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I have seen that new players may find difficulties while creating their first very own Magic: The Gathering deck. So, I created this "deck" in order to help those players who have just got into the wonderous world of MtG. I'm going to explain the basics of deck building, as well I'm going to create few example decks in order to make new players understand how it goes.
Also, I'm using ONLY STANDARD cards on these example decks, so new players understand that they can easily build decks from cards they have from their nearest stores.
Now, shall we begin?
At first of all, think about your deck colors and idea. Which kind of theme would you like to use in your deck?
Swift and reckless?
Sluggish and destructive?
Cruel and selfish?
Elegant and deadly?
Cunning and painful?
These are just few examples about which kinds of decks you can make. You can create dozens of decks with different themes and techniques, but even the greatest Planeswalker's journey begins with a single step, so let's focus on your first one.
The colors are important for both your deck idea and the spells you can use in it.
As example, you can't use destructive burn spells in a completely white deck, or wound-removing healing in a completely red deck.
The main "specialities" for colors are:
White:
-Healing
-Aura-type enchantments
-Hordes of small creatures
-Protecting and powering up your creatures
-"Paralyzing" threatening creatures on the battlefield
Green:
-Extremely big creatures
-Land ramp (, getting land cards more quickly than just single one per turn)
-Destroying "unnatural" cards, such as artifacts and enchantments
-Raw power
-Flyer hate (, numerous ways to kill flying creatures that green often cannot otherwise block off)
-Life (, keeping your creatures alive, or returning them from your graveyard to your hand)
Red:
-Extremely quick gaming strategies
-Recklessness
-Burn spells (, spells that deal directly damage to creatures and/or players)
-Small and swift early-game creatures
-Powerful late-game creatures and spells
Black:
-Draining (, "sucking" life from your opponent)
-Death (, killing creatures on the battlefield or returning them from your graveyard)
-Unfair gaming
-Discarding cards from hands
-Selfishness (, sometimes you have to sacrifice your own creatures and/or pay your own life)
Blue:
-Battlefield control
-Often sluggish, cunning strategies
-"Stealing" (, taking your opponent's creatures or other cards)
-Flying creatures (, they are indeed hard to block)
-Countering spells (, negating any kind of card your opponent is trying to play except land cards)
-Artifacts
Which one of these colors interests you?
Is it GLORIOUS white? Or MIGHTY green? Maybe DESTRUCTIVE red? How about CRUEL black? Interested in CLEVER blue?
If you want to use deck that runs lots of creatures, red, white and green are all good choices. If you want to control the situations on the battlefield, blue, white and black, may interest you. If you like unfair play, red, blue and black can give you spells that make sure that your opponent will not like playing against you. How about decks that hold down your opponent in order to finish them with huge monsters? Then I may consider using green or blue.
If you can't just choose one color, you can always add another! Two-colored decks can be awesome too, since they can combine benefits from two different colors! Just remember, less colors = often easier to get deck working well.
The choice is yours.
When you have chosen the color(s) of your deck, and have figured out the gaming strategy, it is time to get creating your very own deck.
There are few steps that I always use when creating my decks:
Step 1, Early-game creatures
-Deck should have something about 8-10 early-game creatures, so you get easily at least one into your opening hand. I classify "early-game creatures" as creatures that cost 1 or 2 mana to cast. These early creatures can block your opponent's attacks and/or keep him/her busy until you have time to cast other spells.
(Note: In swift decks, you may need to add even more early-game creatures to get many of them in your starting hand, so you can dominate the battlefield starting from early rounds.)
(Another note: I some rare cases, you may be able to replace some of the early-game creatures with spells, like small burn spells.)
Step 2, Cards of the main strategy
-In order to use your strategy, you need cards to create it, and cards that support it.
As example, if you are attempting to build mono-white soldier-themed deck, you need at least soldiers, and preferably cards that boost and/or support soldiers other way. Good example is Captain of the Watch. Six-mana 3/3 Human Soldier that has Vigilance, gives you three 1/1 soldiers, and gives all other soldiers +1/+1 and Vigilance.
Get cards that you classify as cards that let your strategy proceed in games. You have no reason to put cards in it that doesn't belong to your strategy or support it.
Step 3, Removal
-Even in most fair-playing decks, you should at least run some cards in it that let you destroy, cripple, or slow down your opponent's best creatures. Even few of these "removal" cards are often enough. In black and/or red decks, you should run more of these annoying removal-spells in order to strike down your opponent's strategies for good.
Step 4, Land cards.
-Think again what is your gaming strategy. If it is something like: "Red-Green swift aggressive creature-based deck", that doesn't have high mana costs in it, you may need less land cards than deck like: "Blue-Green late-game monster deck".
As example, if the maximum mana cost in your deck is 4, you may manage even with 21 or 20 land cards.
...Or if your maximum mana cost is something like 8 or more, you should add more land cards, like 24 or 25 of them.
-Try to count how many mana symbols there are in the mana costs of the deck's nonland cards. Try to proport lands that you have more of those lands that you need more.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: You can have as much cards in your deck as you want. The minimum deck size is however 60 cards. It is recommendable that your deck doesn't use too many cards, since then you have lesser chances of drawing the cards you really need at time to time, and also your strategy suffers. I suggest that you keep your max deck size at 65.)
(ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: Remember, you can have only 4 copies of single card in your deck, excluding basic land cards.)
Now, when your deck is done, you have to make few final phases.
Shuffle your deck well, so all cards get mixed well.
After this, try to take few test-hands. Draw seven cards. Is the hand good?
(I classify opening hand as a "good hand" if it has at least two land cards and at least single early-game creature.)
If the hand is good, you can be proud of yourself. You are doing well.
If it is not, you better not get panicking yet.
Was the hand good or not, shuffle it back into your deck and then draw another hand. Draw something about 10 hands, and then try to remember how many of them were good ones. If more than 6 of them were good, your deck is well planned.
If less than 5 of them were good ones, try to customise your deck a little bit.
What was wrong with the hands? Not enough land-cards? Not enough early-game creatures? Try to fix the problem. Then, try taking some new hands.
(Note: If your deck has more than sixty cards and you have problems with your test-hands, remove as many cards from the deck as you can, then try again.)
When you succeed of getting 6 or more good hands out of 10, you know that your deck is locked, clocked and ready to rock!
Ow yeah!
Now you know how to make workable Magic: The Gathering -decks. When you play more and more, and you become more skilled in it, you can create more decks, using older cards, maybe order some cards from websites...
And become a TRULY Planeswalker.