A General beginning for a deck-building FAQ. Suggestions for structure as well as content would be appreciated. Tips for Deck construction. Introduction: ------------- This Document is designed to help the beginning magic player. If you have any input, please let me know, and I will try to incorporate it into the next posting. I have been playing magic for almost 1.5 years now, and I have won a few local tournaments. After having posted a series of articles in the same vein as ELF's guide to the forest, and Canticle's single card strategies (the original net sage), I still receive periodic mailings from people requesting advice on how to tune their deck. I am by no means the only person who has the talents to tune a deck, and there are certainly a great number of players who are as skillful, or more skillful than I, but I would like this document to serve as a basic guideline for deck construction essentials. Since it is aimed at the beginning player I will leave it to more seasoned players to flesh out a section for how some of these axioms are affected when moxen and Loti enter the equation. Colors vs. Speed: ----------------- There is a direct relationship between the number of colors you decide to place into your deck, and how fast your deck plays. Unfortunatly the fewer colors you choose the more likely you are to leave yourself vulnerable to some form of attack. A player who chooses an all red deck, will find himself quickly being able to cast all his spells. He will probably be able to get a quick jump start in the start of a match, but if ever faced with a circle of protection against red, would see his entire arsenal laid to waste, since red has no way of removing enchantments*. So it is always wise to add at least one additional color to your primary attack (even if you simply choose colorless artifacts to serve that purpose). Indeed even an all white deck would have a difficult time dealing with a sleighted deathgrip that counters white spells (or any single color you prefer) *) ICE age does provide a solution to the all red player for white enchantments, but the principle remains the same. Primary and Secondary Color. ---------------------------- When choosing your additional color it would probably be in your best interest to address the shortcomings of your primary color. In the above example the player could adopt white as his secondary color and then add a few disenchant's to his deck. Still there are considerations when adding a secondary color. First and foremost is land division. I have found it useful to make one of my colors more dominant both in spell selection and in land division. I might use 13 mountains and 7 plains instead of 10/10, and then include more red spells than white spells. The reason this becomes important is because of casting costs. a dragon whelp requires 2RR, and a wall of swords is 3W. Both require a total of 4 mana. the difference is that I can cast the wall of swords with only a single plains. while the dragon whelp requires at least 2 mountains (and indeed the more mountains I have the more fire it will breathe). So I will not select spells from my secondary color which require more than 1 of it's designated land type. This will ensure that I do not dilute my deck speed very much, but still retain the flexibility of a second color. (any multilands are counted among the secondary color lands. so If I have 4 plateau's, i would only need to add 3 plains for my total of 7) this can of course vary by personal taste. (Hopefully future revisions of this FAQ will include caveats for more than two colors) Creatures Vs. Non-Creatures. ---------------------------- Quite often people ask "how many creatures should be in my deck in proportion to my other spells?". This is a loaded question, since there really is no "correct" answer. You might decide to build a creature deck, and overwhelm your opponent with the little buggers, in which case most of your spells would be creatures. Or you could shun creatures alltogether, and build an energy deck with mostly non-creature spells. Either extreme is workable if you have a fiendish enough plot in mind. In the general case it is advisable to split the number of creatures and non-creatures about evenly. So in a 60 card deck you should have around 20 creatures and around 20 non creature spells. Percentage of Land. ------------------- It is rarely advisable to drop below 33% land. I have not built many successful decks that incorporated less than 35-38% land, but the trick here is to calculate your spell costs. A deck composed of mostly 1-2 casting cost spells should not consist of more than 33% land, and might conceivably do well with even less. Decks Relying on Huge creatures on the other hand will need extra mana to ensure that you will be able to cast something. Spell Selection. ---------------- Now that you have determined which colors you would like to play, it is time to select the strategy for your deck. you should consider a range of casting cost spells, and make sure that at least 50% of your spells fall at or below 3 mana to cast if you want your deck to be competitive. If you find yourself unable to cast anything by turn three you will quickly fall behind in the match. In order to have a strategy you have to have a plan. Wether it is some twisted combination of cards you have thought up on your own, or have seen in Canticle's SCS lectures, or wether it is some general principle to which you want all your spells to adhere. You could start with a single card like the dwarven warriors, and then see what you can get from there. what types of creatures would be particularly annoying if they could get through unblocked? Whirling Dervish? Farrels Zealot? The Fallen? Marsh Vipers? Carrion Ants? Lets say you decide Carrion Ants. You have already commited yourself to primary and secondary colors Black/red. Does this combination pose any glaring weaknesses? How can they be resolved if at all? (in this case perhaps a nev's disk as a last resort to remove enchantments). Spell Analysis. --------------- Magic has five primary colors each of which have their own specific charter. Each Color has it's strengths and weaknesses, and the combination of the right colors and cards should consider each of the following categories. 1) Can your spells protect you from dammage? 2) Can your spells inflict unconditional dammage on your opponent? 3) How fast can your spells be cast? 4) how long can you sustain an attack? 5) Can you remove opponent artifact and enchantment threats? a purely white deck might rate very highly in categories 1, and 5, medium in category 3, 4, and very poorly in category 2. While a pure black deck might rate very high in category 3, high in category 2 , medium in category 2 and 1, and poorly in category 5. your Job is to join those spells and colors which maximize each of these categories. If you find that your deck does poorly in one of these areas but makes up for it by being outstanding in all of the others you might just have built a contender. This type of deck would probably do great against most of its competition, and then fail miserably against a small percentage of decks. A helpful design tool would be to keep a few of the "staple" average decks handy to test your deck against. perhaps a red/green creature deck to represent the weenie hordes... and a red direct dammage big creature deck to represent that contingient. If you can handle both then chances are your deck would do alright. Play a few sample hands till turn 7, and keep track of how much dammage you could have done to a virtual opponent. Do you like your position? Now try a blue black card denial, and a blue white enchantment deck. You should be able to identify your weaknesses. If your deck does not rely heavily on offense give yourself points for being able to remove opponent cards, or turning opponent cards into your own advantages. Card Interaction. ----------------- Lets say you have chosen red/white as your primary and secondary colors. And you want to use the orcish artillery to dammage your opponent. You take a look at cards in white that could make the artillery useful. perhaps a circle of protection red, perhaps a spirit link. which do you choose? Spirit link on an orcish artillery is nice, and it has the added benefit of possibly neutralizing one of your opponents creatures as well. Cop Red will not gain you any life, but will prevent red dammage to you. At this point you might say spirit link would be the right choice, since Cop Red is too directed. Ie what if your opponent plays black green, then your cop red will only protect you from your own artillery, with none of the frills of a spirit link life gain. It is almost as useless as playing karma against an opponent who does not use swamps. It is generally a good rule not to include directed cards in your deck, unless you will always have a use for them against any opponent. Ie, if you play with karma always in your deck, then you should also include a magical hack to make the combination work no matter what lands you opponent uses. you might even want to play with a cop white in case you opponent plays white as well. In the example above choosing Cop red over spirit link would force me to justify the cop. Perhaps I would add mana barbs, and power surges, and then the interaction between the cop, the mana barps, the power surges, and the orcish artillery would lead me to a deck design...spells that dammage both players. perhaps I would add an armageddon clock, and lace it red. perhaps a skull of orm to retrieve my enchantments... once a theme has been discovered a multitude of cards beg to be a part of it. Unfortunatly this leads you into the next category. Which cards do not belong? -------------------------- It is never easy to trim your beautiful deck down to the "zone" (#cards < 65). So how do you choose which cards do not belong? I use the following metrics... -one mana rule. if white is my second color, and I have a serra in my deck, it must go. the WW is too expensive for me to wait on. I might have a mishra's a strip mine, 2 mountains a plains and a sol ring. and that serra would still be stuck in my hand, while a shivan dragon would already be on the table. this will generally work since I always place more of my primary lands in my deck. I do not reccomend having spells costing more than one requisite mana in each of your colors even if you do split the land 10/10. you will invariably find yourself missing that second mana! So leave those spells only in your primary color, and remove them from your secondary. you will notice immediate improvement. -Are any of my cards too directed? Ie, do they only target a specific color? red elemental blast is a wonderful spell, but it does not make it into my play deck because it is too one-dimensional. If my opponent is not playing blue, then this card would be entirely useless to me. It would be almost as bad as telling my opponent I am skipping a turn, when I draw it from my deck. -Susceptible cards. What happens if my opponent takes this card away? I once had one of my knights of thorn controlled, and found myself without a disenchant for a few turns. I had no way to defend against them since all my blockers were red, and all my dammage spells red as well (knights of thorn have protection from red). Needless to say after the match I took a long hard look at how important this card was to my deck. I saw a player play gloom (already a dubious card to have in a regular play deck.) against a blue white player who was quite delighted at the concept and immediatly sleighted white to black. a few turns later the poor sap played another gloom (apparently not having learned his lesson), and found the blue player sleighting it to green... which was the secondary color of the player who had cast gloom. In this manner he hurt himself more than his opponent by playing a susceptible card. Tsunami, and flashfires also fall into this category. Not only are they directed, but incredibly susceptible (especially tsunami! look out for that magical hack). -Mutual benefit/harm cards. Mana Flare has lost probably as many games as it has won. When playing a card that benefits your opponent as well, be sure to account for this in your strategy somewhere, and reduce your opponents benefit of the card. Otherwise this type of card is a candidate for removal. -Conflicting Types. It has always puzzled me how people can manage to use both the rack, and the black vice. It seems to me that you would build your strategy around either one. ie either your strategy forces your opponent to hold onto more cards, or it forces him to discard. Other examples of this would be playing with meekstones, and creatures that would be affected by the meekstone. Or playing with an ivory tower in a fast weenie horde deck. -Dual purpose cards. These are more difficult to spot since generally they are a part of a theme and cards should interact beneficially for you. Still disenchant and dust to dust both remove artifacts. having both is extremely paranoid. choose the more general of the two (disenchant). In a sense orcish artillery and lightning bolts accomplish the same thing. direct dammage. Having 4 artillery can justify removing a few lightning bolts or fireballs. The trick here is to break your cards into categories. (Offensive/Defensive/Life Gain/Mana producing). within these categories you might find overlapping cards that serve multiple purposes. favor those over others. -Any cards you added to hose your friend Joe. They are probably directed at his particular type of deck and will be useless in the general case. Your Sideboard. --------------- This is where you Want your directed cards. Especially if you find that your deck exhibits a certain weakness, you will need to make up for it here. If you can not think of any directed cards, then think of other cards that were weeded out of your deck and place them here. You should address each of the five categories of deck design, and make sure your deck is capable of handling all of them. If it is weak in one area, then make up for it in the sideboard. you should also consider opponent strategies... how does your deck fare against a weenie horde? if not well, then maybe a holy light? or an earthquake?, or a fog, or a few boneflutes? Did you decide not to tackle the enchantment problems your deck has? put your tranquilities into the sideboard, or your disenchants, or scavenger folk. Is your opponent playing with lots of direct dammage? maybe you need a stream of life, or a simulacrum, or reverse dammage or eye for an eye? opponent have lots of big critters, while yours are small? meekstones could help there. In short address those things that defeat your deck, and your best counterpunches to them. perhaps you are playing all black and face all white. you can be certain might have karma in his sideboard. prepare with nev's disk, or glooms. Experience is the best teacher of what your sideboard can use. when you loose a match in a tournament ask yourself what your deck was missing, and if a solution exists in your colors. if so that solutionis at least a candidate for your sideboard.