Pro Analysis & Combos

Pro Analysis & Combos

Pro Analysis is the deep read on a deck. It looks at the whole list and your whole collection, then tells you what the deck is trying to do, where it's thin, how to play it, and which cards are worth adding and cutting, each with a reason. Next to it, Synergies shows the cards that are best together and the game-winning combos the deck has or is one card away from.

Both live on the deck's Stats page, in the Pro Analysis and Synergies tabs. The tab you're on is in the link, so you can send someone straight to it.

Running It

Open a deck's Stats page, pick Pro Analysis, and press Get Analysis. It takes a minute or two, and a progress bar shows each step as it goes. It's doing considerably more thinking than the quick suggestions in the deck builder, and it's looking at your whole collection while it does it.

The result is saved with the deck, so it's there the next time you open it. Change the deck afterward and a note says the recommendations still reflect the older list, with a Re-analyze button. If a new set has come out since, it says that too, because nothing from that set could have been suggested.

Strategy and Weaknesses

Strategy comes first: what the deck is built to do, and the themes it's built around (tribes, mechanics and keywords, with how many cards are in each).

It reads your Deck Notes first, so that's the place for a power level, a budget or a pet card you want it to respect. If it still got your deck wrong, press Not what this deck does? Correct this analysis and say what the deck is actually for, in your own words. Save and re-analyze runs it again with your correction as the goal, and every analysis after that uses it too, until you press Remove correction.

Weaknesses sits beside it: what the deck is missing or thin on, with the actual counts (ramp at 6 of about 10, say), and the kinds of decks it'll struggle against. Hover one of those for why.

The Picks

The picks sit under filter chips, one group at a time, as compact rows or a grid of cards (the switch on the right, and it remembers which you like). The adds come in three groups, and each one has a minimum:

Cut is the fourth group: cards the deck is better without. It only suggests a cut when the deck clearly is.

When there aren't enough genuinely good picks to reach a minimum, the rest are listed under Filler: the closest fits left, below the bar, with an honest reason for being there. If your collection doesn't have enough cards that fit, it says so instead of padding the list with nonsense.

A pick that has a card in mind to take out says what it Replaces. Its buttons run along the edge: card details, pin (ten pins, max, same as anywhere else on the site), wishlist, where to buy it on Proxies and Buy picks, and thumbs up or down. Your thumbs are remembered, and they shape what you get next time.

EDHREC Picks

On a Commander deck it also reads what other players run with your commander on EDHREC, and shows it on each card: "EDHREC 52%" means about half the decks with that commander run it. That counts for a lot. A card lots of those decks play is expected to show up in your picks unless it fights what your deck is doing, it's a hard sell as a cut, and when two cards do the same job, the more popular one wins. Cards you own that EDHREC likes get looked at even if they'd otherwise be buried in a big collection. Your correction still comes first, though, so a pet card or a house rule beats popularity.

Brackets and Game Changers

On a Commander deck, Pro Analysis gives the Feels like bracket that sits next to the official one at the top of the Stats page: how hard the deck actually goes, on the same 1–5 scale. Both numbers are explained under Commander Bracket.

It knows your deck's official bracket too, so it won't hand you a card that quietly pushes the deck up a bracket, like one more Game Changer than the bracket allows. If it does suggest one, the card is labelled Game Changer and its reason says it raises the bracket.

Quick Swap

On a From collection pick that names a card to replace, Swap in makes the change in one click. It asks first and says what's about to happen to both cards: the one coming out stays in your collection as a spare, and the one going in uses your free copy (or comes in as not owned yet, on a Theorycraft deck). There's an Undo for about twenty seconds afterward. Quick Swap doesn't show on Catalog decks, because adding a card there makes a new copy. The deck builder has the same thing for any card in the deck, see Quick Swap.

Tactics

Under the picks are Tactics: the sequences a pilot of this deck should know, like rotations, by phase. Opening, Midgame and Closing, each as the cards in the order you'd play them, with a line on why the order matters.

Synergies

The Synergies tab is also Synergies & Combos in the deck builder's ⋯ menu. Most of us don't want to go infinite. What we want to know is which cards in the deck are really good together, so that's what leads.

Synergies are the groups of two to four cards that are much better together than apart: a token maker, a sacrifice outlet and something that pays you when a creature dies, or your commander and the card it most wants beside it. Each one says How it works on the table and Why it's strong in this deck. They come from Pro Analysis, so run that first, and run it again after big changes.

A few of them might need a card the deck doesn't have yet. Those are marked with where your copy is: a spare, in another deck (by name), or not owned. Open them from the deck builder's ⋯ menu on a Builder or Theorycraft deck and you can add the card from right there.

Game-Winning Combos

Underneath are the infinite loops and outright wins, for tables that play them. Think of it as a combo finder for your actual list: every combo the deck has (In this deck), then the ones it's One card away from, with the missing card named and where your copy is. If you could finish some of them with your spares, it says how many and lists those first.

Pick one and you get a flow chart: the cards at the top, each step in order, what it does at the end, and anything that has to be true Before it works. Combos don't need Pro Analysis, so they show up on any deck. They come from Commander Spellbook, which supplies the steps, and EDHREC, which adds how many decks run each one, plus any Pro Analysis spotted. If Commander Spellbook isn't answering it tells you, rather than pretending your deck has no combos.

Free

Pro Analysis is free, with no monthly usage limits for verified accounts. See What's Free.