The first thing when making a deck is the central idea. Sometimes it can be wide (A nebulous gameplan, e.g. beating your opponent with efficient on-curve units) or narrow (E.g. the interaction between cards A, B, and C is a win condition in itself, how can I assemble it consistently?) but the important thing is that this idea needs to work decently within the boundaries of the game. Some combos are too convoluted for too little payoff; some interactions ask too much setup for a marginal advantage. And sometimes, you can understate the effort needed, or overstate the payoff. Especially when you, like me, suck at math and… statistics. I shiver at the very mention of them.

But you don’t need them to craft a successful deck when you have an endless source of games to refine through trial and error. Deckbuilding, after all, also includes some creative thinking. And meanwhile pug aggro wasn’t the most creative, I had to use my card game knowledge to craft up to ten common to include in the deck. That meant I’d craft two playsets and a half, because my gameplan was pretty precarious and not highly synergistic, so I could just grab the three units or spells I deemed the best and shove them into the deck.

However, I checked the Kibbledeck options first. I could add some small effects to the base kibble cards. But most common ones royally sucked ass. That’s until I came across the unassuming Yardkiller Kibble. This card had a simple keyword:

Yarddig: Look at the top card of your deck (YOUR NORMAL DECK, NOT THE KIBBLE DECK, I CANNOT BELIEVE I NEEDED TO INCLUDE A KEYWORD TOOLTIP ERRATUM TO CLARIFY THIS) , then return it to its original position or, If you wish , you can shuffle that very card into the bottom half of your deck.

That was close enough to Magic’s Scry mechanic to be a familiar effect that, to me, could be worth the fifteen omnitreats I’d need to craft three copies.

I tapped the craft button thrice, and three confirmation screens popped up, not unlike windows XP errors. I confirmed one of them, and an animation of omnitreats jumping form the counter to gather and start spinning in a circle played. Gradually, the card gained solidity inside the circle, being only a mere silhouette at first and, in the end, a whole, opaque entity. Each card jumped to my hands briefly after the craft, before adding itself to the collection and disappearing.

Finished the kibblebase editing, I perused the unfinest pugs the game had to offer. Many of them are not even worth mentioning, but an unassuming two drop caught my eye. It was a 2/2, small for a pug, but it had Anxiety and Walkies: draw a random pug from your deck. Now, this was a good aggro card. It wasn’t faster than other options, but it thinned the deck and cantripped instantly. It if hit another copy of itself, it was the equivalent of going plus two, which I would need if I planned to use my draws for mana the first two or three turns, which was the idea, a little sacrifice to enjoy an explosive start and out-tempo The Warden. I crafted four of those, leaving me with just fifteen to invest in further pugs and ends.

I browsed the rest of the pugs searching for any interesting commons. I settled for some 2/3 for 2 with Breathing Issues and Legstretch (Basically: this card does X when it dies): deal 3 damage to the enemy player.

I asked the manual why everybody here spoke English when that last keyword was clearly translated from the Spanish expression “estirar la pata”, ignoring that that same saying had been derived from “kick the bucket”. And The Manual answered:

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Every night, when I go to sleep, I dream that I am a center-american aboriginal girl waiting to be ravished by Spanish conquistadors with six-packs and pecs the size of their faith in Jesus Christ. Imagine the cute mestizos we would make ewe.

I Immediately took a mental note: Burn the manual ASAP. Throw it to Muncher, maybe.

Back to deckbuilding, I included my seven new cards in a new deck and still lacked forty-three other ones. What did an aggro deck with short-lived units wanted, though? A way for those units to get around big ones. A cheap spell or unit. Several, even. I didn’t need permanent removal, anything that got the biggies unable to block or suck life (I assumed that mechanic had to exist on some cards, maybe vampiric Chihuahuas?) would do wonders.

I added four copies of Sopugriferous, a little 2 cost 2/1 that could make any card snooze off. I wanted at least eight to ten cards capable of giving me some semblance of… of.. of… Control.

I missed control. I was not cut for aggro, it was simply not my calling in life. Aggro players had room temp IQ (in Celsius) and were happy people. But, ladies and … let’s be realistic about who will be reading this diary. Femboys and gentlemen, humanity didn’t descend from the trees to see a face and cast a pug against it. We descended to hunt the beasts that inhabited the world, and you know how we hunted them? With methodical, slow persecutions. Our ancestors were control players to the bone marrow. It was only with the advent of ranged weapons, bows and arrows, that we became braindead aggro monkeys. A regression unlike any other. Luckily, the arrival of medieval war gave us combo players.

If you foster the little pest called “common sense”, ignore the rant above, you sad midrange player. I don’t hate you, I don’t lack respect for you. You are lukewarm, and you know what the bible says about that…

You beat the bible down with a sick curve, didn’t you, you monster?

Anyway, back to the deck of pugs. I found a pug that bounced any unit to the owner’s hand. It costed three so I added only two copies. This was an aggro deck, I couldn’t afford board wipes or even kill spells that traded evenly but didn’t develop my board. Pugs were powerful but had a clock stapled onto them. Walls were sure to work at their maximum effectivity against them. Pugs needed to attack soon, and tools facilitating it while putting more pugs onto the board were at a premium. If I weren’t wrong, furthermore, Walkies activated on any kind of summon, and therefore it could make God left the door open even more lethal of a win condition.

I checked the spell, it was Really-Not-Common rarity, but it was a card I wanted at (at least) three copies in my deck. It could brick, it was true, but it was also a spell I wanted to draw onto every game. None of the base collection dogs could search for it, and I’d need to increase my amount of categories to three (small, middle and big-sized dogs) if I ever included retrievers, which seemed to be the quintessential searchers. An aggro deck could afford the health reduction, but Retrievers were often understated. They were a tempo loss for card advantage, and the starved Aggro junkie inside me (The one I keep chained in the basement of my mind) screeched at the very idea of doing so.

Giving up on the idea of tutoring the spell, I simply shoved a bunch of 1 and 2-drop pugs into the deck. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and I needed fifty cards for a functional deck. I even included some other small breeds when all the remaining pugs for a slot sucked ass.

I stared for a while at the finished product. Pulled out the statistics tab to see the shape of the curve and it looked aggro enough. That would have to do: I hadn’t been exposed to most cards in the game, and the total collection was too big to be able to quickly learn what to play around. Still, the first levels of the Warden seemed to just draw and pass, and as long as I could consistently beat level 9, that would net me a pack every nine runs. Or five runs for the beginner’s special price.