MTG Salvation

Hi, everyone. Old time player here (1994-1998) who has returned to the game. Got rid of all my cards when I quit, so I'm staring from square one. So far I've bought the following:

2 Amonkhet bundle packs (the one with 10 boosters,a land pack, and the card boxes with the expansion art)
1 Hour of Devastation bundle pack
4 planeswalker decks (Gideon, Lilliana, Nissa, and Nicol Bolas)
2 Mystery Boxes ( contained 6 booster packs 1 from each of the last 5 xpacs, and a random mystery pack)(
At a local game shop I bought a $10 mystery pack they had put together from commons and uncommons from the current Standard block ( I'm not sure what that means, but that's what they said).

So far I've put together 3 decks from all of this, and wanted to see what everyone thought.

I'm not sure how to do the card names so that they link to the card description, as I'm brand new to this. I was just barely into the internet when I first quit the game. These decks seem to be in compliance with Modern and Standard format rules, as far as I can tell.
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MONO-GREEN




BLACK/BLUE




RED/WHITE



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Very glad to be back in the game and I've had some success so far. In the casual play around where I am, I've won a few so far with each of the above decks.

Hey there. Welcome back to MTG!

To start with basic matters, you can tag specific cards by going {card}CARDNAME{/card} (with [brackets] instead of {whatever these are}).

Looking at the deck, Call of the Herdis not currently Standard legal. I'm guessing that you got it from packs of Modern Masters, a series of (relatively) new sets that makes older cards without making them standard-legal.

To comment on the deck itself, you got a couple of pre-cons and about a box-worth of boosters and that kind of shows. Perfectly usable against friends starting the game but nothing too likely to win tourneys at your local gaming store. If you've been away from magic since 1998, you should know that creatures have become MUCH more powerful and that the benchmark for a good creature can be
pretty insane (instead of shivan dragon and carrion ants), that spells are much weaker (next to no random discard, land destruction, cheap and good counters, etc), and that mana bases can still be one of the priciest parts of a competitive deck.

If you want to build up the deck, I personally recommend looking for singles online over cracking boosters. If you want a halfway-decent red aggro deck, you can make one (or at least most of one) with just commons and uncommons (like cartouche of zeal, ahn-crop crasher, nef-crop entangler, bloodrage brawler, and abrade).

Quote from Rosy Dumplings »

Hey there. Welcome back to MTG!

To start with basic matters, you can tag specific cards by going {card}CARDNAME{/card} (with [brackets] instead of {whatever these are}).

Looking at the deck, Call of the Herdis not currently Standard legal. I'm guessing that you got it from packs of Modern Masters, a series of (relatively) new sets that makes older cards without making them standard-legal.

To comment on the deck itself, you got a couple of pre-cons and about a box-worth of boosters and that kind of shows. Perfectly usable against friends starting the game but nothing too likely to win tourneys at your local gaming store. If you've been away from magic since 1998, you should know that creatures have become MUCH more powerful and that the benchmark for a good creature can be
pretty insane (instead of shivan dragon and carrion ants), that spells are much weaker (next to no random discard, land destruction, cheap and good counters, etc), and that mana bases can still be one of the priciest parts of a competitive deck.

If you want to build up the deck, I personally recommend looking for singles online over cracking boosters. If you want a halfway-decent red aggro deck, you can make one (or at least most of one) with just commons and uncommons (like cartouche of zeal, ahn-crop crasher, nef-crop entangler, bloodrage brawler, and abrade).

Thanks for your comments. I think the Call of the Herd came out of the $10 box of commons and uncommons I got at the game store. No one around here has complained about it in casual play. I haven't done any tourneys yet. It's at least Modern compliant, as far as I can tell.

There are quite a number of useful tags in this forum, which are explained in this thread in the ruling section (stickied at the top):
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/251940-cardtag-explanation-aka-you-must-use-cardtags-in

The [c] tags or [card] tags are for individual cards, and while you can use those to link an entire deck, the [*deck] tag (without the *) is much better suited for that. It's what it is for, after all. (Using those tags within normal text can screw up your post, though, since the software interprets it as a tag and tries to fit anyhing that follows into it until the closing tag is found.)

Example:
[*deck]Lands (24)
12 Mountain
12 Forest

Creatures (24)
24 Runeclaw Bear

Others (12)
12 Lightning Strike
[*/deck}

without the *s becomes

here's some more:

Black/Red



Green/Blue

And here's my version of the Gideon, Martial Paragon deck.

My idea here was to really emphasize the exert mechanic with cheap creatures. There are no creatures (other than Gideon) that cost more than 4 mana. Also, no card requires more than 1 mana of a specific type ( with 1 exception).This deck is super-aggressive, hoping to win early. Between Cast Out/Open Fire/Edifice of Authority and the various exert tricks, the deck should have a free shot more often than not at your opponent's life total. Throne of the God-Pharaoh is just adding insult to injury, and Luxa River Shrine can provide some help if the game goes longer than you expect. That sometimes happens (I've noticed) between 2 aggro decks that slaughter one another's creatures, or against a control deck that somehow manages to contain this deck's aggression (hard to do effectively, or for any length of time, as the deck presents so many targets for control spells).

Gideon, Martial Paragon exert-heavy deck

Here's a black and white deck I just put together. No special themes/purpose here, just some things I decided to try together. 1 obvious play is to dig Torment of Hailfire out of the deck with Tamiyo's Journal, wait for a minimum of 8 mana usable (my suggestion) and then nuke your opponent with a 6 point Torment. If I had more Evolving Wilds I'd go with 4 of them and 10 each of the basic lands. And also probably 4 Wild-Field Scarecrows. With that kind of mana ramp, a huge Torment would essentially end the game. In solo testing ( where I play 2 decks against each other) the scarecrow and wilds let me play a land every turn of the game. If I had 4 Torments, that would probably be the main point of the deck. I usually construct decks for casual play under Modern format rules.

Black/White

I picked up some more cards at a new shop yesterday ( just found out about it). Only about a 20min drive from home. They have a deal where they give you a small cardbox for 8 dollars and you fill it with as many commons and uncommons from their stock as you can. This is probably how I will rebuild my collection since coming back to the game ( and of course buying new xpan).

So, going through all of the cards that I got ( the older commons/uncommons plus the 2 Ixalan decks and the prerelease pack) i broke down all my existing decks, and was pondering what to build next. A friend then called and suggested a couple hours of casual MtG at his house, starting in 1 hour. I said yes and then promptly threw these two decks together quicker than I normally do. The first is black with a splash of white and the second is red/green with lots of burn with a side of mana ramp/card drawing/life gain, and several big creatures.

EDIT: Took some time to tinker with the decks

Black(with splash of white)



Red/Green burn/draw/lifegain/big creatures

Here's a blue(with a splash of white) deck I just threw together. I've won a few with it so far.

Here's one based around Huatli, Warrior Poet.

Here's a green and black deck that I just kind of threw together in about 30 min. It has worked very well.