For me one of the best moments when looking at this site is when I log in and see there is a new comment on one of my decks or on one of the deck I commented on. Sometimes the comments I get to see are not really to the point or even friendly, but most of the time I'm reminded of cards that will fit the deck that I didn't know or have long forgotten, get a new view on the decks strategy or some other information.
Personally I decided to give longer comments only to decks that have a proper description. Why is that so? Before getting to MTGVault I was part of a German MTG Forum, which had some rules for deck-posts. One of these rules was that a deck without a description of at least the decks strategy, would be deleted. It was even advised that you should point out the key-cards of the deck and describe the purpose of those. Reading those descriptions helped me to evolve my deck-building and it also saved a lot of time.
For me adding a description to a deck on MTGVault is a sign of courteousness and appraisal for the people who look at you deck. They use their time to look at it and maybe even help you, so helping them to save time and nerves should be a matter of course.
If you don't want/ need any comments or help with a deck it's OK, but it could also be written down. Nothing's more frustrating than writing a comment for a deck and never getting and reaction from the builder.
[u]What is a proper description?[/u]
A good deck-description doesn't have to be lengthy, but it should contain some basic informations. A red burn deck with states "burn your opponent to cinders" or a green stompy with "play big creatures" is basically to the point, but it can be done better and that quite easily. You can write up any information on the deck that you feel others could find useful. A short story why you did build this deck is as appreciated as information's on the build itself, the strategy, cardchoices, legality, and so on.
One of the most important things I can recommend to do is structure the description. Nothing is worse that having to read a wall of text, pause, and then have to look for the point where you just stopped reading. Take a look at books and magazines and learn a lesson from those by using titles, paragraphs or lists.
[u]What you can put into a deck-description[/u]
Strategy. An experienced players will be able to see what you had planned with a deck from the name of the deck or by taking a quick look at the cards. But if you write down such information's the people who look a the deck will need less time for figuring out what you had in mind and have more time to think how to improve it and make comments. Personally I use the Tag-system for this. When using combos give a rough description, the detailed one can be written down in the how-to-play section.
• Sources. The number of decks out there is vast and the possibility that the type of deck you just finished has already been built by someone else is quite high. If you figured the deck out yourself, congratulations (And I really don't mean this sarcastically ), if you didn't give some informations on your sources. This gives the original designer/ author some credits and allows other users to understand where you got your informations from.
• Special/ uncommon cards. When using an existing deck-type you can point out why you didn't use one of the cards used in this archetype, but instead another one. For example why didn't you use [[Slippery Bogle]] but [[Jungleborn Pioneer]] in an aura deck?
• Tests/ playing results. Have you already tested the deck, and if yes how did it behave? Especially game-results can be of interest fro other users, because this will tell them a lot on the strengths and weaknesses of the deck. If you had an epic fight against another deck, or experienced some funny moments you can also write those down. Even if it may not be of great interest for hardcore builders it might put a smile on their face... which WILL increase you chance for getting a comment or a like.
[u] What you always should put into a deck-description[/u]
Know all these are things that you can write down, but there are also some things that, in my opinion, you have to write down.
• Special rules. Most of the deviations from the normal rules are well known, like Commander, Pioneer or Pauper. Personally I like to use the deck-tag and deck-format system to point out those. But when you and your friends you're using really special rules, like some home-brew modifications, or something that is very new and not well known, you should give some informations on how this all works.
• Budget. If you have a certain budget for the whole deck, or per card, simply write it down, or you will get suggestions that will likely be out of your targeted budget.
• Legality. Especially standard decks change very fast and when building such a deck it's a good idea to write down some information on which sets where used. After one or two years another user might look at the deck and ask himself "This is tagged standard but none of these cards are standard legal any more. What's going on here?". Another example is a special ban-list/ card-range. A while ago I held a small pauper tournament for my friends. Since most of us started playing at or after M12 I decided to limit the legality to modern-only cards and use the modern ban-list instead of the pauper ban-list. Such information's have to be written down because none can guess this.
[u]What you could put into a how-to-play description[/u]
The general strategy of the deck, Aggro, Midrange, and how they're all named, should be in the deck-description or in the deck-tags. So it shouldn't be necessary to point out that e.g. one should attack as early and fast as possible with an aggro deck. But what you can do is give informations on priority of some cards. For example why you should play a [[Vampire Nocturnus]] first if you happen to have one on the hand and also a [[Bloodline Keeper]].
A thing often seen on aggressive decks is a god-hand description: What happens per turn if you draw the perfect hand, which will also gives a good impression of the most important cards in this deck.
For decks that use a combo one of the most important things is a description of this combo, what one will need and how one will get it running.
[u]What deck-tags you could use[/u]
Personally I'm using a standardized system deck-tags that I'm adding to each deck. Legality, colour usage, strategy, tested/ untested. This helps me to find certain decks in the growing list of decks I have built.
Further Information's you could add with deck-tags might be if you need help on the build, budget, extended strategy's, there's a ton of pre-set tags and you can even write up your own. Important is that you don't use too many of them as only the first 4 are displayed in the deck-list though and these are the crucial ones that, in combination with the deck-name, might or might not attract users of looking into your deck.
I hope I was able to give you some ideas on why and how you should write deck-, how-to-play description and use deck-tags.
Greetings
Muktol