We have a great article that Alex Sawyer had written for this blog. When I read it for the first time, it felt like I was reading a professional article written by a great player. It explained all of his ideas, sideboard strategies and everything you need to pilot a 75 like this (75 meaning 60 cards in the main deck and 15 in the sideboard. 60 + 15 = 75.) But when new players get into the game, they need to know how to read these articles, listen to how the players talk, and see the lines of play.
So lets start with the beginning, which is the deck title. The other ideas about listening to how the players talk and seeing the lines of play will come later in other articles.
When a player makes a deck, they want to represent the deck colors and deck strategy in the title. The colors are represent by these annotations:
- W = White
- U = Blue
- B = Black
- R = Red
- G = Green
Now that you understand the colors in a single letter format, now we need to figure out how these letters represent the deck in the title. When we put these single letter representation in a title, we put them in order by means of how much of each color is represented in the deck. Lets say that I have a lot of red cards and some white cards in my deck list. I will te represent this in my deck as RW. The same rule applies when you have more than two colors in the deck. Again another example of this would be if my deck contains 50 % Red, 30% White, and 20% Blue. This means I would represent this by putting RWU in the deck the title.
So, we got the colors down within the title, now to explain what do the rest of the words mean when being introduced to the deck. The rest of the title should represent what the deck should do throughout the games that you will see or interact with. For example of keywords that you will see in the rest of the title:
- Aggro - Aggressive
- Control - Taking control of the game
- Midrange - Having stratagies against all the different time periods throughout the game
These are just some of the different types of deck lists key words that you will see in the title of decks. Now that we have the basics of how you need to understand what the deck should do within the title
I am going to use a deck list that will be posted after this one. The deck that you are going to read and see about is called RW Midrange. Just from the deck title, you should deduce that the deck has mostly red cards and some white cards; maybe a little a little more than some in white and a little less than mostly red. You will have to find out when the article gets posted! :)
What are some other topics that you want us to talk about or some videos you want to see happen. You can contact us at mtgplaymatt@gmail.com and be sure to follow us on Twitter@mtgPlayMatt and our PlayMatt Facebook site.
