How to begin MTG

Hey Veeky Forums, my friend has recently introduced me to MTG, and I'm in love. But... I have no clue where to start. He just keeps telling me to look up online guides. How did you guys start? What should a babby beginner begin? I sat down and made a mono green deck focusing on getting lands out quickly... is that good? Where do I head from here?

Commander is best and only format worth playing.

I guess the first thing to determine is how competitive you want to be/why you want to play, and how much money you can throw at the game.
It also helps to know if you have a group of buddies who can keep powerlevels at around the same.
No one wants to play against(or be) the dude who brings a top tier legacy deck to casual night.
Commander can be super fun too, but if your group doesn't communicate what they want out of it, it can degenerate into a mess pretty fast.
May I make the suggestion that your group puts together a cube? Cubes are fantastic fun for both powergamers and beer and pretzel people.
Where else can you play show and animate tinker against a mirrrari's wake deck.

OP here, see I don't really understand what your saying, but I really want to! Haha I should do more research

>made a mono green deck focusing on getting lands out quickly... is that good?
Green ramp aggro is fun, but not tournament viable. You will typically get dunked on with your weak early game.
But if your friends are not playing tier 1 tournament bullshit, you should be fine.

Really, deck construction is simple.
1. think of how you want to win
2. once you have a wincon, try and find cards to aid in that wincon
3. make a 60 card deck with 22 lands and that wincon+enablers (don't try to fuck with the numbers, it's generally not worth it)
If the archetype has a name, you can do as your friend said and google the name. For example, yours is monogreen ramp. The very first google for monogreen ramp is a casual primer that gives a neat little introduction and recommendations.

Watch mtg vids on yout u be brugh, the community is actually good in mtg

Look up Jund decks, that's how you win

It takes time to get used to the whole mtg scene, but it sure is worth. A cool place to get acquainted with some of the cool stuff is the channelfireball website and youtube channel. also the Tolarian Community College youtube channel

As for how to start, maybe going to your LGS, seeing people play, talking with the people there. I got a lot of friends like that and made some playgroups where we just play for fun and do some drafts now and then

Draft is a format where you and 7 other people each get three boosters. You open up the pack, take one card and pass the rest. Repeat until the boosters are done.

A cube is a collection of cards designed to be drafted, they come in multiple types and sizes. You shuffle the cube, and make random 15 card "boosters" for people to draft with.

My vote is for delver and BUG decks as far as hyper streamlined efficient decks go. As much as I love my Death and Taxes, its not a good deck for understanding fundamentals. Delver is, because it does a little of everything.

Ignore all these people
Just download "Magic: Duels" On steam or Ios or android or a console and play that. It's more or less the best tutorial for the game out there, though the game is simplified for computers

How could I forget that, also this

It may be tough getting lots of cards, but the story mode can be pretty cool sometimes

Jund is cheaper

You can also BUY cards for a lower cost than actual packs, but the in game packs have fewer cards
This is offset by the fact that you can only get a limited number of copies of a card, but once you have a full set of say, evolving wilds, you can put that set in EVERY deck you want

First post best post.

Forgot to mention, Pauper is a pretty good and cheap way to learn the game too.

Pauper is a way to play the game where only commons are allowed, and because magic has been around forever, a lot of really good cards are commons. Decks are pretty cheap, and powerlevel is fairly high. I think the most expensive deck in the format right now is the Red Burn deck, and that's what, 60 dollars?
I have a Green/Blue graveyard deck, and a Blue/White control deck in pauper.

If they can just knock the price down on goyf and lilly a little bit more, modern Jund enters the almost affordable range. Legacy Jund is still backbreaking, thanks duals.
You may be right though, RTR-INN Jund was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had playing magic.

Legacy jund also wants chains of Mephistopheles

I just started checking out Reddit's MTG pages and they have links to some great resources. Don't count on getting responses though, they're usually too busy circle jerking over new sets and meme cards. Kind of like here, I suppose...

I love that on duels a 4 dollar card pack gets you basically a third of the typical 15 card irl pack

But on the flipside, you'll never get any repeats you don't need and they mostly cut off the commons

True, I've yet to pull a mythic on it though

It happens. You just have shit luck.
There's actually a special animation for opening a mythic too, it's got a little halo of light around it

pauper.

>buying virtual cardboard

>buying real cardboard tgat clusters your appartment

>buying virtual cardboard
>that you can easily get for free

Whats the best way to cheat out Marit Lage?

Thespian's Stage.

Go to your LGS, get friendly with people, do some drafts, play Standard, play EDH, try and piece together how the rules work in your head. Don't get into this for any other reason than you're having fun doing it.

It would be easier to give good recomendations if we knew:
>Do you have a local game store?
>How much money are you willing/able to spend on magic?
>Do you want to play against your friends/in tournaments/both?

...

This

It's beautiful, user.

Go to an lgs, talk to people, someone will probably be willing to show you the ropes.
Although they're not brilliant the starter and commander decks give you a pretty solid start (the deck builders toolkit gives you a pretty solid collection as well)

Look up Tolarian Community College on YouTube, the guys autistic but his reviews are top notch.

Which Country are you in is an important question too

It's a lot better buying bulk from ebay in the uk because there's very few game stores here to offload 500 Stitched Manglers at a time, at the same time it's more expensive to start a big collection off singles seeing as all those stores pretty much match card prices to the dollar prices.

decide based on the total budget you want to throw in now or later.

do you have friends playing the game? what do they usually do?

Chinamen counterfeits is the way to go

There is a guide on 1d4chan, use it. Anything is viable, don't buy intro packs, good luck.

This.

Grab a precon commander deck, play it a bit to get a feel for it. What did you like? Dislike? Want to improve? Then go over to EDHrec and look at all the commanders and see what fits you the most.

This way you're spending 35$ on a precon and then eventually just adding in single cards.

And you should make sure your friends want to play commander too. That's pretty important and kind of dumb of me to bring up as my last point.