The combined release of Oath of the Gatewatch and Shadows over Innistrad is an exciting time for the Magic Duels player. With a huge influx of new cards, there is a wide variety of new decks and strategies to try out, and the field has more breadth than ever. This article will review a few of the new tricks and synergies to explore and the types of cards that help support them. And I've included three decks you can take into battle right away or modify into your own creations.

How Does Magic Duels Deck Building Work?

Before we get too deep into specific strategies, let's take a moment to go over how deck building in Magic Duels works, as it's a little different than the printed formats.

Magic Duels uses what's often referred to as "1-2-3-4" deck building. This means you're allowed one of a given mythic rare, two of a given rare, three of a given uncommon, and four of a given common. Not all cards from the printed set make their way onto Magic Duels, but typically a large majority of the strong and interesting cards are included in digital boosters.

Strategies that revolve around building around a specific rare in Standard don't work as well in Magic Duels, but archetypes that are heavily supported at common and uncommon are comparatively stronger because you have access to more of their supporting cards.

Red-Green Werewolves

One archetype that makes the jump from Standard to Magic Duels particularly well is Red-Green Werewolves. This creature-heavy deck is aggressive and can quickly take over the battlefield, especially if your opponent stumbles.

This is partially because of its heavy support at uncommon with cards like Ulrich's Kindred and Howlpack Resurgence. There is also a wide variety of individually powerful Wolves and Werewolves like Duskwatch Recruiter and Pack Guardian. The tribe is also not lacking in strong rares/mythic rares with cards like Geier Reach Bandit and Arlinn Kord.

Black Colorless Midrange

The colorless cards from Oath of the Gatewatch provide a lot of extra power if you're able to produce colorless mana. You have access to strong rares like Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher. Bearer of Silence and Reaver Drone are fantastic incentives to build this kind of deck. Black cards in Oath of the Gatewatch work great with colorless cards to form a resilient midrange deck that can clear the way for its efficient threats to attack unopposed.

Black-Red Vampire Madness

The last deck I'll leave you with today is an aggressive deck built around the madness mechanic from Shadows over Innistrad. Most of the cards supporting this strategy are Vampires, so it's easy to leverage a light Vampire tribal theme to give an extra dimension to this already highly synergistic deck.

There's a world of possible decks out there waiting to be discovered. Have fun experimenting with these ideas, or strike out on your own. See you in Battle Mode!