Making the most of your deck.

 

[Ed. Note: I apologize for the day late post, there was a mix up.]Hello, my name is Alden and I have been playing magic for several years now. I have gone through many phases of play from very beginner casual to some tournament play. I'll review some of my decks, give fun ideas on deck building, formats, and I might even break down some concepts I have gotten from analyzing Pro Tour and why some of their decks are so successful. But enough about me for now, lets get on to how to greatly improve your deck with what you have. As a side note most of my ideas will be in the standard format because most new players only have access to the current sets.

Deck strategy:

I find most decks that are successful follow a theme such as: control, aggro, discard, lifegain, stompy, and burn to name a few. When you have a deck that has a little burn, a little life gain, a little mill, and a little aggro you will not be very consistent. Try to figure out what you want to do and do your best to get that accomplished as fast as possible.

The Mana base:

This is probably the most important aspect of the deck. Without a solid land base you are never gong to win anything. The first thing you look at in a deck are the colors. Here are some questions to keep in mind.

1. How many colors am I going to use?
2. What are the colors offering me?
3. What can I cut?

I find it hard building consistent decks with 3 or more colors (Well its not as hard now with Alara but I'll cover that some other time.)   For most casual decks its best to stick with 1-2 colors unless the third is something you absolutely have to have. The next thing you look at for your mana base is your deck's curve. This principle is simple: have enough low to cast cards that you can consistently play things on the early turns of the game. As cards get higher to cast you want to have less of them. I find most aggro decks(Mostly 1-3 to cast) only need about 20 lands. Most regular decks even if they are aggressive need around 23-24. And typical control decks need at least 26 because they can not afford to miss a land drop.

Ratios:

You want the right number of creatures, to enchantments to spells in your deck. This really depends on the deck but for most decks you  will have:

• 4-16 One and two to cast creatures.
• 8 Three to cast creatures.
• 4-6 Four to cast creatures.
• 2-8 Five or more to cast.

As you can see, there are a lot of early drops compared to late game drops, this will make your deck much more consistent.

For enchantments and artifacts try to pick up to three that fit well and play 3-4 of those. You also want 6-8 removal spells, and some other useful spells. I find creature heavy decks are a lot more effective and if you are using a lot of acceleration feel free to use higher casting cost creatures.

The last point I am going to cover is how important it is to make your deck as consistent as possible. If a card is in your deck and it fits really well with your strategy, try to have 3-4 of them or find other cards that do something similar. When you do this it is easier to get what you need.

This is all I am going to cover for today. Next week I will cover some bombs that can turn the game around.

Till next week,

              Alden