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My Favorite Feature in Amaranth

If you haven't used it, Amaranth is a deck builder and card search utility.  You can find cards, build and save decks, and export them in a variety of formats.  And if you've ever played a deck and tweaked it, then you need to know about Amaranth's Versions ability.

We'll take a look at a deck that I have played for many years: a !Toreador Undue Influence bleed deck.  It's gone through many iterations.  I recently added two cards to bring it to 72 for Rudolf Scholz's V5 for Vendetta event.  The Archon Investigation proved very useful in round one of that event.  It's always useful to look at a deck's history.  You can recognize changes in your playstyle, the meta, and other effects that have altered your concept.

So what is the Version ability?  Quite simply versioning a deck allows you to keep a single copy of the deck saved on the server.  There's no need to title your decks v1, v2, etc. any longer.  That single deck can have many versions and each version can have details.  I like to list why I made changes, but you don't really need to fill in that field if you don't want to.

How to Version a Deck

To version a deck, simply click on Versions.

Click Tag This to create a new version of the deck.

Enter any text you think is appropriate for the new version.

Comparing Versions

When you click on a version in the Versions pane, you'll get a comparison with the current version of the deck.  You can see that comparison here.

If you want to compare two different versions, you'll need to make one of them the active version.  You start by clicking on the version that you want to make active.

Then, click Use.

Now you can open the Versions pane again and compare the active version (that you just replaced) against any other version.

If the current version is not tagged, Amaranth will warn you.

Seeing Your Deck Over Time

As I mentioned at the beginning, it can be really interesting to review a deck over the course of its lifetime.  I invite you to check out Undue Art Scam.  You'll notice that the name is no longer accurate: the deck doesn't even contain any Art Scam any more.  If you review the deck, it gone from 90 card down to 60 and back up again.  The crypt is rather different, including having Maldavis (ADV), at one point.

Do you have a deck with a long history?  How drastically has it changed?

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