Asking for Advice

Receiving good advice starts with you

*Mikokoro, Center of the Sea* illustrated by John Avon

Fantasy Standard is a brewer’s paradise. The restricted pool of cards in an unexplored metagame necessitates that people get creative. But similar to most creative endeavors, we may sometimes feel like we have hit a dead end in a deck idea. Something about it just doesn’t seem to click neatly into place, and we may turn to asking our peers for help.

Brewers can expect more focused and actionable feedback by clarifying a deck’s general game plan and increasing question specificity. Today’s article aims to guide brewers toward asking more productive questions and to guide advisors toward more constructive answers.

Deck Identity

Know what your deck is trying to do. Control needs answers, Combo needs selection, and Aggro needs pressure.

Every deck starts with an idea, and understanding your deck’s core identity will guide you toward what threats, support, and answers you’ll want to include. An identity can usually be described as an archetype and how they win the game. Examples can include “a Control list looking to mill out the opponent”, “a Combo list looking to enchant a creature with Presence of Gond while an Intruder Alarm is in play”, or “an Aggro list looking to beat down with efficient creatures”.

After the identity of your deck is defined, you’ll want to add a supporting cast of cards that contribute towards that identity. As this happens, you’ll see play patterns take shape and you will generally begin to understand what your deck wants to be doing at different stages of the game. This is the deck’s game plan. For example, a Control deck’s game plan might look like “Remove an early threat and play a board wipe to stabilize, then hold up counterspells while you look for your mill pieces.”

Distilling your idea down to an identity and a game plan provides a clear and concise context for advisors to grasp when you share your idea. When advisors try to decipher a list without this context, they might get lost and offer suggestions antithetical to the brewer’s goal. When advisors are instead given direction through a deck identity, they can provide more relevant suggestions to satisfy the brewer’s curiosity.

Question Specificity

Point to specific problems you are having and advisors can better help you.

Understanding your deck’s identity and being able to share it is a baseline necessity if you want to ask others, “What do you think about this deck?”. However, I’ve noticed that asking such a general question leads to an overwhelming flood of answers that can feel more like an interrogation than constructive criticism. Too many suggestions at once can be paralyzing if you don’t know where to start, and it can be discouraging to make so many changes to a deck that you feel like your initial vision is lost. While “What do you think about this deck?” can get you a general assessment of a deck’s strengths and weaknesses, I suggest narrowing down your questions to be more specific.

Asking more specific questions will help you focus on a particular area that you’ve been struggling with and will give advisors something clear to answer. It can be especially productive if you have been testing the deck and noticed a particular weakness while playing. Your questions might highlight deck-building choices, mana base construction, what interaction to run, how to protect your threats, and more. For example, “While building this UW Control deck, I feared that Slaughter Games would leave me without a win condition. How can I lower that risk?” Or, “While testing this Mono-red Aggro deck, I felt like I was flooding a lot. How can I make that happen less often?”

You grow as a brewer when you can focus more on isolated concepts instead of being overwhelmed by trying to make a deck “generally better” all at once. By asking specific questions one at a time, you can more effectively refine your list little by little until you’re satisfied with it.

Giving Advice

Provide thoughtful reasoning with your suggestions. *Urza’s Glasses* illustrated by Douglas Shuler

Advisors who can give constructive and actionable feedback are just as important as brewers who can ask specific questions. The goal is to answer the question asked and provide thoughtful reasoning with an answer. We want to build up and educate each other with our suggestions, not tear each other down or make others feel foolish. Pointing to other’s decks and articles can be helpful sources of evidence, though anecdotal experiences and intuition shouldn’t be discounted.

If you need more context for a deck as an advisor, ask for it. Sometimes, a good question can be just as, if not more helpful than, a good suggestion. However, remember to keep your questions at least tangentially related to the brewer’s original query and to use them to prepare your actionable feedback-- the brewer is looking for answers, not necessarily more questions. It is fair to admit to the brewer that you don’t have good answers, but at least try to point them in the right direction.

Receiving Advice

Be open to change, but remember your deck’s identity. *Primal Clay* illustrated by Adam Rex

When receiving advice, remember that people are trying to be helpful. While a deck you construct may be tied to your ego, remember that people are talking about pieces of cardboard and not you personally. Keep an open mind but remember your core deck’s identity. This doesn’t mean that you need to accept all the advice you are given or even agree with it, but I recommend being open to experimenting with suggestions. Inversely, if a change suggested to you works out, let the advisor know. This kind of positive feedback is instrumental in cultivating a positive brewing environment.

If you decide to make changes to your deck, make sure you either note them down or save a previous version of the list. That way, you can always go back if you don’t like the change. Keeping a version history also helps me remember what worked and what didn’t so that I have a database to pull from when making new decks.

Conclusion

Ultimately, we are all trying to help each other out. It is the duty of brewers to know their deck’s identity and general game plan to be able to ask good, specific questions. At the same time, it is the duty of advisors to clarify context when needed and to provide constructive feedback that encourages learning for everyone involved. Remember to take advice as the act of kindness it is, and be open to change, but keep true to your deck’s identity.

Additional Reading

Learn more about archetypes here.