Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 10:11:42 -0500 From: "Leonard D. Blado" Subject: Re: Advice on a beginning deck > Being a neophyte in the MTG world I was wondering if anyone out > there can give a "newbie" some advice on building his first deck?? I > just getting into the game with my daughters and their friends and > would appreciate any advice. Well, my 'basics' are something like: Mana: 1. Usually you need a little over half as much mana production of a certain color for each spell of that color. This often gets simplified into "20 land for a 60 card deck", but it isn't entirely accurate. For total mana, I generally use the shorthand of 14 + 3 * average casting cost to determine the approximate number of lands I'll need, but this is merely a benchmark (and a fairly inaccurate one at that). 2. If you're playing with multiple colors, try and use as little colored mana as possible- this doesn't mean play with all artifacts. :) For example, a Fallen Askari is usually better than a Black Knight in a multi-color deck. 3. Keep your costs down. 4 mana is about the limit for 'reasonable' decks- anything more and you're seriously risking a mana screw. Those Shivans are nifty, but unless your deck is tuned to specifically deal with them, they'll just sit in your hand. Card Selection: 1. Look for 'card advantage'- cards which kill multiple cards at once, or cards which allow you to either get a better quality of draw or greater quantity of draw. Most of these are rare, but there are some notable commons, such as Crypt Rats. 2. If it has it empty text box, it probably bites. Most of the best creatures in the game either have some incredible advantage (the nigh-unto- unkillable Blinking Spirit) or some trivial drawback (Ernham Djinn's give-forestwalk) that makes them a bit disbalanced. 3. Don't let your opponent play their game. Most new players make the mistake of trying to build a deck that works in a void- they visualize a game of Magic like a road race, where both players are simply trying to work the other's life total down faster. While it's possible to build decks that totally ignore your opponent, it's probably not possible with any conceivable card set a new player would own. You want to always build into your deck some way of depleting your opponent's resources (creatures, mana, cards, whatever). This is usually called 'disruption' or 'removal' (depending on what exactly you're doing). Play of the Game: 1. Keep cards in hand. There are virtually no decks that really benefit from an empty hand, for a simple reason- they make a great bluff. Your opponent doesn't know that all you have in hand are 2 Forests, after all. By playing patiently, and mustering your resources in hand instead of simply dumping them on the table, you get around all sorts of mass destruction problems as well. Basically, avoid the mistake of automatically thinking that "I can cast it, so I *must* cast it". There are some circumstances where you'll want to break this rule, but that's a little involved- suffice it to say, you can figure it out pretty quickly. 2. Play cards and effects as late as possible. You generally want to keep your cards untapped and your spells uncast as long as possible. Suppose you have a Prodigal Sorcerer- if you deal 1 damage with it during your upkeep, you're going to be regretting it when I cast a Ball Lightning on my turn. 3. Learn the rules. Don't be put off by the hundreds of pages of D'angelo's- the rules are actually pretty simple, once you wade through the chaff and get down to the actual procedures involved. If you don't know the rules, you'll find yourself often getting snookered by someone who does. You should also acquaint yourself with various net resources. A good place to start is the MTG-STRATEGY-L FAQ... it'll give you a broad overview of various popular strategies, as well as providing definitions for all the Magic technospeak we tend to use. Once you're done there, you might peruse Frank Kusomoto's page- it's low on the jargon and provides samples of some of the more popular decks out there, as well as a brief explanation of how the deck works. Also somewhere out there (if you're particularly fearless about wandering the Net for days) is the Comprehensive Magic Resource List (or something like that), which contains links to everything you could possibly imagine Magic-related. I don't offhand know the URLs for any of the above, but if you wait long enough John Cataldo will post his weekly "MTG-STRATEGY-L FAQ is located at..." message, and the FAQ contains links that will (eventually, with patience) get you everywhere else I mentioned. -Len Blado