How to Build a Magic: The Gathering Deck That Wins

Building a Magic: The Gathering deck is not just about finding a deck online, purchasing cards, and then beating your friends. Magic: the gathering is about creativity and fun. But you still want to win.

This article will give you the basics for constructing a consistent and winning Magic: The Gathering deck that is unique to you.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• At least 20 land cards
• At least 40 non-land cards
• Preferred: One full box of a latest edition or expansion set.
• Preferred: 20 lands of each of the five colours.

1. Get all of your cards out and organise in relation to color and type. Separate your lands and artifacts out.

2. Limit yourself to 60 cards no matter what.

3. Think of a theme. Do you want to bash your opponent with creatures? Do you want to counterspell everything that your opponent tries? Do you want to make your opponent discard?

4. Think of a secondary theme. If you want to bash your opponent with creatures, do you want to pump up your creatures? Do you want to protect your creatures? Do you want to eliminate your opponent's creatures to let your creatures through?

5. Decide how many colours with which you would like to play. It is best to start out using one colour, as this is the easiest, most consistent and effective way to win. If you have many dual lands, you could pick more than one colour, but this article will assume you picked one colour.

6. From the colour you chose, set aside six sets of four creatures, so that you end up with 20 total creatures. Creatures are important even if you do not want to bash your opponent. Make sure that you err on the side of creatures that give the most bang for your buck. If you want to construct a weenie deck, choose only creatures that cost only one or two mana. If you want heavy creatures, choose only eight of the creatures to be the heavy hitters, while choosing twelve as supporting cast members that you can get out early.

7. You need to decide here whether you want more artifacts enchantments or spells to support your main theme. To a certain extent, the cards you own will decide this for you. Make sure to choose card for which you have full play sets (four), so that you are more likely to draw them.

8. Make sure that there is as much positive support in relation to cards as possible. So, for example, if you have a white/black weenie deck, or a red burn deck (lots of direct damage) you will want to add artifacts, enchantments and spells that allow you to draw lots of cards quickly. Four howling mines are a good addition to almost any weenie deck.

9. No matter what, keep your deck to sixty cards. Ask yourself, do I have sufficient mana? Do I have ways of drawing extra cards? What do I have to prevent my opennent from bashing me with creatures/making me discard/killing me with direct damage?

10. Ask yourself what you can play in the first/second turns, what you can play in the fourth/fifth turns and what you can play once mana is no longer an issue. As you increase up this scale, you need to have fewer of the corresponding cards. In other words, err on the side of early game and leave one or two sets of four cards for something to end the game with.

11. Shuffle your deck well; do not stack your deck. When you stack your deck, this means you have created a poor deck that would lose at a tournament when an opponent has the right to shuffle your deck. Then, draw seven cards and play five mock turns, maybe ten if you feel like playing it out. Repeat this process about ten times. If you find that your first draw and subsequent four draws are leaving you without being able to play your cards down to nearly nothing in your hand, then you need to rebuild your deck either adding more mana or putting in more low cost cards.

12. Do not get emotionally attached to cards. Stick to your theme and only add cards that support this theme. If you want to win, then you cannot just put in cards you like; put in cards that win!

13. Have fun and find a live opponent who, like you, wants to experiment and learn, as opposed to just copying a deck online and trying to make up for a bad self-image by bashing people with someone else's idea for a deck.

Tips & Warnings

• Work with what you have before buying new cards. Often you'll find that the cards you purchased to make the perfect deck end up unused.
• Try to think up new strategies rather than depending on decks formulated by others. This is more fun and can result in victories as people will not be expecting it.
• Magic: The Gathering is alot of fun, but can take over your life. If you are finding it difficult to think of nothing else but magic, take a week off. This will clear your head and allow you to build better decks.

[ladychappers]

on 1/17/2009 This is really cool-- you broke it down into such simple terms! Thanks!!!