Building your deck
Learning the rules to playing MTG(Magic The Gathering) is usually the most difficult aspect, but depending on the type and caliber of deck you want it can also become a bit irksome.
First of all there are many kinds of decks, over hundreds of kinds.
-Burn
-Stall
-Mill
-Counter Spell(Wizards)
-Goblins
-Zombies
-Merfolk
-Spirit
-Elves
-Elemental
-Slivers
-Madness
-Slide
-Affinity
-Control
The list can go on.
But I think I will start off with showing how to built a traditional goblin deck. Goblins are very common decks and easy to build and to understand. With the theme of goblins, they are usually good at quickly swarming the field and overpowering your opponent with numbers and fast burn(direct damage).
Okay, instead of just throwing a list out right away, we will begin from scratch.
When building a deck your first step is choosing a theme.
The theme I'm going to show you is Goblins. Depending on what types of cards that are out there that support this theme, that's what you would usually choose from. If most cards of a theme are blue(Island), you wouldn't choose to add in a lot of green(Forest). Goblins are usually red(Mountain) and perhaps goblin zombies that are black(Swamp). But mainly all goblin related cards are red(Mountain) so we will stick with that.
Now that we know what color our deck is going to be(red-mountain), we can start to look around for what types of red cards there are. Red(Mountain) is usually considered to be filled with instant and sorcery cards that deal direct damage to creatures or players, this is called burn. Also, red contains a lot of quick creatures with an ability called haste, this allows them to attack the turn they are played and summoning sickness isn't applied.
So since you now red is about quick creatures and burn, that's what you want to look for in cards. You will find some cost less mana than others or are more power and or toughness, that just helps you narrow down what you want in your deck.
Decent burn cards you might come across are cards like:
-Rhystic Lightning
-Shock
-Arc Lightning
These cards will help you destroy creatures on your opponent's field and or deal damage to them directly in order to quicken your victory. Over time you will find cards better than the cards you have. You will learn Lightning Bolt, a burn card that does three damage for one red mana will be better to have in your deck than a shock that deals 2 damage for one mana. So overtime you will always find better cards to update your deck with.
Moving on away from the burn... We have the main theme of the deck which is the creatures.
Fast and mana cheap goblins would be cards like:
-Raging goblin
-Goblin chariot
-Goblins of the Flarg
-Mogg Sentry
These goblins only suffice for a short time. You figure out that as the game progresses, these creatures won't be enough to damage your opponent. This is when you apply your burn cards to lessen the opposing force. At the same time, you should also begin to apply your stronger goblin cards which usually come with some sort of drawback but is useful due to your already large numbers.
Cards that you could find helpful would be something like these:
-Mogg Flunkies
-Goblin Medics (Alright effect)
-Goblin Marshal
-Okk
-Goblin goon
Now I want to add a little tidbit in here, avoid favoring cards and throwing them into the deck just because it's your favorite card, that will only distort your draws and ruin the entire theme of your deck.Now when you have the main theme supporting cards collected, add cards that speed up the draw, mana cost, and or overall use of the main theme support cards. For example in this deck, cards like Goblin Warchief and Goblin King would help the strength and playability of your goblins.
Also, once you really get the hang of the game and the cards, you begin to realize you could do a lot more damage to your opponent by using your goblin's numbers to your advantage by sacrificing them with cards like:
-Goblin Grenade (sacrifice a goblin to deal 5 damage)
-Siege-Gang Commander
-Goblin Pyromancer
These cards allow you to do huge damage while still maintaining the lead in the number of creatures you control. After putting a lot of more work into the deck, you would want to get into the more expensive red cards such as adding and or replacing some weaker cards with:
-Goblin piledriver
-Mogg Fanatic
-Goblin Sharpshooter
Now with the complete collection of these cards, you could end up with something like this:
Goblin Deck
60 Cards
Creatures: 28Goblin Piledriver X4
Mogg Fanatic X4
Goblin Warchief X4
Goblin Goon X2
Goblin King X2
Goblin Sharpshooter X1
Goblin Pyromancer X1
Mogg Flunkies X3
Raging Goblin X4
Mogg Sentry X3
Spells: 12Lightning Bolt X4
Shock X4
Goblin Grenade X4
Lands:Mountain X20
Now with the finished deck, you notice that the ratio is 40/20 for creatures and spells to land. This is usually the norm for how much land you typically need. If you go for a multicolored deck, say, red(mountain) and black(swamp). You want to split it 50/50 so its 10 mountain and ten swamp. But this usually depends on the deck. If you have more red cards, add more mountains instead of swamp, maybe take out three swamp and add three mountains instead if you have less black cards.
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