Quality Maxxing

Last December, I told you my subscription model didn't match how we actually play Magic, and I rebuilt it around monthly credits and rollover. In April, I gave every tool a second, bigger brain and let you choose between them.

Starting December 1, I'm finishing the first job and undoing the second one.

Here's the TLDR:

• Eco and Best are going away. No more quality toggle. Every tool runs at the best quality I can offer, every time.
• 1 credit = 1 action. A Deck Scan, PowerTune, ManaTune, or DeckTrim costs 1 credit. No more 5-or-1 math.
• For subscribers, your free daily credits become part of your plan. Subscribers get one monthly pool to use whenever they want, and every plan gets the same or more than it does today.
• Deckhand Chat, RuleCheck, and card scanning become free. Chat and RuleCheck get a daily limit that grows with your plan.
• Prices aren't changing. Not one of them.
• Your balance converts in your favor. Every balance gets divided by 5 and rounded up.

The rest of this post is the why, because a change like this deserves an explanation.

A Quality Tool For A Quality Game

When I started DeckCheck, my biggest worry was pricing. Magic players are used to completely free deck builders, AI costs a lot to run, and Magic is already an expensive hobby. I didn't want my deck-building tool to become another big expense, but it couldn't be a completely free tool. So in the early days, almost every decision I made leaned toward as cheap as possible.

Then this past year happened. It's wild how different DeckCheck looked even just at the start of this year. The site still showed a power level. Since then, I pulled power levels off the site and replaced them with CRISPI, then DTI. Card scanning showed up (thanks, Convoke!), Recommander made card recs a whole lot better, the Deckhand moved in, and sooooo much more. The site you use today, and the quality of help you get from it, are miles ahead of what DeckCheck used to be.

Anyone who's played Magic for more than a few months learns fast that it's a game of quality above all. How good a card is, how often it gets played, and even what it costs all come down to how well it does its job. I say this because, as the site grew in scope and the tools got better, one thing became really clear to me: I should have always optimized for quality, not quantity. Because Magic is a game of quality.

I really noticed this sometime in the summer. Since the launch of Best mode (back then it was called Pro), I had been building the whole site around it thereafter. Eco slowly became an afterthought: a way to stretch your credits further if you wanted more runs without paying more. But more and more I started to see it as a problem.

Which brings me to Eco.

Why Eco Is Going Away

In April, I wrote this about Standard mode, the option that later became Eco: "It is not going away." I meant it when I wrote it. I'm going back on it now, and I want to be straight with you about why, as some of you will lose out from this change, and I'll get to that below.

When I launched Pro, I made it opt-in on purpose. I didn't want anyone to feel like they had to pay more if they didn't want to. But I did worry about confusion in doing so. Here's the scenario that kept me up at night: someone runs their deck on Pro and shows it to a friend. The friend is impressed, signs up, runs their own deck, and gets a much worse analysis. Now they're confused, and they might leave without ever finding out there was a better option one toggle away. I worried about that when I launched Pro, and honestly, I've worried about it ever since.

Then the data came in. Almost nobody turned Pro on except my power users. Meanwhile, people kept telling me DeckCheck's answers weren't good enough, and every time I dug into one of those complaints, the person was using the cheaper option. People were judging DeckCheck by its worst foot forward, and I didn't want that anymore. That's why I recently renamed the options to Best and Eco, made Best the default, and changed the Eco description to say plainly that quality and accuracy can drop.

To further this point, in September, when the Threat Index launched, Eco broke it. The AI behind it just isn't "smart" enough to do a DTI scan well. It scored decks way too low, made a lot of mistakes, and caused a ton of confusion. So on September 20, I turned Eco off for the scan. My mistake was launching DTI with Eco on at all. A lot of you were used to Eco being "good enough" under CRISPI, and that habit didn't carry over. That one's on me.

But once I saw it there, I couldn't unsee it everywhere else. This is where the shift from "affordable first" to "quality first" really comes to a head, and for me it comes down to two things.

1. Cheaper Isn't Always Cheaper

Back in April, I used a straightforward Dinosaur aggro deck as my example of a deck the cheaper AI handles well. That's still true. If your deck is simple, Eco will do just fine. But most decks aren't a simple and straightforward dino deck.

The further your deck drifts from the obvious, the more unique it becomes (which this platform is built to help you do), the more often Eco falters. And when it misses, you likely run it again. Say you PowerTune a deck on Eco and the swaps don't land. So you run it again. And again. Seven runs later, you've spent 7 credits, which is more than one Best run costs, and one Best run might have nailed it the first time. Even worse, sometimes Eco never gets there at all, no matter how many times you click the button.

That's the part people miss about a smarter AI: it isn't just better, it's more efficient. What it does in one run can take Eco several runs, assuming Eco gets there at all. So a lot of the time, the Eco discount was an illusion. You paid for it in reruns, in time, and in frustration.

And the quality gap matters more than the credits. PowerTune swaps, DeckTrim cuts, and ManaTune fixes all depend on the AI understanding what your deck is actually trying to do. That's the exact thing the cheaper AI sacrifices. A worse answer for fewer credits isn't really a choice. It's a trap, and it's the version of DeckCheck people walk away remembering–a trap I was afraid to admit to.

2. Often, You Just Want It to Work

The second thing is the one I've thought about the most.

Apple is famous for this. They decide how the phone should work, and then they make it work really well. You lose some knobs to turn, but most people never wanted the knobs in the first place. They wanted something that works the same way every time and does what they need, well. That's what I want DeckCheck to be and it's time I admit to that.

Remember the toggle most of you never touched? That wasn't laziness. That was you telling me something. And honestly, I don't think it should ever have been your job. I should have just released the new, smarter AI and told people that prices would go up a little bit to accommodate it, and on the net, it would be worth it. Magic is already one of the most complicated games out there. Building a Commander deck means deciding on a game plan, a curve, a bracket, a budget, and 99 cards. Asking you to also decide how much intelligence a PowerTune on this particular deck deserves is one decision too many. That's my job, not yours.

So that's how I'm building DeckCheck from here on out: options where they matter, and a curated experience everywhere else.

Simplification

Getting rid of Eco also lets me fix the most confusing part of DeckCheck: the credit math. With only one quality, I can go back to making every action cost exactly 1 credit (more on that in a second). Less to think about, less friction, and more time building.

So from now on, DeckCheck does one thing at one quality: the best I can afford to run. Your plan buys you more of it. It never buys you a better version of it, because there won't be a worse one anymore. And with only one quality left, the Best label goes too. There's nothing to compare it to. It's just DeckCheck.

What You Get

Here's every plan, before and after. To compare apples to apples, "actions" means runs at today's Best quality, which is what every run gets from now on. 

A few things worth pointing out:

• Your daily credits are now part of your plan. Today, subscribers get 5 daily credits on top of their monthly credits, but only on the days you show up. That's the exact "use it or lose it" problem I complained about last December, and I left a piece of it in. Now those daily credits are baked into your monthly allocation. Want to burn all 60 on one Saturday brew session? Go for it.
• Every plan gets the same or more. Spellslinger used to top out at 60 actions, but only if you logged in every single day too use all those free credits. Now it's 60, whenever you want them. Sage goes from about 90 to 120. Archmage goes from about 150 to 240.
• Your vault gets bigger. Unused actions roll over, up to 2 months' worth: 120 on Spellslinger, 240 on Sage, and 480 on Archmage. That's 2 months instead of 3, but because every monthly pool is bigger, the vault still holds a third more than today's caps (90, 180, and 360 actions).
• Upgrading makes more sense. Every plan now gets the same number of actions per dollar, so going from Spellslinger to Sage doubles your pool. Today it only adds about 50%.
• Mana gets 25% more. It's 25 actions for $5 instead of 20. Subscribing is still the better deal per action, by a lot.
• Importantly, I'm effectively dropping the price of what a run at Best quality costs today vs. what it costs in the future.

Everything else in your subscription stays the same: Smart Binders, Deckhand reports, playtester customization, Discord perks, etc.

What's Free Now

Some tools are things you run on a deck. Others are things you lean on the whole time you're building. Asking a quick rules question, bouncing an idea off the Deckhand, or scanning in a stack of new cards shouldn't make you check your balance first. So starting December 1, these are free:

• Deckhand Chat, with a daily message limit that grows with your plan: 15 messages a day on a free account, 50 on Spellslinger, 100 on Sage, and 250 on Archmage.
• RuleCheck, with a daily limit that also grows with your plan.
• Card scanning, for everyone. Scan up to 1000 cards a day with your camera. No Camera Credits needed.

The limits are there to keep things sustainable.

The Honest Part: Who Gets Less

I promised myself this post would be honest, so here it is. If you used Eco a lot, you'll technically get fewer runs.

• Free accounts get 1 action a day instead of 5 Eco runs. If you used Best, nothing changes for you: 5 credits a day bought one Best run before, and you get one run at that same quality after.
• Subscribers who lived on Eco will get fewer runs than before, but every single one runs at full quality. For what it's worth, Eco is only a few percent of what subscribers run, so this won't touch most of you.

What Happens to My Credits?

Do I lose anything?
No. On December 1, every balance gets divided by 5 and rounded up: your monthly credits, your vault, and your DeckCheck Mana. 452 credits become 91 actions, not 90.

Are prices changing?
No. Spellslinger is still $5, Sage is still $10, Archmage is still $20, and DeckCheck Mana is still $5.

What about DeckCheck Stasis?
Your vault converts the same way and stays frozen until you come back. While you're on Stasis, you get the free account's 1 action a day.

I bought Camera Credits. What happens to them?
Card scanning is free now, so on December 1, your unused Camera Credits turn into DeckCheck Mana at the same dollar value: every 20 unused scans become 1 action, rounded up. A full, unused 1,000-scan pack becomes 50 actions, which is exactly what $10 of Mana buys after the change. Like all Mana, they never expire.

Why I'm Doing This

When I started DeckCheck, my thesis was simple: tools like these could radically improve how we build and play Magic. That gut feeling never went away. But honestly, for a long time it was more of a hope than a fact. That changed early this year, when the platform and the AI behind it finally clicked into place, and the thesis started proving itself.

Here's something you don't see: the emails and DMs I get. A lot of them are support questions, critique, or plain old haters (keep them coming). But more and more, I get messages like this one:

Over the last year or so I've fallen in love with MTG. But boy it's a learning curve and quite frankly still is. I found out about your app from a one off comment on Reddit you made in a post. I think it was you as you said you made it. Well I cant say thank you enough. Each one of my strongest deck is one way or another is thanks to the help your app has provided.

And I have a lot more like it.

The other proof happened at my local game store. I ran a Bracket 3 tournament there with them, and we used DeckCheck to verify every deck in the event. It was a great success. Not one "Judge! This guy's deck is NOT bracket 3!" And this was back when CRISPI was still a thing. For all of CRISPI's flaws, it was still good enough to run a real, in-person competitive event.

That matters because a lot of players want to compete, just not at the highest level. Think of an intramural sports league: you get to scratch the competitive itch without dedicating your whole life to going pro. That's exactly what Bracket 2, 3, or 4 tournaments could be. The problem is that the bracket guidelines, as they stand today, aren't strict enough to hold a tournament together on their own. With DeckCheck, they can. And they have.

I'm sharing all of this because, to me, it proves two things. First, the thesis was right: these kinds of tools really can make Magic better for the people who play it. Second, the thing holding DeckCheck back was me. I was so afraid of pricing people out (or frankly, increasing prices at all) that I held back what DeckCheck could be. I was building for quantity when I should have been building for quality. No longer will I keep the tools worse just so they can be cheaper. One credit, one action, the best experience I can give you. That doesn't mean I've stopped caring about cost–and I hope my actions, both past and future, prove that. I've worked hard to keep DeckCheck free without a single ad, and to keep the paid parts cheap enough to be worth it. These days, five dollars barely gets you a fast food meal (or the cheapest Play booster even). For the same five dollars, Spellslinger gets you 60 full runs of what I think are the best deck-building tools in Magic, every month. I'm proud of that, and where DeckCheck is today.

As always, I try to read every email and DM I can. If something here doesn't sit right with you, tell me. There's more than a month before this goes live, so if something is really off, there's time to fix it.

Thanks everyone!

Anthony