Magic: The Gathering - Any online tools to help make a deck?

[Kapol]

Oblivion Ring

Since the rest of the cards you mentioned seem to be standard-based, it's important to point out that Oblivion Ring is not actually standard legal right now.

Aye, but only if it's not blocked. Its a decent card, but you wouldn't get through unless you had a board wipe, in which case, you'd probably lose yours as well.

It wouldn't do much good against a deck that has hexproof or indestructible creatures, which his Eldrazi deck has.

For that card, I'd recommend going full Grixis (Black, Red, Blue) and putting in four Aqueous Forms and 2-3 Thassas. Being able to give it unblockable makes it impossible to stop. And putting it in the colors of Doom Blade and Magma Jet will help.

1) Buy singles. I know it has been said, but I can't stress this enough. Boosters are overly expensive. They're fun, but places like CardKingdom and MTGFanatic are the way to go.

6) Speaking of game modes, by far the best advise I can give is this: Find a group that doesn't care about formats. Seriously. Standard and Extended are creations of the devil made to hurt puppies and steal money from disabled children and housewives. Magic is FAR more fun when you have a group of people that don't force you to go out and completely rebuild everything you worked on every time a new set comes out.

For 1), if you like opening up packs like I do, look into Draft and Limited. Sir Connery mentioned it, but I personally love limited formats. Limited formats are formats where you get packs, open them in different ways depending on format, and use the cards to build a 40 card deck normally. This gets rid of the 'spending problem' that many have with Magic. You can't just drop $500 on cards and expect to whip everyone. There's a lot of luck involved. And drafting takes quite a bit of skill.

For 6), it'll largely depend on how you want to play. If you have friends you can play casual with, then that's fine. If you're the only one who you really know who plays, then you're going to want to pay attention to formats. I'm personally a fan of Standard. It's rotating nature makes it shift quite often, so you're not just going to see the same deck repeated forever. We're also at a point where jumping into Standard is the perfect, since rotation just hit. No having to worry about an old set with a bunch of good cards you don't want to invest in killing you every time.

But no matter what you play, I'd say it's worth learning what all the formats are. That way you can know what you need to play if someone mentions they'd like to play a certain format.


A small note: I personally like to use mtgdeckbuilder for building decks online to test them out. They have some pretty solid tools to play around with the deck a bit, and the deck construction is actually visual rather than just the card names like many others.

 

[ForumSafari]

Oblivion Ring

Since the rest of the cards you mentioned seem to be standard-based, it's important to point out that Oblivion Ring is not actually standard legal right now.

Whoops, it didn't get a reprint did it? OK, well I suppose Pacifism would provide an adequate drop-in and most Esper decks sideboarded Detention Sphere pre-rotation so it might be worth mainboarding in its' place. Honestly Oblivion Ring is going to leave an interesting gap in white removal.

 

[Brian Tams]

6. Try to aim for 60 cards, but if you expect the game to go on a long time, you can increase that number. Generally, though, I never go beyond 70 cards.

This is horrible advice. Adding more than sixty cards dilutes the power pool of your deck, and works against the purpose of having multiple copies of the same card in the deck (I.E., you want multiple copies to increase you chances to draw it. By adding over the minimum limit, you are decreasing those chances with no real gain.) The last competitive deck I saw that wanted more than 60 cards (61 to be exact) was the subject of a raging debate for months. The only reason why it worked was because the deck abused a pretty broken mechanic at the time (Cascade).

 

[MysticSlayer]

6. Try to aim for 60 cards, but if you expect the game to go on a long time, you can increase that number. Generally, though, I never go beyond 70 cards.

This is horrible advice. Adding more than sixty cards dilutes the power pool of your deck, and works against the purpose of having multiple copies of the same card in the deck (I.E., you want multiple copies to increase you chances to draw it. By adding over the minimum limit, you are decreasing those chances with no real gain.) The last competitive deck I saw that wanted more than 60 cards (61 to be exact) was the subject of a raging debate for months. The only reason why it worked was because the deck abused a pretty broken mechanic at the time (Cascade).

Like I said in an earlier post, 70 was way overshooting the maximum limit (in truth, it has been a long time since I bothered with a 70 card deck).

Also, again, I tend to find sticking religiously to a 60 card deck outside of a highly competitive setting to be more stress than it's worth, especially for new players. Your chance of drawing the card you want goes down in the tenth-of-a-percent range, which is a rather negligible effect for those playing casually or only semi-competitively. Keep in mind, this is a new player asking for help, not a guy who just got invited to his first Pro Tour.

I should also point out that adding duplicates has a greater positive effect than the negative effect of adding extra cards to the deck. Yes, it is still not an ideal situation to have more than 60 cards just because you have duplicates, but again it doesn't totally cancel the effect of adding duplicates, and, again, the effects are negligible enough to not really matter outside the most highly competitive of settings.

With that said, I am still for the 60 card deck build. I just think people get a little too worked up over it.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

6. Try to aim for 60 cards, but if you expect the game to go on a long time, you can increase that number. Generally, though, I never go beyond 70 cards.

This is bad advice
don't listen to it
60 cards is the hard limit for all formats that call for a 60 card limit and it contradicts some of the very good advice in the other numbers like 2, 3, 4, & 5

I probably didn't express myself as well as I could have.

60 cards is definitely the best deck size. However, there are occasions where a deck pretty much leads to a 61 or 62 card deck. In this case, the percentage difference of drawing your ideal cards is decreased by, at most, 0.1%, which is pretty much negligible most of the time, even more if that card plays an excellent role in the strategy. 70 was a little high, though, I will admit that.

While I would advise a 60 card deck, I did want to emphasize that there are times when there might be 1-2 extra cards that seem very good given the overall strategy of the deck. Now, there is always an element of limiting yourself, and going overboard by throwing every good card into the deck will ultimately hurt you, but I also think treating 60 as the hard limit could potentially close you off to some great possibilities. I've used some really good 61-63 card decks, and I've found my success with those decks, provided the extra 1-3 cards are thoughtfully chosen, to be no different than using 60 card decks. Maybe a serious player, if they were to statistically track themselves, would be able to pull out enough of a loss in win percentage to justify the hard limit, but unless you're planning on going pro in this game, it's not worth getting too worked up about it.

let me be clear as well:

2. Locate a few cards in your deck that are just awesome. See what color they are, and start looking some other good cards of that color. In particular, look for cards that will really help complement your power cards well, and also look for ways to get your power cards easier. While it might seem disadvantageous to keep drawing cards, there are times when you want to draw a card.

If you add a 61st card you dilute the power of your best cards and you have made it harder to get your power card(s) out of your deck

3. Try to establish a theme. What is the purpose of the deck. For instance, I have a black/white deck designed around using the Extort ability to dwindle my opponent's life and keep myself alive. I use a lot of tokens to protect myself. Ideally, I want to get one of my Planeswalkers or Teysa out. If that happens, my chances of winning skyrocket. That's just one example of a deck with a definite mission (and a back-up plan).

by adding a 61st card you weaken your theme and broaden the purpose, remember if your deck tries to be a "Jack of all trades" it will be (as the saying continues) a "Master of none."

4. Keep experimenting and be honest with yourself. Could you have done better with other cards you have? Is your strategy just flawed? It takes a while to perfect the deck.

If you have more than 60 cards in your deck than your strategy is flawed and you can do better with the cards you have.
Please note that a perfect deck is NOT one for which no more cards can be added but rather;

a perfect deck is one in which no more cards can be removed.

5. Know what your mana curve is as well as your Land-to-Spell ratio. However, don't get too upset when you get mana screwed or mana flooded. It happens to all of us. As a general rule of thumb, 24 Lands is standard in a 60 card deck, but this will change depending on your style of play. My brother runs one deck with only 20 Land cards, and I've successfully played decks that go up to 28.

adding even 1 card throws off your mana curve and will increase the chances of being mana screwed/flooded
remember that the amount of lands is dependent on the cost of your Cards as well as when you want to use them as well as what kind of acceleration you have you can get away with less mana if your cards are cheep or you have a lot of acceleration but if your cards are expensive you'll need more mana to use them on time. and really the only way to get this is expirience. Build decks and play with them, a lot then tweek them and again play a lot repeat until it is tuned just right.

Captcha:
Remain calm

I agree with this. Even in a casual environment, you will be going up against people who have paid attention to the 60 card rule[footnote]For that matter, depending on the size of the group, the amount of money people have to throw around, and just how big of a dick the person in question is, you might even run up against net-decked clones of competitive decks, or decks that were actually built by the person in question, but still aimed mainly at competitive play. The stories I could tell you about that one guy who ran mono black... nice guy, but downright /evil/ deck he had there. And not all of them are actually nice people.[/footnote], and assuming an otherwise equally good build, their deck will be better than yours, for the simple reason that they'll be that much more likely to get what they need when they need it. And unfortunately, 61 cards is not the usual newbie mistake in that area, it's more like 70+, which makes for a /really/ crappy deck. Don't do that, because it'll get you murdered the first time you go up against a decent player with a competently built deck. And pretty much every time afterwards, too, barring very good luck on your part and very bad luck for the other guy both happening at the same time.

 

[Lorennar]

I would recommend deckbox.org as a free way to keep track of your collection and make decks. It has some good organizational tools and even in list mode you can still see the spoilers for a card by hovering over the name. Manual entry can become a pain but outside of playing strictly on MTGO and letting it take care of inventory not sure how you would even get around that.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Tapped Out is probably the most widely used online deckbuilder and the best way to keep track of a list of all your cards is probably Deckbox.

I hope you enjoy getting into Magic!

 

[Tanis]

Are elves still any good?
I've got a few wicked decks that are based around creature types.

I'd suggest getting something like a pre-made burn/creature kill/etc deck and then improving it with various cards you own.

They're not the fanciest things to play, but they're pretty good at getting you 'used to' the ideas of how to build your decks.

I'd suggest AVOIDING the mixed colored decks until you've gotten better.
-My 5 colored deck is fun to play, but a nightmare if I don't get X type of cards within the first 5 draws, plus it's also around 100 cards.
XD