Iced Coffee & MTG in response to Laghail

[Mitchilich]

It's been a while since I didn't go to bed until 2 a.m.

 

Laghail asked me what was on the docket for game night last night...  It wasn't an official game night.  Those are every other Thursday at 6 pm.  It was an ancillary game night that a close friend and I use to get our game fix during the in between time.

 

Another friends wife had gone to Ecuador for a missions thing.  She brought back a fantastic espresso grind Ecuadorian coffee.  I brought it over last night, and we mixed up some mean iced coffees and proceeded to immerse ourselves in the amateur stage of MTG.

 

This is a game I am just beginning to collect cards for, and learn to play.  Last night was in fact, the first time I have officially played with a physical deck.  Up to now, just console emulations are all I have played.  Those do not lend themselves to a comprehensive understanding of the rules, since the game itself monitors the can and cannot do aspects of each card and move.

 

We played 5 games, all of which I lost.  But that's OK.  My friend is an amateur too, but has played before.  He was using an intro pack - a ready to play deck.  I built mine myself from a 1,000 card collection I ordered online.  In between each game, we stopped, BS'ed, and I revamped my deck build as I was learning what worked and what did not.  Sometimes I would draw creature after creature, and no land, or not enough land, to draw enough mana to cast anything.  Other times it was the other way around... all the land I want, nothing to use the drawn mana on.  I started with a black / white deck.  Found the white not being much help, and moved to an all black mono-deck.  Then I realized I was all Land and creatures, lacking instants, sorcery, and enchantments.  So I had to adjust that... and so it went until I went home.

 

Right now, I have a mono-red deck built with 24 lands, and 36 creatures / sorcery / instant / and enchantment in a 14/14/6/2 split.

 

I'd be happy for someone to chime in who has some deck building experience, and can intelligently discuss mono-decks vs multicolored.  My concern is not having the right lands on the battlefield.

 

Anyway, Laghail, here is your answer - which I chose to post public so that I could hopefully leech some advice out of it.

 

 

[Beckyinma]

Most of the decks I've built are mono, green, white and black.  I'm not a huge fan of islands or mountains, and I don't know why.  I have a mono white Plainswalker deck that is all about adding life, building huge armies and annihilating the enemy in very few turns, late in the game.  My boy scouts hate playing against it, but my hubby's zombie deck does a number on it.   

 

Every color has strengths and weaknesses.  When building a single color deck, obviously you want to play to the strengths of the deck but try to shield it against other players taking advantage of weaknesses.  I found that doing some online research about the deck color I wanted to build, and ordering a small number of cards specific to the deck I was researching.  If you use super strong cards, they often have ally cards, or other specific cards they call on for strategic attack or defense.

 

Multi color decks are often heavily favoring one color over the other.   There is also lots of advise out there on that too but I tend to do mono decks.  Any multi color decks I've built have lost miserably to the Zombie deck, and do just ok in 4 player matches with my kids and hubby.   

 

The more you play the more you learn.  but most of all have fun playing!