Building Your First Deck

So, you've finally decided to make the jump and build your first Magic deck? You're in for a treat; many players enjoy the process of simply coming up with an idea for a new deck and building it almost as much as they enjoy playing their new creation! There are a few simple things to keep in mind when building your first deck.

Many tournament formats for Magic: The Gathering require players to bring a deck with a minimum of 60 cards (including lands). That's a good number to aim for when building your first deck. It's also important to remember that you can only play up to four copies of any one particular card. Basic lands (Plains, Islands, Swamps, Mountains, and Forests) are an exception to this rule, but all other cards have to be included in quantities of four or fewer, even if you happen to own more than four copies of a particular card.

So what should your deck actually look like after you've built it? A good rule of thumb is to keep a solid mixture of creatures, spells, and lands to make sure you have plenty of cool creatures to attack with, powerful spells to disrupt your opponent's plans, and enough lands to be able to play everything you draw. A commonly used rule of thumb is a mixture of 24 creatures, 12 spells, and 24 lands.

When you first start playing, building a deck from scratch can seem hard. Try this: Pick your two favorite colors. Let's use red and green for this example. Get 12 Mountains and 12 Forests. Then get 12 red creatures and 12 green creatures. Add 12 red or green instants or sorceries. Shuffle and play!

After you play with your new deck for a while, you can start to customize it. One of the great things about building Magic decks is that you get to choose what you want in your deck. Take out cards you don't feel are working well and add new cards you want to try. The best part about trading card games is being able to play with whatever cards you want. There is nothing stopping you from playing a creation with 40 creatures and 20 lands, or 20 creatures, 20 spells, and 20 lands. You could even play a deck built entirely of lands if you wanted! Have a favorite combination of Magic cards? Why not build a deck around them? You can even design a Magic deck around the work of your favorite artist.

Sideboards

In addition to your deck of 60-plus cards, many tournament formats allow players to utilize a set of additional cards separate from their maindeck for competitive play. These cards are referred to as a "sideboard" and are not required to simply enjoy a game of Magic with your friends. However they can be useful to allow you to change cards from your maindeck with cards from your sideboard between games. Sideboards must include exactly 15 cards (no more and no less) and can be used after the first game in a match (matches are generally best-of-three or best-of-five games). You may choose to exchange any number of sideboard cards for an equal amount of maindeck cards. After you've finished a match, you must reset your deck to its original configuration with all of your sideboard cards removed from the maindeck and the original maindeck cards put back in.

For more advanced information on building your first Magic deck, try this article. For more information on Magic tournament formats visit this page.

Dynamics of a Turn

Before discussing the dynamics of a turn in Magic: The Gathering, it's important to know what the Stack is. Simply put, the Stack is where spells and abilities reside while they wait to see if they resolve. Spells go on top of the stack in the order they were added to it. (In visual terms, it's helpful to actually picture this as a literal stack of cards, with the newest card always going on top of the stack.) Spells and abilities resolve from the Stack one at a time in the opposite order they were added. That means the last spell or ability added to the Stack will be the first to resolve. This is often abbreviated as "LIFO" (Last In, First Out).

The Dynamics of a Turn

Turns in Magic are divided into phases, and then further divided into steps. They clearly define what players can and cannot do during each part of the game. They are also designed in reference to which player is "the active player." While both players are allowed to do specific actions during a Magic turn, the active player gets to do far more than his or her opponent and gets to act first when doing so. Players are the active player during every other turn, rotating with their opponent. This is a chart of what a turn looks like in Magic: The Gathering, complete with what players can do during each step:

Beginning Phase

a. Untap step

You untap all your tapped permanents.
On the first turn of the game, you don't have any permanents, so you just skip this step.
No one can cast spells or activate abilities during this step.

b. Upkeep step

This part of the turn is mentioned on a number of cards.
If something is supposed to happen just once per turn, right at the beginning, an ability will trigger "at the beginning of your upkeep."
Players can cast instants and activate abilities.

c. Draw step

You draw a card from your library.
(The player who goes first skips the draw step on his or her first turn to make up for the advantage of going first.)
Players can then cast instants and activate abilities.

First Main Phase

You can cast any number of sorceries, instants, creatures, artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers, and you can activate abilities.
You can play a land during this phase, but remember that you can play only one land during your turn.
Your opponent can cast instants and activate abilities.

Combat Phase

a. Beginning of combat step

Players can cast instants and activate abilities.

b. Declare attackers step

You decide which, if any, of your untapped creatures will attack, and which player or planeswalker they will attack, then they do so.
This taps the attacking creatures.
Players can then cast instants and activate abilities.

c. Declare blockers step

Your opponent decides which, if any, of his or her untapped creatures will block your attacking creatures, then they do so.
If multiple creatures block a single attacker, you order the blockers to show which is first in line for damage, which is second, and so on.
Players can then cast instants and activate abilities.

d. Combat damage step

Each attacking or blocking creature that's still on the battlefield assigns its combat damage to the defending player (if it's attacking that player and wasn't blocked), to a planeswalker (if it's attacking that planeswalker and wasn't blocked), to the creature or creatures blocking it, or to the creature it's blocking.
If an attacking creature is blocked by multiple creatures, you divide its combat damage among them by assigning at least enough damage to the first blocking creature in line to destroy it before assigning damage to the next one in line, and so on.
Once players decide how the creatures they control will deal their combat damage, the damage is all dealt at the same time.
Players can then cast instants and activate abilities.

e. End of combat step

Players can cast instants and activate abilities.

Second Main Phase

Your second main phase is just like your first main phase.
You can cast every type of spell and activate abilities, but your opponent can only cast instants and activate abilities.
You can play a land during this phase if you didn't during your first main phase.

Ending Phase

a. End step

Abilities that trigger "at the beginning of your end step" go on the stack.
Players can cast instants and activate abilities.

b. Cleanup step

If you have more than seven cards in your hand, choose and discard cards until you have only seven.
Next, all damage on creatures is removed and all "until end of turn" effects end.
No one can cast instants or activate abilities unless an ability triggers during this step.

The Golden Rule

The most important rule in all of Magic: The Gathering is this: whenever a Magic card contradicts a game rule, the card takes precedence.

Mana Base

Invariably one of the most important characteristics of any Magic deck is making sure the player piloting said creation can actually play the cards in the deck from the lands they've included. This foundation of lands is invariably referred to as a player's "mana base." Fortunately there are some useful guidelines that can help make sure you're on the right path.

For each color you're playing in your deck, add up all of the colored mana symbols for that color (the colored mana symbols are , , , , ). Then divide that number by 2. This is a good estimate of approximately how many lands you should play that provide a specific color of mana.

Divide your colored lands equally to the proportion of mana symbols in your deck, but err slightly towards the middle when one color is heavy and the other is very light (a deck with 36 symbols and 12 symbols may benefit from a 16 Forests/8 Mountains spread instead of a strict 18 Forests/6 Mountains).

Building the perfect mana base is one of the fun deck-building challenges Magic provides, and you're sure to improve at it over time.

What's Next?

So you feel like you've got a handle on the Magic: the Gathering basics? Have you played a few games, built your first few decks, perhaps even tried your hand at a Friday Night Magic or another tournament event? Then it may be time to broaden your understanding of the elements that make Magic tick, and we've got the perfect series for you!

The Magic Academy is a series of articles that helps walk players through some of the building blocks of Magic's fun and complexity. If you think you're ready for that next step in the game, you'll want to make sure you check out The Magic Academy!