The Joys of Limitation

I like building decks for trading card games. I've played a number of them, including the old Harry Potter TCG, the now defunct Warhammer 40k CCG, the discontinued World of Warcraft TCG, and the everlasting Magic: the Gathering, and I've enjoyed constructing decks in all of them.

For me, deck building is a creative outlet. Usually, I pick a theme, look at my card pool, and build a deck that fits that theme. Often this will be centred around a single card and built out from there, but sometimes it's around a combination of two or more cards, or more generally around a type of card or game mechanic. Occasionally, I look at my collection of cards and build the best deck I can with what I have. I enjoy that, but I usually get more satisfaction out of 'jenky' decks that have themes; they have more character to them.

When I was growing up, I was limited by my card pool when building decks. This was an interesting restriction, since I could obviously only build with what I had; I never was big on the trading aspect of these games, and would usually just collect the cards. As a kid, I could only ever get so many cards, but still, I enjoyed being restricted in that sense; it added a challenging element to building, and I didn't feel compelled to spend a fortune to find the right card to complete a deck. What I had would have to be good enough unless I got lucky opening a booster pack.

By contrast, when I started playing Magic: the Gathering a few years ago, my approach to deck building changed. While I still built decks based on a theme when I could, I was no longer limited by my card collection; buying specific cards was far easier with Magic than it ever was with other trading card games I played. This meant that I could look at a list of every card printed, find the card I needed for the deck, and pick it up from a local gaming store. This removed the restriction I had as a kid of a small card pool, and opened up far more opportunities for building those themed decks. If I had an idea for a deck, I could build it, no matter what my luck was in opening packs, or how old a card was that I needed. If the card was one I could afford, I could get it for my deck.

Magic is particularly interesting, however, in that it has several supported ways of playing. These formats are either 'Constructed', where players create decks from whatever they have in their collection, or they are 'Limited', where players are given a small number of sealed booster packs from which they build decks. Given the small card pool, Limited settings make building themed decks largely out of the question, so it falls to building the best deck you can with the limited resources at your disposal. Nevertheless, I find Limited environments to be quite rewarding; players only have a short amount of time to build their decks, and it forces players to use cards that would be passed over in Constructed games in favour of better cards.

I've heard it said that greater restrictions breed greater creativity. I'm not sure that it applies entirely with trading card games, but greater restrictions in TCGs certainly encourage greater resourcefulness. Building a deck out of whatever you want is a lot of fun, but building a deck out of a small pool of cards really does make you better appreciate a lot of otherwise uninteresting cards; sometimes you have to make do with what you have, and those mediocre cards may just be the best on hand.

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