Can anyone give tips on building a mtg deck? I do not know how. Thanks!

Can anyone give tips on building a mtg deck? I do not know how. Thanks!

>1: buy cards
>2: stack cards
>3: ????
>4: profit

Make sure the cards you put in synergize with one another but have fun with it. That's it

Run 24-26 lands in a 60 card deck
Try to assemble a basic "curve" of creatures at different mana costs (6 2-drops, 8 3-drops, 8 4-drops, 4 5-drops)
For the rest of your cards, look for cards that neutralize or kill your opponent's creatures.
Limit yourself to 2 colors at first. Running a single color really limits what your deck can do, but 3 or more colors can make your manabase more inconsistent, especially if you don't have many rare lands.
The Planeswalker decks they sell in LGSs are retailers are usually a decent starting point to learn the game and basic deckbuilding, but don't expect to win a tournament with one

I'm feeling generous, so if you tell me about the style of deck you want, I can help you build an inexpensive list to learn the game with.

Pic related was my first deck.

I should clarify that these are pretty loose guidelines for deckbuilding for beginners. Once you understand the game and deckbuilding more, you'll break all of these guidelines frequently

22-25 lands
No more than 4 cards at 5 or greater mana unless running dedicated ramp
At least 14 cards 2 mana or lower

The first step is figuring out what type of deck you're building as that will influence stuff like how your curve will look, how many lands you should be playing, and the ratio between spells and creatures. Either you decide that straight away or you buy a precon or something, play with it a bit, and then decide which of the cards in it you like and you want more of.

An aggro deck usually wants somewhere around 8-12 one-drops because they want to be able to beat face as soon as possible. They normally don't play very many non-creature spells, instead only opting to play enough removal to reliably get blockers out of their creatures way. They also usually don't play many creatures that cost more than four mana because they normally plan to have won by the time they would be able to cast them. Because of this they also don't need to play many lands. Somewhere around 20-22 is normal for an aggro deck in Standard.

Midrange decks resemble aggro decks in a lot of ways, but usually plan to win by sheer force of attrition, and as such don't play as many, if any, one-drops and their curves go higher. You're also more likely to see card draw spells and the like in a midrange deck than in an aggro one. They normally play somewhere around 23-24 lands, but sometimes you'll see midrange decks that play as many as 25.

Control decks try to gain as much card advantage as possible and win in the late game by virtue of having more powerful cards, and simply more cards, than their opponent by then. To get to that point they attempt to stall the board with removal and counterspells and use card draw spells to refill their hand. 24 lands is the bare minimum for a control deck and often you'll see control decks that play more than that.

Also note that not all decks fall cleanly into any one of these three categories. Sometimes you see control decks that look and play a lot like midrange decks (or maybe it's vice versa), and sometimes you see aggro decks that keep on curving into six drops that start to provide card advantage and the like. Sometimes you even see aggro-control, which are the rarest breed. These are decks that have a low curve with aggressive creatures but the spells they play all work on both the offense and defense. Cards like Lightning Bolt, for example, can both be used to get a blocker out of the way or be sent to the face but can also be used to remove a threat from the board. Cards like Force Spike or Daze can be used to disrupt your opponent or counter his threats or to protect one of your own. And so on.

Once all that is clear and it's time to start building your deck it's important that all your cards work towards the same goal. You (usually at least) don't want to play Savannah Lions and Wall of Omens in the same deck. Nor do you (again usually at least) want to play Goblin Guide and Bogardan Hellkite in the same deck.

You get some spell cards and some lands of the appropriate colors. You put them all on a pile, pour some gasoline on it, light a match and burn them. Then you pick a better game and go play that.

Id like to play a high risk high reward deck. Colors black and whatever

As long as you don't care about being competitive. Try to brew a Suicide Black variant. It's an ancient aggro archetype. Mono-black and runs a whole bunch of undercosted creatures with huge drawbacks.

Yeah don't fall into the common noobtrap of making nothing but "tribal" decks.
That is, decks that are only composed to a certain creature type.
So many new players just don't learn the concept of building around a strategy such as fast offense or slow control.

>Choose how you want to win
>Have two or three alternatives to the main win plan
>Have cards for each plan
>The cards must also synergize between them
>Have good mana cost distribution
>Or good ramp to compensate for expensive average mana cost

>Some cards seem like shit to newbies compared to awesome creatures, like scry cards, draw card cards and tutors, but they are by far the best. Add them.
>Competitive decks are not balanced and you wont get a long mtg experience out of them, they're designed to win fast or lose fast if you can't win.
>Pauper and Commander are underrated, Standard is cancer, avoid at all costs.
>Use cardmarket if you're in Europe

Black and red, then

Yes.

Don't.

Play competitively tuned decks against other competitive decks until you understand why they are built the way they are. Don't bother building your own deck if you are completely new to Magic. You'll get your shit shoved in.

>Id like to play a high risk high reward deck. Colors black and whatever

Dredge. RB hollow one is also an option.

Have a purpose behind the deck. A bunch of randomly decent cards doesn't really get you anywhere.

What format?

Temur energy

spend money

You can spend thousands of dollars, but if you don't know how to build a basic deck, all you end up with is a pile of cardboard.

These kids today with their collector numbers and their newfangled tap symbol. Twenty Black Lotuses and twenty Plague Rats. Now that’s real Magic.

Let me clarify:

1) Go to mtggoldfish or other website that aggregates deck lists
2) Pick one to play
3) Spend money
4) Win games

>Temur ENERGY
I feel like there might be some kind of theme/cohesion, but gee, I don't know.

Learn about mana curve and card advantage.

Then work around those concepts when you find something you'd like to build

That also doesn't work well. You can netdeck all day, but if you don't understand deck building, you can never tweak the deck to better fit your purposes. Your sideboard will be utterly fucked, for example. Netdecking is a great tool, but not the only tool.

And if you do know how to build a deck, you'll still end up with a pile of cardboard.

>This is the amount of delusion the faggot that spends money on paper has

You should look into dredge but don't start there.

isn't that backwards? Or is "looking at a list on the internet" what they're calling netdecking?

The major difference is between a builder, a player, and a pilot. A player can build a sideboard, a builder can make decks, and a pilot can play the game given a 75 and a brief explanation.

If you wanna be like that, then you also need to learn about and understand tempo. And probably also read the article Who's the Aggro from decades ago.

I remember Richard Garfield once talking about a similar concept, though I think he called it Engineers and Pilots or something similar. The idea being that Engineers are able to see which strategies are the best while Pilots are better at playing. The problem he noted with this, however, is that sometimes an Engineer will be able to see a strategy that theoretically should be able to beat the currently most played strategies, but he won't be able to test it properly by virtue of the Pilots being able to put maneuver him and win even if the strategy they try isn't optimal.

The example he used was a hypothetical RTS with a wide variety of units, where the commonly accepted idea is that "this game is all about the tank units," and all the Pilots are perfecting their tactics in building and micromanaging their tanks in the most efficient way. But then an Engineer takes a look at the game and thinks "but the dragon strategy should be even better," but even if he's right he'll still lose every game where he tries to prove this, and because everyone is so convinced that the game is all about the tanks no Pilot takes him seriously.

Garfield's proposed solution was an RTS where the cost of units was randomized, which would in part make it so that all units have their moments to shine. And partly reward Engineers for being able to quickly analyze the options and being able to tell which units are most worth their cost.