Magic 102: Building Your First Deck (Magic Arena)

The Magic Arena team sponsored us to make a video discussing the basics of building your first deck! So what are some of the most important things to consider when you sit down to make your very first deck? How do you make sure your deck functions the way you want it to? We have some ideas!

00:00 Intro
1:10 Land count
3:24 Creature ratio
6:29 Mana curve
9:54 Running out of cards
12:29 Consistency
16:40 Outro

[seajay]

This was helpful but, how about a video where you build a deck from scratch explaining why you put certain cards in there. Like this mechanic works well with this card etc. Not as a 'this is the best deck' but, as an example of the thought process for choosing specific cards. With so many to choose from it's really easy to get lost or confused about how to think about which cards will work for you. Especially if you're new.

[Takashi]

just started playing mtg arena, been playing for 3 or 4 weeks. I gotta say for a video from 2018 this was VERY HELPFUL for a new player and NO idea how to make my new deck without serious balance issues. Thanks for the video

[Hammelthst]

Just perfect for new players. I´m comming back after 15 years of not playing mtg. That´s the best video for newbies and old verterans on youtube!!

[thenightangel]

Been building decks for a long time and I still enjoyed this, thanks set!

[LiangHuBBB]

I just wanna say whoever coded this game deserves an award or sth like this
MTGA is so amaziNG!

[richardsinclair]

I've build Magic decks before, but I recently came back to the game after not playing for like 6 months. Standard rotated and all of the decks I played before were no longer viable, so I needed to build something new. In my six month absence, I forgot a lot of the basics. Thanks for the refresher!

[luliby]

Good lesson for newer players. If any of them are coming because of Arena, this is a good place for them to start.

[basicpigeonbee]

Best first deck:40 rat colonys and 20 swamps

[leonardoboccaletti]

Really good video Seth!! I would very much like to keep seeing videos like this on the channel.

[aruuusam]

Thank you guys for such wonderful starting guide on how to build your first deck. As a new MTG player this video helped me a lot.

[RogueUnderdogGamer]

Amazing video! Exactly what I needed! Thank you! Perfect execution!

[virgdoll]

Going through a bunch of cards a friend left me when they moved, gonna see if I can build a deck! Thanks

[ImperialDiecast]

One thing you forgot to mention is that when building multi color decks you also want to be careful in how many lands of each type you add depending on how many cards of that mana color you have in your deck. For example if you have a near perfect mix of roughly 18 green and 18 red cards, then it makes sense to have 12 forests and 12 mountains but if your deck only runs 9 green cards and 27 red cards, then you need to adjust your manabase accordingly. Which is something still easy to do in 2 color, but in 3 color decks and more, it gets complicated.

At this point another thing you could have suggested is to take evolving wilds as that lets you fetch any basic land card which makes it just as useful (if not more) than the guild gates at 3 color decks and more because those only produce 2 mana with the chance of not producing mana of the 3rd color for example.

And if you are running a 4 or 5 color decks is it useful to just take guild gates instead of basics as that way you might play slower due to them entering the battlefield tapped, but you minimize the chance of getting mana screwed.

[theraydar]

Good stuff broh 🤙🏾 been playing over a decade but your tips was interesting and helpful enough that I just decided to keep listening while I work

[trevorlarson]

This video is fantastic and I greatly respect this fellow. I would also suggest, if you're statistically inclined, checking out hypergeometric distribution probability. There's an excellent video of it here on YouTube, but I don't remember the creator.

Using the hypergeometric distribution is how I ended up with a 62 card deck that still has around 80% chance of having 4 lands down on turn 4.

[adambryant]

this man is very smart and this video helped my friends a lot I kept winning although they understood the fundamentals of magic and played other card games this video helped them to understand as they called it "the behind scenes" of magic

[LedPESRule]

@MTGGoldfish
This is fantastic and very helpful content!
Being a more experienced player myself I don't actually care for this video, but it's awesome that you do content like that for the people who do need it :D

[brunodeborba]

Great tips man, very clear information!

[the.pale.dragon]

This video was insanely useful. Thank You so much.
"What's the worst thing that you can do, guys?"
"Letting our mana go to waste."

[brokenswmr]

This is a great video, thanks @MTGGoldfish!