I just want a simple deck to compete against my friends and possibly FNM once I learn more
Modern Deck Help forum
Posted on Nov. 11, 2015, 10:03 p.m. by Growliff
So, I started my MTG journey with an Origins fat pack. I built 2 "decks" that are probably the worst you have ever seen. With that said, I really just want a deck I can use and understand to make. What does aggro, mill, control, etc. mean ? And what sets them aside each other. How do you make them ? I really don't know where to put this. I am very lost. I just want to play FNM modern and with friends. Help ? Haha, sorry guys.
Hi!
The types of decks that you are asking about are called "archetypes", and there's a lot of them that are super fun to play. Burn, or a deck that uses cards like Lightning Bolt and Shock is a fun deck, if you like hitting your opponents with non-creatures. If you like wrecking face with creatures, however, Tron is your best bet. It uses the lands Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower to produce extra mana so that they can cast big creatures early in the game. Aggro means aggressive--it relies on small-cost, value-oriented creatures (i.e. Monastery Swiftspear) to beat the opponent early. Mill refers to using cards like Glimpse the Unthinkable to put an opponent's entire library into their graveyard. I don't know if you know how mill wins--if a player can't draw a card, than they lose the game. Control refers to using counterspells like Remand and Mana Leak or getting with of creatures using Path to Exile and Smother to control the board so that their creatures can get through. It's totally okay to be a noob at this--I was in your position (for Modern, at least) a few months ago. Ask around at your local game store for some good Modern decks, or just check out what others around you are playing. And above all, make sure that the deck that you eventually build is fun. Also, you can navigate the decks on TappedOut by going to the deck builder and browsing by Modern decks. Hope this helped!
November 11, 2015 10:21 p.m.
Serendipitous_Hummingbird says... #4
hey no worries man, we all started somewhere. My journey back into magic (and when I actually started learning about tempo, card advantage, etc) started with a 2013 Deckbuilder's toolkit and a deck as ugly as yours.
Okay, so to answer your questions about terminology.
So there are three types of decks (for now we won't break it up into subtypes)
Aggro is a deck that aims to win through making the first move. It uses cards with high power and low mana costs to beat your opponent before he or she can beat you.
Control is the opposite of aggro. It uses counterspells like Cancel to prevent your opponent from playing his or her spells. Unlike aggro, which wants to win ASAP, control prefers to slow the game down, slowly building up mana and lands in order to cast a big game winning card called a win con. Wincon cards are hard for the opponent to remove and can win the game for the player you controls it. Control decks are very powerful, but also very complicated.
Combo decks are decks that rely on getting cards that interact with each other to kill an opponent instantly. An example of this is Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Pestermite. If you tap Kiki to make a copy of Pestermite, when that Pestermite enters the battlefield, you use its ability to untap Kiki and then repeat the process until you have an army of millions of 2/1 creatures. Combo decks are also very powerful, but are extremely difficult to play.
If you are looking for a simple deck to play, I recommend aggro. Try building a 
deck that uses cards like Lightning Bolt, Bump in the Night, Rakdos Cackler, and Spike Jester to kill your opponent as quickly as you can.
November 11, 2015 10:24 p.m.
TheAnnihilator says... #5
So, to answer your archetype question:
Aggro -- This kind of deck looks to aggressively attack its opponent's life total. A common form is RDW (Red Deck Wins), which focuses on playing very small and efficient creatures, like Foundry Street Denizen or Monastery Swiftspear, and a few burn spells that do direct damage to the opponent, like Lightning Bolt and Rift Bolt.
Mill -- This is a very different kind of deck, which focuses on throwing away your opponent's library via cards like Mind Sculpt and Glimpse the Unthinkable. Usually 
and colors.
Control -- Another very different archetype, control aims to neutralize your opponent's threats via counterspells like Counterspell and Dissolve, or removal spells like Go for the Throat and Detention Sphere. This kind of card-for-card exchange prolongs games to the point where draw spells like Divination, Sphinx's Revelation, Blue Sun's Zenith, etc. allow the control deck to pull ahead in pure resources. After very long back-and-forth exchanges, the control deck plays a very powerful finisher ("wincon") like AEtherling, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, or just very threatening and resilient spells that simply win the game on their own.
A lot of deckbuilding is about finding cards that do what your archetype asks for most efficiently. For example, a aggro deck really likes Lightning Bolt because it costs little mana and does more damage than most burn spells at it's mana-cost. Other deckbuilding theories revolve around "mana-curve", which is looking at how expensive (mana-cost again) your cards cost and shaping the numbers of what you include to make a smooth curve of totals. An aggro deck, for example, is mostly about speed and efficiency, so you want many 1-2 cost spells, some 3 cost ones, and very few 4+ mana spells if any.
November 11, 2015 10:26 p.m.
GoldenDemon says... #6
Oh man, okay, where to start.
Welcome to the game, first off!
Wizards of the Coast has published a series of articles called Level One on their website, which articulate useful concepts about how to play the game/build a deck/etc. for new players. Here is a link to a page with links to every article in the series; I'd recommend you read them all eventually.
The ones most relevant to you right now, though, are "An Introduction to the Popular Constructed Formats" - which will hopefully illustrate a little why, imo, "I am a new player and want to play Modern with my friends" is a Foolish Thing To Want - and the three articles on deck archetypes (Aggro, Midrange, and Control).
Short version, though - "aggro," "midrange," and "control" are words used to describe broad deck archetypes.
An "aggro" (aggressive) deck plans to win by playing cheap, efficient threats that will defeat the opponent before the opponent can establish a defense - most aggro decks hope to win by turn 4 or 5, if possible.
A "midrange" deck plans to win by playing a powerful creature or planeswalker, and preventing opponents from getting rid of it - by killing their strong creatures, making them discard cards, countering their spells etc. - until it can kill them. Midrange decks are slower than aggro decks, and usually have cards that cost more mana to play.
"Control" decks plan to win by outlasting the opponent. They counter spells, kill creatures, destroy artifacts/enchantments/etc., and draw a bunch of cards so that when it's turn 8 or turn 10 and your hand is empty and you have no creatures left, they still have a full hand and can start doing crazy stuff now that you're too tired to stop them. Control decks are the slowest and often the most complicated decks to play.
"Mill" decks (named after Millstone) are basically control decks that win by putting an opponent's entire deck into their graveyard. If you have no cards left in your library, and you have to draw a card (like, say, at the beginning of your turn), you automatically lose! Mill decks are usually pretty bad, but people insist on trying to build them anyway. Shrug!
I would recommend not playing at FNM for a while, and ESPECIALLY not Modern - just play casually with your friends, not in any particular Constructed ("tournament," basically) format. This will help you develop your familiarity with the game. If you really want to play in a tournament, I'd dip your toe in the waters with Standard first; it's a tournament format that just uses cards from the most recent sets, so there's a lot fewer cards you'll have to be familiar with, and a much more manageable number of deck archetypes to plan for. Modern is a very complex, very fast-paced, and frequently very expensive format to get into, and I wouldn't recommend it to new players.
I'd also highly recommend doing booster drafts or sealed-deck events, where you buy booster packs and then build decks with your friends just out of the cards you all open and then play in a mini-tournament, as a good way to learn about the game and get better while also acquiring new cards.
November 11, 2015 10:37 p.m.
Okay, so I'll just give a quick primer on deck-building.
Keep the classic RPS model in mind:
Aggro < Combo < Control < AggroOrAggro < Midrange < Control < Aggro
Every deck with a plan fits into one of these 4 major archetypes (technically, there are 6+ but most play as variations of these 4), each of whom have a distinct goal.
Aggro, derived from the word "aggression," seeks to beat its opponents as quickly as is possible, often playing smaller, cheaper and more mana - efficient creatures and spells (Monastery Swiftspear, Goblin Guide, Zurgo Bellstriker, etc). Examples include Burn, Sligh and Affinity. These decks are strong early but the moment they run out of gas it's over. Red is usually preferred in these decks but isn't required.
Combo is an interesting archetype, seeking to assemble their combo in order to win instead of win in more "fair" ways. Examples of these combos include Deceiver Exarch + Splinter Twin , Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond and Hive Mind + Pact of Negation . These decks often can win completely out of nowhere, and have no cares about life total. There is no specific color identity in combo, but blue can be highly prevalent due to its draw power.
Control is the slow guy. Control decks seek to outdraw/outremove their opponents and use their sheer late game power to win. Popular cards in the past include Counterspell, Sphinx's Revelation, Damnation and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. By keeping your opponents down or healing off their attempts on your life, you win late. Blue is extremely popular in control decks, bringing draw power and counterspells to the table.
Midrange is the last major archetype. Its idea is to, after turn 3 or 4, always drop a strong threat on the board each turn. Popular cards in midrange include Tarmogoyf, Siege Rhino and Thragtusk. By keeping up on these threats, midrange decks force their opponents to spend cards to halt their board presence. Green is somewhat popular in midrange decks, supplying a good number of potent threats.
You also mentioned mill. I'm not going to go in depth, but mill is a "burn" deck that attacks the opponent's library instead of life total. It's kind of a weird aggro-control hybrid, but weak.
The best resource for learning more about the game is through practice, but Mark Rosewater's Making Magic column on the MTG Archives has some golden articles (you'll have to do some digging, I'm on a phone rn). Also mtgsalvation helped me a good deal early.
Good luck!
November 11, 2015 10:48 p.m.
GoldenDemon is spot on. Read those Level One articles. I wish that I had those when I was learning how to play. Also, it might be a good idea to start going to prereleases, which are sealed-deck events where you get to learn about and play with the cards from the newest set. Also, if you have a friend that plays Magic, learn from them. It's how I learned most of my knowledge of MTG.
November 11, 2015 10:51 p.m.
Well I've been beat to it, everything these guys have said is great advice, so I'll just give you a link to a super cheap and fun deck you can build for Modern. (BML) Unexpected LD Control it's great for casual play, but can also hold its own and provide a lot of fun if you choose to play at a FNM with your friends. It's sort of a mix between midrange and control, but is pretty fast as well. It will teach you a lot about different mechanics and gameplay decisions. I hope it helps!
November 12, 2015 12:13 a.m.
Kingofsouls says... #10
So, the definition of "cheep" varies from person to person and meta to meta (by the way, 'meta' is short or metagame, which the easiest way to describe is what decks and play styles are in your local area. Knowing this helps you understand what the common strategies are and how to punish your opponents). For me, a budget modern deck is anywhere from $100 to $150.
What I would do is figure out what kind of decks appeal to you. Play a bunch of decks, either online via Untap.in or with proxies (i.e. fake cards used to playtest. This is a great way to figure out what play styles you are good at without investing all that money in a playset of Karn Liberated or some other super expensive card.) Once you figure out what clicks with you, build around it.
For me, I have always found that green beatdown decks using creatures is my best bet: Knocking the foe off balance with a horde of powerful value critters is fun for me. Thus, exhibit A: my personal baby and favorite deck of all time.
Cry Havoc and Let Loose The Beasts of War!
Modern*
SCORE: 3 | 13 COMMENTS | 404 VIEWS
I win by droping a bunch of cheap critters and Eldrazi Drones that make dudes. Then when I have enough for the Alpha strike I cast one of my many Overrun effects and my opponent has a sudden and fatal case of death. It's not that expensive - any of the pieces are not that costly and you can easily cut out the Windswept Heaths, Garruk Wildspeakers and Chord of Callings and build up to them by just playing the basic shell.
So when you are ready to build your own deck, I try to follow two rules.
Research decks that have the same or similar strategies as yours. Find you what is in it, what makes them work, how they get to the endgame, how they interact with the other side of the table and prevent you from losing, etc. Decks of the same arch type will vary in content and gameplan, so do be careful. For example the Tron deck is usually split into two or three camps: Mono Blue, Mono Green, and Green/Red (in the last case, the red is usually a splash, so Green/Red from what I see is played more than just Green.) Although both are Tron decks and usually pack Karn to exile everything good and eventually reset the game with said exiled stuff for an unfair advantage, the decks play differently. Mono-Blue leans towards traditional counterspell control and has an alternate win in the Mindslaver/Academy Ruins lock. The Green and Green/Red is very aggressive by being able to search for the Tron lands much faster/reliably with green spells in addition to the Expedition Map. It wants to cause mayhem until it lands a kill and then use said kill to...well kill. Same deck, different playstyles.
Figure out how you want to win the game. I do not mean "I attack until they die' or 'i cast counterspells until the opponent does nothing.' That is not a game plan. A gameplan is more along the lines of 'I cast the best one and two drop agrro green creatures and plan to end the game with a powerful Groundbreaker buffed with Aspect of Hydra' or 'I plan to stall the game until I can drop an powerful creature that is hard to answer and win by having a creature they cannot stop.' The more you can narrow it down the better. I find that you can easily build around a plan than an abstract concept.
This is a little long winded, but I hope it helps.
November 12, 2015 1:12 a.m.
Mana Curve Mana Curve Mana Curve
Mana curve is the concept of of having card to play at the mana you will have each turn.
Two keys to a good mana curve: Have the appropriate number of cards at the Converted Mana Costs (CMC) for the type of deck you want and making sure you have the appropriate number of lands for the type of deck.
Examples:
Aggro - traditional creature based aggro has at least 12 creature cards that are "1 drops" a single mana to play, very few cards that cost over 3 and need only around 20 (or less) lands. because they need to be consistently fast they often only play one or two colors
My homebrew:Improvised Weapons
Control - This deck controls the board state, the average converted mana cost is higher, the land requirements are high (usually 24-28 depending on number of colors). Removal is important and it will play any number of colors that it needs to to have it
Mana Curve Exercise - A couple of standards ago I just experimented with a deck that had a very efficient mana curve and that had higher than average power threats at every turn and accelerated quickly. Now it isn't a viable modern deck but it is a good example of building a curve and building in the mana support. (It would likely be classified as a midrange strategy, but the experiment was just about a smooth, efficient mana curve)A Walk in the Woods
Every deck plays better with a good mana base and an appropriate curve, every deck plays worse and is more inconsistent with a bad curve or base.
Wizard_of_the_Broke says... #2
You can look up terms at MTG Salvation Wiki, here. What I will tell you is that beginners should play aggro. The idea of an aggro deck is simple and intuitive: you want to directly lower your opponent's life total as quickly as possible. You want to do this mainly by casting creatures (like Wild Nacatl) and attacking. You may also want spells like Lightning Bolt that can do damage directly, or can kill opposing creatures so they can't block. And you want your creatures to interact with your other cards in ways that help you (like having a Mountain out with the Nacatl).
In order for people to point you in the right direction, you may also want to figure out what format you want to play in (Modern or Standard, most likely - look those up - or just ask your friends what they play).
Best of luck.
November 11, 2015 10:18 p.m.