Congrats everyone! We welcomed our 1,000th subscriber last week to MTGZone! A huge thank-you to everyone here for browsing and contributing—this is a wonderful place already and will only get better.
To celebrate this awesome milestone, we’re giving away 1 LTR collector booster and 2 LTR set boosters to one lucky community member!
To enter:
- Make sure you’re subscribed to /c/mtg.
- Add a comment to this post with 1 thing you’d like to share about the game. Anything! Favorite deck, an MTG story, a streamer you like, your pet card, suggestion for the site.
We’ll leave this up for 2 weeks and at noon eastern on August 7th we’ll pick a random member from the comments here. I’ll reach out via DM for an address and once confirmed will post here!
Some fun facts for reading this far:
- Our first post was on June 9th, a bit over 6 weeks ago. Since then we’ve had a total of 304 (mostly spoiler!) posts.
- You’ve upvoted these posts 2,439 times and downvoted them only 42 times.
- You’ve also made 1,098 comments, upvoting them 2,240 times and downvoting them only 9 times!
- We have 409 registered users at this instance now!
Thanks again to everyone, can’t wait to celebrate 5,000! As always please DM me or mike with any questions or suggestions or if you’re interested in getting involved, or find us at Mastodon.
Updates:
[12:00pm] It’s noon Eastern! I locked the thread and will get all of the unique usernames here to run the drawing!
[1:46pm] Apologies for the delay! We have a winner: @kaiyo@lemmy.world! I sent them a message now to verify and once I get a reply I’ll make the official announcement post with drawing video. Stay tuned!
This place is great, thanks for all the hard work out in to it!
In the 90s I used to play mtg as a kid and listen to the Mountains Goats on cassette, and now there’s a Mountain Goats secret lair. Full circle.
As an extremely casual commander player, I always feel like a noob even though technically I’ve been playing MTG for over half a decade at this point. My commander decks have all been precons and I’ve mostly just got cards through drafting with my friends, but this year I’ve been trying to build my own deck from scratch and it’s… exciting but frustrating.
Does anyone have any tips for taking a (commander) deck from the “theoretical pile of cards” stage to a functioning deck? By that I mean, I’ve done the preliminary research (scryfall searches, EDHREC most used cards for the commander, etc) to find possible cards, and I’ve read some high level theory stuff about deck building (ramping, threats, etc) to categorize my possible cards… But can’t really find any articles/videos showing workflows to actually build the deck.
Currently I’m trying to use tags on Moxfield but it’s mostly a confusing mess as I try to trim down ~200 possibilities into a lean, functioning deck.
This doesn’t directly answer your question on paring the big pool down, but I bookmarked this a while ago that had a pretty good overview of EDH deckbuilding basics that might help, including numbers on how many of each category to go with: https://www.archidekt.com/decks/1048638#EDH__Deck_Template_(read_description_at_bottom) (and original source). It links to a separate guide on lands too which is helpful.
In general I think it’s really helpful to set a goal at the beginning. Are you building a deck to primarily have fun and/or explore a theme, do you want to try to be competitive, etc. I tend to choose the cards that I enjoy playing over those that might be “strictly better,” for instance, particularly ones that I have nostalgia for. I also tend to build around themes/tribes a lot which naturally limits the pool.
I think your question would make a really good post of it’s own, but my best suggestion would be to write down the mana curve you want first and build your deck to fit cards into that curve. Say you want 10 1cc spells, 20 2cc spells, 25 3cc spells, and 10 4+cc spells with 35 lands. There are so many possible cards you can include in your commander deck that I think it’s better to choose them based on a structured mana curve you want. That way your deck won’t fall apart while you play it, and you have a clear system for how to swap/upgrade/replace cards in your deck.
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I agree with mike that this could be a whole post on its own, but something that’s helped me pare down the pile of potentials was the rough guidelines that both Prof (TCC) and Tomer (Goldfish) put out a couple of years ago, where they talk about how much ramp vs removal vs card draw you should aim for (I still try to run at least one “you win the game” card in every deck, in line with Tomer’s suggestion).
I still review my 99 with that in mind, even if I don’t always hit those exact numbers, and it’s helped make my decks play more smoothly whenever I run them, and is also really helpful when upgrading, since I know if I’m adding a new card draw engine, then my cuts should be from my existing card draw.
It’s probably helpful if I actually share the links:
TCC - How to Build Your 1st Commander Deck: https://youtu.be/1jO2fmsef0g
MTGGoldfish - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/the-power-of-a-deckbuilding-checklist-commander-quickie
Here’s a fun fact - I still play Magic with friends that I played magic with back in 2002. 21 years and going strong, baby!
Thanks for the giveaway! I really enjoy the cards from the LOTR set. My dad doesn’t know much about Magic, but is a big LOTR fan and has had a lot of fun looking at the cards for the art and flavor text.
Going through the 10 cent bin at a local comic book store to make decks with friends to play that day when you’re a poor high schooler… miss those days.
MTG has been a fun hobby I initially never thought I’d get into. My first tine playing was tabletop edh borrowing a friend’s Lord Windgrace precon. Now a few years later (and a hiatus or two) I’ve started competing in edh tournaments, participating in and running drafts, and making my own decks. It’s a fun game that I’m glad to see gaining traction (although I do wish WOTC would slow down a little).
Hot take: MTG needs more hippos.
I recently built a deck with [[Hokori]] as commander and me and my friends love/hate it 🤣
Do you have a list for me? :)
Thanks for nurturing this community into what it is today, the best MTG space on the web. I would like to remind everyone, [[Norin, the wary]] is NOT a coward, he’s just a very smart warrior. I’ve always thought he might be related to Rincewind the wizzard.
I would like to see this community grow and be nice to each other. MTG has a certain eleiteism that made it difficult to comment on reddit.
There were a couple of cards that I submitted to the custom cards subreddit that were later printed almost exactly like I posted them. I mostly remember Foundation Breaker (mine was 2GG cost and 3/2) and Damn (mine was 1BB // 3WW for the costs)
I love my bear deck!
The most satisfaction I ever got from this game was building a deck entirely of artefacts and black enchantments, then using it to wipe the floor with my best friend who taught me the game. He then had to build several iterations of a deck designed to take it down, even then only maybe getting a 50/50 win/loss ratio.
Thank you for this!!
I’ve only recently gotten into MTG but I jumped in hard and fast! Commander is the play style I enjoy the most and the community around it has been truly helpful and supportive when I’d ask for help in my LGS or on various forums! I say all of that to hopefully entice anyone new or curious of the game to jump in!! You won’t regret it!
Hey thanks for doing this giveaway!
I played for years when I was a teenager and got back into MTG during the pandemic. Discovering commander was a complete game changer for me. I just love the way it’s played lol!
