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Help me create a good Magic: The Gathering deck?
heretoinform
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I recently came into about 3,000 magic cards for free, which makes me want to learn how to play.
Can you guys give me some tips on making the deck? Like general proportions of creatures to mana(?) cards, etc? I would like to make a deck utilizing the combination of white and green cards, because I read somewhere that white cards heal or do stuff like that and green cards have powerful monsters (plus I think the elves look cool haha).
Thanks.
Can you guys give me some tips on making the deck? Like general proportions of creatures to mana(?) cards, etc? I would like to make a deck utilizing the combination of white and green cards, because I read somewhere that white cards heal or do stuff like that and green cards have powerful monsters (plus I think the elves look cool haha).
Thanks.
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That said, here are the rules for the game.
As for deck construction, I learned through trial and error mostly. Ill take a deck idea and build something, play some people with it, make changes, play some, make changes etc etc till I get it where I like it. Some good rules of thumb, you want about 1/3 of your deck to be lands, try to have some good cards for each mana cost (IE: some good cards that cost one, some that cost two, some that cost three etc.), try to have more of a few cards rather than a bunch of singles. You dont want a deck full of one of each card, you want four of the good cards and so on.
So yeah, theres some basic pointers and the rules, if you go read and post around in the magic thread in the Critical Failures thread you'll have better luck.
Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
1/3 of the deck should be mana/land to start with. When you play with the deck, alter it from there.
Look on the back of the card. See those little dots of color? Each color works well with it's neighbors.
Go through your pile of cards, sort them by color for your own sanity, and read them all. Anything that sounds fun to you, set it aside. You might be able to find patterns.
Some decks live on alot of tiny creatures. Some decks rely on getting alot of mana very fast. Some decks rely on multiple cards working together.
My favorite deck to play with, which is I think the only one still constructed that I have, is all green. It is elf heavy, but uses certain els and Legendary lands to generate a ton of green mana fast. That way, I can get out my really big creatures. Some of my elves let me look through my deck to put those creatures into my hand. I also have a number of +X/+X enchantments to buff anyone let through my opponents defenses. I also have a fun little enchantment that forces all defending enemies to block the enchanted creature. See all everything kind of supports everything else? That's my preference for playing.
I have a friend who loved a deck based on counter-spells. Pissed me the fuck off.
General info: A deck usually consists of 60 cards. You can have a max of 4 of the same card in one deck. About 40% of them are lands to produce mana. To win you need to reduce your opponent's life total to 0 (or to 'deck' your opponent but that should come up rarely).
Usually this is done by doing the smackdown with creatures. Creatures differ in cost, size and abilities. You need variety in their costs to be able to play one each turn. Size lets it deal more damage and/or survive better in combat. Abilities are a bit trickier to explain which you will learn over time. The cost/size ratio is important to assess if the creature is any good or not. You don't want to pay a lot of mana for an insignificant body.
Spells generally help your cause by supporting your creatures, by killing your opponent's to prevent them from attacking or blocking, or by various other ways. As with creatures the cost plays a role depending on how powerful it is. Generally, the more expensive the spell the more it influences the game.
Anyway, the only way to get better is to play and to enjoy.
Hehe I've seen some pretty funny life gain decks. Usually ends up with the life-gain deck gaining about 30 life per turn and putting out Howling Mines and Millstones to make their opponent run out of cards before they can kill the lifegain deck.
20-22 Land
for green/white you are going to be focused on LOTS of creatures with enchantments to help and any removal that you can muster.
For creatures I have a "worth it scale"
Each +1/+1 per mana spent is worth it, each ablity like trample, first strike or flying is worth one mana.
therefore a 3/3 is worth 3 mana, but watchwolf, a 3/3 costs two and is g/w to boot and only costs 2 is better
Cantrips are good (cards that let you draw another card when you play it)
Lands that can produce more than one type of mana are great too.
Ahhh Elven Pipers. When I was in High School some dude had a few of these rare cards and I was sooooo jealous. I have long been out of the loop but they were out of my budget as a high school student.
I also vaguely remember the almighty AVATAR OF WOE
of which I had two! Good times.
Since people have mainly been giving casual advice here so far, I'll try and offer some balance.
First things first, don't be distracted by big, flashy cards. Impressive though they may be, only a very specialised deck is liable to get them to work in most games.
Your meat-and-drink cards should mostly be costing 2, 3 or 4 mana, with a few fives. If you include anything costing six or more, make sure it's something powerful enough to justify that cost. One-mana cards tend to be weaker, so you should only be using a few except in very specific decks.
The majority of decks (leaving out some of the fancier stuff for a minute) divide into two types: aggression or control. Pick one and stick with it, choosing all your cards to fit. A focused deck is much more likely to win.
Aggression decks are usually based around lots of cheap and medium-cost creatures, and those creatures should generally have a high power instead of a high toughness. They should be as efficient as possible for their cost- expensive small creatures with powerful abilities tend to be much less useful in this kind of deck. Every colour but blue has lots of useful creatures for this kind of approach.
Spells in this kind of deck should be focused either on helping your creatures attack more effectively or on destroying your opponent's creatures. Anything else should be secondary.
Control decks are based around countering an opponent's resources until you are in a postion where you effectively control the game and can attack safely. Decks of this kind tend to be slower. Their creatures should mostly still be low or medium cost, but more focused on high toughness or abilities that make them hard to kill. Small, ability-focused creatures can be useful, but don't have too many of them.
The key concept to understand with a control deck is Card Advantage. If you opponent loses a card and you don't, you gain an advantage. If your creature kills theirs without dying itself, that's card advantage. if your cheap creature or spell kills their expensive creature or negates their expensive spell, that's also card advantage, although of a lesser sort. If you play a card that lets you draw multiple cards, that's card advantage. If you manage to kill multiple enemy creatures or make you opponet discard multiple cards with just one spell...
I think you see where I'm going here.
While aggressive decks are focused on damage, control decks should be focused on getting ahead on cards. Every spell you have should either counter an opposing threat cheaply, counter multiple opposing threats, or give you cards. You're in it for the long game.
Mechanics to be wary of: land destruction and life gain. Although these can be useful in the right decks, they seem more powerful than they are.
When in doubt, compare cards to other cards of the same cost to see how much they do for that amount of mana. Look for those that seem to be the most efficient.
Above all else, a good deck is useless if you don't know how to use it. If you win or lose a game, analyse the individual choices you made, not just the cards you drew.
As I assume you're not in the position to make any OMFG Tier 2 awesome decks, you may just want to begin by making cool "themed" decks and duking it out. Elves v. Goblins, Fire v. Water, and so forth. You'll get the hang of what's good and what's not worth your time as you begin to play some games. Try to stick to mono-colors and aim to have fun, because if you're playing to win you'll get frustrated and upset quick.
The only other deck style I played around with was a red and blue deck. I didn't have a lot of creatures except for walls. Most of my blue cards were counters to stump my opponent and the majority of my red cards were burn cards to kill his monsters or preferably kill him.
Shogun Streams Vidya
In general though, the 20 land in a 60 card deck is horrible advice unless you're running a deck with a very low average mana cost, one color and no cards that cost above 3 mana. Arcanis had a really good post back in the MtG thread. *digs*