Building a Magic deck can be hard work, but a deck doesn't have to be made of all rares or be able to kill the guy across the table on turn 2 with a dazzling combo to be good. Attacking for 2 points of damage can win any given game just as effectively. Below, I've come up with a list of tips to create simple, but powerful decks, as well as a thing or two you should ask yourself while you're building. And with that, here is the list:

First and most importantly, deckbuilding is all about being consistent and drawing the cards you need frequently. The solution is to cheat by stacking your deck and hoping your opponent doesn't bother cutting it! I'm just kidding, but a good solution, and a legal one, is to play 4 copies of any given card, besides basic land in your deck. That means play 4 of your 2/2 creature, and play 4 of your pump spell, and even 4 of your card that kills a creature. Doing this gives you much better odds of drawing that card, or even drawing multiple copies, which in turn will let you do what you want to do more often.

9. Focus on the main idea

In a similar situation, if you are trying to build a defensive (or "control") deck that isn't very fast, but wins long games, you don't need 2/2 creatures for 2 mana. Instead, you want cards that let you draw more cards than your opponent, or cards that let you kill more than one enemy creature at a time. You want to focus on cards that will let you win a long and drawn out game and let you survive the early stages. Your opponent will eventually be helpless on the 8th turn of the game when you slam down a 6/6 and they only have a 3/3.

The mana curve simply means how much the stuff in your deck costs. If your cheapest card costs 4 mana, no matter how good it is, a lot of decks will be too fast for you and kill you before you can get going. To be fast and keep up, it's good to have cards that cost 1, 2, 3, and so on, and a card has to be really really good if it costs more than 5 and you want to include it. Something to think about is if you have a creature that costs 1 mana and another that costs 2, you can play both of them on your third turn! If you keep this up throughout the game and get more cards on the table than your opponent, you'll have an advantage on the board!

Why not play all five colors? You want to play your favorite red burn spell, and your biggest green creature, with some good black removal and white combat tricks, all backed up by blue counterspells! Yeah, I do too, but it doesn't really work that way. All too often, if you play too many colors in your deck you'll be holding red spells in your hand while you have islands and plains in play. You wont be able to consistently cast your spells, and cards that you really wanna use will be trapped in your hand.

6. Play 60 cards exactly, not 61

The thing is, no matter how many cards you play in your deck, you're only allowed to have 4 of any given card, so the more cards you put in your deck, the less likely you are to draw one of those important cards. You want to draw the cards that are important to your deck as often as possible, and in as many games as you can. Who likes to lose because their deck just didn't draw what it needed to draw? I don't, so make this happen as little as possible by playing only 60 cards.

I love Magic, and if you're still reading this you probably do too, but the most annoying part of the game is when dumb luck happens and you draw land after land after land, when all you need is that one spell to win the game. Equally annoying is the opposite extreme, when you have 2 land, and only need one more, and you can’t draw it to save your life. Sometimes it's just bad luck and there is nothing you can do, but the majority of the time, you can prevent this from happening.

On the opposite end, if you're building a control deck that needs to play a land every turn up until turn 6 to stay in the game, you might want anywhere from 23 to 26 lands, depending on how many cards in your deck allow you to draw cards, or to thin your deck by searching for cards that you want. Figure out if you're playing an attack deck or a defense deck, and how much most of your spells cost, and add lands accordingly.

"Wow Ryan, thanks, I thought I was supposed to play bad creatures!" I wouldn't leave you hanging like that. Here are some of the things that might make a creature worth playing with:

3. Card Advantage!

Other examples would be cards that allow you to draw 3 cards, or cards that make your opponent discard 2 or more cards from their hand, or even cards that can kill creatures over and over again.

2. SYNERGY

Alright, example time. All your creatures have "protection from red" and you clean up the board with earthquake, which is a red spell that deals massive damage to every creature in play, including your own. Normally, this card would kill a lot of your own creatures too, but because they have protection, earthquake will kill only your opponents creatures! Having creatures with protection from red makes the card earthquake in your deck a lot better.

This works two ways however. If you're playing a deck with creatures that get stronger if you have no cards in your hand, don't play cards that make you draw more cards. Don't play cards that return things from your graveyard or from play to your hand. Don't play things that get stronger for having cards in your hand. You want your cards to help each other. It's your opponent's job to try and beat you, and you don't need to help.

What's to be said about practice? Play the deck, see what's working and what isn't, and make changes. Add some land, remove cards that aren't performing, or try that card you were considering while building that just didn't make it in the end. Lay the deck out on the table and ask yourself what doesn't look right.

Please feel free to send comments, questions, and death threats to my email, which is: melokuthecloudedbeatstick@yahoo.com

Thanks very much for reading,
Ryan Spring