I know it says “Deck Garage” on the sign outside my virtual door here at Pojo, but to be honest, I sometimes get the feeling that fixing one deck after another can get a bit tedious over time.  Not just for me to do, but for you to read, I’m sure.  That’s why I try to write articles about other things when the opportunity arises.  I welcome any Magic-based E-mail, even if you don’t have a deck list attached.  I do however frown on people who simply ask me to build decks for them from scratch with nothing more to go on than, “I want to make a blue deck”, but I’m willing to tackle any topic.  And when Ben sent me this E-mail, I decided I was long overdue to discuss in depth the issue of drawing cards.

Hey there again. Still reading your column, in fact, I have an idea for an article you might want to do, cleverly disguised as some questions about deck building in general.

Recently in the games I've been playing, from a pool of about 10 decks or so that my friend and I have built, and play against each other, that the decks with the ability to draw cards and restock their hand, tend to come out on top when the game drags on. One uses Archivist, one has Train of Thought, and there is a smattering of Browbeats and Harmonizes and Ancestral Memories (though we can't really afford to buy whole playsets of those...). Anyway the point is, I started thinking to myself that it would be a good goal to (almost) always include some cards in your deck that will help you draw more cards. So I tried to think of cards that were good at that in each color, and I sort of got stumped.

Here is what I came up with, and I'd like it if you'd help me out with some of your favorites! (I try to keep rather current, from about Kamigawa block onwards.... but I've been known to jump around)

Blue:

I don't even really want to go here, there are so many options, the best of which are just so expensive. Recently, I like Foresee a lot. I like train of thought a lot too. Card draw here isn't really a problem. We even use the odd thieving magpie, just whatever works.

Red: I really have no idea outside the various cantrips, and Browbeat. Got anything?

Green: Harmonize, and Carven Caryatid, but other than that, I'm lost. I've discovered, however, that Keen Sense doesn't work and that I don't really like paying 4 life for a card with Sylvan Library...

Black: Phyrexian Arena, I guess... if you can afford it and don't mind losing a life a turn. Kind of at a loss here, too. Any good alternatives that don't involve giving up life? I guess black is more the color of discard.

White... found a TON of cantrips here, nothing I really care for. Except maybe Pursuit of Knowledge. What do you think of that?

Speaking of enchantments  for card draw...

Standstill is nice, wish it was cheaper. Heightened Awareness would be good if it didn't cost 5 mana.

I'm curious as to what you think of Rhystic Study. It's only $.50 and 3 mana... do you think it could find a spot in a deck?

finally, I really like the idea of Quicksilver Dagger. Pinging, and drawing cards, for 3 mana... I like it a lot.


Alrighty! I hope you can come up with more than I could! And I do plan on submitting some decks eventually. Love your column, keep it up!

--Ben

Ben’s initial observation is of course spot on: if you can draw significantly more cards than your opponent over the course of a game, you have a much better chance of winning.  I’m constantly telling people that a good way to speed up your game is to include ways to draw cards or to search their libraries for the cards they need.

The logical extension that Ben arrives at, that it is always a good idea to include cards that draw you more cards in your deck, is true in many but not all cases.  The obvious exception is top-tier aggro decks that see play at high-level tournaments.  These decks get their strength from a singular focus: to do damage and to do it fast.  Since these decks are usually aiming to end the game by turn four or five, and they are most often Red (the worst color at drawing cards), you often don’t want to include card draw spells in them because you want every spell you cast to help kill your opponent.  But this is the extreme example, and Ben did point out that the advantage becomes more visible as the game runs long.  If you expect your game to run long, you can almost always improve your odds of toughing it out by adding in a few ways to draw extra cards.  As such, it may be helpful to know in what ways each color can draw cards.

I won’t bother with Blue, simply because Blue is the king of card draw.  If you can’t find a blue draw card you like, you’re not looking hard enough.  It has turn-one cantrips that filter your draws (Opt, Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand), late-game cards that give big payoffs (Opportunity, Tidings), adjustable draw spells (Train of Thought, Braingeyser), and a host of others.

The next best color at refilling its hand is Black.  Ben mentioned Phyrexian Arena, but dismissed it due to the life payment.  And that was what really made me feel like this article needed to be written.

You see, a lot of newer players starting out feel like their life total is a lot more important than it actually is.  Paying 1 life may seem like a steep price to pay for something blue often does without paying life, and everybody does once a turn for free.  But really, it’s worth it to draw more cards than your opponent.  Just look at one of the most infamously powerful cards in Magic’s history; Necroptence.  With this card, you skip your draw step, and can pay 1 life to get a card at the end of your turn.  It seems like a raw deal at first, and many people thought it was for a time.  But it quickly became clear that it was more than worth giving up a draw step to be able to get as many cards as you had life points to pay.  Many Necro players would go all the way down to 1 life to draw more cards.  Why?  Because that means you’re drawing as many as 19 cards more than your opponent.  In most games, the game is over before you even see 19 cards.  Necropotence essentially doubled the amount of cards you drew over the course of a game.  If you’re drawing twice as many cards as your opponent and you still can’t win, you’ve got serious problems.

Let me make it even clearer.  Let’s assume you’ve got Phyrexian Arena out.  You lose 1 life and draw an extra card.  What will you do with that card that you paid so dearly for?  Well, maybe it’s a Volcanic Hammer.  You can throw it at your opponent for 3 damage.  That means that for your 1 life, you brought your opponent down 3 life.  Or you could throw it at a 3/3 creature that was attacking you.  For the price of 1 life, you’ve killed a creature that would’ve dealt you 3 damage next turn.  And maybe 3 more the next turn.  By trading 1 point of life, you’ve saved yourself from losing quite a few more.  Maybe the card you spent your point of life on turned out to be a creature.  You play it, and maybe it blocks.  By blocking with it, did you save yourself from more than 1 damage?  Maybe you attack with that creature.  Will that creature do more than one point of damage over the course of the game?  Or maybe it wasn’t a creature either; maybe it was Sacred Nectar.  For the price of 1 life, you have the option of gaining 4 life.

The point I’m trying to make is that one card is usually worth more than one point of life when you play it.  Most direct damage spells do more than 1 damage.  Most life gain spells gain you more than 1 life.  Creatures can deal or prevent lots of damage by attacking or blocking; the more turns they stay in play, the more they deal or prevent.  And in most cases, you and your opponent usually trade cards on a 1-for-1 basis.  One creature for one removal spell.  One counterspell to match one spell.  Sometimes you can get a 2-for-1 or a 3-for-1, and those cards are the ones that are considered powerful.  But for the most part, every extra card brings you closer to victory.  That’s why savvy Magicians are more than happy to play Phyrexian Arena, Night’s Whisper, Dark Confidant, and Promise of Power.

The one corollary to this is if you know your opponent is able to do at least N damage to you next turn, you might not want to go below N life to draw more cards.  But for the most part, the cards you draw will save you from this.

That covers Black’s draw power; let’s move on to Green.  Green doesn’t trade life for cards, but it does have plenty of decent draw power.  Its extra drawing is usually tied to its creatures.  Ohran Viper is a very powerful drawing agent, since its creature-killing ability makes opponents reluctant to block it.  Hystrodon is also a potent choice.  In a creature-heavy deck, you can get good mileage out of Primordial Sage, Heartwood Storyteller, Llanowar Empath, Biomantic Mastery, and Enshrined Memories.  Green is the creature color, so the more creatures you have, the more ways to draw cards you have. 

Next up is White.  As Ben observed, White often gets the short end of the stick when it comes to draw power.  It gets cantrips to be sure, as well as cards with Cycling, but no more than the other four colors.  Some of them, like To Arms! or Pentarch Ward, are pretty decent.  Others, like Second Thoughts, Blessed Wine, or Carom, aren’t so much.  The rule of thumb when judging the merit of cantrips is: put your thumb over the “draw a card” line.  Would you still play it?  If the answer is no, then maybe it’s time to look elsewhere.

For real card draw in white, a halfway decent option can be found in Convalescent Care.  It only works if you’re at 5 or less life, but that’s about when you need extra cards the most, isn’t it?  Phyrexian Arena and Convalescent Care would be interesting to play alongside one another.  You can also try Armistice, but each card is fairly expensive.  My personal favorite white draw spell, though, is Oblation.  I know, I’m going pretty far back here, but this is a solid utility card.  As an instant, you can stack damage and then save your creature, or use it in response to anything untoward that would befall a permanent of yours.  And get two cards back.  In any deck that makes tokens, this becomes even better since you don’t actually lose a card.  In a pinch, you can even use it to get rid of some nasty thing your opponent plays that you can’t deal with any other way, but I don’t recommend that.  Giving your opponent two cards is a path to ruin.

But if you thought White was bad at drawing cards, then you haven’t seen Red.  Red, the color of smashing stuff up and not taking time to think, the color that doesn’t care about the long game, has embarrassingly little playable draw power.  Ben pointed out Browbeat already.  Red can draw more cards, but usually at the expense of the cards it has now.  Wheel of Fate will give you (and everyone else) a new hand, by making you discard your old hand.  If you play out all your spells before it unsuspends, however, it will likely not matter.

And that’s where it starts going downhill.  Red card draw likes to give up what it has for something better, but rarely can you cheat on giving up your hand by playing it out like Wheel of Fate.  All is not lost, however.  If you really want to dig through the archives, there’s Goblin Lore and its Portal reprint Control of the Court.  You could hope to get unlucky off a Winter Sky, or REALLY lucky off Fiery Gambit.  Mindmoil will give you a new hand almost every turn, but you only get to play one spell out of each new hand.  If you just need to get the right card right now, it could do the job.  After that, it’s pretty much all just cantrips and Cycling.

Finally, the answers to Ben’s other question concerning enchantments that draw cards.  Heightened Awareness actually may be better because it costs five mana: by that point, you may have played out your hand and have nothing to discard.  If your hand consists of zero cards, then “discard your hand” means “do nothing”, at which point it’s a one-sided Howling Mine.  Rhystic Study is a card I’ve actually lost to a few times.  In multiplayer especially it can be very punishing.  Either you get to draw a lot of extra cards, or your opponents can’t cast as many (either because they’re paying extra mana for them all, or because they’re choosing not to play them.)  Either way, the scales will slowly tip further and further your way the longer this card is on the table.  And Quicksilver Dagger?

Well, just like more cards will win you games, Auras by their very nature can lose you games because they give your opponent opportunities to kill two of your cards with one of his.  Quicksilver Dagger, however, manages to avoid that scenario (or at least negate the effect) by replacing itself in your hand once you tap the creature it’s on.  If you get even one activation out of this, you’ve made it worth the resources you expended.  And repeatable card draw is the most powerful kind, so I’d approve of the Dagger.

This article has run longer than I originally expected it to, but everything in it was worth saying, so I’m glad I wrote it.  Hopefully, you’re glad you read it.  I admit it’s not the most entertaining thing I’ve ever written, but it may be the most informative.