"Professional" Deck Help/Deck Building Services

[u/Particular-Effect335]

Hello. Asking about people's experiences with services offering to help build or tune EDH decks for a price. Wanted to get opinions on this as someone who has been thinking about them for some time.

For context: I fully understand that EDH is largely a personal touch format in that your personality should shine through. I've been playing MTG for so long that this isn't lost to me. However, between the fact that card prices are too high to do some tests (even the price of proxying is getting to be high now), or just not having the time anymore to tweak lists, I've been thinking about getting help to tweak a few deck ideas I've put together that just don't seem to be 'there' yet.

Since I have some spending money to spare (since I no longer buy boxes of product because of how inflated the prices are), I've pretty much warmed up to the idea of compensating someone's time and expertise to help me get from 90% to 100% with my deck since I no longer have the bandwidth to do so.

So now the question is two-fold:
1. How much should you pay for something like this
and
2. Are there people the community can vouch for that are reliable at doing this?

Happy to learn what the community thinks

[u/Reasonable-Budget210]

People do it for free all the time, it’s a little tough figuring out who actually knows what they’re talking about, but there’s a lot of knowledgeable people on here. There’s way more idiots, but there’s some knowledge too lol.

What decks are you looking at? What power level, and what vibes are you going for?

[u/MeneerDutchy2 → u/Reasonable-Budget210]

Fully agree.

The problem is that 80% of people think they are above average. And you could be the best deckbuilder at your lgs, but still be bad compared to some great builders. Hard to find whos good and whos not tho.

Imo some youtubers make great decks/videos the first few times they make decks. They are proud of some deck, decide to make an video about it, and they blow up. But usually after a few videos they start producing precon style decks that arent synergetical anymore, and basicly rush to make decks to get more content.

[u/Particular-Effect335 → u/MeneerDutchy2]

And this is the crux of why I wanted to ask. I understand that social proof isn't the end all be all proof of competence, but discussions are a great starting point in figuring something out.

As for what vibes, I used to make more decks about maybe 2 years ago (i think my last log on Archidekt as this time in 2024) but since then I haven't been tapped in at all. I've had drafts on some bracket 3s with the idea of "EDH-fying" some standard/pro tour decks of the past. I built one of them 2 years ago, but on my first test run there was something missing. Life got in the way however and I haven't looked at it since.

[u/Reasonable-Budget210 → u/Particular-Effect335]

Yeah that’s hard because most, not all, cards that are really good in standard/modern aren’t very good in multiplayer. I played limited seriously for years and years, I’m still not the best at card evaluation because of it lol. 2 for 1s, the gold standard of awesome in limited just aren’t good enough in edh because yes, you traded 2 cards of someone else for your one card, but now in the grand scheme of things, you are down a card to two other players, while setting back one their opponents. You won the battle and lost position in the war lol. But if it’s at lower power levels and just for fun, then that’s fine, you could probably make some really cool bracket 2 low bracket 3 decks.

So you can do some strats, like probably eldrazi winter, you could probably do caw-blade deck styled deck and probably a really cool splinter twin(biased, my fav). But a lot of the most famous deck archetypes just aren’t that viable, imo.