Where to Even Begin?
Deck Help forum
Posted on Feb. 22, 2014, 3:44 p.m. by cybergreen
Hello, everyone!
After realizing almost all my friends play MTG, I went and bought a 2014 Deck Builder's Tool Kit from Amazon and a lot of 500 various cards from ebay. I tried to buy enough so I could make at least three decks so myself, my brother, and another friend could play.
I made a couple decks the first day I received the DBTK and my brother and I learned how to play (and had a good time =P) but a couple friends criticized the decks for not having any kind of actual strategy or structure.
So, I'd really appreciate some help. Here's my list of cards: http://tappedout.net/users/cybergreen/inventory
If you could just skim over the list and give me a few starting points, I'd be very grateful.
What I'm thinking at the moment is a generic Red/Green big monster/direct damage deck, a black/blue control/mill deck, a white life gain/token deck, and a multicolor artifact deck.
Where would I need to start for each of those? Thanks in advance!
-Cyber
ducttapedeckbox says... #3
Are you interested in just playing with your brother/friend? Or are you looking to start playing decks in a certain format? Either way, I'd recommend looking around the site for some budget decks (use the advanced deck search option to search for that hub) and see what turns up. Budget Standard decks probably have the most in common with the cards you have.
Try them out with the site's playtester, or try out Cockatrice to see what you like. Once you get a feel for that, let us know what you'd really like to build and I'm sure users would be more than willing to help out.
February 22, 2014 4:25 p.m.
smash10101 says... #4
One of the most important things to think about when building a deck is synergy. Play cards that work well together. Don't play cards that detract from each other. A mill/control deck shouldn't have much in they way of anything that would win by damage. And it shouldn't have any sort of aggressive stuff either. An aggressive G/R shouldn't have defenders or cards to be played in defense. Also remember, consistency is important. Try to play lots of 4-ofs and never play more than 60 cards without a good reason.
I'm not going to teach you how to build a deck right now, but if you put one of your deck lists up here, I could take a look at it and tell you what's good and what's not, and suggest replacements.
If you want to play standard, feel free to copy my deck. Without the expensive lands (just replace them with basic lands), it's super cheap and still competitive. You can find the list here.
February 22, 2014 5:04 p.m.
cybergreen says... #5
Okay, let me clarify a bit: I've played TCGs for years, and I know how to use Google. I've read plenty about basic strategies. My problem is the specific cards I have. I don't have anything worth building a deck around (from what I can tell) and I have mostly just one copy of everything so most decks I look at are way too far from anything viable to even be a model.
February 22, 2014 5:25 p.m.
MadScientist says... #6
The main problem with your card list is most of your collection are singletons.
Building an efficient deck with synergy usually requires paysets of the cards you want to include (4).
However the Commander format requires a singleton deck of 99 cards plus a commander.
With your collection you might want to look into building a commander deck or two to play with.
February 22, 2014 6 p.m.
My two cents, keep it simple and keep it stupid. You have a brother to practice on, so that is great. You two should pick opposite styles and test it by playing each other, you will get a lot of criticism along the way.
The trick is to look for the constructive kind of criticism and ignore the rest. Also, don't cave in to what everyone else is doing. It helps to stick to something you will like to play, even if what you like is totally bizarre.
Also, if you really want to get a handle on deck building, look for a lot of contrast. An example would be playing a really fast weenie deck vs slow big creature deck. Opposite ideas with plenty of contrast in between, one is bound to lose but at least you will know why.
Hope that helps, good luck!
February 22, 2014 6:08 p.m.
smash10101 says... #8
Even with a history of playing other TCGs, I really would not recommend starting with Commander/EDH. The deckbuilding is much more difficult than a casual 60 card deck and it generally requires a decent card pool.
Again, without looking through your collection (and because I don't want to build a deck for you), I see a few options:
- You could buy a premade deck, and then edit it to your liking. This could work for either casual or standard.
- You could order singles from a website like TCGplayer.com to build a deck you design here on T/O or another deckbuilding website. Again, this would work for either casual or standard.
- You could try to work with what you got in your toolkit. This will make worse decks, but if you're playing only against other decks built from this card pool, it could be balanced.
No matter what you choose, again, I suggest putting a decklist up here, and ping me (just tag me in a comment on it or something) and I'll be happy to help as much as I can.
February 22, 2014 6:27 p.m.
cybergreen says... #9
Thank you, obitus and smash, for actually giving me useful advice =P
February 23, 2014 3:45 p.m.
I am happy to hear what I said was actually useful.
While your at it, you have a lot of singles in your collection. So you kind of have this nice opportunity to put together a deck entirely made up of a single copies of cards. This is not by any means an easy way to start deck building, in fact I am sure people would advise against it.
While you wait for more cards, try to put together a deck for the fun of it that you think will work with just one copy of each card in the deck. I assure you the game play will at least be interesting. When you get more cards you can start building regular decks and what not.
February 23, 2014 3:58 p.m.
cybergreen says... #11
I made two decks, a Green ramp for my brother, and a Black/Blue control for myself.
smash10101, would you mind giving me some feedback, specifically concerning the Black/Blue?
cybergreen says... #2
Terribly sorry, here's the link to my cards.
February 22, 2014 3:46 p.m.