A New Begining

I have a lot of friends that play Magic the Gathering but most play on a purely casual level. Some are more experienced than others. Often (usually by the less experienced players) I get asked the question how do I go about building a deck. New comers and first-timers listen up (read closely is more like it) because I'm going to discuss just that.

Okay, the first the thing you should ask yourself when building a deck is, "What is my win condition?". This can be a multitude of different things and you should have more than one in a deck. (Note that beatdown and mill are by my terms a strategy not a win condition) A win condition should be the game changer. For example, if you are playing mono-green, then beastmaster ascension, wolfbriar elemental, and overrun are all viable win conditions. There is one simple but important point to make about each of these win conditions, they all work together. A deck that wins consistently has to multiple ways of winning that synergize with the other cards in the deck. Wolfbriar can be multi-kicked to make tokens. Next turn, with Beastmaster Ascension on the field, you cast Overrun, hopefully attacking with enough creatures to put 7 counters on the ascension to activate its ability and giving all your creatures in play +8/+8 and trample (+5/+5 from the ascension and +3/+3 and trample from Overrun). If you pull this off unless they have a prevent damage spell like angel song or fog this is a game winning play.

Now that you have the win condition the next step is to compile a list of cards that will aid you in achieving this win condition. Cards like harrow, khalni heart expedition, momentus fall, all help you to produce mana faster, gain life, and draw cards which all will help you get to your win condition.

Unfortunately the third thing you should ask yourself when making a deck is, "How much am I willing to spend on this deck and how likely am I to get the cards I need?". It is a good idea to grasp how much a deck costs before building it and also how many of the required cards you already own. I have made countless deck lists in Word but few of them ever get made bescause I know that I am never going to get 4x Elspeth the Knigh Errant as an example. So what I usually do is keep two lists if there are cards I would like to put in the deck but don't have. I usually save them as a word file and store them on my iPod touch. (You never know when you are going to have an opportunity to buy/trade for cards and its helpful to know which ones your need) Now that I have two lists I try to take the "What I have Now List" and convert it into "What I Want to Have". This can take time and lists can go under many revisions or they can be made once and never touched again. It all depends on what cards become availble, get printed, or new combos that I find.

Decks also have to have another crucial concept. The Mana Curve. This is probably the most important part of every deck. You can have all the bombs and win conditions you want but if the Curve is too high you will never play them. If the deck you are making has to play fast to win then you better have some sort of backup plan if the game drags on. If not in the main deck then the sideboard definitely.

This brings us to the all important sideboard. ALWAYS HAVE A SIDEBOARD WHEN PLAYING IN ANY SORT OF COMPETITIVE EVENT. I went to an FNM one time where a player didn't have a sideboard. He would have done significantly better if had a sideboard. Sideboards are limited to 15 cards and have to be exchanged on a 1 for 1 basis with the cards in your deck. Considering that games 2 and 3 of a match are going to be sideboarded games it is essential to have a good sideboard becuase you play more games with your sideboard than without. I could write a whole post on the sideboard itself (which I probably will) so I won't go into detail about it here. But essentially you want to have easy to play cards that address certain weaknesses within your deck that your opponent has capitolized on to try and beat you.

The final part of the deck but certainly in no way unimportant is the mana base. Without a solid mana base your deck will not function properly. An easy to use quick rule of thumb is to have 1 land basic land per 2 nonland cards of the same color. So if you had 12 blue cards you should 6 islands or 6 lands that produce blue mana. This is a very basic description and a more detailed post will follow.