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Main » Articles » The Art of Brewing

The Art of Brewing

Ali Aintrazi
Posted on June 30, 2017
 Reddit

Hello everyone, and welcome back! In case you weren’t away, I’m known as a “brewer” in the Magic Community. What this means is, I basically come up with new decks for the given format. Today we are going to talk about a topic a lot of people ask me about, “how do you brew a new deck?” or “Why do you brew?” Hopefully this article will articulate my thoughts and feelings on brewing. I will also go over the process I use when making a new deck. This article should help explain how I come up with the decks and hopefully it will help your inner brewer too. I brew in two ways. I either attack a metagame or I brew around a card. I will explain both processes as well as give insight on brewing as a whole. If you want to know how to build new decks or improve your deck-building, I highly recommend that you continue.

Attacking the Metagame

What do I mean about attacking the metagame? Well, it means that you take all the tier one or most popular decks and you build a deck that can beat the majority of them. You want to be able to beat around 60%+ of the most popular decks. If your brew can beat two out of three of the best decks then you’re good to go. However, if you have two best decks and your deck can only beat one of them, that puts you at 50% against the best decks. 50% is not where you want to be, your chances of doing Top 8ing an event drop drastically. You don’t always have to build a deck from scratch. It’s much easier to take an idea and build on it. My best success story with building a deck to attack the metagame was when Caw-Blade was the best deck. I took an existing ub Control shell (given to me by Brad Shepperd and John Winters) and changed a few things about it so that it had very favorable matchup against Caw-Blade. I gave up percentage points against Birthing Pod and Pyromancer Ascension but my win rate against those decks was still around 50%. This was the last US Nationals where I Top 8ed with ub Control. The Top 8 was 6 Caw-Blade decks, one Pyromancer Ascension deck, and myself. I ended up winning the whole event because my deck was so tuned to be favorable against Caw-Blade.

U/B Control ? Standard | Ali Aintrazi, 1st Place at Nationals on 8/7/2011

This was also true when I built a Grand Architect deck that attacked decks playing the Swords from Scars Block. Tumble Magnet was great against cards like Sword of Feast and Famine and Sword of War and Peace, especially if you could put more charges on your Tumble Magnets with things like Thrummingbird or Contagion Engine.

Architect Control ? Standard| Ali Aintrazi, 8th Place at StarCityGames.com Standard Open on 2/27/2011

Attacking a metagame doesn’t even have to be a new deck. You can take an existing deck that has fallen out of favor but is favorable now because the metagame shifted. This is the case in Modern. When you have a format so diverse, you can punish people for not playing artifact hate with Affinity, no graveyard hate with dredge, or if the metagame is a ton of Midrange decks, you can punish them with a deck like Tron.

Building around a Card

When building around you a card, you still want to keep the metagame in mind. You can’t expect to build a sweet deck and do well at a tournament if you don’t prepare for the decks that will be in that tournament. When I build around a card, I tend to build around one that I really enjoy playing. When Time Warp was reprinted, I really wanted to play the card. I build a shell with the deck and mind and after losing and tuning the deck over and over, I ended up winning a PTQ and qualifying for the Pro Tour with said deck.

Turboland ? Standard | Ali Aintrazi, 1st Place at Pro Tour Qualifier on 6/20/2010

I tend to do better when I play decks I enjoy. This tends to be Blue and Green decks or decks with cards that are just fun to play. I’ve had success with other decks that were built around Heartless Summoning, Part the Waterveil, Master Biomancer, Prophet of Kruphix, Axebane Guardian, Door to Nothingness, Smallpox, and many more. However, for each successful deck, I’ve had five that flopped. This bring us to our next topic.

Know when to Let Go

Sanity Grinding
It’s important to know when to put a deck down and start somewhere else. Sometimes the card you want to play just isn’t good enough no matter how hard you try. If it keeps coming up short or the card isn’t having much of an impact on your games, you have got to move on. Otherwise you’ll get stuck and be treading water. Keep in mind letting go doesn’t always mean starting over with a different card. Sometimes it can just mean playing a different color. Maybe your Fraying Sanity deck is better as ug instead of ub? Maybe Fevered Visions is the answer so you try ur? It could be that urg (Temur) is the answer because you’ll get Fevered Visions, Bounty of the Luxa, Sweltering Suns, and Dissenter's Deliverance. Then you might realize that your opponent drawing cards is hurting too much so you just play ug with Bounty of the Luxa, Seasons Past, and Fogs. From there you could conclude that access to Fumigate or Approach of the Second Sun as an alternate win condition could be helpful, so you try adding White. If it’s still not working, let go. Who knows, you may be able to come back to it in the future when a new set comes out or the metagame shifts, and you know what? The next time you come back to it, you’ll have a much easier time building and tuning the deck since you have experience.

Many years ago, there was a time all I really wanted to play was Sanity Grinding. However, the best deck at the time was Fairies and Five-Color Control. The deck could beat Five-Color Control but lost horribly to Faeries. With a 50% win rate, I just put the deck away. Luckily, later down the road LSV won a Pro Tour with wb Tokens. wb Tokens beat Faeries and pushed that deck a little further away. Then wgTokens started popping up alongside wb Tokens and Faeries was seeing even less play. Evacuation was legal in that format and was basically an instant speed Wrath of God against token strategies. I got to revisit Sanity Grinding with main deck Evacuation. I knew what the deck was supposed to look like from playing it previously. I added Evacuations and I was right, the deck was smashing the token strategies and still beat control decks. I ended up getting sixth place at a PTQ. I will always remember this tournament because it was the first time I ever took my brew to a large event and believed in myself and my deck.

Sanity Grinding ? Standard | Ali Aintrazi, 6th Place at Pro Tour Qualifier on 5/10/2009

It was a great feeling; and, from that point on, I stuck to my guns and played whatever I enjoyed playing that I also thought would do well at an event. Keep in mind this was a special case, it doesn’t always work out. I’ve had to scrap many a brew because I wanted to do well. If you want to be a successful deck-builder, you can’t get stuck on one deck or card. Any person can throw a bunch of cards together and call it a brew. If you want to do well and succeed, you must know when to let go of a deck. It’s hard, trust me I know, but you gotta do it.

Perseverance and Tenacity

Now that we’ve talked about when to give up on a deck, you must know when not to give up. You will get mocked, ignored, and sometimes even laughed at for your deck ideas. Ignore them. I know not everyone can do this, I know I couldn’t. So, when you can’t ignore the negative feedback then take it. Take it and turn it into fuel. Fuel that you can use to continue building and tuning your brews so you can ultimately prove them wrong. You’d think someone as successful as me with brews, that I wouldn’t get negative comments for my decks. Believe me, I still do. My decks have been labeled “Ali Decks.” Basically, meaning Ali built it, so he is the only one that can do well with it. I get ignored by most competitive players and grinders, these players just want the best deck all the time. Sometimes even friends would make jokes at my expense. It sucked, but I promise you it’s all worth it in the end. When you take down a tournament or have a strong finish with a brew. You’ll feel like you’re on top of the world. More importantly, you’ll have more confidence in yourself and continue doing what you love to do.

Grow the Brewing Community

We must support people building new decks. It keeps the format healthy and not stale. If you see someone playing a sweet new deck, give them a complement, it could mean everything to them and give them enough fire to keep going. Brews are great for everyone, even the Spike. Best case scenario you invent a new deck that becomes part of the metagame and really shakes things up. Worst case scenario you get crushed by a Spike player. You both prosper. The Spike feels like they got a free win and you should learn a lot of valuable information from the match. You learn a lot more from losing a match of Magic then you do winning, this is especially true for when you are tuning a deck.

I have a tough time looking at a deck and knowing what needs to change to improve it. The best thing for me is to play the deck repeatedly so I can learn its strengths and weaknesses so that I can tune it and make it better. Brewing is a lot of work, but it is fun and rewarding. I really hope this article has helped you in that regard. It’s a lot of information to swallow but I wish I had a similar article I could’ve read when I started brewing. If this inspires just one person to pick up brewing or to continue brewing, then I’m happy.

Thanks for reading and I can’t wait to start building around some of these Hour of Devastation cards. See you all next week!

Much love,

Ali Aintrazi

@AliEldrazi on Twitter

Hour of Devastation is now available for preorder at CoolStuffInc.com!

TAGS articles, constructed, deckbuilding, ali aintrazi, decklist, brewing

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