Modded decks prebuilt already with the "right" cards

[flavioj]

Hello there I'm new on this Modding thing, but I think it is awesome. You guys are very talented and I really enjoy to play Magic 2014 with dozens of news decks... except for one thing.

Without edit new decks are almost fully optimized. I can edit the new decks to make then optimal but they can't be saved. I know this issue can't be changed.

In this case it would be better if the modded decks already came with the 'optimal' build, thus would not need to carry many adjustments before jumping straight to matches. It would be great especially for those (like me) who like to play with random decks.

[Xander9009]

I fully agree with you. You can however optimize a deck yourself. You need Gibbed Tools and Riiak's Deck Builder.

1. First, open up Riiak's Deck Builder. Click Tools>Options and type a unique number into the Use ID Block field and press ok.
2. Tools>Generate Content Pack Enabler. These first two steps only ever need done once. Once you've done them, you never have to do them again (unless you reinstall the deck builder or delete your content pack enabler).
3. File>Create from existing deck.
4. Choose the deck you want to set up and modify it to your will.
5. File>Export to>Wad.

Now, you'll have a deck with the setup you want. To remove the old deck so you don't have two, you'll need Gibbed Tools.

1. Once you have gibbed tools extracted to a folder, drop the wad file the original deck is in into the same folder, then drop it onto "Gibbed.Duels.Unpack.exe".
2. Delete the wad file.
3. Rename the folder and remove the "_unpacked" from the end.
4. Navigate into the folder, find and open DECKS.
5. Delete the deck you edited (there are two files, one for the deck and one for the mana pool).
6. Navigate back up to the top folder with Gibbed Tools.
7. Drag and drop the folder onto "Gibber.Tools.Pack.exe"
8. Delete the unpacked folder and move the wad back into your game folder.

It's a bit tedious, but as long as you back up the downloaded mod's .wad file, you can always fix any mistakes you make. Once you do this, the deck will have exactly the cards you want. Note that if the deck uses assets from the mod other than JUST the decklist, you'll still need the .wad file for the deck to work. This will probably be the case for all decks. They'll all come packed with cards, functions, deckbox images, AI, etc, so just deleting the wad once you've edited the deck to your liking is usually not advised.

[RiiakShiNal]

It should be noted that an "optimal" deck will vary between players as different players have different opinions on what is "optimal". So creating your own decks (whether from scratch or based on someone else's deck) is usually the best way to go.

As for removing old decks, if the modders have been creating their decks with the Deck Builder then usually it is easy (because each deck has its own WAD) just find the WAD associated with that deck and move it to another folder (or delete it, if you know you have a backup, can retrieve it later by downloading it again, or just don't care about that deck). You only have to worry about using gibbed tools to remove a deck if the modder made a deck pack WAD that contains more than 1 deck.

[flavioj]

Thank you for feedback. About the "optimal" configuration of decks you can see that most of the original scheme uses some cards in the decks: several cards with good synergy are at the unlockables. I'm not asking for removing any card, only that some of these cards might already be included in the original deck build.

As an example I refer to Natural Order from Ancient Wilds 2013 Deck. Natural Order is the best card in Ancient Wilds. There is absolutely no scenario that exists in which you don’t use two of these game-winning bombs. But, just like in the original deck, this card is in the unlockables sector. Thus I propose that the modder replace a less interesting card (eg: Ambassador Oak, Manaplasm, Herd Gnarr placing it in the unlockables sector) for the greater good.

[Xander9009]

Yes, that's exactly what I thought you meant, and the steps I posted are exactly how you'd go about making Ancient Wilds have two copies of Natural Order.

@RSN, I didn't think about it, but would the Deck Builder save all of those necessary files in the new wad as well? Is that why you're saying it wouldn't be necessary to keep?

[RiiakShiNal]

@RSN, I didn't think about it, but would the Deck Builder save all of those necessary files in the new wad as well? Is that why you're saying it wouldn't be necessary to keep?

Most of the files are automatically generated by the Deck Builder even when you do a "Create from Existing Deck". The about the only things that won't be regenerated are the personality files (along with their associated graphics), but you can force those to be re-created quite simply. Just open the "Deck Information", click on "Edit Personality" and change the music (you can then change it back if you want), click "Apply" and "Apply" again to get out of "Deck Information", now it has marked the personality as a new personality and will re-create those files when you export.

[flavioj]

Yes, that's exactly what I thought you meant, and the steps I posted are exactly how you'd go about making Ancient Wilds have two copies of Natural Order.

After doing all the steps I need to send the new WAD file to all the people I play with?

[Xander9009]

If you're doing multiplayer, then yeah. You and anyone you play against in multiplayer must have precisely the same wads installed.