by Elton Gahr

Created on: March 09, 2009

Building A competitive magic the gathering deck is one of the most difficult tasks in gaming. Even playing in the game types with the least cards you have hundreds of choices and knowing which card is best isn't always easy, yet simply downloading a list of cards of the Internet isn't nearly as satisfying as finding that perfect set of cards yourself, even if they turn out to be very similar, so how do you build your own deck?

The first thing to understand is what your strategy is. Do you want to overwhelm your opponent with numbers, slip past them with a few creatures or simply control what they do and outlast them. Any of these and more can be viable strategies but if you try to do all of them you're deck is going to end up muddled.

Once you have decided on the type of deck you want to build your next step is to look at the decks that Wizards of the Coast expected you to build. This is often easy. In most sets there are a group of cards which are clearly meant to go together. This can be a guild, a race or a class or those with a specific ability. Using one of those themes doesn't guarantee that you can build an effective deck but it many of the most powerful decks in magic have been because people used the planned decks more effectively than wizards of the coast expected(affinity comes to mind).

Third using Magic online or magic apprentice or any other list find every card which fits your theme available. Do this even before you choose color. It can take time but I find it effective because sometimes you'll find a card which you would have normally discounted because of some preconditioned criteria which can actually be quite good in the right deck. Many of the best cards in the game of magic have major drawbacks so don't start discounting things yet and certainly don't limit yourself to cards you already have. Building a competitive deck will almost certainly mean buying singles but you don't want to do that until you've refined the deck.

Next you'll find the extraordinary cards. These are cards which are either very under cost for what they can do, such as 2 mana for a creature that is often a 5/6, an extremely versatile card that isn't to expensive, a card that a game changing effect, or a card that does something nothing else does. Extraordinary cards aren't always great, but great cards are always extraordinary.

Find the one or two central cards. These are cards which match the theme of your deck perfectly and are extraordinary. These cards should allow

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