what to have in your magic the gathering deck

By Mike Flores

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Michael Flores is the author of Deckade and The Official Miser's Guide; the designer of numerous State, Regional, One thousand Prix, National, and Pro Tour–winning decks; and the old editor-in-master of The Magic Dojo. He'd claim allegiance to Dimir (if such a Guild existed)… but instead will just shrug "Simic."

Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or ho-hum and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of carte advantage. Whatever way you play, though, tin and should incorporate a mix of all classes of Magic cards, whether single-card furnishings or lock cards, card cartoon or carte nullification. Once y'all've got the correct mix, you lot'll be able to focus on flawless play and prudent drawing.

—Brian Weissman

Welcome dorsum to Level One!

Over the by couple of weeks we have started to put together some of the basic principles that successful competitive Magic players utilise to plan for, and attain, better results. To review, some of those are:

Strategy—Specifically the notion of stringing our actions in a specific social club to achieve item (and predictable) results.
Strategies—Including the idea that what you really want to do is successfully finish a game of Magic before your opponent does.
Card Reward—One of the most important, central, and foundational concepts in Magic: The Gathering... how more than cards (nevertheless you obtain them) atomic number 82 to more options and a greater likelihood of prevailing over your opponents.

This week, nosotros will put together those three lessons to look at one of Magic'due south most important historical decks, which gave ascension to a huge schoolhouse of thinking, and ultimately somewhere between a 3rd and a half of every major victory in the history of the game.

Prepare?

The Deck

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That masterpiece is Brian Weissman's The Deck, from most ii decades agone.

The Deck is a little non-intuitive and then we'll take a moment and go over what it is all well-nigh.

The Deck's goal was to simply non dice. To that end, information technology played a number of cards that would blunt the opponent'south attack, like Ivory Belfry (to proceeds life), and all manner of creature defense, from the fast Swords to Plowshares to the more expensive—but infinitely effective—Moat.

Ivory Tower

Swords to Plowshares

The Deck was Magic'southward first broad-base innovator of bill of fare advantage as a goal unto itself. Moat, for example, could neutralize whatsoever number of creatures on the ground. With all the turns that the anti-damage and anti-creature cards were buying it, The Deck had time to depict extra cards with Braingeyser and Jayemdae Tome.

The bill of fare reward went two ways—not just was Brian drawing actress cards, he was hammering the opponent's hand. Mind Twist was a one-for-many single-card exchange that made final week's example of Listen Rot stake by comparison. And over the grade of several turns, Disrupting Scepter could trade for card after card itself.

Braingeyser

Mind Twist

Note how The Deck puts our offset three weeks of principles into action to produce an of import, groundbreaking, and highly influential gear up of incentives...

Strategy and Sequence

The Deck's principal way to win is past attacking with Serra Angel. It bears mentioning that Serra Angel was a two-style card itself. Not only could information technology attack for 4, simply with both vigilance and flying, it could cake smaller flying creatures that were capable of sailing over the Moat.

Serra Angel

Moat

Now, with only two such creatures in the deck—err... The Deck—Brian had to play his cards in a particular order.

In the earlier parts of the game, he would use Swords to Plowshares to kill fast creatures, and build toward Moat and other key permanents.

He would detect his Listen Twist (perhaps with Demonic Tutor) and power out that Mind Twist with Mana Bleed or Black Lotus. Then, hopefully, he would go his Disrupting Scepter on the battlefield.

The Deck'due south plan was to accumulate lots of machinery in play. It really wanted to empty the opponent's hand and soft-lock him or her with Disrupting Scepter. Helpless yet? Now he would play Serra Angel and hopefully win in about five swings.

Disrupting Scepter

Brian had to pay careful attending to his sequences. If he played Serra Angel too early, it might be Counterspelled or bite a Swords to Plowshares from the enemy; because he just had ii, he couldn't be cavalier nearly their lives. Disrupting Scepter was a skillful bill of fare to keep the opponent downward, but he probably wouldn't want to commit three mana—and and then iii mana each subsequent plough—to bop the opponent for merely a single card while being attacked by lots of creatures on the ground... Brian would have wanted to utilize his own animate being defense to stabilize his life total first.

At the same time, playing a single-minded defensive strategy around stopping threats and promoting card reward gave Brian great liberty in his deck design. Unlike about of the decks you have probably seen, he didn't devote a lot of space to creatures. Subtly, this made him resilient against fauna removal spells. If you had a paw total of Doom Blades you would probably not accept anything to aim them at. And by the fourth dimension they would be useful... yous might exist in discard-lockdown-hell. At the same time... it'southward non like you could not play such Doom Blades. He was still killing you with creatures!

"Successfully conclude the game before your opponent does."

Brian's deck clearly wasn't setting any state-speed records.

Today, a Modernistic (format) deck playing only cards you lot would be familiar with from Duels of the Planeswalkers can kill on the third turn!

Turn i: Mountain, Goblin Guide; attack for ii (eighteen)
Plow 2: Teetering Peaks, second Goblin Guide; assail for 6 (12)
Turn 3: Mountain, Spark Elemental; attack for 7 (5), Lightning Bolt (2), Lava Spike (-1)

Given the speed of such a potentially uncomplicated collection of cards, how can nosotros reconcile the overall strategy of Brian'due south allegedly not bad and influential deck?

Goblin Guide

Lightning Bolt

The guideline I talked about in "Strategies" isn't expressly to win every bit fast every bit possible; rather, to win faster than the opponent. If an opponent'southward deck is total of clunky cards that cost four or more mana, a turn-three kill with Goblin Guides is going to put away that opponent before he or she can fifty-fifty cast anything interesting.

So, one way to successfully conclude a game before the opponent does is definitely to blaze to that 20th life point very quickly (say on plow three), cutting off turns with every Lightning Bolt. Brian's was to elongate the game until it is out of the opponent's reach.

Imagine you are Brian, hiding backside his Ivory Tower with a full hand.

Not just are you lot making it difficult for a fast Red Deck opponent to kill you (going up to simply 23 life from one cycle of life gain puts y'all past the higher up three-turn impale threshold)... just at some signal you are actually engaging in a card-advantage scenario (if your Ivory Tower is providing 3 life per plough, that is basically cancelling a Lightning Commodities or Lava Spike each time).

Carte Reward

...was the backbone and differentiator of The Deck. All the fourth dimension that its brute elimination was buying would translate into more time, more state drops, to tap more than lands in service to the great god of card drawing. Final week, we talked almost how cartoon an extra card could fuel your hand to murder—Murder—more Dragons. That was true in Weissman'south heyday every bit well. Locking down the basis with Moat to stop multiple attackers and Bequeathed Recall into multiple Swords to Plowshares for individual trades were both card-advantageous ways to stop threats and extend the game.

Murder

Ancestral Recall

While 2014 eyes might expect at Weissman's detail collection of cards equally clunky or blowsy, his principles of elongating a game, defending himself from creatures, and taking advantage of bill of fare advantage have guided top mages for about twenty years.

But a couple of weeks ago, quondam Rookie of the Twelvemonth Alexander Hayne put away a K Prix with his WU Control deck... essentially the 2014 inheritor to Brian Weissman's legacy:

(eighteen) Alexander Hayne – Azorius Control

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Near every menu in this deck is defensive, and many of them are simultaneously card-advantage-promoting.

Azorius Charm—Deals with an attacking creature; sometimes gains life
Detention Sphere—Deals with a problem permanent (or more one)
Deliquesce—Stops most threat cards
Concluding Jiff—Deals with a small-scale problem fauna
Sphinx'due south Revelation—Gains life
Supreme Verdict—Deals with multiple creatures
Syncopate—Stops a threat card, assuming a minor mana advantage
Jace, Architect of Thought—Blunts attacks by reducing attacking creatures' power
Elspeth, Sunday's Champion—Destroys large creatures or produces blockers
Ætherling—Resets itself to block, even if information technology attacked (similar Serra Affections)

Isn't that amazing?

Every single principal-deck card has defensive applications. Even Sphinx'southward Revelation! The "threat" cards in this deck—Ætherling and Elspeth, Sun's Champion—are both two-way cards that can both attack and defend (often simultaneously).

Ã†therling

Elspeth, Sun's Champion

At the same time, many of these cards take card-reward applications that would make Weissman smile. Sphinx'due south Revelation is kind of the quintessential Weissman carte du jour—carte du jour reward and defence force at once. Jace, Architect of Thought is a card-reward engine and a troublesome defensive stopper; same with Elspeth, Sun's Champion.

Postal service Script:

When I first read most The Deck back in the mid-1990s, I immediately became enamored of the idea that creatureless—or near-creatureless—decks like Weissman'south were somehow superior to the less focused and less strategic hodgepodges I was used to. With Weissman talking virtually "the surest way to defeat your opponent" it was easy for me, as a less experienced but very curious player, to get whole pig into this novel direction. Such became a limiting way of thought, itself.

At present I know—and it is important for me to tell y'all, I call up—that a dull, brute-poor deck is just 1 sort of possible successful strategies, no improve or worse than others (as an thought) in and of itself. Different formats will dictate what kinds of cards and strategies are better than others, rather than ideas in the abstract. What these ideas tin do, successfully, is to give you tools. Hopefully (newer) players now know a different manner of thinking and playing than they did before reading almost The Deck; hopefully that cognition tin can enrich how you play and inform the choices you are empowered to make from hither.

Love,

Mike