TL;DR am looking for some resources to help me learn to build and use decks with synergy.
Am new to MTG, first experience was MTG Arena on December 30th. Now have several Paper decks so am learning. I see decks where one card helps another card become stronger, example Ajani's Pridemate and cards with LifelInk. Some of the decks I've played against have been ruthlessly fantastic at using cards to create other cards that are killers. Have seen the posts of Mana Curve (am familiar from HearthS) and formulas such as 40% land, 40% creatures, 20% spells and that's good advice.
I'd like to be able to build some decks where the cards work with each other.
Have read Reid Duke's "Level One."
Pretty much, you get better at this the more you play; even just the more cards you see, to some extent. Certainly, the more cards you use.
You’ll see things that line up with other things, more and more. Also, simply being familiar with the idea of (and importance of) synergy means you will be looking for it, subconsciously at the least.
Something that might be useful is checking out decks that are known to do well, be they strong EDH decks, or tournament-topping decks of whatever formats. In fact, all the deck primers in these forums should point out various bits of synergy, so that’s probably a reasonable place to start.
So every deck is somewhat synergistic, it's just a matter of degrees; sometimes it's as simple as aggressive decks not playing cards that cost higher than three mana, just because the deck wants to make fewer land drops. Other decks, such as pure combo decks, are 100% synergy-based. So if you're actually into literal combos, I suggest you check out decks of that archetype.
Synergy is essentially cards aligned in function... Avaricious Dragon + Rakdos Pit Dragon, have a degree of synergy for example, since one ditches your hand and the other benefits from that. As would Soulflayer + Bedlam Reveller, since they care about different things in the graveyard. While these two examples have synergy you wouldn't expect to see them in a deck, the first has too high a mana cost and the second fails completely against graveyard hate.
A two card combo like Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek, has synergy but it's also needs a bunch of support and is relatively fragile.
When you look at popular decks you also need to look at the mana curves, generally decks have more 1 drops than 2 drops for example, but there isn't a hard rule. When building your deck also remember that to see a card that is 4x in your opening hand isn't guaranteed, so if there is another card that performs nearly the same function it can sometimes be worth running too, as an example; Path to Exile + Chained to the Rocks, path is great, but in a push, if you are playing mountains chained can get the job done.
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Am new to MTG, first experience was MTG Arena on December 30th. Now have several Paper decks so am learning. I see decks where one card helps another card become stronger, example Ajani's Pridemate and cards with LifelInk. Some of the decks I've played against have been ruthlessly fantastic at using cards to create other cards that are killers. Have seen the posts of Mana Curve (am familiar from HearthS) and formulas such as 40% land, 40% creatures, 20% spells and that's good advice.
I'd like to be able to build some decks where the cards work with each other.
Have read Reid Duke's "Level One."
Thanks so much for helping out this total Noob.
You’ll see things that line up with other things, more and more. Also, simply being familiar with the idea of (and importance of) synergy means you will be looking for it, subconsciously at the least.
Something that might be useful is checking out decks that are known to do well, be they strong EDH decks, or tournament-topping decks of whatever formats. In fact, all the deck primers in these forums should point out various bits of synergy, so that’s probably a reasonable place to start.
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A two card combo like Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek, has synergy but it's also needs a bunch of support and is relatively fragile.
When you look at popular decks you also need to look at the mana curves, generally decks have more 1 drops than 2 drops for example, but there isn't a hard rule. When building your deck also remember that to see a card that is 4x in your opening hand isn't guaranteed, so if there is another card that performs nearly the same function it can sometimes be worth running too, as an example; Path to Exile + Chained to the Rocks, path is great, but in a push, if you are playing mountains chained can get the job done.