Decked Builder

Review by eFreeware

The single most distinctive thing about Decked Builder is that its card database lives on your device. That means searching for a card, checking a printing or looking up a ruling does not depend on a connection, which is an unusual arrangement for a deck building tool. It is a paid app at $3.99, it carries no ads, and it does offer in-app purchases on top of the initial price.

The app is built for Magic: The Gathering players who treat deck construction as a serious hobby rather than a passing interest. If you brew regularly, keep several decks on the go at once and care about what a full list costs to assemble, this is the workflow it was designed around. If you only play with whatever you open from a few packs, the depth here is more than you need.

Searching a local card catalog

Card finding is where the app starts, and the developer has built it around filters rather than a single search box. You can narrow the catalog by expansion, rarity, color, card type or cost, and combine those conditions however you like. There is also full card text search, which is the feature that matters most when you are chasing a mechanic rather than a name: you can pull up every Landfall card, every Elf, every Vampire, or any other attribute that has appeared on a printed card.

The app also handles printings in two ways. You can view each card once, which keeps a search result readable, or expand it to see every version of that card across every set it has appeared in. For anyone who cares about which printing goes into a binder or a trade pile, that distinction is useful, and it is the sort of detail that separates a tool built by people who collect from one built by people who only play.

Format support covers Standard, Modern, Extended, EDH and Classic, so the format you are building for is recognized inside the app rather than something you track separately. The catalog itself is described as complete enough to search offline, which is the point of keeping it local in the first place.

Building, testing and reading a deck

Once you have your cards, the app lets you keep multiple deck lists and sideboards, so a brew in progress does not have to be finished before you start another. Sorting and filtering a deck by mana cost, color and card type is available, which matters once a list grows past the point where you can hold it in your head. Finished decks can be emailed to friends, a small feature that saves retyping a list into a message.

The testing tools are more interesting than the storage side. You can draw sample hands to see how often a deck opens the way you want, and the app also lets you simulate a game of Magic by playing cards out to the battlefield. That is a long way from sitting across a table from an opponent, but it is a reasonable way to check whether a curve actually functions and whether a plan comes together in the first few turns.

Statistics round this out with mana curves, counts of colored mana symbols and percentages by card type. These are the numbers that tell you whether a deck is top-heavy, whether your mana base can support what you are asking of it, and whether the mix of creatures, spells and lands looks like what you intended. Reading them alongside a few sample draws is where the app earns its keep as a construction tool rather than a list keeper.

Pricing a list and buying the cards

Pricing is the second half of the app's purpose. Decked Builder pulls price feeds from several card sellers, including TCGplayer.com, CoolStuffInc.com, CardShark.com, MTGOTraders.com and MagicCardMarket.eu, among others. The aim is to work out the cheapest way to assemble a deck from some of the larger suppliers, and you can price an entire list with a single tap.

The app also handles purchases, whether you need a full deck or only the cards your collection lacks. That last option is the one I would expect most established players to use, since buying a full list when you already own half of it is rarely the sensible move. The in-app purchases sit alongside this, as an extra layer on top of the $3.99 you pay up front.

It is worth being clear about what this part of the app is: a way to compare what a list costs and then act on it, not a marketplace of its own. The prices come from outside sellers, and the buying happens with them.

Reading about decks, and testing the ones that win

The research side of the app is built on RSS feeds that have been formatted for clean viewing and quick downloading. The reading material comes from established corners of the Magic community, including StarCityGames, Channel Fireball and GatheringMagic.com, rather than being assembled by the app itself.

Card names inside those feeds are highlighted automatically, and tapping one looks it up in the built-in database without needing a network. That is a small convenience that adds up if you read a lot of deck discussion, because it removes the step of switching to a search to find out what a card does.

It also connects to mtgo-stats.com, so you can pull recent winning decks onto your device and work with them there. For a player who wants to see what is performing and then pull a list apart in the same place, that closes the loop between reading about a deck and working on it yourself.

Presentation and a note on the ratings

The visual side gets attention too. Card art is scanned in high definition and the developer says it displays well on higher resolution screens, which matters when you are reading a card at a glance rather than squinting at a thumbnail. The app also supports the day and night cards from Innistrad, a mechanic that needs specific handling to display correctly and is easy for a builder to get wrong.

One thing a new buyer should weigh is the store rating. Decked Builder sits at a 2.6 average across 4,871 ratings, with more than 50,000 installs since its release in May 2012. That is a low score for an app that has survived this long. It was last updated in July 2024, so the project is still being worked on.

I would go in expecting a tool rather than a polished game.

What kind of player gets value here

The clearest fit is a constructed player who builds and rebuilds decks often, plays in a format the app supports, and wants to know what a list costs before committing to it. Someone who brews on a phone or tablet during a quiet moment, checks a few sample draws, adjusts the curve and then prices the result is exactly the loop Decked Builder is set up to serve. Collectors who care about printings and set symbols will find the search filters and the every-printing view useful as well.

A more casual player who mostly drafts, or who plays one deck they rarely change, will find most of this machinery idle. The offline database and the pricing tools are the two features that justify the price, and neither does much for someone who is not actively assembling lists.

The research feeds and the mtgo-stats.com integration add a second reason to open the app regularly, since they turn it into a place to follow what is winning as well as a place to build. That combination, rather than any single feature, is what makes the app worth considering for a committed player.

A deck workshop for committed brewers

Decked Builder is a $3.99 tool for players who take deck construction seriously, and it is priced like one. The local card database, the format filters, the full text search, the draw and play testing, the statistics and the multi-seller pricing all point in the same direction: helping you go from an idea to a finished, costed list.

My recommendation is that it suits the player who already brews regularly and wants the searching, testing and pricing in one place, particularly if offline access to the catalog is useful to them. Players who build occasionally, or who want a game rather than a workshop, will get less from it. For the committed deck builder, the feature set is specific enough and deep enough to justify trying.