2011)

I am very new to Magic but have quickly become obsessed with it. Friends convinced me to try out the game about 2 months ago and I’ve been loving it ever since. What was once two people that used to play Magic in high school is now eight twenty and thirty-something friends all spending money they don’t have on Magic to compete with each other. We all play with M12 since it was, and still is at the time of this writing, the newest set. I have several years of expansions and rulings to learn about, but this article details the most valuable lesson to my Magic enjoyment I’ve learned so far.

My dilemma involved the relationship between winning and having fun. I’m sure to many people they are one in the same. For me, my enjoyment of the game is half and half. For example, the first deck I ever assembled and won with was mono-red. I won here and there, but even winning quickly became unfun. As with most mono-red decks, my deck was built around getting mana and doing direct damage, and a lot of it (so original for red!). There were a few creatures (some dragons and goblins), but mostly there were instants and sorceries. And it was boring. So I didn’t win a lot, and I didn’t really enjoy playing (not that I’m knocking red at all!).

I watched other decks pull out monsters and demons and angels and golems and all kinds of interesting beasties. Whenever I would put more creatures in my red deck and take out some sorceries (to keep it at the 60 card minimum), it wouldn’t play as well. I’d be without mana and the game would last longer, making my loss inevitable. Or I would add a few cards of black or green and I just couldn’t win. Friends told me to leave the red deck alone because it worked!

Even in the red deck, if I put everything into it I liked to make it more fun (Furyborn Hellkites and Flameblast Dragons and Chandra’s Phoenix, for example), it would’ve been 80+ cards and would definitely not have worked as well, not that I had 4 Furyborn Hellkites waiting around to put into a deck. I felt restricted by the rules of what I was told makes a good deck. My friends and I are no experts, but we like to kid ourselves that we could compete in tournaments and win. So, we follow the rules and try to build decks like the tournament pros that win a lot with as few cards as possible.

One of my friends that we’ll call Jace will, 90% of the time, uses a mono-blue deck. The deck has only M12 illusion creatures, Lord of the Unreal, and M12 Jace in it as far as attackers/creatures; everything else is Redirect, Cancel, Ponder, etc. And it functions – he will copy with Phantasmal Image his Lord of the Unreal and keep copying it and hexproofing everything. If you don’t immediately start killing things, in a few turns Jace will have 3 hexproofed Lord of Illusion copies and several hexproofed and 3 or 4-times-buffed illusion creatures. And while it works well and can be frustrating to play against, it is incredibly BORING. Playing against Jace’s monoblue deck became not only boring, but incredibly predictable. Everyone playing him knows exactly what he’s going to play almost every turn. We used to make jokes whenever it was our turn about having to ask him permission to play anything because of his Cancels and Negates, or we’d bet on what creature spell he was about to play. Surprise! There’s a Phantasmal Image! Surprise! He’s countering my spell! Not so much.

Another friend, we’ll call him Gideon, plays a lot of white, and has 4 of everything in his main white deck. It’s 60 cards, of course. So imagine every good white card in M12, and put 4 of them into a deck and you’d have his. It is:

White (60)
4: Sun Titan
4: Gideon Jura
4: Gideon’s Lawkeeper
4: Gideon’s Avenger
4: Grand Abolisher
4: Day of Judgment
4: Demystify
4: Lifelink
4: Pacifism
4: Oblivion Ring
4: Angelic Destiny

16: Plains

Nice, right? And it works too. At least, it works against other M12 decks made similarly. Now this deck may not be typical, I know, but his deck and Jace’s mono-blue deck illustrate a point. The overarching, underlying grand design that my friends work for is a deck that wins, period. What creature will Gideon play with his white deck? Well there are 5 possibilities, and he probably has 1 or 2 of those creatures in his hand at all times. As soon as he gets 5 mana, he’ll play Gideon. As soon as he has 6 mana, he’ll play a Sun Titan probably. It works, it wins, and it’s boring. Why do all my friends have 6 or more decks built (Gideon has over 10)? Maybe because different decks are effective in different situations, sure, or maybe because playing with any one deck too long would make them drill holes into their heads. They switch between the decks. Even if one deck would probably be better against a particular opponent, I’ve seen them use a not-so-great deck just because they’re sick of playing with their better one.

So, seeing this trend, and not being able to afford Garruk, Primal Hunters and Grave Titans, I built my second deck with one purpose – to be awesomely fun. It is 112 cards and counting (I videoed myself shuffling the deck once to appease my rule-savvy friend Gideon). It has Emrakul the Aeons Torn, Progenitus, Iona Shield of Emeria, Yosei the Morning Star, and Thrun the Last Troll in it. It has hydras and angels and Godsires out the buttock. I’ve got enough Baneslayer Angels and Gaea’s Revenges in there to take on an army of Phyrexians. And it rocks! It’s stuffed full of mana and cards that let me search for mana, and I threw in 4 Quicksilver Amulets and Dramatic Entrances to help with those big nasty creatures. But the reactions on people’s faces when I pull out Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, even if he is removed or paralyzed the next turn, is priceless. The joy of drawing a card at the beginning of my upkeep and seeing Akroma, Angel of Wrath charging towards me is priceless. I have probably heard more “What the heck is that!?”s in the last month than in the rest of my life combined. I don’t always win, sure, but I do most of the time and I have fun every time. Winning doesn’t have to be your only goal.

It’s Green/White, if you were wondering. In the 13 games I’ve played with it, I’ve only mulliganed once because of lack of mana in my hand. Every game is different - completely different. Sometimes I draw wurms and Godsires and trample my foe, sometimes I draw angels and Pacifisms and paralyze him. Sometimes, sometimes…I draw on my opening hand a Quicksilver Amulet, a crap-ton of mana, and Progenitus and on turn 4 have him out raping and pillaging the countryside. The point is I love the deck. It is immensely enjoyable to play with and viciously satisfying to win with.

If you are new to Magic, certainly learn the basics; start with a mono deck as I’m sure you’ve been advised to do, but then go crazy. An advantage to just now getting into Magic: The Gathering is that it’s been around for a millennium and by now you can make a deck do just about anything. I guarantee there is a card out there from some expansion that will make work whatever you want to work. Want to build a deck around making your opponent’s creatures into chickens? There’s a card that does that, and a way to make it effective I’m sure. Want to make a deck that allows you to pull cards from your opponent’s library or graveyard to play for yourself? No problem!

How about building a deck that’s only goal is to give you as much life as possible? Shoot for a goal, say 40 life, then check out the creature card Felidar Sovereign. Do you hate people who use decks that build their life up to 40 or more? Check out the Planeswalker Sorin Markov (the cheapest M12 Planeswalker, financially speaking), specifically his -3 loyalty counters ability, which is “Target opponent’s life total becomes 10.” Are you wanting to build a life-gain deck but are afraid of Sorin Markov’s -3 ability? Check out the Eternity Vessel artifact and put some Oblivion Rings in your deck! You can literally do anything because there is a card for everything, and a card to counter that card.

Win, but don’t forget to have fun. To me at least, winning is almost useless if I didn’t enjoy the fight.

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