Learning to Play Magic - Part 4 - Building a Deck - Extra Credits 

What's in YOUR deck?

As someone playing a squirrel deck I approve of this video.

So Joan of Arc was an aggro player?

Aggro decks only have one plan: "GEEEET 'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEM"

I wish you had talked more about card advantage in each of these archetypes. Because similar to any strategy-game, ressources (~cards) are key! Aggro decks try winning the game before the opponent can cast all their spells, basically getting a temporary card advantage in the early game because they can play all their cheap spells while the opponent has to wait. Control decks gain card-advantage over the long game via expensive cards that are "worth more" than because they either have 2 effects or draw additional cards. Once they 1-for-1 everything the opponent did, they're winning. Combo decks try to cheat the system by having a combo that either instantly wins the game or is worth more cards when they come together than any "fair" deck could muster. Midrange is basically a control deck with a creature focus instead of an instant-sorcery-planeswalker-focus. They have a very similar playstyle to control decks in that they're favored in the long run once they can cast all their spells. That said, many decks are mixes: The classic Legacy delver deck is a mix between aggro and control, phoenix decks are a mix between combo and midrange (in fact many midrange decks have smaller combos in them). The most important thing when deckbuilding is synergy: Ideally, you want all your cards to have a similar goal AND go well with each other! That's really the secret of a good deck, even if it's just for fun!

I hope you will cover a full game (from the very beginning), and explain how and why things work.

"Your Library is an expression of you." The heaps of Arena decklist videos I've watched and imitated would beg to differ.

I once made a multi color "Thanos Deck", with my win condition being "Fraying Omnipotence" (Basically just kill half of everything on the board). Using all of the Infinity Stones to slow down my opponent until I drew The Snap. It played like crap, but it was an absolute riot with my friends.

3:30 Welcome, to Jurassic the Gathering!

the most important piece of early deck building advice that was given to me, and that I have passed on to others, is make sure your deck is trying to "do something." It doesn't have to be super tuned or linear but when someone asks "what does your deck do?" or "what is your deck about" you should have an answer. It could be anything from a very specific combo or a detailed strategy to "I want to play a bunch of Angels" or "this is my favorite character and I want to build a deck full of spells related to them." The point is when you add a card to your deck think about if it helps your decks idea or hurts it. Also, to start off I would suggest try to build mostly two color decks (although mono color is okay). It gives you flexibility without as much risk that you can't cast all of your cards.

Got it, agro decks are Joan of Arc (get 'em!) and control and combo decks are Otto Von Bismarck (always have a plan.)

Will: Yah it's rewind time EC: Yah it's deckbuilding time

One of my favorite decks I built was a Red Spellcaster which was based around exiling the top cards of my library and playing them for free and then bringing spells back from my graveyard and back into my hand. Used at most 6 mana per turn for an average of 4-10 creatures or Instants/Sorceries.

I am surprised he avoided mentioning “mana curve” when discussing about early turn plays and aggro vs other deck types.

"how'd you get the forest" Splashed green. Duh. Only question: does Zoey play with an unaltered version of the cat commander deck released a few years ago, or did they add some cards to it?

Deck building is honestly something I enjoy just as much as playing the game itself, it's awesome when you experiment with some cards and end up making a deck that work really well.

As someone building their first completely-self-designed deck, it's nice to step back and look at the basics. I've been so caught up in the specifics of each card that I've forgotten the goal!

Am I the only one who wants a similar series on d&d

1:33 *laughs in risen reef*

"Your library is an expression of you" - a believer Meta decks: G E T 'EM!

Yall got me into Magic The Gathering and so far I've been playing it almost non-stop. Thanks :)

Started playing Magic on Arena a couple weeks ago after watching the first few videos in this series. Loving it so far! Just got to Platinum ranked last night ^_^ I have the pleasure of having come up with a popular (apparently) deck type before I knew it was popular :P (That is: Red/Blue/Green Elemental creatures with Risen Reef to raise all the lands from my library, frequently with ma boi *Omnath* to combo up with)

I made a Chronozoa/Chryoplasm deck once centered around the idea of creating 3/3 flyers that multiply each turn and have the ability to shift into any other card at the start of my upkeep. It was a bit slow to get going but so much fun to pull off.

I love that you mentioned squirrels. My druids use squirrels sometimes.

My favorite deck style is aristocrats. It's kinda midrange but has a ton of cheap creatures and I love that recently there's been a ton of Black/White support for it. In short, its playstyle is that I win by killing *my own* creatures. Sacrificial life drain. I also dropped about $30-ish on the beautiful new mono-white angel tribal stuff, relatively cheap if you don't get a ton of Resplendent Angels or Lyra Dawnbringers. All I need is a Serra, The Benevolent now

Nothing is better than Dinner Extra credits 😏

I love this! Helped me much!

Omg that polyraptor combo was beautiful. And it was truly infinite

I once got 20 5/5 artifact creachures onto the battlefield with in the same turn.

Watching these videos made me download MTG Arena. I am kicking bot butt(know humans would kick my butt) Going to make my own deck next.

Omg 😂 the dinasaur song. I'm dead that was amazing.

This was so helpful thank you

"low cost spells, like 3 mana" me, a boros white-red player: "that's almost the top mana cost i can afford in any match"

This is a great series, and those end bits with Zoe are awesome! She looks just like my own kitty ^_^

"Midrange" sounds like it describes the red/green decks I used to play, though I wasn't good at valuing cards so I ran a few too many Wurms and the like. But I loved my lightning bolts and bears and such. Mid toughness creatures that weren't trivial to kill, and just enough burn to remove or weaken whatever stands in their way.

Time to build an Izzet burn deck.

I played back in innistrad. My deck was an aggro/combo human artifact deck. There were two ultimate goals 1: Myrran Crusader with a bunch of artifacts, namely butchet's cleaver and mask of avycyn, for lifelink and hexproof, plus some buff cards, and back him up with some soldiers. (Nothing in the deck was more than 6 mama and most of it was 3 or less) 2: 3 Fiend Hunters (3 mana) and Champion of the Parish (1 mana) whenever a human enters the battlefield, CotP gains +1/+1, whenever Fiendhunter enters the battlefield, you may exile target creature until Fiendhunter leaves the battlefield, at which point the exiled card returns to the battlefield. Use 3 fiendhunters to exile themselves infinitely. For best results, add butcher's cleaver and mask of avycyn for lifelink and hexproof. Even better with sharpened pitchfork for firststrike. You basically have this super buff paladin dualwielding a pitchfork and a cleaver, wearing a masquerade mask, coming to kill you. Either you eat the damage and die, or block and oh hey, lifelink doesn't care about toughness. I now have a million life.

I really like my black and red vampire deck. It's got a decent amount of aggro and midrange qualities with a killer combo. It's got red destruction based magics and vampires that have death touch and life link. The main piece of the deck is my Olivia Valdaren and it constantly gains more power for every creature I can convert to a vampire. It is admittedly a bit slow but it can wreck some combo decks that rely on a lot of small creatures.

Also you guys are just completely awesome and I really enjoy the content you great folks offer ....peace out for now brotha's

Zoey playing a Recorder is the best I've ever seen

In middle school the draw for me was just being able to play and have fun. I wasn’t really that good and I never tried to hard.(I used a pre built Flying/Burn Deck with a few modification) Simply playing to have fun with others was great.

I remember I was learning Magic for the first time a week ago and we were playing a 6 player FFA (I was given a Morph deck) and my first lesson was “Gang up on the Infect Deck”

Love the squirrel nod. I run an infinite squirrel combo deck.

One time my son used cards to keep sending the same Midnight Guard back to my hand. "Ok, I attack with my Midnight Guard!" (Whelming wave) MG: (Gets played and attacks again) (Aetherize) MG: "Why do I even bother..."

You forgot Mill, but that's fine. Because the best part of Milling is the moment your opponent realises what's going on.....

I try to use all the colors cause I love combing things but I am most definitely at heart a red mage who loves agro but I have made decks in all colors I often use white and green to make up for the weakness of red or use blue with red to have both offense and defense in a deck or if I want to kill anything and everything combining red and black is quite dastardly either way like you guys said making decks and trying them out is just as fun as playing

Suicide Black My favorite classical design for a Deck. Right now I'm working on a variant of it for Vilis EDH.

0:16 That's a cursed face

The zoe endcards in this series give me life

Thanks!

SQUIRREL EDH DECK! NEXT MEME DECK BUILD!

My brother and I like to play EDH format against each other ( 1 commander, 100 cards per deck, no multiples of any card except for lands) and it can get more than a little absurd. Every time we start up with frequent games and deck-building it turns into a straight up arms race to see who can beat the other in the most brutal manner possible. What I've learned mostly is that my brother is a pro-trickster. I've been playing him for years, and even with a deck he's used against me before, I never know what the hell he's gonna do to beat me. Personally, I run my decks with as few outright tricks and gimmicks as possible. All in all I'd say we're evenly matched in any given encounter. What EC's videos on MTG have really done for me is make me re-familiarize myself with the fundamentals of the game, it's been super useful.

I have a black red vamp deck from the OG Innistrad block. I have been updating it and changing it for 7 years.

I personally like to play combo decks. Just so I can say “I love it when a plan comes together!”

Opponent gloats with their infinite raptors. Attacks all in. Gets settled. We like to have fun here.

Trying to make a dinosaur deck with the pyroraptor and forerunner of the empire combo and I laughed so hard when they show it in this video

Guessing the next video is in the game formats. Love cammander myself

Love your video's

Revel in Riches is so good when you also have stronk pirates.

Hi. Nice job on vid

once, about three yeara ago, while sorting my cards I noticed a lot of black cards that involve sacrificing a creature as part of a cost, and I thought it would be funny to make a modern deck centered around sacrificing creatures (both mine and my opponents). It was just for fun, I didnt think it would be that good. It became the strongest deck I had ever built, so much so that my brother had to make a new deck SPECIFICIALLY for beating it. Sometimes even a deck that sounds like a joke when said out loud can be powerful when put into practice.

I have a deck idea I've been kicking around for a while, but just haven't had the time to bring it to the table yet. It should generally play as a pretty normal midrange R/W equipment deck, but it ALSO harnesses the power of Mycosynth Lattice (Everything is an artifact) with Bludgeon Brawl to ensure EVERYTHING is a weapon. Once that's in place, Golem-Skin Gauntlets (+1/+0 for each equipped card) makes Vulshok Battlemaster (Haste, equips all equipment when it enters) the kind of almighty being that literally throws the EVERYTHING at your opponent. It's very slow and very disruptable, and several of the cards do nothing on their own, but dammit, that's what Magic is all about. That and Lantern Control.

1:07 and then there's the end game deck where you pull a spell that basically allows you to summon creatures without playing mana until you find another spell card so you make it your only spell card.

I recently played a blue green fog mill deck against a 250 card blue black attrition deck, It was epic. I was within one card draw of removing the last two cards from their library and I had run out of fog. I had four cards left in my library and I knew I had two card draws and a fog left. I drew an island.

I think you need an extra liturature series

Wouldn't mind seeing you cover some more specific types of builds.

My Personal favorite deck is my EDH Yarok the desecrated land deck. Its main goal is to get a ton of lands and mana available to play creature cards with interesting etbs. my favorite combo lets me have infinite mana on my turn which i use to play Agent of treachery infinite time by bouncing it with a shrieking drake. I steal every card on the field then concede watching my opponents scramble to figure out what to do with a completely empty board while i sit and laugh :>

zoe's deck reminds me of kitten from "if the emperor had a text to speech device"'s deck

If you play commander I recommend having at least 3 mana rocks or more. Mana rocks are artifacts that make mana.

Best deck you ever played or build ? Perso, it was on Theros and it was the Mono Blue...expensive in gods, but oh god it was satisfaying ! How about you guys ?

So another thing that I think you should've mentioned, although I guess you alluded to it, is the value of consistency. Not only is it good to stay at the minimum of 60 cards, but any cards that you really need for the deck you should run 4 copies, the most you can have of any non-land card. As you said, you're not gonna use most of the cards in your deck in most games. But we can get more specific than that. If you consider that you start by drawing 7 cards, and then lets say a typical casual magic game goes on for about 7-8 turns. That means that without any other means of drawing cards to dig deeper into your deck, you're only seeing about 15 cards, or a quarter of your deck, across the whole game. And coincidentally, by having 4 copies of a card, then on average you should see at least one copy of that card per game. Obviously this isn't a guarantee, but generally speaking it helps illustrate why having 4 copies of your key cards is really important. On top of that, if you think about it, you only actually need 9 unique cards to make an entire deck. After all if you have 60 cards total, and 24 are lands, that leaves 36. And if you can have 4 of any other card, then dividing 36 by 4 leaves you with a minimum of 9 unique cards. The other big aspect of deckbuilding is that I usually start by picking my win condition. The strategies you bring up (Aggro, Control, etc) are often a part of the win condition, but I usually refer to specific cards. So like for example maybe Feather the Redeemed is my win condition, so I start out by putting 4 copies of her in my deck, and then I focus on putting in other cards to support myself getting to Feather. And of course you don't need only one Win Condition, in fact it's often best to have at least 2 or 3 strategies of how you're going to get your opponent's life to 0. So maybe I also throw in some Dreadhorde Arcanists into my deck for good measure before I start finding my other support cards. So if you really wanna simplify deckbuilding for new players: I would say that what you should do is start by setting out 9 slots for unique cards, and then fill one or two of those slots by picking out whatever cool fun and powerful card you wanna play with that you think can win you the game. Then simply fill in the remaining slots with cards to support those powerful cards, be they creatures to play in the early game, spells to buff or defend things, or other kinds of interaction to mess with your opponent, and put in 4 copies of each card, and go to town!

I really love your cat!

I'm just here trying to build frog tribal. EVERYTHING MUST BE TRBAL!!!

I used to have a dope heroism deck, It was grate

Magic forces me to play as a sorcerer and I didn't opt in for this.

My pauper deck tries to plow out an 8/8 eldrazi with annihilator 2 and hopefully haste on turn 2

My main tip for deck building is to play the deck constantly. Every time you lose ask yourself why you lost. Then make a swap and try again.

Some codes for arena: OneBillion PlayRavnica PlayAllegiance GAMEAWARDS SPARKLEDRUID SHINYGOBLINPIRATE FOILFUNGUS PARALLAXPOTION PREMIUMSCRY PlayWarSpark PLAYM20 LEVELUP BROUGHTBACK

better way to reword the "usually only play the minimum 60 cards" (at least better imo). if you play 61 cards, you have one 'worst card'. and that card gets in the way of you drawing all the other cards in your deck that are better. so even though its hard, try to keep it at 60 cards. sometimes, what i've done is purposely make the deck 5-10 cards over 60, play test it a little, and then work on shaving off those extra cards. finding those few 'worst cards' when you've played a few games with the deck. also, if you play paper, dont just look up the "best decks" and go buy them, not unless you're going to a big tournament like a grand prix. making your own deck is not only a lot funner, but also a lot cheaper. plus, beating a 150$ deck using your deck thats like 20$ is very satisfying.

The first deck I made on my own was a myr deck because I thought they looked cute. And I would quietly play in my corner, being ignored by everyone until....INFINITE ARMY OF UNTARGETABLE MYRS!!1! There’s a myr combo that generates unlimited mana. With a myr propagator, you make infinite myr copies. Then add in an angel that gives untargetable to all artifacts (myrs are artifact creatures) when you have metal craft, equip it with a whispersilk cloak so it can’t be targeted and have fun.😁

That was great XD

No mention of the Rule of Nine? The simplest way to make a new deck fast (and leave improving it for later) is to pick just 9 spells with a good curve and creature/noncreature ratio, take 4 copies of each (the max), and add 24 lands for a 60 card deck. If the result has holes either in play or in your collection, just swap out copies of those nine spells for other ones that do similar things.

It would be pretty cool if you guys also made an epsiode about competitive magic.

0:39 - OH MY GOD HE IS BENDING THE CARD REEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I really liked the explanation of why you should try to have only 60 cards in a deck.

I made a deck on arena with 120 cards with no limited hand size you usually get out early then start drawing and you end up out drawing the 60 card deck. On one turn I drew 60 cards. I decked myself so hard. But I ended up putting 500 goblins out on the board on one turn. Its a prdy fun deck.

I would recommend going to your local magic the gather store and saying you are a new player and you would like a deck. They typically have two colors and follow the rules video. That’s how I got mine

You mentioned that sometimes you should edit an existing deck, this is actually how i got my most powerful deck and i wanted to share it. I purchased a red/green spider deck a while back that hinges on a 5/7 spider with the effect: ‘tap an untapped spider, search your library and graveyard for Arachnid web, put it into play.’ Sounds great, but the red spells made up half the deck, were really expensive, and forced me to choose between them, or my spiders. Solution? I gutted all the red from the deck, packed in more spiders, got two Garuuk Relentless, and some 1-2 mana draw cards, and created a terrifying deck i call Arachnophobia. i’ve held back decks with three 100/100 white elementals before. So it is always a good idea to look into existing decks, and find what synergies with you c: Or cobble together an 80 card red deck centered on blowing everything up until you get Koth the Hammer out and beat your opponent to death with your mountains. Either or.

I only really did this once, I suppose you could call it aggro/combo thingy in Ursa's saga era. Full of low-cost creatures most of whom had the ability of either first strike, grant first strike, or grant protection from chosen color. A few were flying or could block as through they had flying. Cheap spells of protection from chosen color, Worship and Paraiah, plus the Serra avatar, Disenchantment, Swords to plowshares and the like. I tried running it against a few tournament winning decks you can buy (with altered back sides so they're worthless for trade). I basically couldn't win with the tournament deck. My little thingy won every time, I rarely needed the avatar. I'm guessing the main qualities within could well be timeless. My advice would be to just keep things simple. I was also helped by a quote: In ancient times, great warriors made themselves invincible and then watched for the openings in their opponents. That's what I went for.

Jank, gag, and meme decks are definitely the most fun. Winning in the dumbest ways possible, that's my M.O. :')

Years back, I was playing FNM at the mall, and there was a guy there who was really really good at it. I think he was on the spectrum, because he was like... ridiculously good at Magic, but was a bit difficult to get along with. Anyway, he had a few decks he liked using, but his favorite seemed to be an obnoxious mill deck he had fine-tuned to basically destroy anyone in like 6-10 turns. It sucked to play against. Well one day, he was matched against this guy who had an oversized deck of over 200 cards (and yes it was part of his deck strategy, I think he had some cards that were affected by the size of the deck, all his cards revolved around walls and searching that mountain for his combo cards), and naturally he beat the mill deck. This made the Mill deck guy freak out and basically throw a tantrum about how it was completely unfair that his unbeatable deck had lost against a ridiculous 200-card deck and blah blah blah. The event runner tried to explain that every deck has SOME weakness and a mill deck is basically useless against an oversized deck, it was just a bad luck match-up etc but he wouldn't listen. To him, the guy had "cheated" with his perfectly legitimate strategy. He was kicked out of the store for it (or was so upset he left mid-match I forget) and I never saw him again. I mean I lost literally every match I ever played at FNM (because I really suck at it) but I never threw a fit over it. Once I learned what the oversized deck strategy was I thought it was brilliant.

Most important part of the game.

Basically my issue with tweaking decks is that If I swap out a lot of cards I feel like I might be better off scrapping it and building a new one and if I'm only tweaking a few cards I feel like I'm not making enough of an impact to be worth it. After all I'm probably not going to be drawing those two extra lands or that shiny mythic rare, so what's the point? If the deck isnt holding on it's own without those cards that one or three extra isnt going to make a significant difference. At least that's the way it feels.

i actually am a combo/controll deck my combo cosets of sorens thirst, murder, and command the dread horde along with a lot of control like instants like counter spell and well murder

I just spam thopters and then tap them in pairs for Ghipher Aether Grid.

Will you guys be doing the 100 commander games?

where can I find the basic/core deck to buy?

I'm new to magic yaaayyy

@2:24 - "Now, just how many low cost spells depends a lot uon the deck type you are playing" Well said! For example, if you want to win, you will have a lot. if you want to lose and complain, you will only have a few. You see, even when the game reaches later turns, instead of casting one big spell, it is often better to cast multiple cheap spells, as the individual impact of those small spell is greater than the individual impact of an expensive spell. Essentially, you want the mana cost of your cards to look more like a CURVE rather than a slope.

I actually had squirrel deck back in the day...