This was helpful but, how about a video where you build a deck from scratch explaining why you put certain cards in there. Like this mechanic works well with this card etc. Not as a 'this is the best deck' but, as an example of the thought process for choosing specific cards. With so many to choose from it's really easy to get lost or confused about how to think about which cards will work for you. Especially if you're new.
Yeah, it's also hard to search through like 5 years of viable magic card sets, and one of them are always going to be taken off by the next season so you need to try to build within the legal meta.
That's something to figure out for yourself (if you have not yet). You have the foundation, now you have to build upon it. You just have to test your deck following the curves mentioned in the video.
just started playing mtg arena, been playing for 3 or 4 weeks. I gotta say for a video from 2018 this was VERY HELPFUL for a new player and NO idea how to make my new deck without serious balance issues. Thanks for the video
You're damn right. the algorithms going on in this thing are insane. Same reason the actual tabletop game intimidated me way back when...all those ability triggers and counters and to keep track of.
This isn't entirely a joke btw, rat colony deck is pretty decent, just need to put removal, some card advantage in there and some other stuff like the dude who makes them unlockable
I've build Magic decks before, but I recently came back to the game after not playing for like 6 months. Standard rotated and all of the decks I played before were no longer viable, so I needed to build something new. In my six month absence, I forgot a lot of the basics. Thanks for the refresher!
One thing you forgot to mention is that when building multi color decks you also want to be careful in how many lands of each type you add depending on how many cards of that mana color you have in your deck. For example if you have a near perfect mix of roughly 18 green and 18 red cards, then it makes sense to have 12 forests and 12 mountains but if your deck only runs 9 green cards and 27 red cards, then you need to adjust your manabase accordingly. Which is something still easy to do in 2 color, but in 3 color decks and more, it gets complicated. At this point another thing you could have suggested is to take evolving wilds as that lets you fetch any basic land card which makes it just as useful (if not more) than the guild gates at 3 color decks and more because those only produce 2 mana with the chance of not producing mana of the 3rd color for example. And if you are running a 4 or 5 color decks is it useful to just take guild gates instead of basics as that way you might play slower due to them entering the battlefield tapped, but you minimize the chance of getting mana screwed.
@MTGGoldfish This is fantastic and very helpful content! Being a more experienced player myself I don't actually care for this video, but it's awesome that you do content like that for the people who do need it :D
This video is fantastic and I greatly respect this fellow. I would also suggest, if you're statistically inclined, checking out hypergeometric distribution probability. There's an excellent video of it here on RU-vid, but I don't remember the creator. Using the hypergeometric distribution is how I ended up with a 62 card deck that still has around 80% chance of having 4 lands down on turn 4.
I always add more land than I need, but not too much. Example: R/BLK/G Nissa (blk/grn) 32 lands 20 basic 4 that can be spells/creatures instead 4 that give one of 2 color mana (not tapped when entering) 4 Evolving Wilds Imho: Landfall OP
im making my first set, as of right now i only have 16 cards, 15 from a booster pack and 1 red land i found lying around. Iv never built a deck before and i do have a duel starter kit arriving soon. since i dont have enough cards to make a deck viscly is there any website were i can simulate a deck as a sort of goal for myself to figure out what im roughly aiming for beforehand? if not thanks!
I would love to see some advice about what kinds of decks needs card draw. I get the idea that it refills your hand and helps you dig for treats/answers, but not every deck wants draw, right? Or at least they want different amounts?
but what can you do when you are missing a lot of cards to make something usefull? everytime i play with my only deck, which isnt even that good and i cant make a second deck because of the missing cards, i just get steamrolled. when i use the premade decks i also get steamrolled because they dont even feel like an average deck and grinding away and just lose over and over again, until i can actually play the game feels like a waste of time and just spending 100€ for packs with the chance to get enough cards to make something is something i wont do.. i want to play the game and get into it, but i now tried the game like 3-4 different times and it always ended with me just ragequitting because im in a disadvantage everytime i play i know you can craft cards you are missing but you first need to know what you want to make to craft the correct cards and i wont have enough wildcards to do so
Okay I played magic back in 1993 to maybe 97.. stuff has changed and have one big question. Say core 2021 for instance.. do you only play 2021 cards or can you play say demonic tudor or say a royal assassin with these newer cards and still work out? Or these days do you just play the set your buying? I notice alot of the cards in the new sets use counters and other things that are new to me. Can someone feed me thoughts so I can get the ball rolling. I had only got into trample and banding back then as new rules. Now I see flash lifelink deathtouch haste ect. So seeing if cards can work together from other sets or not really. Hope this makes sense. My buddy wants to play and I use to enjoy old school magic and the new is a bit different years later. Thanks in advance
I know big decks can be consistent if they’re built correctly and used well. My fathers black vampire deck is a great example. Over 100 cards big and it has creatures that produce mana letting him bring out creatures with flying, life link, trample, etc etc
Personally the only issue I see is how land and nonland ratios are treated differently in arena. You can lower the land count by 2-4 in most decks and still get the hand you want early game
This is actually the second worst thing about arena (behind only the Vault). Back in closed beta I experimented with a Flame of Keld deck running as low as 16 lands - if I'm not mistaken - and it was way more consistent than it should ever be. I understand trying to minimize mana flood/screw, but I just wish they'd use a regular shuffler/first hand randomizer
@@lucasenraraujo I've lowered my deck's land count by 2-4 for every single deck I run on arena vs the real counterpart and I've had the exact same results as you're describing
Hmm, I don't think it should be that drastic. Best of one matches on Arena have some unique rules about how you get your opening hand, but they should be so impactful that you play up to four less lands than normal.
best of one matches are a different meta, and you can and should take into account the shuffler for that. I can tell you for sure that flame of keld deck couldnt possibly be good in best of 3/competitive constructed
@@SilverAlex92 I still don't see how this warrants land fixing in a best-of-1 meta. Land fixing undermines decks that use more lands and gives unfair advantages to decks that use less lands. Why spend the time to perfectly construct your manabase for efficiency if you can just get it fixed in your opening hand? Land fixing should not define a meta, the decks and ratios should
Would be really cool if some good brewers made some interesting 0-mythic 0-rare decks. Something like Beamsplitter Wizards by Merchant ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CQopyOO68Zc.html. Real fun deck to play. You ask why? Because of Arena matchmaking. It's not random. It's based on the type of deck you have and especially the rarity of cards you have in your deck. So throw a few mythics and rares in it and you are going to play against the strongest meta decks out there. I think that most people grind with their 1 or 2 fully built meta decks. Therefore, not only are you playing against the strongest decks around, you are constantly playing against the same few decks that have won Pro Tours. Yes, I could build my own deck, but it would suck big time. I would never come up with something like the Beamsplitter Wizards. It's a sweet deck to play and you usually get matched against all sorts of decks of new players. Much less boring than the constant few meta decks. Anyone up for the challenge? ;-)
Hi everyone I am an intermediate player I have won a few FNMs but I’m just beginning to truly brew up my own lists, this is the one I feel some what confident about and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or criticisms Green-Red Ramp Creatures: 18 4 Lanowar Elves 4 Elfhame Druid 3x Wayword Swordtooth 2 Ghalta primal hunger 3 Demanding Dragon 2 Etali primal storm Spells: 12 4x grow from the ashes 4x circuitous route 2x bane fire 2x apex of power Enchantments: 6 2x Sunbirds invocation 2x Vance’s blasting cannons 2x shapers sanctuary Lands 24 4x routbound crags 10 forests 10 mountains
Ghalta won't be that good, since you're not running many highpowered creatures. You need some removal. Fight with fire seems perfect, also play something like lava coil. Treassure map would help this deck alot with flooding issues. shaper's sanctuary isn't that good in a deck with this little creatures. pellaka worm is really good, carnage tyrant if you can afford it. Wayword swordtooth won't be that good in this deck, you'll probably get a maximum of 1 extra land drop.
I'll try my best to explain what I think but I'm not a pro so don't take what I say too directly. First of all, I think the ramp shell is ok, not too much things, but you should figure out after each game if it was too much or not. I don't really like any of the enchantment you're playing. They are not part of your win plan. You should really focus on the main goals of your deck : ramp, cast big spells, and don't die. Your big spells are cool, I don't find Ghalta particularly appropriated here, it's easily destroyed or exiled, and I'd rather play a more sticky creature like the Carnage Tyrant. If it drops fast enough, it will still be an enormous threat for your opponent. The don't die shell is clearly not enough there. Drop your enchantment for tools to deal with aggro decks : you need to be able to kill Benalish Marshals, Wildgrowth Walkers, Drakes, etc. Lava Coil and Fight with Fire are good options (lava coil exiles, it's extremely important against golgari). You dont have access to easy life gain against red aggro, check if you can survive in matches. If I could give you one crazy card for you deck, try out Sarkhan's Unsealing. If you can survive one turn after dropping it and cast a Carnage Tyrant after, it's an instant win against all aggro decks (80% of the meta). But playing too more copies is dangerous, don't play more than two I think. Another crazy choice would be Goreclaw, I personally really like these two cards. Oh and also, Etali is crazy bad xD
RedSPINE thanks for the advice I’ll definitely take it into consideration but is Etali really that bad it seems to have a pretty bonkers affect to me XD I mean like casting a teferi off the top of your opponents library sounds like a dream
I think you're going a little too big here. You have almost 20 ramp cards, and the payoffs aren't good enough. I'd drop Grow and Circuitous route, and put in more dinosaurs. Regisaur Alpha is a standout, and Carnage Tyrant gives you a big top end that's hard to kill. You could also go Drover of the Mighty > Elfhame. I would also try and add more removal like Lava Coil and Thrashing Brontodon so you can interact with opposing decks. Shaper's sanctuary is more of a sideboard card, Apex of Power is impractically expensive, and Sunbird's Invocation is a 6 drop that doesn't do anything the turn you play it.
This Deck needs carnage tyrants, maybe instead of the etallis, also you are running way to many rampspells, they are basically dead draws when you have enough lands later in the game. I'd switch some out for removal. Fight with fire would be a good one here. Maybe even banefire. I also would play regisaur alpha in any red-green list. The card is just bonkers
Pause you can cast instants on your opponents turn and flash cards so a smart thing would be to save 1-3 mana for some oh shit cards like fog so you dont die.... it also scares the opponents like that bitch may have a instant they can use to clap me.
@@Abo3dlY02 Your vault progress is hidden until you get to 100% on your vault. Having a 5th copy of a card gives a "small" percentage of vault progress, a 5th copy of a Mythic is only about 1.2% vault progress and lower rarity cards offer even less progress. Opening packs also progress your vault also.
Been having a lot of fun playing Arena. Much less clunky than MTGO, looks nice. However I do have a few complaints about the state of MTG overall (card quality and SJW nonsense aside). It is getting ridiculous how much faster the games are now due to ever increasing power of cheaper casting cost cards. Used to be you needed to spend at least 3 or 4 mana to get a really decent card and 5 or 6 to get a game changing card. Now it's more like 2-3 and 4-5. Also, colors are losing their distinctions. It is WAY easier to just play 1 or 2 colors than in the past. Maybe getting rid of most of the color-hoser cards was a good idea, but when I see straight up life-gain cards for black, targeted creature removal for white with no qualifiers I see the lines blurred a lot. It all works for my aggressive game play style, but kind of miss the slower developing games sometimes.
If I understand what you are saying Wildcards are for crafting new cards and they are stacked next to the gold if you hover over the flower icon it will tell you how many cards you can craft
This video seems so helpful, but I’m finished 5 minutes in. The cadence and vocal tone is just too annoying and sound as if the video is trying to pander to kindergartners. I’m out.
As an experienced player (I started again in july.) I cannot stress enough how mana is important in MTG it's why I put at least 40 basic land in my deck to be sure to be as efficient as possible.
"Building 3-4-5 color decks is difficult" You see, that was the beauty of the game. Each color has weaknesses and you can try to balance them out by combining them with other colors. However, by doing so one would lose consistency. Then they printed fetchlands and this guiding principle behind game design was ruined. In Eternal formats you can just build whatever mana base you like. #banfetchlands
@@redspine2859 life doesnt matter in eternal formats. Ban fetch lands and itll have more impact as people will be forced to change their decks up to manage that change. It also prevents cheating in events that have formats that allow fetch lands. Really isnt a downside to their banning.
That's not true, there are alot of 1 and 2 mana decks in modern, 3 color is common, but there are next to no decks running more then 3 colors. And fetch lands are just the best designed land cycle in magic, having alot of different usages. If you want to ban sth., ban shocks or original duals if you really if you won't less consistent mana.
Arena is the worst designed platform to play Magic you can barely see your own hand, cards fly about at the speed of light that you glance from the screen you can lose the whole match and Magic Duels is so much better play ability, just lacks the number of card choices.
the only real difference between magic duels and arena is that when the cards are on the battlefield, arena reduces them to "tiles" that only show the card name and card art but if you hover your mouse over any such tile it shows you the whole card. I think this is better than Magic Duels where you have to use your mouse wheel to zoom into the cards.
I watch so many of these where they’re videos made by pros using terms I haven’t learned yet. Ir actually turns me off of the hobby because it seems inaccessible to newcomers.
I built a red and blue (not meta, only my strategy)... I always Win at least 5 times on the Constructed Event and recover the gold and win 3 rares/mithycs and today i won twice 7 times in a row earning 1000 gold each... the time that you spend to obtain cards in this game is awesome this makes this game a incredible f2p.
this man is very smart and this video helped my friends a lot I kept winning although they understood the fundamentals of magic and played other card games this video helped them to understand as they called it "the behind scenes" of magic
So, what about how do I defeat decks that eats your cards into graveyard or when I find people actually they literally finds themselves into power loopholes where I found myself vs like 200 creatures and -1100 dmg...