Some cards just scream out to you, “Play me! Just think of all of the fun stuff we could do together. Infinite mana. Infinite turns. Infinite wins! All of this could be yours and more if you just play 4 of me!” Those cards promise you the world if you’re just clever and open-minded enough to unlock their secrets. They are the sirens of MTG and everyone wants to be the genius who broke the card that everyone said was crap. Unfortunately, sirens have a bad rap for a reason. Many build-around-me cards just never have the support they need to really get crazy. On top of that, plenty of them just don’t have a game crushing best case schenario to keep up with conventional decks full of good cards. These siren cards leave deck builders crashed on the rocks of inconsistency and sadness more often than not. As such, knowing how to pick the right build-around-me card to invest time and effort into is critical to becoming a great deck builder. Here is a little list of stuff to think about when you are choosing which white whale you want to pursue.

1. Can the Central Card Win the Game or Just Do Cool Stuff?- A good build-around-me card will win the game in short order if set up properly, be it through a 1 turn death explosion or a multi-turn time bomb. Furthermore, once a good build-around-me card gets going it is incredibly hard to stop. For example, Birthing Pod, Splinter Twin, and the new Jeskai Ascendancy threaten to end the game once they get online and they present your opponent with only a 1-2 turn window to actually stop them from either ending the game or from taking the game over. Cards like Ooze Flux and Hardened Scales do a bunch of cool things in the right decks and once they get going they can look impressive; but, both of those do not threaten to immediately end the game regardless of how well set up they are. In the absolute best case Ooze Flux and Hardened Scales make good situations better, instead of making good situations unstoppable.

2. Does the Central Card Need Special Setup? – Some build-around-me cards, like Hardened Scales, need to be played before other cards to have any effect. Some cards, like Grapeshot, need to be played last to do anything spectacular. And some cards, like Birthing Pod or Chord of Calling, don’t have any timing restrictions. Generally speaking, you should be wary of build-around-me cards that have to be played early to do anything. You can only play 4 copies of any given card and, barring some tutoring or other shenanigans, you might not see your build-around me card during your first few turns. That means that all of your nice synergies can be dismantled by some bad draws. I personally prefer to let my opponent beat me rather than dumb luck, so I try to avoid build-around-me cards that need to be played on turn 1 or 2 to do anything. Cards that need to be played last live and die based on how hard it is to mess up their setup. For example, disrupting a storm combo requires counterspells or early disruption, but those options aren’t always available nor are they flawless answers (Hi Pact of Negation!). On the other hand, keeping an opponent’s board clear to stop Abzan Ascendancy from doing anything is fairly easy for a lot of decks. Also if your central card needs 2 or more other specific cards to do anything cool, you really need that combo to win the game immediately for the risky setup to be worth it.

3. How Hard is it to Knock Down Your Sand Castle?- Every deck centered around a single card is going to be vulnerable if that card is disrupted in some way. Even Birthing Pod decks aren’t as good without Birthing Pod. However, some build-around-me cards attack on a vector that is so unusual that opponents will not often have an answer in their main deck. The Standard Jeskai Ascendancy deck is one prime example. The deck kills by creating an infinite loop then attacking with weenies full of WUR-Tang power. Proactive decks like Mono-G devotion and super aggressive forms of Rabble-Red might not have any way to disrupt an ascending Jeskai player. Therefore, Jeskai Ascendancy decks are pretty well positioned in the current metagame (if only they were more consistent). Other resilient strategies include stuff like Storm, Hexproof, Birthing Pod, and Scapeshift. Each of those decks rely on the fact that the problem they provide are only answered by a few narrow cards that most people don’t play regularly; they are the sandstone castles of the Magic world. On the other end of the spectrum we have cards like Yisan, the Wanderer Bard that get shut down by ordinary, everyday creature kill-spells. Creature based build-around-me cards can be rough because almost every competitive deck plays some amount of removal. Unfortunately decks based around a single creature without hexproof, shroud, protection or some form of recursion are very easy to stop. Building a deck around a normal creature is like building a sandcastle out of pure sand while everyone else has Super Soakers.

I hope these tips help you in your deck building pursuits. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to trying to make Isochron Scepter work in Modern.

This was rather well timed for me, I was just thinking about theory crafting a standard deck at some point.

@bollard: Yep I have been working on a Chord of Calling deck and a counter/burn deck for the next gameday. I was thinking about building around Hardened Scales as well, even though I discourage the pursuit in my post. That card just looks really fun and potentially broke, even though it is likely a trap.

I just got "back" into Magic about 3 months ago, around the time M15 dropped.

I've got 5 Standard decks, as my collection at the moment is mostly Theros and up cards, so I don't feel I would be great in Modern or Legacy. Just sticking to Standard and Draft plays at the moment.

Currently, I'm running a Blue/Artifact deck. Was "thinking" of splashing a little red in the for Shrapnel Blast, but I really like it as is without red.

Another W/B deck that has 2 Elspeth, Sun's Champions, 2 Ajani Steadfast, 2 Sorin Solemn Visitor, and a lot of early aggro white cards and black removal, with a couple of late-game black cards (Indulgent Tormentor and Ob-Nixilus). It's been doing really great at my FNM.

Got a Jeskai deck running a lot of red removal, white early aggro, Mantis Riders (I knew that card would be amazing, I called it after winning my KTK pre-release), and Blue removal/card draw.Yet, I sold all 5 of my Jeskai Ascendancy cards (while they are worth something) because I just don't see myself playing that card and liking it.

A Sultai deck that I'm trying really, really hard to have a few delve cards in there and use Empty the Pits. It's also a bit of a mill deck, which means people hate playing against me when I play it, and I feel a little sleazy as well.

And a R/G deck that runs Xenagos and some big green creatures, but I'm just not feeling that deck at the moment.

I have 4 Chord of Callings that I just can't ever seem to convoke or use, might be better in a W/G deck, but I just don't have sufficient G game winners (IE no Nissa, Pulakranos, Courser, Slyvatid and so on), so I just don't feel I can competently run green at the moment.

Anyways, I've been rambling! Love seeing fellow MTG players!

@bobby_the_great: Nice! This is a great time to get back into the game what with Khans being so awesome and Theros being so meh. I find that chord really needs to be in a dedicated toolbox deck to be any kind of useful. I play it in a U/G deck with a bunch of 1-of finishers and answers like Arbor Colossus, Sagu Mauler, and Hornet's Nest. I don't think you can just add it to a R/G monsters deck and get anything out of it considering how aggressive that color pairing wants to be. You generally don't want to add a 3 mana kicker to any of your threats in R/G since they are all largely interchangeable killers.