Deck Sculpting

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Though there are several formats in Magic, you can be assured of one thing: in any given contest, you will see and cast only a small percentage of your deck's cards. From personal observation, my typical games last six or seven turns, meaning I will see 13-14 cards (the seven in my opening hand plus one drawn per turn), or ~25% of my 60-card deck. Following recommended deck building strategies, about 40% of your cards should be lands, meaning you will see only 8-9 of your deck's 36 spell cards and 5-6 of your lands. That's fine- if you have what you need. But how can you increase your odds of getting what you need, when you need it? Enter deck sculpting, the subject of today's post.

'Deck sculpting' means including spells or abilities that increase your odds of having the cards you need. Some ways to do this:

- Card draw spells or abilities. That's intuitive- the more cards you can access during the game, the greater the chance of hitting something you need. Cards like the below:

- Variations on card draw. Some spells or abilities allow you to draw and discard a card, or vice-versa. Though your hand remains the same quantitatively, you get more freedom to choose what is in that hand. See these examples:

- Selective filtering. There must be better terminology to use here, but whatever. There are a number of cards that allow you to look at the top [x] cards of your library, and choose a subset to keep (in your hand or put back on top of your library). Sometimes you must exile or put into the graveyard cards you do not choose, per the below examples.

- 'Scry N,' where N is a whole number. This is a specific (and common) type of selective filtering. Per the official rules:

701.18a To “scry N” means to look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them on the bottom of your library in any order and the rest on top of your library in any order.

- Search spells and abilities. The ultimate deck sculpting is going straight for what you need with spells or abilities like the below.

Any Magic veteran has had the agonizing experience of drawing a land when you needed a spell or vice-versa. "Top-decking" (drawing a needed card at the perfect time) is a great feeling but rare; increase your chances of success by adding deck sculpting cards to your mix.