The game Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering , also known as Magic, is the first collectible trading card game created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic continues to thrive, with approximately twelve million players as of 2011...

requires each player to have their own deck in order to play. There are over ten thousand unique cards which can be used for this purpose; thus a considerable number of different decks can be constructed. However, decks can usually be loosely classified based on their play style and mode of victory.

Basic Deck types

Most classifications of decks begin from one of three major types: aggro, control, and combo.

Aggro

Aggro (short for "aggressive") decks attempt to reduce their opponents from 20 life to 0 life as quickly as possible, rather than emphasize a long-term game plan. Aggro decks focus on converting their cards into damage; they prefer to engage in a tempo-based

Tempo (Magic: The Gathering)

Tempo is a term used in Magic: The Gathering to indicate the advantage gained when a player is able to play more or stronger cards in a shorter period of time due to efficient resource allocation...

 race rather than a card advantage-based attrition war. Aggro generally rely on creatures as a cumulative source of damage. While strategically simple, aggro decks can quickly overwhelm unprepared opponents and remain resilient in the late game as well. Aggro decks also generally have access to disruptive elements, which can inhibit the opponent's attempts to respond.

• Example cards: , , , ,
• Example decks:
  • Goblins, which uses cards like , and . It heavily employs the goblin creature type, a class of creatures that are typically cheap, fragile, and deal high damage.
  • White Weenie, which uses small, efficient creatures such as , , and
  • Affinity, which uses the affinity mechanic and large numbers of artifacts to quickly play spells such as and , while efficiently dealing damage using and .
  • Red/Green Beats, uses low-cost, high power creatures such as and to kill the opponent quickly. It also utilizes mana denial such as and .
  • Sligh (also known as "Red Deck Wins"), which utilizes its mana as efficiently as possible to kill the opponent quickly, using low-cost cards such as and .
  • Suicide Black, which uses efficient but dangerous cards that cost life such as , , , and . Suicide Black epitomizes Black's philosophy—win at all costs—and treats even its life total as an expendable resource.

Control

Control decks avoid racing and attempt to slow the game down by executing an attrition plan. As the game progresses, control decks are able to take advantage of their slower, more powerful, cards. The primary strength of control decks is their ability to devalue the opponent’s cards. They do this in four ways:

1. Erasing threats at a reduced cost. Control decks given the opportunity can gain card advantage
   Card advantage
   Card advantage is a term used in collectible card game strategy to indicate one player having access to more cards than another player. The concept was first discovered early in the history of Magic: The Gathering strategy...
   
    by answering multiple threats with one spell, stopping expensive threats with cheaper spells, and drawing multiple cards or forcing the opponent to discard multiple cards with one spell.
2. Not playing threats to be answered. By playing few proactive spells of their own, control decks gain virtual card advantage by reducing the usefulness of opposing removal cards.
3. Disrupting synergies. Even if control decks do not deal with every threat directly, they can leave out whichever ones stand poorly on their own; e.g., a creature enchantment which will never need attention if all enemy creatures are quickly removed.
4. Dragging the game out past opposing preparations. An opponent's faster, efficient cards will become less effective over time.

• Example cards: , , , ,
• Example decks:
  • Mono Blue Control, which uses a heavy suite of counterspells alongside card-drawing such as , removal such as , and a win condition such as . This class of deck is nicknamed "Draw-Go," because most of its players' spells are instants designed to be played during his or her opponents' turns.
  • Blue-White Control, which is similar to Mono-Blue Control, but features more board-control cards such as , and .

}, supplemented by card-drawing like and a number of disruptive spells.

• • Astral Slide, which uses large numbers of cards with cycling, including those with added benefits such as and , to power and .
  • Mono-Black Control, which uses removal spells such as and to control the board, and to kill the opponent with spells such as .

Combo

Combo decks utilize the interaction of two or more cards (a "combination") to create a powerful effect that either wins the game immediately or creates a situation that subsequently leads to a win. The term "combo" can also describe a deck built around resolving a single powerful spell such as to create the same kind of insurmountable advantage. Combo decks value power, consistency, and speed: the combo should be strong enough to win, the deck should be reliable enough to produce the combo on a regular basis, and the deck should be able to use the combo fast enough to win before the opponent.

Many decks have smaller, combo-like interactions between their cards, which is better described as synergy.

• Example cards: , , , , .
• Example decks:
  • Painter Combo, which uses and chooses Blue to permit to destroy any permanent or counter any spell, while also allowing to put the opponent's entire library into their graveyard.
  • Worldgorger Dragon Combo, which revolves around the infinite loop triggered when is animated from the graveyard using an enchantment such as . The loop generates mana and card drawing which is then used to end the game.
  • Belcher Combo, which uses free and efficient mana acceleration to play and activate , preferably on the first turn. Because the deck runs 2 or fewer lands, one activation of will almost always kill the opponent.
  • Flash, which is dedicated to casting and putting a into play and then into the graveyard, allowing the player to find a combination of creatures which will kill the opponent instantly. and are used to find the combo pieces, while and protect the combo.
  • Hexmage Depths, which uses to inexpensively remove the counters from and put a flying, indestructible 20/20 creature token into play as early as the first turn.

Aggro-Control

Aggro-control is a hybrid archetype that contains both aggressive creatures and control elements. These decks attempt to deploy quick threats while protecting them with light permission and disruption long enough to win. These are frequently referred to as "tempo" strategies, as their control elements are often more temporary; for instance, they may return opposing creatures to their owners' hands rather than remove them entirely.

• Example cards: , ,
• Example decks:
  • Blue-Green Madness, which uses cards like , and .
  • PT
    Pro Tour (Magic: The Gathering)
    The Pro Tour is the highest form of competitive play for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game. It consists of a series of payout tournaments held throughout the world, each requiring an invitation to participate. Every PT awards a total of $230,000 in cash prizes, with $40,000 going to...
    
     Junk, which uses cards such as , and .
  • Naya Lightsaber, which uses powerful creatures like and removal like , many of which also provide card advantage.
  • Fish, which uses mana denial such as , , and , alongside countermagic such as , , , and , to keep the opponent off-balance long enough that creatures such as and win the game.
  • Bant, a GWU deck which uses efficient creatures like , , and in tandem with exalted creatures like , disruptive creatures like and along with some counterspells (typically as well as removal like . Bant tries to drop exalted creatures to then cast to fetch one of its efficient killers, then control the rest of the game with removal and counterspells while its own creatures grow and deal damage.

Midrange

Midrange strategies seek to control the game's first few turns and then win in the middle turns with large, yet highly efficient, threats. The black-green "Rock" deck is one of the most common decks to execute this strategy: it uses cheap creature removal and discard in the early turns to disrupt aggro and combo decks, and then starts playing large creatures in the middle turns that are, if not removed, capable of ending the game quickly after hitting play.

• Example Cards: , , , ,
• Example Decks
  • The Rock, which uses cards such as , , and Pernicious Deed.
  • Ghost Dad, which utilizes , , and , for efficient creatures, card draw, and lifegain.

Control-Combo

Control-Combo is a control deck with a combo finisher that it can spring quickly if need be. A notable subtype of Control-Combo is "prison," which institutes control through resource denial (usually via a combo).

• Example cards: , , , ,
• Example decks:
  • Stax, a prison deck which uses to destroy opposing permanents, to replay permanents to feed the , and and to tie up an opponent's mana and prevent them from ever playing spells.
  • Stasis, which uses and cards such as or .
  • Scepter-Chant, which uses and .
  • Trix, which gains life using and then uses to leave the opponent with the often deadly drawback.
  • Oath, uses and to quickly put a large creature such as or into play.

Aggro-Combo

Aggro-combo decks employ aggressive creature strategies along with some combination of cards that can win in "combo" fashion with one big turn. For instance, Ravager Affinity decks that include Disciple of the Vault can win by attacking with creatures and also with a combo finish of sacrificing multiple artifacts to Arcbound Ravager and killing the opponent with Disciple triggers.

• Example cards: , ,
• Example decks:
  • Fling Affinity, which uses or and along with .
  • Food Chain Goblins, which uses , and and .
  • Fires, which uses with and .
  • Manaless Ichorid, which uses cards with the dredge mechanic such as to fill the player's own graveyard, enabling free creatures such as and , which, in conjunction with , can generate a large number of zombie tokens.

Aggro-Control-Combo

Aggro-control-combo decks combine efficient, creature-based damage, heavy disruption elements, and an ability to unleash an extremely powerful synergy that can end the game in "combo" fashion.

• Example cards: , , ,
• Example decks:
  • Gro-A-Tog, which generally wins by playing and protecting it with disruption such as and as it "grows," but can also win by playing and chaining together and to draw many cards and instantly make lethal.

See also

• Magic: The Gathering preconstructed theme decks