Basic Deck Building
One of the hardest parts of Magic is building a deck that works well and fits your playstyle. For a basic but effective deck there are a few simple guidelines to follow. First of all, you need to figure out how you like to play and what kind of deck bests suits you. Next comes looking at the cards you have available, whether cards you actually own or singles you intend to buy. Once you know what cards would work well, you should pick your colors. Finally comes the actual building of the deck.
To figure out what deck suits you, you should either borrow and try out a variety of decks and see what kind you like best, or consider your general approach to a problem. Do you tend to approach a problem by simply powering through it? Do you tend to search for a circuitous solution which requires more planning but less effort? Those are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself when you are planning a deck. Once you figure out the general concept behind the deck, you should continue by selecting a more specific type of deck that fits your playstyle. For example, if you prefer the blunt approach, there are several ways you can make a deck around that. You can try the simple green deck with plentiful large creatures or you could go with a red burn deck to kill your opponents directly. The key thing to remember is that you need a plan for how you will win, instead of just making a random assortment of cards that seem good. Even if your plan involves keeping your enemy from building up and just attacking them with an unblockable 1,1 every turn, that eventually leads you to victory.
Once you decide on the type of deck, you need to look at what cards you have at your disposal. If you were to make that simple creature deck, you would look for creatures that are strong but cheap, such as garruk’s companion or terra stomper. You would also look for spells that complement your creatures, such as the simple giant’s growth, or let you respond to your opponents plans, like with a naturalize. You will want to find as many cards that fit as possible and then whittle your deck down once you have found all the cards you need. Once you decide on which cards suit you best, you should pay attention to the colors you are planning to use.
Now the actual construction can begin. Key guidelines are that a 60 card deck is preferable. You may wonder you should limit your deck size but you need to pay attention to the probability of getting good cards. If you have more than 60 cards, you will be less likely to get the better cards in your deck since you will be adding cards that are inferior to your deck. One example is say duskdale wurm and terra stomper. Duskdale wurm is a good card, but terra stomper is better in every way. If you add the duskdale wurm, you will be reducing your chances of getting the better card and weakening your deck. Another guideline is that about a third of your deck should be creatures. The reasoning behind that is simple: even if you don’t intend to win by attacking your opponent, you almost always need creatures to block with. Those creatures also tend to have abilities that compliment your decks overall plan. Lets say you have a mill deck. You might think that creatures aren’t important to winning, but there are creatures that can both keep you alive and help you mill. Look at hedron crab, which mills three whenever you play a land. It is an excellent mill, as well as a good blocker in the beginning. You should also look at jace’s phantasm and isleback spawn. While neither aids in your milling, both get more powerful as you mill your opponent and can both keep you alive as well as offer an alternative way to win if your milling isn’t working well enough to win. When it comes to lands, they should comprise about a third of your deck. That means that you will usually have enough mana for your needs, but also makes sure that you will have enough spells to actually do things. If you have a high cost deck and think you need more mana, you should instead use spells that give you mana, such as the keyrunes and signets of ravnica. The last thing to consider about lands is your color composition of the deck. If you have just a few spells of a single color, or have a deck with many colors, you will want to be able to get the color that you need, such as with evolving wilds or terramorphic expanse. If you don’t include those, you will have a lot of trouble playing spells of specific colors. In fact, if you only have like six spells of a color, you should probably either take that color out or remake your deck to include more of that color.
Once you finish making your deck, you are ready to test it out. Shuffle heavily before your first game because your cards will be clumped, especially your lands, and that will make it very hard to do anything. One technique to shuffle in the beginning is called mana shuffling. You start by placing each land by itself and putting spells of that color on top of the lands until you run out of spells, which generally means two per land. After that, stack the piles randomly and your deck should require much less shuffling. You do need to shuffle normally after that, but only a few times rather than over twenty. Once you feel your deck is well shuffled, look at the bottom few cards to make sure your lands are well distributed. If they are, shuffle one last time and start playing. You may even consider playing against yourself for a few games to test it out if you have multiple decks. Good luck with your decks and may you have plenty of them.
One of the hardest parts of Magic is building a deck that works well and fits your playstyle. For a basic but effective deck there are a few simple guidelines to follow. First of all, you need to figure out how you like to play and what kind of deck bests suits you. Next comes looking at the cards you have available, whether cards you actually own or singles you intend to buy. Once you know what cards would work well, you should pick your colors. Finally comes the actual building of the deck.
To figure out what deck suits you, you should either borrow and try out a variety of decks and see what kind you like best, or consider your general approach to a problem. Do you tend to approach a problem by simply powering through it? Do you tend to search for a circuitous solution which requires more planning but less effort? Those are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself when you are planning a deck. Once you figure out the general concept behind the deck, you should continue by selecting a more specific type of deck that fits your playstyle. For example, if you prefer the blunt approach, there are several ways you can make a deck around that. You can try the simple green deck with plentiful large creatures or you could go with a red burn deck to kill your opponents directly. The key thing to remember is that you need a plan for how you will win, instead of just making a random assortment of cards that seem good. Even if your plan involves keeping your enemy from building up and just attacking them with an unblockable 1,1 every turn, that eventually leads you to victory.
Once you decide on the type of deck, you need to look at what cards you have at your disposal. If you were to make that simple creature deck, you would look for creatures that are strong but cheap, such as garruk’s companion or terra stomper. You would also look for spells that complement your creatures, such as the simple giant’s growth, or let you respond to your opponents plans, like with a naturalize. You will want to find as many cards that fit as possible and then whittle your deck down once you have found all the cards you need. Once you decide on which cards suit you best, you should pay attention to the colors you are planning to use.
Now the actual construction can begin. Key guidelines are that a 60 card deck is preferable. You may wonder you should limit your deck size but you need to pay attention to the probability of getting good cards. If you have more than 60 cards, you will be less likely to get the better cards in your deck since you will be adding cards that are inferior to your deck. One example is say duskdale wurm and terra stomper. Duskdale wurm is a good card, but terra stomper is better in every way. If you add the duskdale wurm, you will be reducing your chances of getting the better card and weakening your deck. Another guideline is that about a third of your deck should be creatures. The reasoning behind that is simple: even if you don’t intend to win by attacking your opponent, you almost always need creatures to block with. Those creatures also tend to have abilities that compliment your decks overall plan. Lets say you have a mill deck. You might think that creatures aren’t important to winning, but there are creatures that can both keep you alive and help you mill. Look at hedron crab, which mills three whenever you play a land. It is an excellent mill, as well as a good blocker in the beginning. You should also look at jace’s phantasm and isleback spawn. While neither aids in your milling, both get more powerful as you mill your opponent and can both keep you alive as well as offer an alternative way to win if your milling isn’t working well enough to win. When it comes to lands, they should comprise about a third of your deck. That means that you will usually have enough mana for your needs, but also makes sure that you will have enough spells to actually do things. If you have a high cost deck and think you need more mana, you should instead use spells that give you mana, such as the keyrunes and signets of ravnica. The last thing to consider about lands is your color composition of the deck. If you have just a few spells of a single color, or have a deck with many colors, you will want to be able to get the color that you need, such as with evolving wilds or terramorphic expanse. If you don’t include those, you will have a lot of trouble playing spells of specific colors. In fact, if you only have like six spells of a color, you should probably either take that color out or remake your deck to include more of that color.
Once you finish making your deck, you are ready to test it out. Shuffle heavily before your first game because your cards will be clumped, especially your lands, and that will make it very hard to do anything. One technique to shuffle in the beginning is called mana shuffling. You start by placing each land by itself and putting spells of that color on top of the lands until you run out of spells, which generally means two per land. After that, stack the piles randomly and your deck should require much less shuffling. You do need to shuffle normally after that, but only a few times rather than over twenty. Once you feel your deck is well shuffled, look at the bottom few cards to make sure your lands are well distributed. If they are, shuffle one last time and start playing. You may even consider playing against yourself for a few games to test it out if you have multiple decks. Good luck with your decks and may you have plenty of them.