Rough-Testing a Magic (tm) Deck. 

This article was originally printed in the Duellist Magazine, and reprinted here for archival & informational purposes.

It's Magic day at your game club tomorrow, and you have a new deck idea you want to try out. You've picked out some spells that should work well together, and added a reasonable number of lands. Now you want to test it out, and do some tuning before you take it up against the tournament-level decks tomorrow. But you're home alone, and it's too late to call a friend. If only you could teach your pet to play....

Well, your pet can't really play Magic, but with a bit of imagination, it can inspire some good ways to test out a new deck. Various players swear by different tests, ranging from just dealing out several hands and checking to see whether you'd be able to cast any spells the first turn, to playing a duel against yourself using one of your other decks. The pet-inspired tests here are meant to give you some measurement of your deck's strengths or weaknesses, and how it's likely to fare when facing certain types of real decks. They also let you get used to playing the cards in your deck, and help you figure out your best combinations, which cards you need to protect with Counterspells, etc.