Help?
General forum
Posted on July 24, 2015, 3:10 p.m. by LowBudgetPlayer
So I've been playing the game for a while. But since only the boys in my scout troop play, none of us have learned how to actually build decks. Advice please?
Rasta_Viking29 says... #3
After reading that article I suggest checking out Reid Duke's Level One article series. He does a fantastic job explaining both basic and complex Magic theory.
July 24, 2015 4:13 p.m.
Damn you Rasta! Always stealing the good answers...
Manabase!
Make sure your manabase matches to produce about 50-60% of your mana symbol count for any given color. For example in a deck with 20 
symbols, you would want about 10-12 sources. In a deck with 10 
and 10 , you would want an 11/11 split.
For an aggro deck, 21-23 lands are usually best,
for control, 23-25 is usually best,
for midrange, somewhere in between.
On the subject of "Curving Out"...
Have you heard the term "Curving out"? If not, or if you don't know what it means, curving out is when you go 1 drop into 2 drop into 3 drop and so on, or 2>3>4... You get the picture. This is mostly used in Aggro decks, since they are most likely to have lots of one/two/three drops, whereas midrange focuses on 3/4/5, and control mostly uses 5/6/7+.
Format
If your friends and you focus on casual play instead of competitively enforcing rules, then skip this section.
If not, this guide should help you build your deck as well.
If you play standard, there are lots of directions for you to go in. Control, Midrange, Aggro, and even some Combo decks have been doing quite well. You can find good decks by looking at the top standings at Pro Tours, Grand Prixs, SCG events, or (I guess FNM?)
But, since your post (Boy Scout Troop?) leads me to believe you are between eight and seventeen years old, you probably have a tighter budget -- therefor not able to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on Atarka Red or Abzan Aggro. (I totally figured that out on my own and didn't just read your username! Shh!)
If you Google this exactly: (Copy paste it, including the quotation marks!)
"Winning Budget MtG Standard Deck"
Since I just covered standard, I'll now do Modern. Modern is overall a more expensive format than standard, with the average deck clocking in at around $800 dollars (Burn, Twin variants, Abzan Aggro, Jund Midrange, B/W Tokens, and "Grixis" Affinity composing the majority of the Metagame, with fringe decks like Bogles, Tribal Zoo / Naya Aggro, RDW. and Collected Company variants on the rise.)
In modern, you usually want to have a faster deck than in standard, since the majority of decks are quite fast, (Affinity, Zoo, Burn, and Infect all have turn 2-4 wins!) Meaning 22-23 lands composed of fetches, shocks, checks, and basics, depending on your colors. AgGro (Mono-G Stompy) usually runs 21 Forest and an Oran-Rief or Nykthos, but Burn Affinity uses a sleugh of expensive lands to become the most expensive deck in modern (insert echo here)!
Off track. Sorry.
Legacy, run 24 lands. I dont care. Unless your manaless dredge. Then run 0. Whatever. That's not a legacy deck.
That was not a curve helper, that was a meta blast. Shit. Whatever. Hope you enjoyed!
-Maringam
July 24, 2015 6:08 p.m.
Maringam it looks like you forgot to close a font tag, so I'll tag Epochalyptik and yeaGO to fix it. It's messing up the format on the pages you tagged and your comment shows up on.
F.Y.I.- please don't use these tags in comments, they mess up the site's format.
brcap says... #2
I know right... if there were girls in your troop that played, you'd all be masters of your decks.
Grammar pun??
Anyway, there are million articles out there to google, so I wont be redundant (do google "how to mana curve", that's important) . But the basics: figure out what your deck wants to do and built it to do that thing well - ie. are you trying to win through a combo: make it easy to put the pieces together and have ways to protect it. Trying to win with lots of small fast creatures in the early game: then do only that!.. (it took me a fair amount of casual play to really grasp that). The point is, don't mess around with cards that dont fit into your build just because they're good cards. A deck that wants to win by turn 5 does not have a creature that costs 5 mana in it (they often don't go higher than 3). Good decks are consistent above all else. Stick to 60 cards!
You'll learn steadily as you play, and check out what pro decks look like and figure out why they built them that way. Check out sites like mtgtop8.com, most cards they use will be $$$, so think.. what do i have that's close-ish to what that card does? and try for similar builds to see how decks work. Just keep playin'
go forth and smash
July 24, 2015 3:30 p.m.