Doom, With No Dead Draws

A card goes dead when you draw it and the deck lacks the pieces that make it work. My fix is an audit: I look at each card and ask two questions, what does this card accomplish, and what else does it synergize with. Run that pass and the sluggish, swingy feeling of a deck that keeps drawing blanks starts to clear up. The Doom precon is the cleanest test case in the whole box, because its two commanders give it two primary engines, and almost every good upgrade is about replacing a card that feeds neither of them.

A card is a "dead draw" when you pull it and it does nothing, because the rest of your deck cannot make it work. My fix is to check each card two ways: what does it do, and what does it combo with? The Doom deck is easy to check, because it only has two things it wants to do. This page swaps out the cards that help with neither.

Doctor Doom, King of Latveria

{1}{U}{B}{R}

Loki, the Deceiver

{1}{U}{B}{R}

Killmonger, Ruthless Usurper

alt

The core ideaTwo questions, two engines

My audit turns on task and synergy. A card that does one useful thing and links up with a package of others earns its slot, and a card that does a random thing with nothing to support it draws dead. The Doom deck makes both questions easy to answer, because it wants two things above all, and you can hold every card up against them.

Hold each card up to both engines. If it feeds neither the discard drain nor the copy loop, that is your dead draw, and that is the slot an upgrade should take.

This is the same move I make when I sort a deck into categories and check whether each part has enough support. Here the categories are already drawn for you by the two commanders, which is why this precon is the cleanest fit of the four for this audit. The three swaps below are that category audit carried out card by card.

The Doom deck wants two things. One, throw away lands so Doctor Doom drains everyone. Two, make copies of your villains with Loki and swing for cards. Every card in the deck should help with one of those two jobs. If a card helps with neither, it is a dead draw, and we replace it.

Swap 1A low-payoff card for a body worth copying

→

Superior Foes of Spider-Man → Green Goblin, Revenant Superior Foes of Spider-Man is a low-payoff card with no home in either engine, so it draws dead in most hands. Green Goblin, Revenant is a flying deathtouch Villain with evasion and built-in card advantage. It gives Loki a body worth copying and it connects to draw, so it belongs squarely inside the copy engine instead of drawing a blank. Superior Foes of Spider-Man does not help either of the deck's two jobs, so it is a dead card. Green Goblin, Revenant is a flying villain that is hard to block and draws you cards. Loki loves copying it, so it fits right into the plan.

Swap 2An off-plan body for a copy-loop payoff

→

Molecule Man → Kingpin, Wilson Fisk Molecule Man is a six-mana 5/5 whose miracle-granting ability wants a very different deck, so it does nothing for the discard or copy engines here. Kingpin, Wilson Fisk turns your sacrificed Loki tokens into Treasure, so the copies you were making and losing at end of turn now leave value behind. A card that used to be dead becomes an active part of the copy loop. Molecule Man is a big six-mana creature whose special trick fits a different deck, so here it does nothing for the plan. Kingpin turns the villain copies Loki makes into Treasure when they are sacrificed. Now the copy plan pays you back, and Kingpin is part of the fun instead of a blank.

Swap 3An off-theme vehicle for a copy-keeper

→

Damocles Base, Sword of Kang → Sundial of the Infinite Damocles Base is an off-theme vehicle with no place in either engine. Sundial of the Infinite ends your turn before the delayed sacrifice resolves, so Loki's copies stick around as permanent Villains instead of vanishing at end of turn. That is the difference between a filler slot and a piece that deepens the exact engine the deck is built on. Damocles Base is a vehicle that does not fit either job. Sundial of the Infinite lets you end your turn early so Loki's copies do not get sacrificed. Your copied villains stay forever, which makes the whole plan much stronger.

The through-lineNothing generically weak comes out

Taken as a group, the swaps are my audit in action. Nothing generically weak leaves the deck. What leaves is whatever the discard drain and the copy loop cannot use, and what comes in feeds one engine or the other. Superior Foes becomes a body Loki wants to copy, Molecule Man becomes a payoff for the tokens Loki sacrifices, and an off-theme vehicle becomes a way to keep those copies for good. That is why Doom is the cleanest fit of the four for this audit. Its two commanders draw the category lines for you, so the dead-draw audit almost runs itself, and the deck stops drawing blanks.

Feed both engines and the deck almost never draws a card that does nothing. That is the whole promise of the audit, delivered on the cleanest deck in the box.

All three swaps do the same thing: they take out cards that help with neither job and put in cards that help with one. Now almost every card you draw does something, because the whole deck points at the same two plans. That is why the Doom deck is the easiest of the four to tune.