Deck Taxonomy on TheManaDrain
Xerox vs Grow and Mentor vs Delver
This is a thread both about the names I give to subcategories/archetypes on the site, but also how they are organized and displayed.
It only recently occurred to me that almost every deck I've bucketed as Xerox just happen to include all the elements that make a Grow deck a Grow deck. Is this just a better name? I've really hated the term Xerox for a while but have been unable to come up with anything better.
Note that while there are many ways to split decks up, for many different reasons, the way we split decks up on TMD has specific goals.
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If a player comes in looking for information on a specific deck, they should be able to immediately tell which subcategory that information is in —to make the site easier to Navigate.
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The information of most interest to the same players should be put in the same category — to make content on the site more Discoverable (e.g. if you liked this list, you'll love this one.)
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A new player should able to get a feel for what these categories mean with a minimal amount of friction — to make the site more Informative and Understandable. ("Xerox" is particularly bad on this front)
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And whenever possible, I'd prefer categories to be Future-resistant (future-proof is impossible) and Descriptive rather than Prescriptive. The old Mana Drain website had categories like "Mana Drain Control" and "Workshop Based Prison" which were displayed in a way that kind of implied that blue tempo decks and workshop aggro decks couldn't exist. I've long felt that this led new players down bad paths and bad ways of thinking.
So the name Xerox fails here on several counts, though Grow is by no means perfect. I think how categories are presented and organized are more important than the naming, but both conversations are worth having. The Xerox/Grow categories have always had some fuzzy edges, but they're where I'd expect them. A Delver deck might have no Young Pyromancer, but those lists almost feel like genuinely different archetypes. I could easily imagine a deck that feels like Xerox with no "Grow" cards, but in practice we never really see them - and drawing the line at 4 Preordain just seems obviously wrong ... Paradoxical Outcome and Jeskai Mentor don't belong in the same subcategory, and any too-strict definition is going to have trouble with that.
Discussion Points
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What's your favorite name for the broad category of decks that includes Delver and Jeskai Mentor and Rug Pyromancer and Snapcaster Control?
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Are there any other subcategories that you think are mis-named? (Remember that the goal of TMD's names might not be the same as the goals you use for yourself)
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Do you think the way the lines are drawn between archetypes now makes sense? Do Delver and Jeskai Mentor belong in different categories? Outcome and Storm? Should any categories be combined, like Landstill and Big Blue?
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What sort of user interface changes could be made to promote those stated four goals, regardless of what the categories are named. Feel free to think outside the box and suggest features the site does not currently support.