1. Initial Concept & Theme

This is a deck about... a baby Chocobo. Or at least that's the plan.

I want to make the Chocobo as scary as possible through stuff like lures to make it the center stage of the deck, even though it's a little cute baby. I want to do this through stuff like lures and giant growths and have voltroned it up with equipment like Assault Suit. The deck will have a blend of combat tricks as well, a small amount of equipment, a small amount of auras, and other funny, stupid creatures.

2. Sorting & Refinement

I find a Japanese wild-growth with bees and blue bottle-shaped, purple bottle-shaped flowers and strange insects in a deep forest, Mark Poole illustrated. I find... ...a strange creature... ...displaying a rose as he wails in Gaia's touch. And... is burning and alive... ...with death... ...and life. Mark Poole. A picture of a business of beautiful ferrets. A cute little Rootwalla lizard. As I continue to pull cards, I find more that are meme-worthy ones that spark joy than the seven that I initially planned. Now I'm considering using Toski as a commander to play more fun cards rather than Chocobo, which would require more cards to optimize Chocobo's threatening manner..

I started sorting by asking myself which cards truly sparked joy and which ones fulfilled the deck’s vision. I noticed a distinction between cards that leverage multiple creatures versus those that boost a single creature.

3. Mana Curve & Playability Adjustments

I start to go through each section by mana cost, and ask myself which ones do spark joy, which ones fulfill the base inner vision of my deck, and divide them in a binary fashion. Here's a photo of this part : I start to go through each section by mana cost, and ask myself which ones do spark joy, which ones fulfill the base inner vision of my deck, and divide them in a binary fashion. I do this and I start to lay out the cards in rows of ten. After sorting through the creatures and non-creature cards like this, this is the result. I continued to pull cards that caught my eye, ...divided them between creatures and non-creatures and then organized them from mana cost. One through five, six plus.

I'm noticing a very old-school magic theme of cards from 94, 95, 96, when I was 4, 5, and 6 years old. As I'm sorting through, I notice a distinction between those cards that can add value by being affected by multiple creatures, or affecting multiple creatures, and those that can boost a singular creature or boost possible counters that the Chocobo has. Here are the cards that I pulled during this phase of the process that do leverage multiple creatures, either in a one-shot effect or on an ongoing basis or recurring basis. I also see cards that are generically good, like Harmonize, Draw 3 cards, but don't synergize with the creature-based themes of the deck. Here are the cards that I pulled during this phase of the process that do leverage multiple creatures, either in a one-shot effect or on an ongoing basis or recurring basis. I continue to slot these in, in the rows of 10. And can easily see that I have approximately 17 slots left for non-land spells. To reach a threshold of 62 non-lands. One commander and 37 lands.

Next, I plan on looking through the stack of originally pulled cards to find cards that will build on the themes developed of leveraging multiple creatures and will cover required tech portions, tech portions like interaction, such as fogs, combat tricks, and removal, as well as card draw, although card draw seems to be covered pretty well already, especially if Toski is the commander. I have a fat stack of cards pulled now so to simplify this, I'm going to do a binary sorting of removal vs. non-removal of my card pool, or threats vs. answers. Difficult to look at a stack of cards like this.

Sort binary in between threats and answers. If I'm thinking in removal and non-removal. But to generalize, something like a recursion spell, a season's past, is a threat because it gets a card back to my hand. Or a genesis storm because it puts parents onto the field. Those are both threats. Whereas, wave of vitriol and azure's predation are removal. Fogs will be categorized as a threat, too. Because they were designed to protect my threats, not answer a removal threat. Although, they can sort of answer, when a creature is attacking you. A card like Vines and Vastwood is similarly hard to evaluate. It's a threat that it makes something bigger, its removable if it makes something bigger that kills something. It protects the threat from being killed also, which makes more of a threat card.Here's the 8 cards that I pulled from the total pool that were easily classifiable as purely removal, I mean purely answers.

After these answers are inserted, I easily see I have seven slots left for remaining cards. I wasn't able to—I noticed as I was sorting, I wasn't able to classify and sort in any combat tricks or fogs, as well as a pillow fort propaganda-type card. I'll be paying attention to the remaining card pool and seeing what other things I pulled initially that I wasn't able to put in through my sorting methods. I'll also divide up between combat tricks, fogs, and other. I'm reminded of the similarity of a Toski deck here: one of my favorite decks ever was an Edric deck, which was the only deck I took to California when I first visited from Georgia. Eight years ago. I took it on a plane ride, Journeyed out and met my best friends in the world. One difference with this commander is that it doesn't have blue in it, so no temptation for extra turns here, which is not in line with how I like to play the game as a pilot or face as an opponent. As this deck evolves into a more of a school-centric, vibe-centric meme deck, for the vibe of course, I do regret not making a Chocobo deck. I can still make a Chocobo deck, but I think that one will have to go more balls-to-the-walls Voltron. More good stuff in modern, less of the exploration of a "joven's ferrets" exploration of nostalgia vibe.

With that in mind, the fogs will become more important than the combat tricks for the remaining seven cards or so. During this sorting, I also noticed a couple cards that can leverage multiple creatures that I missed before. But I've divided it up between Combat Tricks vs. Fogs. The remaining portion seem to be mostly, or in large part, creatures, threats, card draw, recursion. I may have to add some recursion into the final deck. At this point I've sorted through my bulk of pulled cards and pulled large categories into a near-final amount of non-add cards. And based on categories, priorities that I've established, now I'm going to put them all together and then lay them out in terms of mana cost and look at the curve and see what I need to massage there. I'll be able to add in and subtract from cards that were not added in before to massage the curve while I have a firm idea in mind about what I've created already in terms of the proportions of the different pieces of the deck which are small, fun, nostalgic creatures and cards with great art from my past as well as cards that can leverage all those things as well as some needed interaction.

I lay out the cards like this, non-creatures and creatures by mana cost. I notice that the 3-drop creature pile is larger, much larger than the others, and I'm wondering how many of my 1-drop and 2-drop non-creature spells or creatures are permanent that I can play on curve, or how many of them are situational fogs or combat tricks. I may need to increase the number of 1- and 2-drop playables, possibly by decreasing 3-drop creatures or 1-drop non-creatures, which are also large, or also 6-drop noncreatures. At this point, I have easily cut two high casting cost artifact enchantment removal spells, seeing that I have multiple zero cost ones or lower-cost ones that do this. Also, Bane Of Progress could be put into play unexpectedly from Lurking Predators destroying my own things, so I don't have control of the timing over that.

To get a clearer picture of the whole, I'm going to lay everything out in a more visible way. Analyzing the 1 and 2 drops, only one of my 1-drops can be played on curve effectively, and three of my 2-drops for these non-creature spells. I will want more 1 and 2-drop creatures.Looking for other cuts, I pull a Shamanic Revelation card draw that's going to be covered by the Commander. I pull a Seasons Past. I have Creeping Renaissance to cover Recursion. And I pull a Bounty of the Hunt, which is token-based, more Chocobo thing-based. I still have three instant-speed combat tricks to boost my creatures.Next I'm going to do a recount of all my cards and then add, do a final add of cards I have and then just do lands from there.

As I'm counting, I notice another cut, which is a redundant card draw spell; it's over curve. My final count here is 57, so I'm thinking this deck can run 37 lands to start with or 36. If it's 37... then I have 5 card slots to fill, along with the commander plus the lands. Now I basically get to look back through my initial stack and pull fun shit that wasn't captured earlier, wasn't pulled earlier in this process. But I'm also going to try to gear it towards 1-2 drop creatures and playable permanents on curve.I might want to look for ramp spells that will allow me to cast my 4-drop commander quickly. These are the five cards I pulled, three of which are ramp creatures. One's a super cute lizard, one's a two mana cost with four abilities. I passed over, I considered pulling and adding the two drop powerful enchantments. But the creatures are more on theme. The sylvan library is more card draw. Innkeeper's talent continuously makes my guys bigger and more threatening. Out of the two, the innkeeper's talent is more appealing.

Oh no, I forgot to count the proxied Chocobo in the deck count. What an injustice. He looks pretty indignant. I decide not to add the diligent farmhand Cutting him over the elves because the elves can attack and trigger combat damage stuff after they makes mana. and add in the Innkeeper's Talent. I get ready to add lands, and shuffle up, and play test, or basically set this aside as I'm done.

Some spells, like Shamanic Revelation, became unnecessary because Toski naturally provides repeatable card draw. Similarly, I cut high-cost enchantment removal since I had lower-cost options.

When recounting, I realized I forgot to count my proxied Chocobo! That was an injustice that had to be fixed.

4. Final Refinements & Playtesting

I reviewed my cuts and added creatures over spells to stay on theme. After fine-tuning the deck, I locked in the land count and prepared to test.

First Game Night

First game with this deck, first night out, I got to see an old friend from five years before for the first time in that stretch of years. I played Joven's Ferrets turn three and got to beat face with him the whole game. Toski ended up drawing a bunch of cards, I made a boatload of mana with Nykthos and gathered an army of my other meme creatures, and essentially won on the back of a Jokulhaups that was cast by my opponent. I used my two or three open mana to cast Heroic Intervention. And then, won from there.