What are the possible ways to test a deck?

Question

Naturally when you make a new deck, you test it on your friends but mine have all stabilised their tournament decks now and the game ends so quickly that I don't get a feel for how my deck flows.

What I want to know is if there is ways of testing decks to see their potential without another player. I really need to give the deck a thorough test so I can see what cards don't fit and which combos are better than expected.

I have seen people play games against themselves but I don't believe this works very well.

What methods do tournament players use to test their decks?

Please note that simply playing games is not an acceptable answer as I do not know people that will just play for fun; they are all super competitive.

Answer 1

There are different ways of testing that you can do, but none of them are as effective as playing real games against other people.

1) Play without an opponent. I usually play new decks over and over without an opponent to see how the basic idea works out. Just draw and play and see how many rounds it would take you to win on average. Do your combos work out as you had hoped for? Do you have too much or too little mana available? Adjust your deck until you are satisfied with the results.

2) Analyze the meta-game you are playing in. What are other players going to play against you? Try to identify the main threats in those decks and see if you can counter them. Are you fast enough so that they do not matter or can you establish enough control to break their combos? If you find a common deck that you are helpless against, try to find a solution.

3) Put up your desk for analysis online. There are many forums with experts from the MTG scene. Post your deck in the appropriate forum and hear what others think about your deck. They usually will have more experience and find weaknesses without having to play the deck. If you have more specific questions than "is my deck any good?", the MTG experts from this site here (Board and Card games on Stack Exchange) will also be able to help. I learned a lot already here.

These three steps can help you a lot already. In addition you can analyze the Mana Curve of your deck and identify problems there. But in the end, finding practice partners helps the most. I have played MTG-games over webcam in the past with friends of mine. It works better than it sounds like in the first place ;). So even if you don't have anyone in reach, you can try to play with friends who live farther away over the Internet.

Answer 2

It's been a while since I was a tournament player, but I used to be pretty good. Beyond playing against the tournament decks of my friends, which was always the best way to test, I did two things.

• I just played the deck to see how many turns it took to get to 20 damage, which actually is decent testing to test the basic concept of the deck to see if it even works on a basic level.
• I had a set of about four decks that I kept maintained that were exemplars of existing tournament decks and ran against them. It's usually pretty easy to play both ends of the game, and it wasn't hard to keep on top of what some examples of tournament decks are; at the time, you could find listings of them online and in magazines, as I'm sure is still true today. I'd just proxy cards I didn't have for this purpose, and that testing would give me an idea how my new deck fared against the dominant archetypes of the day.

Answer 3

You need an actual playtesting group, one with decks that resemble the actual metagame, not ones specifically tuned to beat your one deck (unless you're playing a dominant deck and that's a specific metagame choice, that is.)

Also, super competitive players need to test their decks just like anyone else. Why won't they take you seriously and do proper testing with you? Even if they're decks are fully tuned (which I seriously doubt, especially since Innistrad is coming out this weekend and each format's metagame will undoubtedly adjust at least slightly), the play practice should still be valuable.

If it's because your deck is a rogue brew and they won't test with you because they perceive it won't benefit them because they'll never play against it... Well, I imagine that's a problem with which many rogue brewers have trouble, and I don't have a solution myself.

Answer 4

You could join a group like http://www.magic-league.com. I don't play with them myself, but these people run online tournaments unaffiliated to Wizards, using applications for playing Magic over the internet that are not MtGO... and thus a lot cheaper, for those who are budget-conscious!

I expect you'd find plenty of people in the forums and on IRC who'd be willing to discuss deck testing and maybe even give you a game. As far as I can tell it looks like a pretty active community...

I appreciate that your question asked for "ways of testing a Magic deck that don't involve playing with people", but honestly, I really think you should find ways of playing with people! I can't believe anyone ever became really good at competitive Magic without a playtesting group of some kind.