Getting started

Use this guide the first time you open DeckScope. It walks one complete pass through the core loop, end to end, and answers one practical question:

What can I build with the cards I already own, and what should I buy next?

Four steps: import → deck → buy list → readiness review. Budget about twenty minutes. Each step links out to the workflow page that covers it in depth — this page is the spine, the workflow pages are the detail.

Walkthrough video

A recorded end-to-end walkthrough of this guide is not published yet. Until it is, the four steps below are the complete path — nothing here depends on the video.

Before you start

• A rough idea of one deck you want to build. A single target is enough; the app gets more useful with more, but it works from one.
• Some portion of your collection in a form you can paste — a YDK file, a decklist export, or a plain newline-separated list. You do not need the whole collection.

A partial but accurate inventory beats a large stale one. Import what you can vouch for and add the rest later.

Steps

1. Import your collection

   Open Inventory and choose Import Collection. DeckScope accepts a CSV, a YDK file, or a plain newline-separated list (3x Card Name works) and parses card names and quantities from all three. Set codes are only captured when you import a CSV and map an explicit set-code column — the YDK and newline-list routes never carry a set code, even if one is written in parentheses after a name.

   Pick a Target Box first. It is required — the import stays blocked with “Select a target box to import.” until you choose or create one — and every card in the batch is written into that box. There is no automatic holding area. If you would rather review a batch before it touches your collection, use Stage for Consolidation instead of importing straight away.

   Two things matter more than volume at this stage:

   • Quantities must be right. Three copies of a staple versus one changes every downstream readiness result and every acquisition recommendation.
   • Boxes should be coarse. Create five to seven boxes that match how you actually store cards — active decks, staples box, main binder, trade binder. If you want a triage step, make one of them your inbox and select it as the import target; DeckScope will not file cards there on its own. Boxes you will not maintain rot within a week.

   Screenshot pending /img/docs/getting-started/gs-01-import.png

   Choose the target box before you paste. Triage is a box you pick, not a state the app assigns.

   Depth: Add and maintain cards covers search, bulk paste, and staging. Organize inventory covers boxes and the owned-versus-available distinction.

2. Create a target deck

   Open Deck Lab and create a deck. Set the format now rather than later — format gates legality and copy limits, and changing it after the fact re-evaluates the whole list.

   Paste or build the list you are aiming at. Treat it as the target, not an inventory of what is currently sleeved. That distinction is the point: DeckScope compares the target against what you own so it can tell you the difference.

   Once saved, the deck reports:

   • which required cards you already own
   • how many copies are actually available
   • which cards are missing outright
   • which cards are blocked because the copies are committed to another deck

   Screenshot pending /img/docs/getting-started/gs-02-target-deck.png

   Main and extra are analyzed jointly — combo lines cross that boundary, so DeckScope does not split them.

   Depth: Build decks covers the deck editor, legality and readiness, and archiving.

3. Generate a buy list

   Open Acquisition and select the Bottlenecks tab. Acquisition opens on Coverage, so this is one click in.

   Bottlenecks collects every shortage across your active decks and groups them by card. The table lands sorted by how many decks each card blocks, highest first, and every column is clickable — you can re-sort by card name, missing copies, unit price, or total price.

   Generate Buy List turns that shortage set into a saved buy plan. The plan’s own item order is the leverage ranking — priority score first, then how many decks each card unlocks per euro, then how many it blocks outright — so you can buy down the plan until the budget runs out.

   The plan also tags each card with a priority group: best unlocks, cheap wins, high-impact expensive, single-deck fixes. Nothing in the app surfaces that today — it exists in the plan data and in the API’s plan-export endpoint. The Export CSV button on a saved buy list downloads two columns, card_name and quantity, and nothing else.

   Acquisition ranks operational value, not desire. It tells you what unblocks the most; you still decide what fits the budget.

   Screenshot pending /img/docs/getting-started/gs-03-buy-list.png

   Generate the plan after inventory and decks are current. A plan built on stale data is confidently wrong.

   Depth: Readiness and acquisition covers the shortage table, the priority ranking, and the buy-verify-reconcile loop.

4. Review readiness

   Go back to the deck. Readiness compares the deck requirement against current inventory and current allocation, and gives you the estimated cost to complete this deck — what is left to buy before the list is buildable.

   Format compliance is reported somewhere else: in the Deck Lab deck list, where a small warning pill appears on a deck row only when that list is illegal (rendered as !) or incomplete (rendered as !!). A compliant deck shows no pill at all — absence is the pass state, so there is nothing to look for when everything is fine. The same pill appears on the deck selector inside Acquisition’s Bottlenecks tab. The two signals fail for different reasons: legality is about format rules, copy limits, and zone counts; cost is about what you still have to buy.

   Three situations you will hit (these are outcomes to reason about, not badge labels in the app):

   • Everything available — every required copy is free in your inventory right now.
   • Owned but committed — you own the cards, but the copies are allocated to another deck. The fix is usually deciding which deck wins, not buying more.
   • Missing copies — you need cards you do not have. These are what fed the buy list in step 3.

   Readiness is not a one-time check. Re-run it after every purchase arrives, every trade, and every deck change. That is the loop closing.

   Screenshot pending /img/docs/getting-started/gs-04-readiness.png

   Owned but committed is the most common first result — and the one that has a free fix.

   Depth: Readiness and acquisition covers readiness in full.

What success looks like

You have one target deck whose readiness state you believe, a buy list you would actually act on, and an inventory honest enough that both stay true next week. If readiness says a deck is blocked and you cannot explain why, the inventory is the thing to fix — not the deck.

Common first-run mistakes

• Importing everything before checking anything. Import one deck’s worth of cards, run the full four steps, then scale up. A full-collection import that you never validate teaches you nothing.
• Skipping the format field. Format gates legality and copy limits. Setting it after the list is built re-evaluates everything and the first readiness result you saw was meaningless.
• Generating the buy list from stale inventory. Acquisition ranks against what it thinks you own. Reconcile first, then generate.
• Treating owned as available. Copies committed to another deck are not free. That gap is the whole point of the readiness check.

Where to go next

Once the four steps above make sense, the loop has three more moves worth learning.

Recommended workflow The repeatable weekly cadence that keeps all of the above honest.

Analyze decks and scores Whether the deck is structurally sound — not just whether you can build it.

Manage deck versions Snapshot before you tinker, so you can revert the swaps that did not survive testing.

Compare and improve decks Read coverage deltas between two versions and turn them into a decision.

Core concepts Why DeckScope models locations, availability, and targets the way it does.

Troubleshooting When inventory, readiness, acquisition, or analysis results look wrong.