering This chapter discusses the strategic importance of card selection and filtering in gameplay, focusing on maximizing the effectiveness of certain cards in combination with others. The chapter emphasizes that the power of a card can depend heavily on the presence of support cards and the current state of the game. Specifically, it highlights how some cards excel when paired with others, like Kyler and human synergistic cards, but can become mediocre without proper support. Despite this, options like flashback can mitigate poor draws to some extent, and it's crucial to consider the board state and available cards to make the most strategic plays.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Conclusion and Personal Experience In this chapter, the discussion revolves around strategies and synergies within a Kyler deck, particularly focusing on how certain cards can amplify the effectiveness of gameplay. It emphasizes the importance of popular synergy cards that work well with human themes and touches upon sub-themes like plus one plus one counters, which are prevalent in many decks. The chapter suggests that players could consider including cards like metabolic Eve Angel for enhanced performance.
• 18:00 - 19:30: Patron Engagement and Upcoming Video The chapter discusses a strategy involving a card that multiplies whenever a non-token creature enters the player's control, enhancing the effectiveness of a commander named Kyler. However, it notes that while this card can create powerful plays, it doesn't address Kyler's vulnerabilities as his removal nullifies the counters. The card benefits other cards in the average Kyler deck, but not significantly, leading to the conclusion that it's not a worthwhile addition for consistency unless very specific conditions are met.

Snail's Guide to Drawing Less Junk Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Magic the Gathering is a card game where cards are drawn from a deck. And this naturally introduces a certain amount of randomness. Sometimes draws are good, other times they're less good. I imagine this isn't news to you if you play this game a lot. Either that or you've had a luck streak worthy of legend. In the worst case, you've got the dead card, a card that you draw and it doesn't do anything meaningful whatsoever. To some extent, this sort of draw is just a fact of life, and it's not something you're going to be able to fully avoid. Drawing
• 00:30 - 01:00 a land when you don't want one, or not drawing a land when you do, will always be a struggle. And though MDFC's utility lands and other tools can mitigate some of this unfortunate variance, it will always be a somewhat present force. But what about among non-land cards? Well, the number of non-land draws that end up being more or less dead can vary immensely deck to deck. And this number will often result from the specific choices that went into the deck building process. So, in this video, I'm going to go through the sorts of cards that often
• 01:00 - 01:30 end up being dead draws in a deck and how to make your deck play more smoothly without harming the things you enjoy about it. To start with, let's talk about an example of a deck with more or less no dead non-land cards. A deck with 35 swamps and 64 rat colonies. All of this deck's non-land cards synergize with each other, and you'll generally never draw a card and have it be entirely useless. However, this obviously comes at a cost. An exclusively rat colony and swamp deck has an exceptionally specific game plan
• 01:30 - 02:00 with little to no flexibility. Either a board with a moderate number of high power, low toughness creatures wins you the game or it doesn't. I choose this example not as a point of aspiration, but rather as an indication of what reduces dead draws. These rat colonies have no variation in the tasks they perform, all creatures that can beat down opponents. And they also all synergize with each other. So, the start of dead draw mitigation starts by paying attention to these two things. What does
• 02:00 - 02:30 a card accomplish and what else does it synergize with? Let's start by discussing the latter. EDH as a format encourages synergy. And by synergy, I simply mean cards doing more together than they do on their own. This is the case because the format is 40 life instead of 20 and has three opponents instead of one. Conditions that necessitate that gameplay be volutrically larger. You simply got to have more stuff going on. Obviously, the most simple version of this is the rat
• 02:30 - 03:00 colony example. Your deck is made up of a creature that will have more power the more copies of it that are in play. But this isn't enough volume for a lot of EDH games. So let's take the example of a somewhat larger lad. Kyler Sigardian Emissary. Kyler is a five mana 2 that gets a plus one plus1 counter whenever another human enters and gives your other humans plus one+1 for each of those counters. So, this is a commander who can dramatically power up a board of humans if left unchecked, but whose high mana cost and small starting stat line
• 03:00 - 03:30 make him a bit of a removal magnet. Naturally, the primary synergy package here is humans, but different cards have different profiles of the situations in which they're good. Copper Coat Vanguard is good as long as you have other humans. Pretty decent assumption for a humans deck. And also gives the commander a bit of extra protection. This card should rarely feel useless and could even be a pretty solid anthem if there are tokens out. That brings me to another card. Increasing devotion is a large scale token creator and this one
• 03:30 - 04:00 is slightly more complicated in its power profile. It's fantastic if you currently have Kyler on board plus some other humans to swing with. It's decent if you have some other human ETB effects on board like loss or knock captain or champion of the parish in play. also decent if you have an Anthem at the ready to pump them up in size and pretty mediocre if you have none of these support cards. The flashback prevents it from ever feeling truly horrible, but it might be a passable play at best if you have neither the commander available nor
• 04:00 - 04:30 any of the 15ish cards in the deck that can amplify this card up to being a decent play. Most of the popular synergy cards for a Kyler deck will do things with humans, and with some exceptions, most of these will be pretty okay. However, synergy can go a bit deeper. You can venture into the magical world of sub themes. Take plus one plus1 counters. The commander uses them, and the average Kyler deck has around 12 cards in the 99 that also feature plus one plus1 counters. So, some players choose to add metastatic Eve Angel, a
• 04:30 - 05:00 card that proliferates whenever another non-token creature enters under your control. Paired with the commander, this card can turn powerful plays into utterly earthshattering plays, but it also doesn't do much to smooth over Kyler's weaknesses. If he gets removed, the counters go with him. Put into the average Kyler deck, this card benefits 12 other cards, which isn't nothing, but also isn't great. Paired with its somewhat ephemeral support of the commander, I'd skip this card personally. Now, does this mean our
• 05:00 - 05:30 Forexian cleric friend belongs in no decks? Not necessarily. Some players might be running larger numbers of plus one plus1 counter cards than the average player does, and others might be building the deck in a way that's likely to keep Kylo around more of the time. This card might even be a star player in some of these decks. It's certainly not a bad card, but these are the sorts of considerations you should be making when you're deciding whether or not to add a synergy piece. How often will it be in a situation to support other cards? And how substantial will that support be?
• 05:30 - 06:00 When I'm building decks, I'll typically keep track of support for different themes and sub themes via Architect's category system. I'll have the baseline categories I put cards into, but also secondary categories for things like Flicker, ETB, Graveyard Enabler, Graveyard Payoff, and so on. When I'm adding cards and trying to flesh out a list, I'll be mostly viewing the deck on the primary categories tab to keep things visually neat. But as I start to prune and sculpt the list, I'll start bouncing back and forth between that and the multicategory tab and see if the
• 06:00 - 06:30 various parts of my deck have the right amount of support. This multicategory approach is also nice for evaluating individual cards because I can immediately see and be reminded of all of the reasons I included a particular card, which also indirectly tells me the situations in which a card will be useful. As an example, let's take a card in a subtheheavy Fexian deck I recently built, that of Rebirth. The categories here tell me that it's a source of value that's payoff for having things in the graveyard. So, as a baseline, I can
• 06:30 - 07:00 check how much stuff I have that helps me get things into the graveyard with a focus on creatures since that's what this can reanimate. However, the other categories also tell me things about this card. This card will be stronger alongside counter amplifiers like proliferate cards and it'll also be stronger when I have untap effects on the field. It's also an artifact and a lowcost one at that. So, it'll synergize with several other cards for that reason alone. And those cards are already helpfully organized into a category for me to check on. I can think about all
• 07:00 - 07:30 the other combinations of cards this card may or may not be on the field with. And based on that, I can approximate roughly how often this card will be useful and roughly how often this card will be dead. The answer for this card is that it'll be dead some modest percentage of the time in the early game, maybe 25% of the time, but there are also situations where it'll be very powerful due to other supporting pieces being around. So, I've currently deemed it worth staying in. I also love the art and flavor of the card, which does end up being a non-negligible factor for a lower power deck like this.
• 07:30 - 08:00 So, that's synergies, but that's only one part of what makes a card dead or not dead. Another big factor to keep in mind is what stage of a game a card is useful in. And before I get into that, I briefly want to introduce a concept. Quadrant theory. This sounds complicated, but it's basically just a way of analyzing different situations in which a card could be played. A basic example goes something like this. We have this four quadrant box. And in this case, we'll choose to label the top side based on the size of an opponent's board
• 08:00 - 08:30 and the left side based on the size of my board. Now, let's consider the card teleportal. How is this in different situations? Well, if we both have small boards, this card sucks. Not many creatures to affect and not many creatures to get past. If I have a small board and my opponent has a large board, well, this is still pretty bad. But maybe there are some niche scenarios where it lets me get in for the last couple points of damage after my opponent has stabilized against my aggression and it can be cast single target for two mana in a pinch. If I
• 08:30 - 09:00 have a large board and my opponent has a small board, well, the unblockable isn't doing much, but at least I'm getting a power buff on all my creatures. Where this card is a straightup banger is when we both have large boards. This is the sort of situation where I'm probably praying for this card as a top deck since it's getting maximum effect. This concept was originally designed with limited formats in mind, where cards are typically simpler and players tend to be on the lookout for narrow slivers of advantage. Fundamentally though, quadrant theory has a straightforward and universally applicable purpose. It
• 09:00 - 09:30 exists to make sure that you're thinking about all of the situations a card might exist in, not just the ideal ones. A variant of this might be to analyze a card based on the stage of the game we're in. Take a card in a mid-power deck. How is that card in the early game? How does it fair in the midame? Now, decks will typically gain more card advantage over the course of the game. So, it's fine to weight your analyses a bit more heavily toward the later parts of the game as long as you have the support to get there. But, you should still consider different versions of
• 09:30 - 10:00 that late game. There will be the version of the later game where you're hitting your stride without setbacks. But what happens if a board wipe is played? How about if you have your board, but your life total has been taxed heavily by a more aggressive deck? How about if a mid-range opponent is pulling far ahead and you need to either kill some key permanence or heavily diminish their life total? Different games will demand different things, and you should figure out how your different cards play in those different games. For a simple example, let's talk about my rata deck, a deck designed to be as
• 10:00 - 10:30 resilient and consistent with its gameplay as possible. It typically curves manador commander into four mana ramp spell into six and seven drops with the goal of continuing to ramp and eventually getting to 20 or more lands. With that in mind, let's talk about a couple cards that are present here. Dracuse m of flames is a seven mana 77 flyer that deals four damage to one target and three damage to two targets when it attacks. Oddly, this is a card that I'm actually most excited to see early as landing it on turn fourward can
• 10:30 - 11:00 be a pretty backbreaking opener if it doesn't get removed due to its sheer power as a removal engine. However, it's still plenty solid as a top deck later in the game. What with its good flying statline and attack ability that remains respectable even if the creature size game has been heating up a bit. This sort of card is a good symbol of what this deck is best at. It's just always decent. For an example with a decidedly different power profile, let's consider a different card, Captivating Crew. Now, this card is pretty bad in the early game. Four mana to threaten an opposing
• 11:00 - 11:30 creature is just never what I want to do with my mana in the first six turns of the game, and I'm rarely all that happy when my turn four or five cascade card pops out this treason triggering troop rather than a ramp spell. However, what keeps me from cutting the card is its sheer versatility in the late game. As long as I have enough lands, it almost always feels good. If I'm ahead on board, I can pull the last two or three blockers out from under an opponent and smack them down before they have the chance to stall things out. If I'm behind on board, it often means that I
• 11:30 - 12:00 had a more aggressive but worse scaling roll out in the early game, in which case I can often leverage opposing life totals to get some favorable jump blocks or at least utilize some abilities on opposing creatures. If the board is in a state of parody, it's the best of both worlds. I can nab my opponent's best threats and turn a five attacker, five blocker standstill into an 82 or 91 smackdown. I was a bit hesitant to add this card to the deck initially, but the sheer consistency with which it feels great in the late game has made it one of my favorite top decks. So far, the
• 12:00 - 12:30 lesson of this video has been more or less be careful with cards whose use cases are highly specific. But I can already hear some of you saying, "But Alex, I want to play those cards. You're describing a lot of my favorite cards. Are you telling me I need to cut those? And the secret third part of this video is that you can play those cards and you can do it fully responsibly. But doing so requires one specific thing, card selection. This may be achieved by playing lots of filtering or by playing a generally high velocity deck, but the
• 12:30 - 13:00 basic principle is simple. Dead cards won't matter as long as you simply see more cards. A basic example of this might be an ongoing source of filtering like Muroke Looter. It's not card advantage, but it doubles the number of new cards you see each turn and lets you get rid of any that aren't immediately useful. Same deal if you play lots of scry or lots of selective draw. Don't like the card on top? Ditch it. Don't want a card in the top four? Great, pick a different one. This even goes for actual factual card advantage. If your
• 13:00 - 13:30 deck is consistently able to set up multiple extra cards per turn in advantage, that's often going to outpace your ability to cast what you draw. And as long as you have more useful stuff to play instead, there's really no harm in drawing that situational card. This was a major fact of life back when I played a mono black deck in my youth. I'd find one of my massive sources of draw, and then suddenly I could cut effortlessly through the quagmire of redundant pieces and specific answers that made up the top of my library. At the end of the day, all I'm trying to do is make you aware of the forces at play here. If
• 13:30 - 14:00 your deck feels sluggish or awkward or swingy, there's a good chance dead cards are playing a major contributing role in that feeling. If you frequently find yourself unable to meaningfully contribute to a game for stretches of time, it might be time to audit the contents of your deck. There are so many cards that look great and ingrain themselves in our brains as simply a part of our deck. Basically, getting to skip any sort of auditioning process for simple vibes reasons. I ran don't blink in my shroom slide deck for several
• 14:00 - 14:30 months because the elevator pitch for it sounds great. It's a card with cycling that can also be a big source of removal if I have astral slide out turning those exiles into somewhat more lasting removal. However, when I examined what this card is actually accomplishing, it doesn't fit into the desired profile of a removal spell with cycling at all. I can cycle it, which is cool when I have some sort of cycling engine already up and going. And I can also cast it normally, which is cool when I have an even bigger sort of cycling engine already up and going. Missing entirely
• 14:30 - 15:00 is the part of the card that has any sort of impact on the game when Astral Slide isn't in play, outside of wasting two mana. And as a result, it got cut for the far superior card, Spectacular Pileup, when Aether Drift came out. For a simple exercise, think about the cards in your deck and try to notice, is there a card where you seem to be thinking something along the lines of, "This card hasn't seen any great games yet, but it's awesome in theory." If that's the case, you're going to want to double check your theories a bit, and take a longer look at that card. Thanks for watching, and thanks to my patrons for
• 15:00 - 15:30 supporting the channel, some of whom are on screen now. I'm actually gearing up for a cool patron video soon, which will go something as follows. I'll take card suggestions from patrons. Then I'll be running a poll with a bunch of those cards to determine three of them that I'll need to construct a deck around. Then I'll build the deck and put a video out on my Patreon that details what the deck does and the process of constructing it. If you want to be part of the input for that, you can sign up for my Patreon for $3 a