Are there general statistics for building a deck?
Deck Help forum
Posted on Jan. 3, 2011, 2:18 p.m. by TheHierophant213
I've been playing for a magic for about a year now and I've always kind of just made decks and play tested them without any real math behind it. But I've been told of rumor to make basic decks with the statistics of 12, 12, 12, 22 lands and 2 extra to stick where you want. For example if it were an elf deck ... 12 mana tappers and mana gaining sorceries, 12 bumpers and randoms, and then 12 game win conditions, 22 lands, and then 2 of anything to stick in at random. Is this correct? I'm not sure how I feel about this balance.
p.s. Is there an article strictly there for deck statistics?
TheHierophant213 says... #3
That's what I figured. So is the guy that told me this full of poopbananafartknocks?(the other word for poop wasn't allowed). Because he was using this as a general rule.
And I have this deck that I'm trying to get to work correctly, it's more of fun deck than anything else really. Should I post up what I have so far in this thread or in a different section?
January 3, 2011 2:43 p.m.
post the deck on your profile. That will slap it on the front page too. I will take a look at it
January 3, 2011 2:45 p.m.
Maybe noob decks could generate some additional statistics if someone knows of a few rules of thumb.
January 3, 2011 3:31 p.m.
DeckBuilder345 says... #6
There are some general rules of thumb... that people try to follow as a base line and then deviate from there. But i don't know as they have been laid down in any one place before. Simple stuff like
60 cards - this one is the easiest for new deck builders to fall into and the one i see most people violating most often when starting out.
24 lands or approx (40%) - insufficient land is another typical problem some place i saw a break down of when to go up or down from 24 as basic guidelines forgot where though
The other thing that newer players always seem to underestimate is land tek. Land tek like man lands, or dual lands, or enter battlefield abilities will often make any deck that much more potent. Thus it makes some sense to spend a little bit on getting good lands that fit your deck well.
Rules of thumb are good when they help you to think about what you may want when first building a deck, or if you are new to the game it will give you some guidance. But the problem becomes when people slavishly follow these rules of thumb and never deviate from them. There are perfectly valid reasons to deviate from rules. The rules you listed didnt' sound horrible, and at least are a little better than the 20-20-20 rule i have heard others mention (which if you aren't careful will leave you mana starved most of the time)(ie not a good rule of thumb).
Not sure if you would consider a creature rule of thumb or not but people often have 14-24ish in their decks. (although lately w/ mythic, and control, and even poly the creature counts have been down even lower)
I am sure there are others. Nothing of course will ever replace actual testing. As there are plenty of reasons to deviate from the rules of thumb above.
I was actually looking for a good list of rules of thumb like the above for commander. I am very new to the commander format, and so know very little about it. Would be great to have some rules of thumb for deck building and would be great to have them in different formats, like commander.
January 3, 2011 4:10 p.m.
TheHierophant213 says... #7
Ok so, I posted it up but I couldn't figure out how to show the lands in the mainboard section. So I put the land count in the description. Apparently the card finder doesn't know what a forest is.
squire1 says... #2
unfortunately, there is no formula that always works. the number of lands, creatures etc all depends on how your deck works. Some decks have no land at all, some have 25 land. Both can work. Some have no creatures, some have all creatures.
There are a lot of great articles about mana fixing in a deck but probably not general stats.
January 3, 2011 2:32 p.m.