Eric's Simple Guide to Casual MTG Deck Construction

 

Here's a simple way to construct your casual deck!

Many of us play MTG across a wide range of formats, but if you're new to building a deck from scratch or you're looking for a way to build a deck for casual spell-slinging, give this guide a try. The idea here is to build a deck that "plays to the table." Your games will be interactive and revolve around creature combat. Of course you can make these decks "better." That's not the point. Instead, think of this as your second deck, the deck you use between rounds at a tournament.

General Deck Construction Guidelines

As you build your deck, lay it out on the table as demonstrated above. Think of your deck being in 4 parts: mana sources, creatures, support spells, and card advantage.

Put in 24 mana sources. It should fill up the entire left side of your deck. Keep your land count high, but throw in a few non-land mana sources too if you have them.

Next, put in 20 creatures. Vary the mana costs so that you have creatures at 1-2 mana, 3-4 mana, and 5+ mana.

Now, put in 12 support spells. These are non-creature spells that help your creatures do damage. Removal, evasion, bounce, or counter spells are all good choices for this part of your deck.

Finally, put in 4 card advantage spells. These can be spells that draw you cards right away or give you access to more cards over time.

Deck Construction Do's and Don'ts

If you are building your deck for a tournament, all bets are off. Build your deck to win! However, if you are playing a casual game of MTG and want to have some give and take, consider these deck construction tips.

First, the DON'Ts.

• DON'T build a land destruction deck.
• DON'T build a discard deck.
• DON'T build a hard control deck.
• DON'T build a combo deck.

Now, the DOs.

• DO build a deck that wins with creatures and combat damage.
• DO build a deck that has a variety of spells and creatures.
• DO build a deck with synergistic cards that create incremental value.

That's it! If you follow these simple deck construction guidelines, you will end up with a casual deck that plays out over a series of turns with a focus on combat damage. You'll notice that the games are interactive and have time to develop. This method allows each color to shine with creatures and support spells that bring a unique flavor to the match-ups. Give it a try!

F.A.Q.

I can't use counter spells, discard, or land destruction?! Those are my favorite things!

You can use all of those things, but they should not be the focus of your deck. Those spells will all fit in the 12 support slots. However, for many casual players all three of those strategies quickly become "unfun." Having a few discard spells in your list is one thing. Having all 12 slots devoted to it is something else.

Do I have to strictly follow the guidelines? For example, can I put in fewer creatures and more non-creature spells?

Of course you can, but the further you deviate from these guidelines, the more your deck will naturally shift away from something casual. By sticking to the guidelines, it forces you to build a certain type of deck, one that is more focused on creature combat and requires the board to develop.

Don't these guidelines just make it so that everyone is playing a mid-range deck?

Essentially, yes. You can lower the curve and build an aggressive burn deck, for example. You can increase the curve and play a more defensive control deck. But yes, decks built using these guidelines are almost forced to be somewhere along the continuum of a mid-range style deck. Again, this is all about playing a casual game of MTG where a board develops and creature combat is the focus.

Does this mean I can't play a combo deck?

Don't build a combo deck for casual games. There are exceptions to every rule, but most casual players do not enjoy watching you figure out the best way to kill them over a series of infinite turns. Instead, if you want to scratch that combo itch, find strong synergies between cards that can give you an incremental advantage.

The End of an Era

Do I still love MTG? Sure, I do.

MTG has been a big part of my life for more than 25 years. I've met friends, traveled, competed, stayed up way too late, collected cards, made trades, and agonized over how many lands is optimal in my deck list more times than I can count. I've spent hours organizing trade binders, cracking booster packs, and watching MTG matches late into the night. Heck, this blog has several hundred posts!

When Commander was new, it was a heck of a thing. It was a social format that opened up tons of deck building possibilities. I like big spells. The Commander format let me play almost all of them. And I did. I built tons of Commander decks, too many. I built Commander cubes. I went way down the rabbit hole on foils and foreign cards and signatures. I had a lot of fun.

But they broke it.

Well, they broke it for me. You may be having a great time with it and that's awesome. But for me, once they started designing cards for the format, a lot of what made it special went away. It got too good. Too focused. Too consistent.

I get it. It's business. They are in the business of selling cards. And if something is popular, it makes business sense to cater to it. And they did. Big time. It wasn't about digging up a suboptimal pile of jank rares anymore. Entire decks were available to buy right off the shelf. This made the format more accessible, which is great! But it took away some of what I thought made the format special. It was inevitable.

I stuck with it. I still built new decks. I still played. But the pandemic pushed it over the edge for me.

I was already not thrilled to play online games of MTG. I totally understand that online is the only option for some of you. That's certainly better than nothing, but I want to see and talk to the people I play with. That's my thing. MTG:Online doesn't scratch this itch. Arena doesn't even have a Commander option and feels even less like I'm playing with a real person. Webcam Commander games are unwieldy at best. And I no longer have the time or inclination to play long Commander games at my LGS, even if it was open.

That leads me to a rough conclusion.

I'm basically not playing Commander anymore.

Typing that hit me like a ton of bricks. The reality is that I wasn't really playing Commander anyway. I was just thinking about it a lot and that was giving me a vague sense of still being connected to the format. When I did play the occasional Commander game with friends, it was always 1vs1, which isn't really "my" Commander format anyway. That's just competitive MTG with more variance and the mini-game of trying to keep your opponent's Commander at bay.

Will I still collect and play MTG? Sure, I will.

I see more Old School cards and games in my future. No particular Old School format. Just trying to build something interesting. Trying to get a few weird synergies to work. I have cards in my binders I've never cast before going all the way back to Alpha. That's a great place to start.