Mark Decks as Built: Reserve Cards from Your Collection
If you’re like me, you have multiple Commander decks. Some are sleeved up and ready to play, others are theoretical lists waiting for the right cards. The problem is keeping track of which is which. That Dockside Extortionist in your collection: is it in your Prosper deck, or is it free for the new build you’re planning?
We built the “Mark as Built” feature to answer that question definitively.
How It Works
When you’re ready to sleeve up a deck, click Mark as Built from the deck page. Icarian walks through every card in your list—commanders included—and matches them against your collection.
For each slot, you’ll see one of three states:
- Auto-Assigned: You own exactly one copy. Done.
- Needs Selection: You own multiple copies. Pick which one goes in this deck.
- Missing: You don’t own it, or you don’t own it in the required finish.
That last point matters. If your deck specifies a foil copy, Icarian won’t let you assign a non-foil. The finish has to match exactly. Note that “own” here means “own AND HAVE AVAILABLE”.
Knowing Where Your Cards Actually Are
Here’s the part that actually matters to me: once a deck is built, those cards are reserved. They won’t show up as available when you’re building other decks. They can’t be marked as tradeable.
I have a handful of expensive staples that float between decks in theory, but in practice they live in one deck. Marking that deck as built means I stop second-guessing. When I’m working on a new list, the cards I see as “owned” are cards I can actually use—not cards that are technically in my collection but physically sleeved in something else.
Build Priority: Best or Worst Condition First
When you own multiple copies of a card, Icarian pre-selects one based on your Build Card Priority setting. You can choose:
- Best Condition First — Use your nicest cards (the default)
- Worst Condition First — Save the pristine copies for trade
You can always override the selection for individual cards, but the default saves time when you’re assigning 99 cards at once.
Integration with the Budget Optimizer
This connects to something we shipped earlier: the budget optimizer that helps you build decks with cards you already own. Now that we know which cards are reserved by built decks, we exclude them from recommendations. The optimizer only suggests cards that are genuinely available.
No more “you already own this!” suggestions for cards that are locked into other decks.
Unbuilding
Taking a deck apart? Click Unbuild and all the reservations clear. Those cards immediately become available again—for trading, for other decks, for whatever you need.
If you’ve been juggling spreadsheets or memory to track what’s sleeved where, give this a try. Mark your active decks as built, and let Icarian handle the bookkeeping.