My First Magic: The Gathering Deck
I have recently gotten an itch to play Magic: The Gathering again, but actually try to get more into it this time. I've sort of been around the zeitgeist of the game for over 4 years, but I have been very on-and-off about actually playing it. I've played MTG Arena on occasion, and around early 2024 I got a bit into actual paper Magic with a few friends, and I purchased a few Pauper decks (decks only made from common cards), but I sort of fell out of that again.
Now that I want to get more serious about it, I got myself the Foundations Starter Collection for Christmas, which is a set of around 400 cards of all kinds that allow you to experiment with building decks, and it's been extremely useful for me!
Yesterday I started brewing my first ever deck using these cards. I used the physical cards to plan it out, but I've mainly been using Arena to actually play and adjust it so I can have all the cards I need/want.
My favourite Magic colour is blue, which focuses on countering spells and drawing a bunch of cards. Additionally, my favourite colour combinations are blue-red (Izzet) and blue-black (Dimir).
One of the decks I got from the 2023 Starter Kit (my first paper cards) was an Izzet deck called Day of the Dragon which I found super neat. Also one of the few paper decks I have is a Dimir Terror deck shared by PaperPauperPlayer, which uses two cards: Tolarian Terror and Gurmag Angler, that are cheaper to cast the more instants and sorceries you have in your graveyard.
The deck I've been brewing takes the general concept of that Dimir Terror deck, but makes it more agressive to fit the Izzet gameplay style that I enjoy more.
The deck has a bunch of instants and sorceries which go straight to the graveyard after use, and a handful of creatures that get stronger or cheaper to cast the more I have in my graveyard. Specifically I am using Tolarian Terrors again, but I am also using Enigma Drakes whose power (attack damage) is decided by how many instants and sorceries are in my graveyard!
The most useful instant — which I have four of in the deck — is definitely Teach by Example, which creates a copy of the next instant or sorcery I play in a turn for free. Additionally, one of the adjustments I made from the original idea was making the deck more agressive, and one of the best cards for that has been Bulk Up, which doubles a creature's power for a turn, and is especially powerful with Enigma Drake!
There is still a lot of work to do with this deck. I do have another creature included, the Firebrand Archer, who is a 2/1 for two mana that deals 1 damage every time I cast a non-creature spell, but it isn't actually as strong as I thought, so I might cut a few of them for more aggressive spells which I have felt are missing. I'll be ironing out these issues as I play even more and get a better sense of what's missing, though.
I'm glad that I am getting into Magic again, and I am very excited to see where this deck takes me, even if it ends up being nowhere. I want to experiment more with this game, so I wanted to share my first step in that direction with all of you!
Here is the current deck list, just because!
Deck
4 Tolarian Terror (FDN) 167
7 Mountain (DFT) 287
2 Opt (FDN) 512
4 Firebrand Archer (FDN) 196
12 Island (MKM) 279
4 Enigma Drake (FDN) 657
4 Swiftwater Cliffs (FDN) 268
2 Think Twice (FDN) 165
2 Crash Through (FDN) 620
2 Dragon Fodder (FDN) 535
2 Negate (FDN) 710
2 Abrade (FDN) 188
2 Essence Scatter (FDN) 153
2 Burst Lightning (FDN) 192
4 Teach by Example (FDN) 666
2 Temple of Epiphany (FDN) 699
1 Fiery Annihilation (FDN) 86
2 Bulk Up (FDN) 80
P.S. If anybody has good ideas for a name for this deck, let me know!
P.P.S. Apologies that I didn't share the thing I've been working on yet, like I said I would last post. I got sick, and that sort of slows me down with my writing, but I am feeling much better now and I'll make sure to have it shared for New Years Eve tomorrow!
