How to Build a Better Magic Deck 

"Don't use two bad cards that are good together" I feel attack as a person

A big thing people at low to middle skill levels should learn, if a bit harsh, is “Reading the card explains the card”

Big Tip: Do not just put all your Rares and Mythics into a deck because they are Rares or Mythics

My tip is to let your opponents look through your deck after games and ask them what they would put in it. Then ask why. Also ask them if they think you made any mistakes. Nothing will help you improve faster than other people's experience.

WotC release Secret Lair - Infect Due to recent events

*me a jank player*: what is this nonsense???

Happy birthday! Seems a little backwards that WE get the gift but oh 🐳

If you have a regular play group where you communicate openly, recommend using proxies before buying expensive cards. No sense in wasting money if that card doesn't stay in the build.

Me love big green creatures. Me love hitting people in face quick. Me made turn 3 attacking galtha deck for pioneer. Uga-uga-uga Happy birthday.

Can you maybe make an episode about some old Sets like the Urza's Block or something like that.

oooh, love the new logo in the intro :)

I’ve been playing magic for roughly 12 years, and I noticed very early on, that I was a fan of control strategies, and I noticed that my 10 year losing streak, was due to my lack of attention to the line that my father actually taught me about just like how you explained it, Ryan. He called it the deck-line and I was always trying to jump from one end to the other in the same deck. It has cost me multiple games and I went back and re-discovered my love of pure control when I built a deck around Aetherflux Reservoir, and began to slaughter my friends with it. Thank you for reminding me once again after I’d forgotten to keep mind of the deck-line. And happy birthday, Loremaster Ryan!

Great work on the new setup! And happy birthday!

Oh, btw have a great bday Ryan! My tip: if you like a tribe, e.g. dragons, do NOT just put those creatures in the deck and nothing more. You need to support the creatures with a few spells, either answers for a controlling deck or more threats for an aggressive deck.

Hey! Black background, less echoes. NICE! As always, great video!

"Every deck exists somewhere on line..." Stop. Stop it there. Yes, that's how you make top-tier deck today. (Sorry, couldn't miss that low-hanging fruit)

Great explanation on the kinds of decks! I’ll definitely be sharing this with my friends trying to learn MTG.

Happy birthday! :) When I make decks, I start by pulling up 5+ deck lists online of the same archetype (i.e. M19 Sarkhan Dragons) and take note of all the cards that are the same across 3+ of those lists.

Happy birthday Ryan!! Thanks for all the great stories that make this wonderful game even more enjoyable!

Really nice setup! Happy birthday, and here's to much more Magic Arcanum to come!

My tip is always to netdeck at first because, if you thought to build a deck, someone probably had that idea first. Look at it, what you like and what you don't like, and evolve through that because, chances are, there's a good skeleton there to build on Oh and happy birthday! if a bit late

I can tell you have a true passion for the game and it is evident by how you speak of the material. Thanks for the tips and quality content.

Love your new intro and new production!!!!

Just got notified you uploaded! Excited to watch the rest at home. Love the new intro logo!

Thanks for another useful aaaand fun vid! Really appreciate all you do! Happy birthday! 🎂

Happy birthday! Thank you for the consistently great content.

Playing commander, my advice would be "If your going to win 25% of the time, make sure you'll have fun 100% of the time with the cards you put in your deck... That include a lot and a lot of card draw... Even if your cards does nothing, you wont have fun with an empty hand. If you could start your deck with 40 lands and 58 card draw spells, do it." And happy birth day!

Damn man that some really nice setup you got there. Looks great!

Happy Birthday! I hope you have a great one. Thanks for the vid!

Happy birthday and thank you for the deck building advice.

Happy Birthday. Thanks for the video!

Happy birthday hope u have fun also love the set up and thank you so much for all the stuff u do on this channel and take care

Hey Ryan, happy birthday hope you had a good day and, as always, a joy watching your content! Big hug!

Happy birthday Brian! You and Nicole are both awesome! (Nice video btw, it helped a lot by allowing me to better mesure my knowledge of how deckmaking works)

Happy birthday! Thanks for the tips! 🥳🥳🥳

Lovin' the new intro! Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, birthday-month twin! Great vid!

Happy birthday from Italy. I like the ending soundtrack and all your videos

Thank you Ryan and happy birthday

I saw this 2 days after it had come out. Happy Birthday, belated!

Pro tip. If you're new and using commander, don't play pirates. You'll just get rofl stomped. Personal experience.

Happy birthday to you for the whole month!!!!!!! Woohoo 🥳

Happy birthday Ryan, I am a fan, keep up the good work dude.

Happy bday

Happy Birthday! I hope you'll get sponsored, because your content is great!

Happy Birthyday, Ryan!

On the zombie tribal deck, I've had a mono-black zombie tribal deck I built back in the onslaught block and with only a few changes since the it is one of my best and most feared decks in my play group, and a great mid-range build at that

Great work folks!

Happy 2 years late birthday, this vid helped. Thanks!

Fantastic video.

Happy Birthday! 💕

My very first magic deck was all the way back in the days of mirrodin. I had a white wenie equip deck. It was more on the aggressive side but had some control aspects to it as well sadly I no longer have said deck. Magic is by far one of my favorite card games that I still play today but I haven't gotten into arena just yet so that will make things interesting when I do.

I really enjoy these videos. I'm a new player, and feel pretty lost in the sauce virtually all the time. Your humor and energy translate well to the camera. Great job to both you and Nicole (hopefully spelled that right). Happy belated birthmas.

Had a good chuckle! Very entertaining episode. Happy B-Day btw! My tip: learn how "the stack" works.

Glad to see you cranking out good content - Vampiroser

My buddy helped me make a deck during the Amonkhet block... it was a minotaur deck that we lovingly called "The Pain Train Deck" it sadly didn't have any one or zero drops in it... but the moment a creature hit the field, the creatures would introduce their fists to the opponents' faces.

Happy late birthday hope everything is well, thanks so much for advise very helpful

Hey Ryan! I just wanted to say thanks for this video. My future stepdaughter is 11 and told me that she wanted to learn how to play recently. Your template of "4 copies of your nine favorite cards + 24 lands" was exactly the lightbulb I needed to build her a GW Pioneer-ish Cats deck on the cheap. Thank you for helping make a little girl happy.

Man I wish i saw this when it was posted. Happy late birthday!

great vid!

Happy Bday...I never enjoyed aggro and quickly got to control, I enjoy long games, because I get to play the cards I gathere, currently finalizing my favorite Esper Doom as a Control Combo Deck in Standard, its not Meta but I love it

The lore of the cards mostly impacts my decks there is some kind of joy for me knowing the story behind the card I'm using

i'm playing magic since Alara block , and instantly fell in love with control gameplay , but it's first time i see list of "the deck" and gosh it is beautiful... Perfecto

I would like to add to the "mustache minute". Nothing can beat the feeling of actually winning (against both friends and foes) with one of the first decks you build yourself xD

Happy Birthday, man!

Happy birthday Ryan!

Tbh I just started last week and I didnt understand why I've been losing all the time when I realized that I'm using a mono blue jace deck to be very aggressive and attack without controlling and saving my mana for instants, so honestly that's already made me a better player thinking about it

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Awesome content bro! Thanks for that :-) Greetings from Germany!

Happiest Birthday Ryan!! :D

Happy Belated birthday Ryan! Saw this when it was up, one thing led to another and never got to check it out till now. I think one big thing to point out is that there is no deck with 100% ratio. You're gonna lose some and win some (though you wanna win more than lose), and sometimes that element of randomness can just suck (especially in arena). I have a mid-range deck that can combo to wins, my star cards are Nightveil predator Sorin, vampire lord planeswalker Heliod, sun-crowned And 2 revenge of ravens If game goes too long, I have Ashiok Nightmare Muse and a faerie that opens sideboard to bring in Liliana dreadhorde necromancer

Happy Birthday!

“Can you make a deck with 30 lands and 30 siege rhinos?No” saffron olive has some words for you

It's amazing that Jeskai is my favorite tri-color combo and yet it was the original control deck in terms of the first competitive decks.

2:48, Siege rhino is an aggressive card, yes, but when you think about it in the context of the standard it was in, it was all over the spectrum. There was Abzan Aggro, midrange, and Control

Happy Birthday. Still it was more a present to us...thx

Happy birthday my guy

I hate to be the guy that likes things the old way, but the Magic Arcanum I fell in love with had a solid black background and good sound quality, thanks for bringing both back 🧡🧡🧡

Happy birthday! I will now sub 🎁

Happy birthday =)

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday dude.

OH! Happy Birthday, boi!

Been playing magic for around 20 or so years. When I build a deck I tend to look at what sort of mechanic I want to build around, and then put in cards that synergies well with it or enhance or enable that effect. Example, I have a beastly mono green trample deck that I almost always win with on Arena. I put in a fair share of trample creatures of course, things like Voracious Hydra and Gnarlback Rhino. But I also put in some things like paradise druids for mana ramping to get those creatures out faster as well as killer enchantments to make those trample creatures much meaner like Hydra Growth. Then to make sure I don't run out of steam if my opponent answers my beefed up monster, I put in things like The Great Henge so that I draw more things to keep the pressure of my onslaught going. Add a pinch of Rabid Bite and Sedge Scorpion to answer problematic threats on their end and you have a very tasty batch of Pulverized Opponent Pie. Another Example if you care to continue reading my long winded and overly thought out process, is my blue and black milling deck. The object of the deck is to win by making my opponent not have a deck anymore by putting their library straight into their graveyard. This takes time of course, which means that I need to be able to survive long enough to do so. Aside from obvious milling cards like Drowned Secrets and Overwhelmed Apprentice, I also put in things to stop and block my opponent from being able to hit me like Dungeon Geists and Wall of Lost Thoughts, the latter of which just so happens to ALSO mill my opponent and synergies well with Drowned Secrets. I like to go online and see what kind of decks people are using and get ideas for mechanics and build my own deck based on them.

I don't have a tip for deckbuilding, but all I can say is: Play a deck you feel good with. I played a aggro goblin deck once, but didn't liked it. I won, but it didn't feel ... as winning? It's like going to a knife fight and you bring a Mini-Gun - you won, but ... not the way you wanted it maybe. I made a Shrine-Deck. I loved the shrines when Kamigawa was released. I didn't had enough money for buying enough packs to build one those days, butnow with MTG Arena I could - and I did - I love my shrine deck. It feesl okey to lose, because it's fun to me to play my shrines

Happy (early or late) birthday Ryan!

In all my experience with "casual tabletop modern" I feel like what makes a "good" magic deck is really interesting to define. For instance, I love tribal decks, and even if they aren't guaranteed to win when we're next sitting around the kitchen table, I'll spend dozens of hours on a deck on tapped out, to make it as flavorful, and good as it can be, without being busted or too pricey. One of my other friends though, browses through netdecks, and buys ton's of really busted cards. While his decks might be "better" they're simply not fun to play with or against. If my Wurms or Dragons lose to Mini Teferi Control, or Eerie Interlude one more time, I might lose it. because of this, nobody wants to play against him, and he's generally bummed at game night, and asking to use other people's decks. For this reason, I'd say its extremely important to answer this question: "What is this deck for?" If you want to take a deck to some FNM, or some tournament, then yeah, make it busted and as pricey as you can manage, cause nobody there is going to pull their punches either. But, if its for fun around the kitchen table with friends, or to play with people new to magic, then make a deck you really like, something with wacky combos, "bad" cards, and you don't need that Sylvan library. I'm 100% in the second type, and while I make decks that I wan't to win, I never put the winning in front of goofy combos, or some other way to make my friends laugh as either win or lose with it. For example, I spent almost all of today working on a Flameshadow Conjuring Dragon Tribal deck. Its still not there, but that doesn't mean I'm about to throw in a few steamkin, yah dig?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🎈

Awesome. I like this dude

Happy Birthday. My best tip? Cycling lands!

My first actually good deck was a mono black vampire deck during the original Zendikar block. Vampire Nighthawk was my bread and butter along with Vampire Nocturnus and other beautifully aggressive cards. I miss that deck.

Solid advice as I am getting started 🤓

thank u i need this

The image of the card doesnt tell you the effect A lot of people do that so a tip is to read the opponent cards too

Hello from Syracuse! Cant wait till you guys start hiring. Haha. Love the videos, alot of help!

I mostly do well at Commander, but my best deckbuilding advice is to focus on synergies. Every card in your deck should work well with *most* of your other cards. For Standard I currently have a deck that's focused on Undergrowth, particularly from Izoni. To that end, I've got small defensive threats like Glowspore Shaman and Mire Triton that let me fill up my library quickly. Since I'm a more midrange deck, I've also got Skola Grovedancer at the two drop, to help me fill the yard and incrementally gain life. Going up the curve, I use Gorging Vulture to pitch four cards and gain a bit of life. Even more with Grovedancer. There's Plaguecrafter as well, which can take out creatures in less aggressive decks, or peel off cards and Teferis from the control decks that give me so much trouble. And it puts a creature into my graveyard. I also have Ayara, First of Locthwain in the three drop spot, who can often win the game if she's on the field when Izoni comes onto the field. If not, she gives incremental lifegain, and card draw, and can put things in the graveyard. Four drop is a bit sparse, reserved for four copies of Blood for Bones, which will allow me to return key creatures from my graveyard, often getting triggers again. Five drop is split between Cavalier of Night and Cavalier of Thorns, with a one of Cauldron's Gift. The Cavaliers are large threats that have to be answered, and each one has a valuable trigger on entering the battlefield or dying (though I usually save Cavalier of Thorns' dies trigger for Blood for Bones). Only three copies of izoni are in my six drop slot, and seven is reserved for a Lotleth Giant in the sideboard. While my deck isn't the strongest, I have been able to do well with it, and that's no doubt due to just how much synergy there is.

Happy Birthday

First off, happy birthday fellow March birthday-er. Secondly, the one thing I like to do nowadays is try to find out what synergizes with such and such card. Now, for as time consuming as it is, I use Deckbox(dot)org to catalog my collection so that way I can easily search for specific rule wordings or keywords or card types to better narrow down what I have on hand. E.g.: If I have a creature that benefits itself or me from drawing cards, I look for ways to do just that, and come across others that have their own little bonus in addition to it.

That dead pixel in the middle of his forehead had me panicking about my monitor

Don't be afraid to ask other player questions, advice, or opinions. They could have some information about cards or how different interactions work between cards