Advance Boy Card Flash Game

There are several types of competitive Magic the Gathering formats, some of which have regional, national and even international competitions. This article will focus on the Constructed format, more specifically Standard or Type II. However, most of the core principles behind advanced Magic the Gathering strategy are pertinent in other formats as well, such as Limited.

As experienced players know, Standard format entails that each player pre-constructs a deck of 60 cards or more, and may also include a 15 card sideboard. A Standard tournament typically consists of one-on-one matches, best of three, often in a round-robin format. The format also only allows the most recent core set and expansion sets to be used in deck construction, making the card pool the smallest of any of the Constructed formats, other than Block. This makes the gameplay much different from other formats, such as Extended or Vintage.

Deck Building– The Core of Competitive Magic the Gathering

Constructing a well-balanced deck and sideboard is an essential element of a Standard Magic the Gathering game. A typical Standard deck consists of roughly 23-25 land and 35-37 non-land spells. No competitive deck plays more than 60 cards. Some deck strategies include playing powerful creatures and other spells to overwhelm the opponent with damage, sometimes referred to as “aggro.” Some decks play few or no creatures and focus more on destroying or countering the opponent’s creatures and spells. This is referred to as “control.” Other decks focus on milling an opponent’s deck or stalling until the opponent loses by running out of cards. Still other decks rely on a specific combination of cards to form a win condition, called a "combo deck." As a general rule, creature-based aggro decks are slightly easier to play and less strategy intensive than control and combo decks.