Lean Brewing
I’ve been brewing for several years now and have been steadily refining my brewing process. I am going to break it down here with the hopes that you can use some of the ideas here to level up your own brewing.
My Goal
As you approach brewing the first step is understanding what your goal is that you are trying to optimize to.
When I was considering names for this blog it was between “What If Brews” and “80% Brewing”. Brewing 80% winrate decks is my goal. I like 80% winrate as a goal for two key reasons:
It is very challenging, but achievable.
Playing in a Magic Online Super Qualifier is a serious time commitment, so if I play in one I want to have a good chance of winning. With an 80% winrate deck you have around a 25% chance of coming in first or second.
So given a goal of brewing 80% winrate decks, how do I optimize my brewing process to maximize the speed at which I get to my next 80% winrate deck.
My Brewing Process
Step 1: Make a list of promising cards from the new set
This step should be fairly obvious what it looks like as I write up and publish these lists.
The highest odds of finding something new and powerful is going to come from new cards that have yet to be tested in the format.
There also tends to be a nice lull between the full spoiler and the sets release to really focus on figuring out which cards seem promising in the new set.
Step 2: Come up with a ton of deck ideas
Once you have cards that stand out, just start jotting down tons of deck ideas.
List them out in broad concept descriptions (i.e. Boros Auras Heroic/Valiant, Flash CoCo U Devotion)
Then try and build the decklists
Many of these concepts you will be able to quickly discard when you try and put together as a decklist. You will realize there are not enough cards to make the idea work, or you have a 73 card maindeck and can’t figure out how to cut it down without giving up the decks concept, or you just look at it and realize it’s a weak deck that will likely do poorly.
This again can be done ahead of the new set coming out, but you will be constantly adding deck ideas to this list.
With a new set I will usually have a dozen decklists sketched out and a dozen more deck concepts jotted down, but not sketched out yet.
Step 3: Sort them in rough priority order
Not all of your decks will be equal in terms of how promising they are. You only have a limited amount of brewing time, so you want to focus on the most promising ideas.
Now we have a prioritized list of 20+ deck ideas with the top half having decklists sketched out.
Step 4: Start testing from the top
Now the most time intensive part, testing. I take the top deck from my list and play two MTGO leagues with it.
Side note- card availability will often limit my ability to go direct down from the top right when a set releases, but that is another plus of this system as it is easy to find the highest deck in the list that does not have card availability issues.
I find one league is not enough to get a good feel or good data on a deck. I will also realize ways to improve the deck after playing the first league, so the second league allows it to show closer to its true potential.
That being said, if a deck feels bad in a not particularly fixable way, I will abandon it after one league.
After, two leagues depending on the winrate I will:
If >= 80% winrate, immediately move to Step 5
If >=70% winrate, move the deck to the “Promising Queue”
If >= 60% winrate, this is the cusp zone and will depend on how the deck felt and if I have ideas to improve it. If I think it has real upside potential I will move it to “Promising Queue”, otherwise I will move on from it.
If <60% winrate, move on to the next deck.
The “Promising Queue”
The “Promising Queue” is full of 60% and 70% winrate decks. When I get 3 decks in this Queue I will stop testing decks from Step 4 and pick one or two of the “Promising Queue” decks and move them on to Step 5.
The intuition here is that I want to get the balance right between exploring totally new decks and refining decks that have shown some but not overwhelming promise.
If I spend all my time trying to refine these 60% and 70% decks, I may miss an awesome deck from my backlog of deck ideas.
The counterpoint, is if I spend all my time testing new deck ideas I may be missing out on a deck that has already shown promise and only needs more data and refining to prove out to be an 80% winrate deck.
I find having this three deck buffer in the “Promising Queue” helps me get that balance right.
Step 5: Further Refine Promising Decks
There is not a set number of leagues for this step. I continually making tweaks for as long as:
Its winrate stays above 70%
I continue to have meaningful ideas for how to improve
Step 6: Take into a Challenge or Qualifier
Once I start hitting diminishing marginal returns on my ability to improve the deck and if its winrate is still high, it is time to take it into a Challenge or Qualifier.
Sometimes the higher play level of Challenges will inspire new ideas for the deck and it will get shifted back to Step 5. Otherwise I move to Step 7.
Step 7: Write a blog post on the deck
A lot of brewing happens by feel. The act of formally writing up an analysis of the deck can really help understand it in a different way. This is also a good way to figure out more generalizable brewing lessons that I can apply to future decks.
If you are trying this yourself, you do not need to start a blog, but I would encourage you to try writing up an analysis of the deck and sharing it with a friend, a discord you’re in, or send it to me.
The other benefit of this step is I really enjoy playing my brews, so I want to make them more accessible to others to enjoy and further build on them.
Step 8: Move on to the next deck
At this point, I either have achieved my goal of having brewed an 80% winrate deck or have a good sense that this particular brew won’t get there.
Both of which mean it is time to move onto the next deck in the Promising Queue and if that is empty to the next deck in Step 4.
Bloomburrow Season Case Study
Step 1: Make a list of promising cards from the new set
You can read it here.
Step 2: Come up with a ton of deck ideas
UG Birds Reef Coco
UG Birds Reef Mutavault
UG Turtle Storm
UG Elementals Ramp Bear
R Lynx Taxes
UG Deserts
GR Deserts
BR Cat/Oven Ygra combo
UB Rats
UB Rats Bankbuster
GB Squirrels
UG Elemental Eluge Crab
RW Mice
W Rabbits
WB Yorion Rottenmouth
BR Lizards
GB Landfall Freestrider
These are the ones I drew up over the course of the season before the bans.
Step 3: Sort them in rough priority order
For sake of saving space I put that list in rough priority order already.
Step 4: Start testing from the top
Step 5: Further Refine Promising Decks
I’m going to summarize the results of Step 4 and 5 together here.
UG Birds Reef Coco- 60% but didn’t feel promising, move on
UG Turtle Storm- 60% originally, but I wasn’t sure how to improve so move on. Read my post on how 17Lands stats got me to revist this deck
UG Elementals Ramp Bear- 40% move on after one league
R Lynx Taxes- 70% move to “Promising Queue”
UG Deserts- 60%, but did not feel better than pre-BLB so move on
GR Deserts- 70% move to “Promising Queue”
BR Cat/Oven All One Drops Ygra combo- 60%, but miserable to play so move on after one league
UB Rats- 80% move to Step 5. In Step 5 winrates were 50% in next two leagues so moved on.
GB Squirrels- 70% move to “Promising Queue”. This was third in Promising Queue so tested results in Step 5 were 60% so moved on.
UG Elemental Eluge Crab- 20%, felt terrible so move on after one league
UG Turtle Storm v2- 80% and felt great, move to Step 6
Step 6: Take into a Challenge or Qualifier
I took UG Turtle Storm into the challenge with high confidence I would Top 8 and thought good odds I would win it. Ended up Top 8’ing
Step 7: Write a blog post on the deck
You can read it here.
A number of people have taken up the deck since and its been great getting to test with others on further improvements to the deck.
Step 8: Move on to the next deck
I tested Gruul Deserts from the Promising Queue to so-so results, so moved on. Then the bans happened, which totally changed the format.
It also kind of created a limbo state for this process, so I have mostly focused on refining the UG Turtle deck for the new meta (turning it into GW Turtle) and waiting for Duskmourn.
Conclusion
Remember this system is tied to my goal of brewing decks with 80% winrates. If you adopt it, first make sure you think about your brewing goal. You will also likely need to adjust the winrate cutoffs for what makes sense for you.
In my brews I do some things that can seem kind of crazy. I am able to do that in part because I have the above system to rely on. I am able to test out a wide range ideas and efficiently toss out the ideas that don’t work and focus on ideas that show promise.
Part of the reason this blog exists is that I come from a background as a Limited player, where there are tons of resources available on how to become a better Limited player.
In contrast there is not much out there on how to be a better brewer. If you are getting serious about brewing try following a modified version of the above system for your brewing goal and I bet your results will improve.