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Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Alchemy | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Brawl | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Pre-release | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Standard | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Fires of Victory
Instant
Kicker (You may pay an additional as you cast this spell.)
If this spell was kicked, draw a card. Fires of Victory deals damage to target creature or planeswalker equal to the number of cards in your hand.
ashby4 on
Zaffai, Thunder Conductor
5 months ago
These cards both fit the theme and have at least some synergy with the deck- Muse Vortex, Spellbinding Soprano, Malcolm, Alluring Scoundrel, Fires of Victory, Victory Chimes, Entrancing Melody, Maelstrom Muse
Talruum Piper is a bad card, but it is a musical Minotaur.
These cards don't quite fit the theme but are powerful in this sort of deck- Volcanic Vision, Immolating Gyre, Tzaangor Shaman, Omnispell Adept, Galvanoth, Epic Experiment, Summons of Saruman, Aminatou's Augury, Commence the Endgame
Also some cheap land upgrades- Fiery Islet, Frostboil Snarl, and Command Tower.
You should also consider running more lands than 35, with a mana curve this high it can be easy to stumble on lands. Alternatively you could play more ramp spells like Worn Powerstone and Coldsteel Heart.
legendofa on
Dominaria United Draft 1
1 year ago
Welcome to the club, DianeB!
My first question is, which format or formats are you most interested in? Since you say you're still new, I'll give a quick rundown of the biggest ones; feel free to skip over any you already know about. More general deckbuilding tips are at the end.
To start close to where you are now, Standard format uses only cards from the last several sets. Right now, the Standard-legal sets are Dominaria United, Streets of New Capenna, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, Innistrad: Crimson Vow, and Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. Every year, the oldest sets leave Standard and new sets are introduced, so the decks change regularly. Deck construction is minimum 60 cards, with no more than 4 copies of any card (other than the basic lands Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest.) There's also a 15-card sideboard you can use to modify your deck for a better matchup between games in a best-of-3 match. Entry costs for a tournament-level Standard deck are usually a few hundred dollars.
Commander, also known as EDH, is possibly the most popular official format right now, so it's easy to find a game. In Commander, the deck is exactly 100 cards. One of those cards is a Legendary Creature that's the "commander" of the deck, and has several special rules associated with it. You can't include any cards with a mana symbol that doesn't appear in the commander's mana cost or text box. For example, if you choose Tori D'Avenant, Fury Rider as your commander, you can't use any cards with , , or symbols. You also can't use more than one copy of any card other than basic lands; they all need to have different names. Commander has a lot of freedom in deckbuilding, can be done on any budget, and is very open to customizing and self-expression. It's typically a multiplayer format, played in four-person matches, but most people tend to be willing to go one-on-one as well.
I'm going to group Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage together, as they're a little harder to get into. They use the same 60-card minimum, 4-copy maximum, 15-card sideboard deckbuilding rules as Standard, but they all have much larger card pools than Standard. These formats are "eternal," which means that they don't gain and lose sets like Standard. Pioneer allows every set released since Return to Ravnica (in 2012), Modern has every set from 8th Edition forward (released in 2003), and Legacy and Vintage both allow almost every card in the game. Tournament-level deck costs range from several hundred dollars in Pioneer to tens of thousands of dollars on Vintage.
Finally, there's Casual. Play with what you have, and have fun doing it. No tournaments, no big-money decks, just a group of players at a table trying to outmatch each other.
On to the general deckbuilding tips. First, try to keep your deck as consistent as possible. This is done by sticking to the minimum number of cards allowed in your deck, usually 60, and including as many copies of your key cards as you can. As an example, if you're building a deck with a focus on instants and sorceries, you might want to include four copies each of Haughty Djinn, Fires of Victory, and Impulse. This will give you the best chance to draw the cards you need.
Second is the idea of the "mana curve," which you can see as a bar graph on this page. There's a lot of math that goes into the mana curve, but the general idea is to maximize your ability to play appropriate cards at every point in the game. Very fast, aggressive decks have a very tight mana curve, and might not include any cards that cost more than two mana. More defensive decks that want to control a longer game usually go higher. Broadly speaking, decks with a tighter mana curve are strongest in the early game and try to win quickly, while decks with a wider mana curve try to prevent fast wins and play a longer game.
Related to the above is land count and balancing. Many new players don't include enough lands, thinking that they aren't really interesting and don't do the "fun stuff" of the deck. This is kind of like leaving dead batteries in a flashlight because it's not the "useful" part. Lands and mana are what make the deck go, and skimping on them results in an unreliable deck, where you can't do the "fun" stuff because you can't pay for it. In this deck, 25 lands seems about right. The faster, tight-mana-curve decks can get away with fewer lands. Most decks want around 40% to be mana sources like lands.
There are some more points, especially about choosing color and strategy, but this response has gone on long enough. This forum is usually pretty welcoming of questions and is very knowledgeable, so please ask. And above all, have fun!