The nuances of deck-building

  1. Instead of thinking of a "bomb" as a card, think of it as more the gameplan/win condition of your deck. You wanna kill your opponent by rushing him down with small minions? Sure, go ahead. You want to combo your opponent? That's fine too, but think of how you are going to kill your opponent/win the game. So instead of building around a specific card, build around the idea of how you're going to win. Instead of "bomb" cards, have little "firecracker" cards that have an impact, but if you don't draw into it, you'll be fine. Building around a "bomb" card sounds more like a commander deck to me, which is a fun alternative to the traditional 60 card games.
  2. Like mentioned earlier, create a deck with "firecracker" cards. You can still have your "bomb" cards, but you won't be fully relying on those specific cards to win. Of course, there are cards that can specifically tutor cards.
  3. In my usual 60 card decks, I tend to run anywhere from 19-23 land cards. Make sure you have a reliable source of mana to draw into. And it's entirely possible to rush your opponent down with low mana cost cards, but if the cards don't synergize well with each other, it'll be a lot harder.
  4. You don't have to stick with 60 cards in a deck, actually! 60 is the minimum, but it's a very nice size to stay at. If you're playing competitively, I'd recommend a sideboard, which is 15 cards that are usually filled with certain removals and other spells that'll help you pull a competitive edge.
  5. A prepared deck should be able to exhaust another person's removal, or you could start playing around certain removals, as in keeping a card in your hand that you would like to survive, and "sacrificing" a different creature by playing it first. But sometimes, your draws are gonna be wack, and your opponent will feel like he's always one step ahead. Those games happen, just keep at it.
  6. I tend to look at my tactics and strategy of how I'd like to win the game before I start deckbuilding. Let's say, I want a green/blue deck filled to the brim with giant mana cost monsters. Okay, well which monsters do I want? How am I going to get the mana efficiently and quickly so that I am not overrun by my opponent in the early game? Is my only win condition going to be smashing my opponents face with big creatures? Keep asking questions in where there seems to be a hole in your deck construction. While it's fun to think of the high rolling in decks, I always tend to think of the worst possible outcomes, and try to fix those to a point where I feel I can efficiently play my decks.

I hope this helps to some extent, I'm not the best at explaining, but I hope something makes sense!

/r/Magicdeckbuilding Thread