Thanks to some really nice people here I was able to view a quickstart guide and feel kinda brave enough to go to the local gaming shop and ask for help.
But the quickstart guide simply said that I need a 60 card deck. I have some cards already, what are the rules and any helpful hints for choosing what 60 cards to pick from what I have already? I don't want to trouble some player if I'm not somewhat prepared to learn.
Lots to digest for you. I'm super old school and categorize decks into Aggro, Control or Combo or some combination of the three. Newer players recognize a fourth, Midrange and some combination of the four types. This is a really good read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_deck_types
But even that can be overwhelming for beginners. This is why I strongly suggest learning from someone. There's an insane amount of deck construction theory that goes into it.
So let's start with a basic question.
What kind of cards do you have and how many? You don't have to answer necessarily in that order.
It will be a huge help to learn the Turn Sequence. It might seem like alot to learn at first, but once you have it down, it'll be second nature to you. It will help to write it down or print it out until you're doing it without a thought. These are the 5 phases of each turn in order.
1. Beginning phase
2. Pre-combat main phase
3. Combat phase
4. Post-combat main phase
5. Ending phase
Also, try to remember that your creatures attack your opponents - not their creatures. Creatures don't attack creatures.
Kind of cards? If you mean the colors and type, I've got some of the colors that don't have that many of a particular type, for example I don't have a lot of life sorcery cards, but I've got some of everything. If you mean set, they are just all over the map, though most seem to date between 2005-2012. Total number, I think I've got between 2000-2500, I'll attach a picture of the box they are in. That's why I want to be somewhat prepared, sifting through that many cards to get 60 seems like it would take a long time.
Thank you for the turn sequence and the tip. And thank you both for helping a newbie.
Well, ultimately what matters are these things:
1) Do you have enough cards that you want to play in (usually one to three) colors you want? Ideally, in most formats and most situations, your deck should wind up being two colors, which is why dual lands are some of the most powerful and valued lands in all of Magic.
2) Do you have enough multiples of the cards you want to play so that you can consistently draw them? Most cards, you should be playing three or four of. If they're good enough to play, they're good enough to draw into several times a game. You also need to be able to somewhat predict what you're going to get in a given game - a lot of new players make the mistake of a deck full of one-offs that has no consistency.
Get sleeves and card boxes for those cards. You'll appreciate them in the long run.
OK, so you got a fairly good start but I have no idea if you got a bunch of weak cards or a good mix. No worries. I wasn't expecting you to have anything more than 200 cards.
You gotta start somewhere so start rifling through the cards and see what catches your eye. Sorting will help. As a start, sort them by color. Create a pile for lands, the five basic colors, colorless, and everything else. Watch for the cards that catch your interest or fancy. See any Eldrazi, Vampires, Goblins, Elves? See any cards that deal direct damage, or let you search yur library?
Or do you see something weird and bonkers that makes no sense?
Once you find a handful of cards that catches your fancy, decided on 1,2 or 3 colors to play. Then rifle through the cards for those colors that didn't catch your fancy and see if any makes sense and add them to your pile (make note of how many of each color you add). Note that colorless cards have numbers like but nothing else. You can look through these and freely add any that caches your interest.
When you get up to about 35 or so cards stop and count out how many of each basic color you have in each pile (ignore colorless). Then find your lands and add the same basic ratio of each color to make a 60 card deck. Lands that add more than one color type are desirable for now.
This is a really really rough outline to building a deck. It won't work and you'll loose your first 1 to 50 games. That's OK. You don't want to know how many games I lost when I started out.
Now shuffle your deck and draw seven. Do you have at least one to two lands? Do you have at least one spell that costs just 1 mana (we refer to this as 1cmc) of any color?
Does that spell color match the land(s) in your hand?
Now play that land, tap, cast that spell. Then draw a card. Is this card a land or a spell? Can you put down another land and cast a 2cmc spell? Draw a card and do the same for 3cmc.
Regardless of the outcome, do this for 4, 5, etc... now shuffle the cards back into your deck and repeat the whole thing. Note how many lands you get and whether you can cast spells on each "turn". Sometimes it helps to note it down in a notepad.
This is called Goldfishing where you play a deck without an opponent and see how long it takes to get him/her down to 0 life. Or in your case. A better feel for how the deck might behave.
I don't have my formulas but a 24/60 deck should net you a 97% probability of always drawing a hand with at least 1 land with a 12% probability of drawing exactly 1. Don't mistake what that last sentence as meaning that if you draw 100 hands, that 3 of those hands will have no lands. The possibility resets each time you shuffle your deck.
Now take that deck you worked so hard to assemble, lose a round, and your opponent will probably tear apart your deck, rifle through your other cards, and put together a new deck with at least one color you had no interest in. My first deck was taken apart and turned into a BR (Black = B and Red = R. Blue is odd man out with U) vampire/dragon deck. My mentor started with a five color WUBRG deck until it was torn apart and turned into IIRC, a WUG deck. By the time we paired off, he was playing pure hellish U.
Tip, a good opponent will know you're new and explain his card choices, why he plays what card, explain your cards and may even show you his hand to teach you. Even patiently answer questions. If he does none of these things, he may not be a good choice to teach you.
And always, you can ask about specific rules or cards here.
@SavannahLion you were right, I died gloriously, lol.
The local shop plays a variation called Commander. I decided to buy one of the premade decks. The shop owner said normally she'd encourage buying additional packs to swap out the weaker cards but with my box I wouldn't need them. I used just the premade deck the first game and even with a lot of help, yeah it was a slaughter. I went home and used the tips on this thread and tried to swap out cards, brought it back last night to the gaming shop. Out of three of us playing, I actually was the second person to die, lol.
I let the guys look at my deck after, they said it actually was pretty good for a beginner. I don't know if I'm going to keep it though, with that game variation the "ooh, ooh cool!" cards didn't work as I hoped they would. Still, good practice.
I can't possibly cover everything that goes into building a deck, but I can suggest a starting point: tribes. Pick a format you like, and figure out what the solid tribes are for that format. For example, in standard there are dinosaurs, zombies, vampires, and so on. Learn all the cards in the tribe you choose, and learn what the best support cards are for the colors that that tribe consists of. For example, if you choose vampires, then you want to learn what the common and useful black and white cards are, as well as all of the cards that are vampires or have some effect related specifically to vampires. Next, create a list of about 26 of the best creatures in that tribe you can find. Put in about 10 support cards, like Cast Out, Walk the Plank, and so on. Put in about 24 lands. You've made your first deck, and it should be an okay deck too. Next you can see how other people built that same deck, practice playing that deck, and make modifications.
That's how I started out, and I thought it was a good mixture of learning, fun, and effectiveness. When you're ready to get serious then learn all of the cards in the format you're interested in, study the top tier decks, and plow through the "MtG Deck Building Series" on youtube. That series is really good and covers everything from probability calculations to deck testing.
It sounds like you had a good time despite getting pummeled.
If it helps anybody, it took me about a year to consistently beat my mentor. He was running a brutal (at the time) but slow artifact/blue control deck. It took me a long time to figure out that a BR mana hungry deck wasn't the answer so I switched to a Wx White Weenie deck. A similar strategy would be Aggro.
Commander is a high hurdle for beginners so kudos for not letting complexity hold you back! Every Magic game you play (of any format) will make you a little better than before. I can already tell that you have the right attitude to succeed at Magic. Keep it up. I'll be interested to hear of further progress.
Commander wasn't tough compared to the other night. I walked in, they asked if I was there for something called a draft. Well, no guts, no glory, so I said sure. It was deck building on the spot with expansion packs that were passed around. Yeah, I was pathetic, but it was fun. The first guy they paired me with had made a deck similar to the one I put together for Commander, so I was all buddy buddy with him once the event was over.
Everyone is not only helpful, they seem to love helping me. It's nice.
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But the quickstart guide simply said that I need a 60 card deck. I have some cards already, what are the rules and any helpful hints for choosing what 60 cards to pick from what I have already? I don't want to trouble some player if I'm not somewhat prepared to learn.
But even that can be overwhelming for beginners. This is why I strongly suggest learning from someone. There's an insane amount of deck construction theory that goes into it.
So let's start with a basic question.
What kind of cards do you have and how many? You don't have to answer necessarily in that order.
1. Beginning phase
2. Pre-combat main phase
3. Combat phase
4. Post-combat main phase
5. Ending phase
Also, try to remember that your creatures attack your opponents - not their creatures. Creatures don't attack creatures.
Thank you for the turn sequence and the tip. And thank you both for helping a newbie.
1) Do you have enough cards that you want to play in (usually one to three) colors you want? Ideally, in most formats and most situations, your deck should wind up being two colors, which is why dual lands are some of the most powerful and valued lands in all of Magic.
2) Do you have enough multiples of the cards you want to play so that you can consistently draw them? Most cards, you should be playing three or four of. If they're good enough to play, they're good enough to draw into several times a game. You also need to be able to somewhat predict what you're going to get in a given game - a lot of new players make the mistake of a deck full of one-offs that has no consistency.
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OK, so you got a fairly good start but I have no idea if you got a bunch of weak cards or a good mix. No worries. I wasn't expecting you to have anything more than 200 cards.
You gotta start somewhere so start rifling through the cards and see what catches your eye. Sorting will help. As a start, sort them by color. Create a pile for lands, the five basic colors, colorless, and everything else. Watch for the cards that catch your interest or fancy. See any Eldrazi, Vampires, Goblins, Elves? See any cards that deal direct damage, or let you search yur library?
Or do you see something weird and bonkers that makes no sense?
Once you find a handful of cards that catches your fancy, decided on 1,2 or 3 colors to play. Then rifle through the cards for those colors that didn't catch your fancy and see if any makes sense and add them to your pile (make note of how many of each color you add). Note that colorless cards have numbers like but nothing else. You can look through these and freely add any that caches your interest.
When you get up to about 35 or so cards stop and count out how many of each basic color you have in each pile (ignore colorless). Then find your lands and add the same basic ratio of each color to make a 60 card deck. Lands that add more than one color type are desirable for now.
This is a really really rough outline to building a deck. It won't work and you'll loose your first 1 to 50 games. That's OK. You don't want to know how many games I lost when I started out.
Now shuffle your deck and draw seven. Do you have at least one to two lands? Do you have at least one spell that costs just 1 mana (we refer to this as 1cmc) of any color?
Does that spell color match the land(s) in your hand?
Now play that land, tap, cast that spell. Then draw a card. Is this card a land or a spell? Can you put down another land and cast a 2cmc spell? Draw a card and do the same for 3cmc.
Regardless of the outcome, do this for 4, 5, etc... now shuffle the cards back into your deck and repeat the whole thing. Note how many lands you get and whether you can cast spells on each "turn". Sometimes it helps to note it down in a notepad.
This is called Goldfishing where you play a deck without an opponent and see how long it takes to get him/her down to 0 life. Or in your case. A better feel for how the deck might behave.
I don't have my formulas but a 24/60 deck should net you a 97% probability of always drawing a hand with at least 1 land with a 12% probability of drawing exactly 1. Don't mistake what that last sentence as meaning that if you draw 100 hands, that 3 of those hands will have no lands. The possibility resets each time you shuffle your deck.
Now take that deck you worked so hard to assemble, lose a round, and your opponent will probably tear apart your deck, rifle through your other cards, and put together a new deck with at least one color you had no interest in. My first deck was taken apart and turned into a BR (Black = B and Red = R. Blue is odd man out with U) vampire/dragon deck. My mentor started with a five color WUBRG deck until it was torn apart and turned into IIRC, a WUG deck. By the time we paired off, he was playing pure hellish U.
Tip, a good opponent will know you're new and explain his card choices, why he plays what card, explain your cards and may even show you his hand to teach you. Even patiently answer questions. If he does none of these things, he may not be a good choice to teach you.
And always, you can ask about specific rules or cards here.
Have fun!
The local shop plays a variation called Commander. I decided to buy one of the premade decks. The shop owner said normally she'd encourage buying additional packs to swap out the weaker cards but with my box I wouldn't need them. I used just the premade deck the first game and even with a lot of help, yeah it was a slaughter. I went home and used the tips on this thread and tried to swap out cards, brought it back last night to the gaming shop. Out of three of us playing, I actually was the second person to die, lol.
I let the guys look at my deck after, they said it actually was pretty good for a beginner. I don't know if I'm going to keep it though, with that game variation the "ooh, ooh cool!" cards didn't work as I hoped they would. Still, good practice.
I can't possibly cover everything that goes into building a deck, but I can suggest a starting point: tribes. Pick a format you like, and figure out what the solid tribes are for that format. For example, in standard there are dinosaurs, zombies, vampires, and so on. Learn all the cards in the tribe you choose, and learn what the best support cards are for the colors that that tribe consists of. For example, if you choose vampires, then you want to learn what the common and useful black and white cards are, as well as all of the cards that are vampires or have some effect related specifically to vampires. Next, create a list of about 26 of the best creatures in that tribe you can find. Put in about 10 support cards, like Cast Out, Walk the Plank, and so on. Put in about 24 lands. You've made your first deck, and it should be an okay deck too. Next you can see how other people built that same deck, practice playing that deck, and make modifications.
That's how I started out, and I thought it was a good mixture of learning, fun, and effectiveness. When you're ready to get serious then learn all of the cards in the format you're interested in, study the top tier decks, and plow through the "MtG Deck Building Series" on youtube. That series is really good and covers everything from probability calculations to deck testing.
If it helps anybody, it took me about a year to consistently beat my mentor. He was running a brutal (at the time) but slow artifact/blue control deck. It took me a long time to figure out that a BR mana hungry deck wasn't the answer so I switched to a Wx White Weenie deck. A similar strategy would be Aggro.
Everyone is not only helpful, they seem to love helping me. It's nice.