Multicolor cards offer access to a broader range of spells and abilities. But they need careful mana management and can be more challenging to play. The first step in building a Commander deck is to consider its color identity. And its color identity determines the colors of spells and abilities. They help build a cohesive and effective deck that can compete with other decks. In our Commander deck guide, we’ll also show you the basics of building a deck in this format.

Aggro-Combo

For example, Splinter Twin and Pestermite make a great combo. Over the course of the game, they’ll gain incremental advantages. Then, when the control player has full control over the opponent, they’ll start playing threats of their own and winning the game that way. For most formats, there is no maximum limit on the number of cards you can have in your deck. However, the more cards you have in your deck, the lower the chances of you drawing your best cards. For more on the number of cards in different formats, see How Many Cards in an MTG deck?

And, thanks to commander combos the handy screens of Magic Online (a little more on this later) here’s what the stats for this deck look like. For now, pay particular attention to that mana curve area on the lower left. Control-Combo is a control deck with a combo finisher that it can spring quickly if need be. A notable subtype of Control-Combo is “prison,” which institutes control through resource denial (usually via a combo).

Of course, you could always just try searching for certain keywords that fit your idea on a site like Scryfall, too. According to our own Arena Tutor, the Standard decks with the highest win rates on Arena are Boros Convoke. Gleeful Demolition is one of the best tradeoffs for an early artifact token. Knight-Errant of Eos is a big curve topper for that rarely needs five lands, and Nurturing Pixie is an example of how a trickery spell still helps apply pressure. Leyline of Resonance is banned in Best-of-One Standard formats on Arena. Resonance can be played in traditional matches, Limited and paper.

This seven-mana enchantment makes it so whenever an opponent casts their first spell of the turn they have to exile the top card of your deck. Then – and this is where it gets good – you can cast that spell if it’s a nonland card. With Standard being so popular on MTG Arena, lots of streamers play it. As such, their personal communities often have Standard discussions. Especially as a way of discussing decks or showing Arena gameplay from their channels.

Step 2: Choosing Your Color(s)

There’re Commander deck breakdown tips for choosing the legendary right card. One of the most popular ways to play is the Commander MTG format. In fact, there is no right answer when it comes to building MTG decks!

Now you’ll be in the trend of the latest events of lands and monsters in a Commander deck. Last but not least, if you’re playing a midrange deck, focus on a few key cards like [c]Goldspan[/c] and [c]Wrenn and Seven[/c]. These key cards need to be powerful enough to make a high impact on the game.

How many land cards does a Magic: The Gathering deck need?

Some example deck names are “mono-blue Eye of the Storm combo”, “extended green/blue aggro-control deck”, and “Rakdos vampires”. The third large portion of a deck is usually used to either shield oneself from attempts by the opponent to halt the game plan or cards that do so to the opponent. Supplementary decks, or side decks, are separated card decks that may be played in casual games to enhance the gaming experience.

Control decks usually have at least two colors, sometimes three. Blue is the most popular control color because all counterspells are blue. Control decks also need spells to remove the opponent’s creatures, so white, black, and red are all excellent colors to go alongside blue. Standard is the main seasonal competitive format in MTG, using the most recent set releases with the older ones rotating out each fall. While there is no maximum deck size, so long as players are still able to shuffle it without help, the minimum number of cards that each deck must have is 60.

The fatties in the deck are designed to mop up whatever is left of your opponent after they have spent their resources on dealing with the rest of your creatures. Standard follows all the normal rules for a one-on-one Constructed format. Your deck should consist of a main deck with at least 60 cards in it (let’s be honest, it should be exactly 60 cards with about lands) and a sideboard of up to 15 cards. Across those 75 cards, you can’t use more than four copies of the same unique card, except basic lands. When playing a best-of-three match, you have the opportunity to switch cards between your main and side to improve difficult matchups for the next games.

The right mana base is essential in having a tournament-winning deck. It’s often tricky to get the mana right in decks that are more than one color. There’s a lot to think about when constructing a mana base. Reaver Drone can slowly kill us unless we have another colorless creature in play, and Ghostfire Blade becomes much stronger if all of our creatures are colorless. We may be tempted to include a more aggressive one-drop like Bloodsoaked Champion in our deck, but it’s better synergy to have only colorless creatures to make our colorless-matters cards better. I just count the mana symbols on cards to help give me a rough idea.

In general, most midrange decks run about 20 to 25 creatures and 10 to 15 spells. Instead of trying to finish the game as quickly as possible, a control player will spend most of their time taking care of their opponent’s threats. A general convention is to play lands, and spells, but there is wide variance in this aspect. This causes the important cards to be drawn on a more regular basis, and helps the deck to be more reliable. Eternal formats follow the basic Constructed format rules for deck construction, but expands the available cards to include virtually all published Magic sets.

To accomplish this, they run lots of cards with low mana costs. Also, almost every card in an aggro deck will help you deal damage to your opponent. As I said early on, this article is just to get you started. Throw something together from your collection, then play the heck out of it.