Deckbuilding [Getting Started]

May 25, 2012

Building a deck is a tough experience. There are almost 1500 unique cards just in Standard, about 225 per color and about 350 colorless cards available to each color. Those numbers fluctuate up and down a bit as sets rotate in and out of standard, but it can be overwhelming for considering the many possible interactions to construct your deck. So I wanted to write something to help new players get started and give some tips to help avoid mistakes and make deck building an easier and more enjoyable experience.

1. DECIDE YOUR DECKS PURPOSE

Before you even start assembling cards think about your deck, What do you want it to do? Do you want to build a Tribal deck revolving around Werewolves or Vampires. Or maybe you want to build a deck around a specific strategy, you want to win very quickly and burn your opponent out. Or maybe you want to build a theme deck based on your favorite movie or recent events. Whatever you want to get out of your deck, there are near limitless possibilities to make that happen.

2. FIND YOUR WIN CONDITION

OK, now that you’ve decided on your purpose you need to decide how your deck will win. Do you want to take over the game with continual beatdown, will you control the game with permission and removal, will you race to assemble the components to a game-ending super-combo? Find your win condition, and find cards that help you accomplish that. The “Stalking Trample” deck sought to enable 1 specific card with a simple mechanic; the control deck takes a general strategy and makes it work from start to finish, and the Self Mill deck takes a selection of cards that have good synergy and use them together to complete one goal.

You can go read this article to read a bit more on each of the 3 main categories for decks.

3. AMASS YOUR SUPPLIES



You’ve probably already started doing this, finding cards that you want to use. Look for cards that work well with your overall strategy. Continuing with the above examples.

“Stalking Trample” sought out creatures with Trample and cards that were advantageous to exploit trample and our dependence on creatures

“U/B Control” looked for cheap counterspells for permission and allowing us to stall, and removal for more control options directly against the board.

“U/G Self Mill” wanted enablers that would mill ourselves and then a collection of finishers that would greatly benefit from all of the cards in our graveyard.

Just because your deck has a theme, that doesn’t mean your should over-commit to it. Our control deck has Delver of Secrets, a card that doesn’t offer any control options, but does have great synergy with the deck. After all, a deck of nothing but kill spells and counters would have no method of reducing our opponent’s life to zero.

You’ll want to find cards that contribute to your overall strategy and have synergy with your deck. Your deck should be 60 cards. This allows you to make your deck more consistent, making it more likely you’ll draw the cards you need when you need them.

To help keep things simple I recommend starting with The Rule of 9.

Now that you’ve selected what cards you’re going to want in your deck, we’ll start going over the specifics for what each of those 60 cards will be.

4. CONSIDER THE MANA CURVE

You can reliably play 1 land per turn for the first three turns, after that it becomes less reliable. This means the highest point you will reliably hit on time is the 3-4 mana mark. This will be the point on most curves with the most powerful and reliable cards. Each deck wants to have a good start, so having a good number of 1-2 drops is important; but the cards lower on the mana curve tend to be much less effective as the game goes on. You will usually have a few cards more expensive than 4, but they will be useless until you have sufficient mana to cast them, meaning they should be less numerous as you will have more time to draw them and cannot use them until you have the mana to play them.

Most average decks will use somewhere around:

1 mana : 4-8 cards

2 mana : 4-8 cards

3 mana : 6-12 cards

4 mana : 4-10 cards

5+ mana : 2-6 cards

Your mana curve is tied closely to your win condition. Fast aggro decks will top out at 4 mana and lean much more heavily on their 2-3 mana cards. Ramp decks that can produce a lot of mana very quickly will have more cards at the top of the curve. Your curve will vary from deck to deck, but this should give you a general idea of what a good mana curve will look like.

5. PLAY THE NUMBERS

Now that you’ve selected what cards you want in your deck, you need to figure out the numbers for each card. You are allowed to run up to 4 copies of any card, except basic lands. Here are some basic rules for deciding quantities for the number of copies to run of each card.

4 copies. This is a card that you want to draw every game, preferably having one in your opening hand. These are usually your bread and butter cards that consistently help you towards your win condition.

3 copies. This card is something you want to draw often, but don’t want a lot of for various reasons. These are good cards, but you won’t be seeing multiples in the same game very often.

2 copies. You want to draw this card eventually, and usually only about once per game.

1 copy. You will not be seeing this card often. You will usually see it about once every 10 or so games. Singletons are usually bad, they reduce the consistency of your deck, and make it much less likely you will draw the card you want when you need it. Unless you have a way to search for and find cards on demand, running a singleton is often a bad choice.

6. GET YOUR MANA RIGHT

Probably the most important tip here. Every deck needs mana, and having the right amount can be tricky. There are no hard and fast rules on land, it varies from deck to deck and has a lot of factors contributing to it. If you are unsure of how much Land you need, 24 is a good number to start at for a 60 card deck. In most cases it’s better to run a little too much land than not enough. Decks with higher mana needs will want to run more land, and cheaper decks will usually run a little less land.

Now that you have a block set aside for Lands, you need to decide how to fill it. A good way to decide the ratio is to count the mana symbols for each spell, this lets you gauge your color commitment. For example, in our “GU self mill” deck we had a split of 24 Green symbols and 15 Blue symbols for a roughly 60%/40% split, and our mana base reflects that split. This method is imperfect, but it does give you a good starting point.

Never undervalue the power of mana fixers. Even simple fixers like Evolving Wilds can be quite helpful. Dual lands (lands that allow you access to two colors) are amazing and the fixing they offer is always appreciated.

There have been quite a few articles written over just mana bases. They do a much better and in depth analysis than I can.

7. PUT IT ALL TOGETHER

This is the stage we’ve all been waiting for, put all of the cards you’ve chosen together with your lands to make your 60 card deck. You’ve done the theorycrafting, you made this deck, it’s your baby, and you’re ready to play. Take it to your friends, take it to FNM, take it online, post it on /r/magicdeckbuilding, take your deck wherever you play magic. As you test your deck and play with it more you’ll find what does and doesn’t work. Slowly tune and refine your deck with gradual changes adding and removing cards to make it better.

8. EXTRA READING

There are always people on /r/magicdeckbuilding willing to help you build and tune your deck, don’t be afraid to ask for help.