So you've started playing Magic: The Gathering and have taken your first steps out into the uncertain world of competative card-slinging, only to get ground into a fine pink powder by someone using a "deck full of OP cards."
But do they really have a deck full of incredible cards and were destined to beat you from the beginning, or is your deck simply not up to par and was doomed to fail no matter what you played against?
In this multi-part series i will be going over magic deck-building and card evaluation in a (hopefully) easy to understand way that will help you become better at constructing a playable efficient deck, as well as hopefully understand basic magic theory and strategy.
The Basics:
The color pie:
Black: Black is typically the color of death and sacrifice. Exchanging one resource for another, typically your own life value, is a staple black mechanic. Black is an excellent "Splash" color, in other words it is excellent to include black into a different color deck to give that deck an advantage it normally wouldnt have. For example adding black to a green deck means you will have big green monsters with the powerful removal of black, which is a potent combo. Examples:
Red: Red is for all the pyromaniacs out there. Utterly packed with cheap powerful spells, red is one of the few colors that can win games without ever playing a creature. Red creatures are typically small and fragile, but explosive and unpredictable. A favorite of new players for being incredibly easy to play. Examples:
Green: Unleash your inner monster! Green is all about big powerful creatures and accelerating your board position to incredible heights before your opponent can even react. Green can present your opponent with simply impossible situations where you have the board completely dominated with little to no chance of losing. Green is virtually void of removal spells and requires additional colors to fill that gap, should you choose to pursue that option. Green is the only color in magic that can play more than 1 land per turn due to cards or effects. Examples:
White: White is the jack of all trades in magic. Its not quite sure what it wants to do, so it does a little bit of everything. The area it excels most in is defense, either via life gain or wiping the board clean of everything that might hurt it. White is a very safe color to play, it can be good at pretty much everything, but its not the best at anything. Examples:
Blue: Blue is full of trickery, deception, and filling your hand up with cards. Weak by itself, blue is the perfect color to play with literally any other color in magic to give you an advantage you wouldn't normally have by going mono-colored. Blue is full of counter-spells, card draw, and various tricks to keep your opponent off their game. Examples:
Basics Part 2:
Basic deck-building starts with choosing a color(s). Hopefully the above reviews have given you an idea of what is appealing to you and you would like to try out a certain style of deck based on what I've explained. Some common examples of proven efficient powerful decks, and why they are:
1. Mono Red aggro - Red is historically the strongest mono-colored deck in magic. The combination of cheap efficient creatures and powerful spells put your opponent on a clock from the very first turn of the game.
Pros: Cheap powerful spells put your opponent out of the game quickly.
Cons: If your initial barrage fails you run out of gas and are pretty much out of the game.
2. Mono Green ramp - Mono green has been a powerhouse as of late, due to the large availability of ramp cards and extremely powerful green beasts.
Pros: Can accelerate your board position and pump out massive hard to deal with creatures.
Cons: Can either draw all ramp and no creatures, or no creatures and all ramp, leaving you with a useless hand.
3. Blue Black/White control - Combining blue with black or white creates a powerful control combination, where you can effectively stop your opponent from ever threatening you as you slowly get your own threats going and win the game.
Pros: Can utterly shut your opponents down before they start.
Cons: Once you are behind, all the counterspells in the world wont help.
4. Green/Red aggro - Combining the power of green monsters with the efficiency of red spells can be a lethal combination. This style of deck attempts to circumvent the con of being mono red or mono green, giving you multiple angles to deal with your opponent.
Pros: multiple angles of attack, keeps in the game longer than mono colored variants.
Cons: not as fast as mono green, not as efficient as mono-red.
5. Green/Blue aggro - Attempts to combine the explosiveness of green with the hand refilling power of blue, to keep a constant stream of threats on the table.
Pros: Pumps out a constant stream of creatures and always has a full hand of cards
Cons: typically not very explosive and can lose hard to fast decks.
Hopefully at this point you know where you want to start. If you do, meet me in the next installment for some magic theory!
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