1. For the extended deck with large toughness attackers theme, I think it is important to recognize that you will also need those creatures for blocking for the times you don’t have a wakestone gargoyle + doran out. Also, I think it might be better to pick either nondefenders with high toughness, or defenders with some power too, so that when only of your combo cards are on the board, you can still do something.

    I think heat ray and broodwarden are conflicting cards in the R/G archetype. Once you use the tokens for an x-spell, it should win the game, otherwise you won’t have a need for broodwarden’s ability. maybe banefire or fireball or comet storm? and run cheaper more efficient removal for the creatures instead.

  2. As far as the Doran deck, I am getting into that in Part Two. Having Doran out and keeping him out is pretty important part of the deck. Wakestone will be too. But how I tackle that issue is an more advanced method of deck building thus I felt shouldn’t go in Part One.

    As for the budget deck, yes you picked up something I intentionally put into the article. Heat Ray isn’t the best choice. But it wouldn’t be about deck building if I couldn’t use the moment to show, why some cards work better than others. Tune into Part Two to see how I tackle the Heat Ray problem.

    Thanks for reading!

  3. Hello Aaron,

    nice overview of some important deckbuilding basics. Looking forward to read part two. Take care!

  4. +1 for the Ghostbusters reference =)

    Excellent article, this is a very nice series of basic articles on the site now. Keep them coming.

  5. Good article.

    I liked the way it is written, makes it seem like a friendly conversation than an article which is always good. I like the deck ideas and hopefully in the next parts we’ll get to see you expand upon them, and maybe even a playtest, as I am quite intrigued by your ‘smack with high toughness’ deck.

    Keep em coming

  6. Thank you all for your encouraging comments!

    Yay! +1 for ghost busters! Now the planeswalker card of myself has an ability!

  7. Great article, however I feel that Step 2: The Format could do with a little further explanation.

    If you choose your deck to belong to a particular format, are you then limited to playing other decks of that format? Where/how exactly do you find out which cards are legal with which format? Can cards be legal in more than one format? What’s a Pauper? What’s the most common/rare format?

    I understand this is only part 1 and these questions could be answered in future articles, but I just thought I would give you a newbie’s perspective.

  8. Certainly helps figuring out what the deck does and what to do with it. I’m normally trying to add another color for a few cards that are more for support then anything so I’m forced to cut them even though there very good at what I want them to do.

  9. Very well written. As someone who is new to both mtg and mtgo, I’m constantly looking for information to learn more about the game, often however, articles aren’t all that new player
    friendly, which makes sense as mtg has been around for quite a while. A+ for both style,
    and content, on to part two and three.

  10. If you do not have a credit card youlesrf you can use a parents or a friendsI use my moms credit card to pay for WoW (technically they pay for WoW for me too)My Brothers friends uses my brothers credit card to pay for WoWBut if you dont want to mooch off of your friends or family you can buy game cards which they have at most;Best Buys, Game Stops and Walmarts but buying with a credit card is easier and you can buy 6 months at once for cheaper which i do it goes from 15$ s a month to 12$ s a month. What you do is pay 72$ every 6 months.