How To Set Up A Magic The Gathering Deck
So, y'all desire to build an MTG deck. Maybe you've bought one or two prebuilt decks in the past, and at present you want to build 1 yourself. For new and experienced players alike, building a Magic: The Gathering deck from scratch can be a daunting task.
At that place are so many deck possibilities out there, the option tin be overwhelming. Good news, this article gives you a step-by-stride arroyo to building a MTG deck that you'll love playing!
How Many Cards in a MTG Deck?
Well-nigh game modes in Magic require a deck count of at least 60.
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For most formats, there is no maximum limit on the number of cards you can accept in your deck. However, the more than cards you accept in your deck, the lower the chances of you drawing your all-time cards. Endeavor to continue your deck count at 60 if possible. For more on the number of cards in different formats, see How Many Cards in an MTG deck? Deck Size.
Commander decks are a little different in that they require exactly 100 cards. Meet our How to Build a Commander Deck commodity for a full guide on how to create one!
Step 1: Choosing a Deck Type
Before you showtime putting cards in your deck, you need to know your deck blazon. Most decks fit into 1 of these four categories:
- Aggro
- Control
- Midrange
- Combo
Let'south take a look at each of these categories and then you can detect out which one is the best for yous.
Aggro
Aggro decks are decks that desire to win the game equally quickly as possible. To accomplish this, they run lots of cards with low mana costs. Also, almost every card in an aggro deck volition help you bargain damage to your opponent.
If you similar playing quick games of Magic and attacking with your creatures every turn, then aggro might be the deck type for yous.
Command
Command decks are the opposite of aggro decks. Instead of trying to finish the game as quickly as possible, a control histrion will spend well-nigh of their fourth dimension taking care of their opponent'south threats.
Over the course of the game, they'll gain incremental advantages. Then, when the control actor has full control over the opponent, they'll outset playing threats of their own and winning the game that mode.
If y'all want to outsmart your opponent and win the game slowly simply surely, you'll want to consider playing a control deck.
Midrange
Midrange decks play a mix of high-impact creatures and efficient spells. Your big creatures will outclass your opponent's small creatures, and yous'll always have a few spells at the set just in case you need to get rid of one of your opponent's creatures.
If y'all like having the best creatures at the table at all times, so you'll love playing midrange decks.
Combo
Philharmonic decks are all about assembling two or three cards that piece of work really well together. For example, Splinter Twin and Pestermite make a great combo. If you enchant your Pestermite with Splinter Twin, then you can tap Pestermite to create a copy of itself, and each copy will untap the original Pestermite, and then you can repeat the procedure as many times as you want.
Combo decks are normally pretty difficult to play (and fifty-fifty harder to build), so we're going to focus on the other 3 deck types for now.
Stride 2: Choosing Your Color(south)
Now that you've chosen a deck type, it's time to choose your deck colors. But before you do that, let'south consider how many colors you lot desire to play.
One colour
If you only run one color in your deck, you'll only be able to play cards in that color. If you lot run too many colors, you lot'll often take trouble finding the right lands to bandage your spells. Well-nigh decks consist of one, two, or three colors.
What colors you choose to run is up to you, but some colors work better with some deck types than others.
Two colors
Aggro decks typically consist of i or two colors. The nearly popular colors for these types of decks are white, red, and light-green, since they have the best aggressive creatures. Blue and blackness aggro decks have existed in the by, but these are less mutual.
Three colors
Control decks usually have at least two colors, sometimes three. Blue is the nearly popular command color because all counterspells are bluish. Control decks also need spells to remove the opponent's creatures, so white, black, and red are all excellent colors to go aslope blue.
Midrange decks also usually have two to three colors. Green and black are keen midrange colors since that'due south where you'll find some of the best creatures in the game. If you want to add a 3rd colour, consider scarlet or white for some more spells and a wider choice of creatures.
Step 3: Choosing a Theme
In my feel, choosing a theme is the most fun aspect of building an MTG deck. This is where your inventiveness and imagination go a say in what cards enter your deck!
Creatures
Many players like building decks effectually creature types. Some of the more than well-known creature types are elves, goblins, merfolk, and zombies. There are plenty of creatures types out there, so experience free to do lots of enquiry before picking a creature type!
Creature type themes piece of work best with aggro decks, since aggro decks almost always run lots of creatures. For this reason, it'south generally a good idea to mostly include creatures that toll ane, two, or 3 mana, that manner you tin starting time attacking with them early on in the game.
An example of this would exist a goblin deck. An platonic gameplan would consist of first playing a bunch of inexpensive goblins early on in the game. Then, once you take lots of goblins in play, you would play Goblin Chieftain to make them all bigger and attack for the win.
Spells
For command decks, most of your cards will exist spells. Y'all might want to focus on removal spells (similar Fateful Absenteeism), counterspells (like Saw It Coming), and board clears (like Doomskar). Most control decks play a combination of all iii! Then, you can have a handful of powerful threats similar Emeria's Phone call to finish off the game one time you're ahead.
Key cards
Final but not least, if yous're playing a midrange deck, focus on a few key cards like Goldspan and Wrenn and Seven. These key cards need to be powerful enough to make a high touch on the game.
So, fill up out the rest of your deck with some spells of your choice. Inexpensive cards that can destroy your opponent's creatures are the all-time. Dragon's Fire and Infernal Grasp are a couple of great examples.
Step 4: Picking Your Lands
Many players set lands as an afterthought when building their decks, but having a good fix of lands will help yous win games.
First, allow's figure out how many lands you want to play:
- If y'all're playing an aggro deck, most of your cards volition have low mana costs, so you'll want to run fewer lands than usual. Having anywhere between 22 and 24 lands is a solid option.
- Midrange decks volition usually have a mix of cheap and expensive cards. Aim to build a deck with 24 to 26 lands.
- Finally, control decks volition play more lands than most other decks. Since nigh of their spells are on the more expensive side, await to 26 to 28 lands in a control deck.
Now, onto the lands themselves. Nosotros'll want to gene in your deck type and the number of colors you lot're playing into our decisions. As a full general rule, the more colors yous play, the trickier it will exist to choose your lands.
One color decks
One-color decks often like to use only basic lands of that colour, and that's perfectly okay. However, don't exist agape to run some not-bones lands with other abilities. Fauna lands like Lair of the Hydra can tap for mana in the early game, and then they can become creatures to attack and block during later on turns.
Bonus Tip: If you're playing an aggro deck, try to prioritize lands that enter the battlefield untapped over ones that enter tapped. Remember, aggro decks want to win the game equally quickly every bit possible, then it'southward all-time if your lands tin be used for mana right away.
2 color decks
For two-color decks, running a mix of basic lands is okay, simply lands that tap for two colors will go a long way in improving consistency. Imagine you're playing a blue-carmine deck and you have all ruby creatures in your hand, only you only describe blue lands! Having lots of lands that can produce ii or more colors will assistance avoid these types of scenarios.
Three or more color decks
Lastly, nosotros have decks with three or more colors. Consistently drawing lands of all iii colors can be hard, so most lands in a 3-colour deck volition want to produce at least ii colors. As a result, three-color decks will run very few basic lands, sometimes none!
Step 5: Picking a Ratio of Creatures and Spells
How many creatures you lot determine to play will partly be dependent on your deck type.
Aggro decks
Since aggro decks like to attack a lot, they will have mostly creatures. Consider playing at least 30 creatures in your aggro deck, then filling out the residual of your deck with ways to boost the power and toughness of your creatures in combat. Maul of the Skyclaves and Snakeskin Veil are peachy examples of spells to put in an aggro deck.
Midrange decks
As mentioned previously, midrange decks similar to run a lot of cheap removal spells. Finding the perfect balance between creatures and spells in a midrange deck tin can be catchy. In general, nearly midrange decks run about xx to 25 creatures and 10 to fifteen spells.
Control Decks
And if you're planning on building a control deck, you might desire to know that most command deck merely run a scattering of creatures. Retrieve somewhere between the iv and 8 range. That'due south considering about cards in a control deck are spells that either destroy creatures or counter them before they can even enter the battlefield.
Some players love putting planeswalkers in their decks. I think the best places for a planeswalker are in midrange and command decks, since their main strength lies in gaining incremental advantages over the course of a game.
Bonus Tip: When you're edifice a deck for a Constructed format like Standard or Modern, equally well as the 60 chief deck cards, you lot can have an boosted 15 cards in your sideboard (if y'all employ one). You can have a maximum of 4 copies of a specific card across your master deck and your sideboard. See our total guide on Sideboards in MTG.
Footstep 6: Tuning Your Mana Curve
When your deck has too many high-toll cards, you'll find yourself not playing annihilation during the first few turns of the game. In the example of having too many low-cost cards, you'll quickly run out of cards to play. Choosing the appropriate mana curve is the best fashion to ensure that yous'll have meaningful cards to play every turn.
The mana curve of a deck is the distribution of mana costs of each card in your deck. For example, the mana curve of a midrange deck might await similar this:
There are no strict rules to edifice a mana bend, and every deck has a unlike ane. Withal, well-nigh every deck follows the pattern of having mostly 2- and 3-price cards and very few cards that cost 6 mana or more.
Equally you lot may have already guessed, aggro decks will typically have the lowest mana curves, control decks will have the highest, and midrange decks will usually fall somewhere in the middle.
Here's what I like to do when tuning my mana bend:
- Offset, I prepare all the lands aside and then that all the cards left are creatures and spells.
- Adjacent, I lay them out into piles co-ordinate to their mana costs. If I encounter that one pile is a lot higher or lower than usual (peradventure I have tons or 2-mana cards merely very few iii-mana cards), that's when I offset making changes to my deck.
- Finally, I'll put the lands dorsum in my deck, shuffle the whole thing together so play a few games to see if this new mana curve fabricated my deck whatsoever better.
This may seem hard, only as you build more than and more MTG decks over time, you'll develop an intuition for what mana curves work best for which decks.
Don't worry if yous don't go information technology correct on your first try. In fact, there is no right answer when information technology comes to building MTG decks! Office of the fun in deckbuilding is experimenting and trying things that have never been done before.
Conclusion – Edifice an MTG deck
Hopefully, this commodity has helped y'all sympathize the core principles behind building an MTG deck and inspired y'all to create a deck you'll enjoy playing!
Think, how you build your MTG deck is completely upwardly to you. These tips on deckbuilding are guidelines, non fix-in-stone rules. If you lot have your own deck ideas that you lot'd similar to pursue, go for information technology!
Exercise yous play Commander? See our guide on How to Build a Commander Deck, information technology'due south packed with tips and tricks! For some inspiration on the type of deck you'd like to create see, MTG Deck Types +xx Popular Deck Archetypes!
More Magic: The Gathering Articles
- How to Build a Commander Deck in MTG
- How Many Cards in a MTG Deck? MTG Deck Size
- MTG Deck Types +20 Popular Deck Archetypes!
- Sideboards in MTG: All You Need To Know!
- MTG Evergreen Keywords List
- MTG Counter
- MTG Counter (Markers)
- MTG Deathtouch
- MTG Defender
- MTG Double Strike
- MTG Enchant
- MTG Equip
- MTG Fright
- MTG Fight
- MTG Outset Strike
- MTG Flash
- MTG Flight
- MTG Haste
- MTG Hexproof
- MTG Indestructible
- MTG Intimidate
- MTG Lifelink
- MTG Menace
- MTG Protection
- MTG Prowess
- MTG Attain
- MTG Regenerate
- MTG Sacrifice
- MTG Shroud
- MTG Tap and Untap
- MTG Trample
- MTG Vigilance
- MTG Ward Explained
Emily
Hullo, I'1000 Emily, the tabletop gamer behind My Kind of Meeple. If this article helped you, I'd be honoured if yous'd say, "Thanks!" with a £iii coffee on Ko-fi.
Source: https://mykindofmeeple.com/how-to-build-an-mtg-deck-beginners-guide/
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