Magic the Gathering question:?

Question

ok i recently started playing this with friends and yesterday i bought 2 decks (molomars might and turnabout from the shadowmoor set) i mixed these two into a green/white deck, with a slight edge on green. (mostly only hybrid whites/green units and greens) but my friends seem to put out creatures much faster than i do.

do you guys have any tips on how to play, or some cards to add to the deck? (

i was also thinking to create a red/white deck when eventide comes out. does anyone have any idea on what kind of cards would be good to put in that red/white deck?

Answer 1

As a member of the DCI, and as a member of the Magic Judges team, I like to welcome you to the best card game in the world.

It’s nice to see that you’ve already gone off to a quick start. You’ve already started building your own decks. That’s nice to see.

Anyhow, it’s not uncommon to see your friend spinning out more creatures than you do, because the green-white deck is simply faster than whatever you’ve got. It’s the best constructed deck that Wizards released in Shadowmoor, and the Green/White Wilt-Leaf Liege is worth about $8 on its own, even though it is released in a preconstructed deck. That’s just how good it is. There are, however, ways to beat it. It’s actually quite simple.

If you want to build a Red/White deck, then you must ditch most of the Green/White hybrids, because they don’t work with Red/White. In Red/White, you want a card called Figure of Destiny. This is a 1/1 Kithkin creature from Eventide that has the following effects: 2x{R/W}: Figure of Destiny becomes a 2/2 Kithkin Spirit. 3x{R/W}: If Figure of Destiny is a Spirit, it becomes a 4/4 Spirit Warrior. 6x{R/W}: If Figure of Destiny is a Warrior, it becomes a 8/8 Kithkin Spirit Warrior Avatar with flying and first strike. In other words, it’s simply a very good 1-drop that becomes bigger as time goes on.

Another card you should have 4 of is Unmake. Unmake removes a creature from the game for the cost of 3x{W/B}. You use Unmake on their liege, and everything suddenly becomes a lot smaller. Then, you Firespout the board, destroying everything in sight.

After clearing the board and making sure that your opponent can’t actually do anything with tokens, (you should run 4 of shock, tarfire, incinerate, shard volley, and flame javelin to burn whatever your opponent has) you start building your own force. A Balefire Liege puts on a lot of pressure, especially when your red spells start doing two more damage and your white spells start gaining you life. Then, you end the game with a huge avatar or a nice beater of some sort.

It’s simple. The key to winning against your friend is in killing everything early. If the Wilt-Leaf liege is cast, make sure you burn it away as soon as possible. If Rhys the Redeemed is dropped, shock it. If other elves start popping up, burn them to death while establishing your own force.

Super Secret Tech: You should run Porphyry Nodes. This is the W enchantment that kills the creature with the weakest power at the beginning of your upkeep. Don’t drop it on turn 1, drop it after your opponent had played some creatures. Make sure that it is gone before you start playing your own creatures, though, because when it eats up your Figure of Destiny or your Balefire Liege, you will be close to crying.

I hope that helped. Once again, on behalf of all of us in the Magic community, I sincerely welcome you to Magic.

Convince your friends to start – as Magic is so much more than a game of cards on a kitchen table. The more players there are, the better the game will be. Have fun, and enjoy yourself. Feel the magic.

Answer 2

Hi and welcome to a fun game!

I'm glad to see you have already taken the first step to becoming a solid player; creating your own decklist apart from the precons.

The first thing you need to do when creating your own deck is to ask yourself what you want the deck to do and do you want it to have a theme (like elves). The most basic catagories are Aggro (beating face with creatures), Control (answering all of your opponents threats and winning in the long run), and Combo (this + that means I win. Example: Pila-Pala + Presense of Gond will make a lot of Elf tokens unless it is destroyed),  As I said, these are the basic things and you can have an aggro deck with a combo in it, or a combo deck that uses control until it sets up the combo, etc. Many of the better decks mix 2 or even all 3 of these basic themes.

In general Aggro beats Control, Control beats Combo, and Combo beats Aggro. It won't always work out this way.

Glancing over the decklists, I would pull out all of the mono-white cards and cards that benefit from having plains (Dawnglow Infusion and Seedcradle Witch).  This will let you play with only forests. I would also take out the Wurm's Tooth and the Revelsong Horn.

Look to acquire 4 Llanowar Elves. They are common (thus cheap) and are useful in almost any green deck. Wren's Run Vanquisher and Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers are good uncommons for a green deck looking to get beefy creatures into the red zone.

Kitchen Finks is also a good uncommon for green/white.

Imperious Perfect (Uncommon) is another choice if you want to play an elf deck.

The Red/White card that really stands out as a whole-lot-of-awesome is Figure of Destiny. Get those while they are cheap, if you can. Apart from that, what do you want to do with your deck?

Feel free to contact me with questions!