The Apprentice moved closer to his adversary, hand in satchel. He quickly reached for a handful of powerful orbs without looking, each one containing both stored mana and spells he learned from his Planeswalker mentor. His challenger did the same. He quickly glanced down into his palms ad the orbs he had grasped and felt the wave of terror overcome him as only mana orbs had been taken from his magic spell filled pouch.

“I should had listened to him,” The Apprentice sighed to himself. “Twenty-six mana orbs is just too many.”

Greetings new player! This will be the first in a long line articles regarding Magic: The Gathering for new players. I’ll be here once a week to help you understand fundamental Magic strategy and deck building. Together, we will work on an example deck created from two sample promotional deck packs that any retail card store can give you. All you have to do is ask. This currently unaltered deck can be found here, http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/paper-champions-new-player-deck/

This week, I will focus on lands. Yes, I know, land is not the most exciting part of Magic: The Gathering but it is the most important part and always has been since the game was created. If you have too little land in your deck, it will be difficult to not only have the land you need to cast spells early, you will struggle in mid and late game as well, unable to draw the land you need to keep up with your opponent.

At least one third of your deck MUST be land. Anything else is simply unacceptable. That’s not a negotiable ratio. Honestly, this is even too little but we will discuss this 20 land aspect a bit later. Remember: If you do not draw lands, you do not play. You sit there, bored, getting your face punched in by your opponent with no way to cast spells to defend yourself. There are times where you have the correct ratio of land in your deck and you still don’t draw lands, so don’t bother chancing skimping lands in your deck in favor of other things. For those of you bad at math, that’s at least 20 lands in a 60 card deck. NEVER play less, it’s simply just not worth it.

The same goes for adding too much land to the deck. Adding too many lands in your deck results in drawing too many lands and it’s hard to land draw your opponent to death. Knowing when to add land to your 20 you already have, how many extra to put in and to do it properly can be done in several methods.

Stacks Method

This is the method I’ve used over the last 20 years. Take your cards and place them in 2 rows of 5, 4 cards per stack as shown based on mana costs of each spell. Then place two land that coincide with the spells placed in each stack. You will finish up with 60 cards total and the minimal 20 land we spoke about earlier. This is fine for when you want to have only 20 land in a deck, but to be fair you will only have 2-3 copies of expensive spells maximum for most decks. when this is the case, slip a land into the 4th slot in place of a spell. Generally this will get you to 23 or 24 land. Here is the example deck below using this method. Disclaimer: This deck came with too much land.

Mana Symbol Method

I have heard of this method but each time someone explains it to me it never makes any sense. In a two color deck you add mana symbols of one color in the cost of all cards, then divide it by the number of mana symbols of the second color. then take that number and multiply it by the number of lands you have space for in my deck.Maybe you can wrap your head around that but I rely on my Stacks method.

Decktype Method

This method grants lans to your deck based on what type of deck you are playing. Aggro (Fast deck with small or hard hitting creatures) can get away with 20 to 22 lands if it is mono colored, 22 to 24 if it is two colored. Control (decks that focus on controlling the game by counter magic or board control0 sits between 24 and 26 lands. Combo (a deck focused on getting card combinations in play to win the game) is very dependent on the converted mana cost of your highest combo card. You want to get your obligated land in play to make the cast the combo.

The Rule of 24

The Rule of 24 is basically this; If you don’t know how many lands you need, the answer is 24. Seriously, I’ve seen this. Of course from there it is suggested that you playtest the deck to determine if you need more or less. This does not seem reliable to me but then again, when I first started playing Magic preconstructed theme decks had just over 20 land where more modern day theme decks have at least 24.

Mathematics Method

I won’t be delving into this method since I do not have a doctorate in math. If you are interested in this land theory, Riccardo Fazio has a paper on what lands should be put in a deck found here, http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/congress/article/viewFile/141/141

Let’s look at our sample deck in the link at the top. We were given a deck with 26 lands and according to my Stack Method that’s nearly 2 -3 lands too many. Sitting down and playing this deck showed me exactly what I suspected. In the late game, my deck starts to run out of answers, drawing lands instead of spells to answer my opponent’s threats. Having 2 too many land offers us an opportunity to add 2 new spells to our deck which we will look into more next week.

Take a look at your land distribution and size up how many lands you will need in total as well as of what color combination and quantity.

Next week we will take a look at our starter decks and focus them, honing in and focusing towards a beginning goal. Follow me on twitter https://twitter.com/TheAiokii or take a look at my other posts on Magic: The Monday. See you all next week!