Building a deck from cards you own

Starting a deck

• Open Deck Builder and create a deck. Give it a name you will recognise in a list of twenty.
• Tag it with a format. That tag is what the legality warnings key off later, so it is worth setting even for a kitchen table deck.
• For Commander, set the commander with the picker. Partner commanders are supported, and the choice affects what counts as on-colour.

Getting cards in

Three routes, and they suit different moments:

• From the collection table. Tick the rows and use the deck button. Best when you already know what you want and can find it by searching or filtering.
• By dragging. Drag a row onto the open deck. Quicker for one or two cards than ticking and clicking.
• From another tool. Card Synergy suggests cards that fit what is already in the deck, and they can be added from there without going back to the table.

The decision that matters: owned, or wished for

A deck normally draws only on cards you own, so the count you see is a deck you could physically sleeve up tonight. Toggle the star and it becomes a wish deck, which lets you add cards you do not own.

• Cards you do not own carry a Need badge, so the list never quietly pretends you have them.
• The gap can be sent to a wishlist in one step, which is the natural handover to buying them.
• Turning the star off again does not delete anything. The needed cards stay listed and stay marked.

Worth being deliberate about this. A normal deck answers "what can I build", a wish deck answers "what do I want to build", and mixing the two without noticing is how you end up at a table missing four cards.

Reading the deck as you go

• Cards group by type, so the creature count and the land count are visible without counting rows.
• Hovering a row shows the card, which saves opening it just to check what a name does.
• The value of the deck is shown as you go, which matters more than it sounds when a single card is a third of the total.

The same card in two decks

A card in your collection can appear in as many decks as you like. Wizbook does not lock a card to one deck, because cardboard does not work that way either: most people rebuild between games. The collection table shows which decks a card is in, so you know what you are pulling apart before you sleeve something else.

Getting the deck out

• Export as a Cockatrice .cod file to play online.
• Share a deck as a link. It carries the list itself rather than pointing at your account, so it works for somebody with no Wizbook account at all.
• The whole deck travels in the Excel workbook alongside your collection, so a backup includes it.

Before the first game

Two tools are worth a minute each. Deck Simulator works out the odds of drawing what you need by a given turn, which is the fastest way to find out you are two lands light. Deck Discoverer goes the other way, showing decks other people are playing that you could nearly build already.