How to learn a difficult constructed deck

Today's Soundtrack: https://open.spotify.com/track/2oh6OHvQ8BmsxzTthpuz7b?si=2c70151336744a1c

Table of Contents

• Intro

• Read Theory

• Don't get intimidated

• Figure out the mechanics first

• Find anchor points

• Try shit

• Learn matchup-by-matchup

• Consult your elders

• Seek comfort, then resist it

Intro

It's about time I wrote a bit about my VML experience!

For those who don't know the VML (originally the Venus & Mercury League, pretty much known now by the abbreviated name) is a competitive MTG Arena league for players of marginalized gender (it's a broader community as well as a specific league, but I'm participating in the league this season so I'll be talking about that part).

In terms of stakes & level of competition, a regular VML season is sort of like an RCQ that takes place one match at a time over ~6-11 weeks, but also has some PT regulars playing in it. There's a wide range of skill levels, but it's hard. The average player is quite good, better than your average RCQ grinder.

I'm playing in it primarily to make connections and get more familiar with Standard, the constructed format for Worlds!

The VML format is really interesting, and I like it a lot as someone who is new to standard but appreciates high-level metagaming and preparation. You submit a decklist at the start of each week, and can see your opponent's decklist ahead of time & prepare for your matchup leading up. Most folks in the league are on an assigned testing team where people help each other decide what deck to bring based on their opponent's deck history, and then test the particular matchup once lists are released.

Since decklist histories are public and lists can be changed each week, this format incentivizes switching it up at least occasionally (so you can't get hated out) and being able to play a variety of decks. However, it's not so overwhelming that you need to learn every matchup in the format - You're able to only test the specific matchup you have each week, which allows for really focused gameplay improvement.

I'm a longtime limited player whose biggest weakness has always been gameplay skill - but I have to play Standard at Worlds. I've already spoken about how I chose Gyruda Quint for the Arena Championships partially because it was a deck that allowed me to focus on only a few important decisions each game, but this time, I have many months to learn Standard, and I don't want to be held back by that potential limitation.

So I decided to play VML, and in addition, I decided to try and learn the hardest deck in Standard from a gameplay perspective - Slogurk Legends.

Now, I am NOT an expert in this deck. This is not a Slogurk primer - These are some musings about my experience learning a difficult deck during a competitive tournament.

So how does someone newly getting into a format learn a (very) complex deck? Here are my suggestions:

Read Theory, Consume Content

Before picking up a deck, especially a complicated one like 4C Legends, I think it's really important to have a general understanding of what the deck is trying to accomplish. The goal here isn't to understand everything they're saying or how to play perfectly in match 1, but to get a vibe of what your priorities should be while playing and a preview of common decision points.

Luckily, there are lots of smart content creators out there who are excellent teachers, and resources are plentiful. Jason, Nicole, and Dom had all put out content on Slogurk, so I joined the Gurk discord and at least skimmed all of their stuff before I played a match with it.

The general vibe I got from this was that Slogurk is a deck about setting up a combo engine more than an aggressive creature deck - In fact, the deck tries to construct a lategame that goes "bigger" than almost every deck in the format, including domain. I read about the temur analyst matchup being mainly about looping Ertai, the mirror being about Boseiju locking their manabase, and how the control matchup should be played slowly to make the game awkward for their answers.

All of this prepared me for noticing what I was doing wrong and having ideas for how to adjust, but I wasn't going to develop any useful intuitions without jumping into it.

Don't get intimidated

Here was my first tweet about Gurk after playing it in 2 matches:

As I've said before, Magic is hard.

Picking up a new deck is going to make you feel like you're bad at it, especially if you're used to winning.

I went 4-6 in my first 10 matches with Jason's Pro Tour top 8-ing list, but more than the results, I was seeing myself constantly making massive mistakes that ended up costing me the game, and knew that I was making even more that I couldn't see.

Gurk is a deck almost designed to give you this feeling. You get punished for behaviors you're used to in normal Magic, like playing your lands and attacking with your creatures.

What do I mean by this?

Here's a typical turn 3 for Gurk. We've activated our Rona and are choosing which card to discard. We have 3 3-drops in our hand and two untapped lands, both of which also function as spells in this deck. We can cast anything, but every game action comes with future costs. We could take a turn off to use cut down and play out our tapland, but this slows down our creature development. We could play out Slogurk, but this exposes it to being removed before it can get value (should we discard a land to mitigate against this?). We could discard a creature and immediately get it back with Rutstein, which sets up the cost discounting next turn and maybe lets us deploy our hand faster, but removes some redundancy/insurance on keeping Gurk around. If we decide to play a 3, which land do we want to play and which do we want to channel? Wait, what are we discarding again??? AHHHHHHHH

It's important to remember these early experiences are a necessary part of the learning process. You can't become good at something without being bad at it for a while. So best get comfortable being bad.

Figure out the mechanics first

When faced with an overwhelming amount of decisions, it's important to be able to focus on manageable chunks first.

When learning a new deck, for at least the first 10 matches (and likely more), I think your focus should be almost exclusively on learning the types of decisions that consistently come up every game and usually have definitive answers:

• Mulligans

• Land sequencing

• Threat sequencing in a vaccum

• Calculating how much mana you'll have on a given turn

• Deck contents for searching effects (random & deterministic)

Figuring these things out will free up mental bandwidth to think about the more nuanced decisions, so make sure to get them out of the way as quickly as possible!

For Gurk, the advice I'd heard from Jason and Nicole regarding mulliganing was "don't". This is dangerous advice to give a limited player like me, and I knew that it was mostly directed at constructed players who feel like they need a perfect hand to win. So I was mostly figuring out mulligans on my own. I knew I could lean into my limited instincts, but how much?

The ultimate heuristic I came to was "does the hand make its land drops and cast spells, at least one of which is a 3CMC or less creature?". Most hands that fit this description are keeps, and ones that aren't are worth thinking about. That was a good enough rule to streamline my decision making and reduce some of the overwhelm.

Similarly, I quickly found general rules around land sequencing that were helpful. Obviously, the first priority was getting tri-lands into play on turn 1, then getting fastlands like Darkslick Shores out before turn 4. It was nearly always safe to play Plaza of Heroes early, unless I wanted access to the black removal spells. I was perplexed when asked to name a creature type with Cavern of Souls, but quickly landed on "Human default, Ooze if I really want to resolve Gurk, Elemental if I need double green for Titania". Obviously I wanted to avoid playing channel lands if I could help it, but the priority for them roughly went Boseiju-Otawara-Takenuma (Boseiju being the most forgivable to play).

I could go on, but you get the picture. Finding rules that work most of the time helps free up processing power, and also gives you a structure to question your decisions later. You have to know the patterns to break them.

Find Anchor Points

One step up from learning the more deterministic aspects of a deck is finding the most common more nuanced decisions that come up and typically have a preferred answer. An example of this in Gurk is which 2-drop to play first, Rona or Inti:

Typically, the answer to this is that you want to play Rona first, which then lets you cast Inti, get a free loot, and then a subsequent loot on your opponents' turn that also "impulsive draw"s you a card. Realizing this is the preferred sequence requires understanding Gurk is more of a combo/engine deck that is trying to dig and deploy its threats instead of putting the opponent under pressure. In this case, I'm against convoke, where both creatures are roughly equally good as blockers, but the most important thing is getting my board presence/engine online before I'm killed, so Rona is the right play.

Try Shit

As per my first point, you're going to lose a lot while you figure out these repetitive decisions and navigate games on autopilot. When you start to feel comfortable with the deck's mechanics but are still losing games, it's time to pivot to higher-level strategy. Where is your autopilot leading you astray?

https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20240512/26f89dc64186440aa3c1ca2fa800bd0b/0

This game is a classic example of this stage of learning a deck. During the first few turns, I'm using my newly learned Gurk autopilot to deploy threats in the "correct" order... and getting absolutely blown out by UW control's typical interaction suite.

About halfway through this game, I remembered realizing "wait... what if I just tried to run them out of threats? They play very few ways to kill me, and my deck is more dense than theirs is".

Using your cards in counterintuitive ways based on theories you have about a certain matchup is a great way to learn. You won't always be right! (again -- gotta be comfortable losing). But the only way to grow past your autopilot is to question it.

Learn Matchup-by-Matchup

This type of thing is a lot easier in a league like the VML, which is why I've appreciated this tournament structure so much. Eventually, much of a deck's learning curve comes from figuring out what your plans should be against each of the other top decks.

After a certain point, playing against random decks over and over lacks the focus you need to really start mastering a deck. Iterating the same matchup again and again is a great way to start to dive deeper on the intricacies and flexibilities inherent in a deck's design. Of course, having friends with lots of wildcards or a testing team helps a lot here.

This is a great opportunity to "try shit"! When you can play the same matchup over and over, it's easier to compare what works vs. what doesn't.

I haven't mentioned it yet, but I'd actually recommend sticking to a pretty stock list and not really changing very much about the deck until you get to this stage. I also haven't really mentioned sideboarding -- That's because I think this is the first stage where you should start deviating from stuff like stock lists and sideboarding guides.

Most MTG content is useful at a high level for a long time, but most content gets obsolete in the nuances as metagames adjust quickly. Here is where you want to develop your own intuitions about the matchups you want to beat and the particulars of the list you want to run.

One example of this for me was the Gurk vs. GB midrange matchup, where I figured out that one of the most important cards to answer is Restless Cottage. I distinctly remember a game where my opponent exiled my Takenuma with cottage on turn 5, after I had deployed a threat instead of leaving up removal, and I lost the game because GB simply can't compete with the grinding ability of a recursive Gurk, but can pretty easily out-class your non-Gurk engines.

Consult your Elders

Everything leading up to this is as far as you can go without having access to an expert on the deck who is willing to spend time to help you improve. However, if you do have access to this valuable resource, now would be the time to use it.

It's not quite as useful to seek out advice on your play in the earlier stages, where you're still figuring out the technical lines and high-level strategies for yourself. Something written by an expert like a deck guide or a sideboard guide might push you in the right direction or tell you what you should be trying to learn, but the really valuable part of being able to talk to someone who is very experienced with a deck is that they can be a challenge to your instincts once you've run out of easy lessons.

My favorite way to learn is to play a matchup by myself, and then have an expert go over my games with me (ideally, slowly through 17lands replays and live/in-person). The right way to frame it to them should be "stop when you notice me doing something you wouldn't do" -- and then you can both discuss why. They will be right more often than you are, that's why they're the expert! But at this point you should be competent enough with the deck that these will be mostly nuanced decisions that are worth discussing together. (The reason not to do this earlier is you don't need someone telling you "hey why didn't you loot away your takenuma in response to Gurk getting killed this turn?" when your response is just going to be "oh, I forgot to").

A huge shoutout to Noah/Cicero in my VML testing team -- They played Gurk at the PT and have been my go-to for analyzing my games and pointing out my mistakes. Some of my mistakes are still of the "I just missed this available action I could take or interaction I should have considered" variety, but other times, Noah's perspective on what my goals should be in a particular matchup or how to sideboard are tremendously helpful counterweights to the conclusions I've come to on my own, many of which are imperfect or at least debatable.

Seek Comfort, then Resist It

This is more of a 'conclusions' section than its own learning stage, because what I really want to drive home is that all of these stages follow a similar pattern -- You're actively seeking out the unknown, and trying to find patterns and predictability within it. This process is uncomfortable, and you have to be okay with that - Put yourself in the uncomfortable situation, and then follow your instincts out of it. Then do it again.

Magic is very hard. We all care about doing well, and learning new things is one of the biggest ways to feel like you're not very good at the game anymore. But if you can shift your perspective from being results-based to process-based (how quickly, effectively, and deeply can you acquire expertise in an area where you previously didn't have any?), it becomes a lot easier to improve, and eventually, become a master.