Global Sports: What Do You Need To Build A Magic The Gathering Deck?

Sunday, September 19, 2010

What Do You Need To Build A Magic The Gathering Deck?

By John Wong

If you want to play a Magic The Gathering game, the first thing you must have is your own Magic deck. You need a deck of Magic cards but what kind of cards should be present in a deck that you can actually play in a standard Magic The Gathering game?

There is no limit to how many cards you can use in a Magic deck; however, if you use too many cards in a deck, you reduce your own chance of getting a card that you want. Therefore, the optimal amount of cards in a deck should be around 60 which make the probability more even.

When we are talking about a normal playing deck, you can find three different groups of cards to exist. The first one is Lands whether they are basic ones or not. The second group represents assisting spells like Sorcery, Artifact, Enchantment and Instant. The third and the most versatile group is Creature.

The first one third should be lands which are crucial in producing Mana. Mana is required to be paid as a cost when the player casts a spell. There are other methods besides using lands to produce Mana. However, many of them need a Mana cost in the first place to actually activate the Mana making ability. So, you sure make sure that you have at least one sixth of the deck as lands which can produce Mana without a cost.

The assisting spells can be quite confusing to beginners and they might find them not very useful. However, using these you can combine cards into power combos. For beginners who use less spells to assist attacks, they can choose to use the quota for attacking spells or creatures.

The last one third which is the Creatures in essence these are the cards you can use to hurt your opponents. If you've got many assisting spells, it does you no good if you cannot damage your opponent. Of course you have the right to replace creatures with attacking spells, but it's not very reasonable to have no creatures at all, unless you have other method to block the attacks of opponent's creatures. If you choose strategies that can beat your opponents without damaging them, please make sure that it is feasible and have a good chance in winning.

One thing you must bear in mind when you are building decks is that except Basic Lands, there must not be more than 4 cards with the same name in the same deck.

I personally prefer using a more evenly distributed deck. As you gain experience and knowledge you will learn how to construct combos to assist your creatures' attacks. Combos can be very devastating and I think constructing them according to your unique strategies to beat your opponent in a calculated way is a lot of fun. Magic The Gathering Cards are designed in a very sophisticated mathematical way; there are complex relationships between cards. As you start your journey of building decks you'll discover these relationships and the multiplying dynamics between different spells. And this would be crucial in building a powerful Magic Deck.

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