Community

Posting a deck

The Casual boards on the Wizard community forums are a great way to get advice on your decklist and overall improve your deck's performance. However, while just posting a decklist and leaving it at that, most people will appreciate it if you put some more energy into your own thread. This will often make people take you a bit more seriously, and hopefully lead to more comments. This thread will give you some pointers on how to make a good thread.

1. Starting the thread
2. Thread content
3. The deck
4. Various tips

Starting the thread

Before posting your deck, it's often a good idea to search if someone has already made a similar one. If you make something with a very "unoriginal" setup, chances are high that you can get tips from previous threads. Archetypes like UB Mill and Slivers appears every now and then (some could even say way too often), so ideas are often easily accessible.

When posting the deck itself, consider the title, it will have significant impact on the thread itself. A good idea is usually to include what the direction of the deck is. You could also try to include a catchy title that will attract viewers. Say you make a Trap.dec, you could include the famous "It's a trap!" Admiral Ackbar style. Having a title like "Need help!" or "Look here!" is a rather poor choice, as most decks are obviously there for the same reason. Avoid using caps, AS IT'S RATHER ANNOYING TO READ AND MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A FOOL.

Thread content

At the start of the post, having some sort of introduction might be a good idea. Just to give the reader an overall impression of you and your deck. You could for example include why you wanted to build the specific deck, what you want to accomplish, or other random thoughts that fits in. If it's for a specific format, like Pauper or Highlander, saying so at the start is often a smart move.

Having the deck early is often a good idea just so the reader can get there at the start, as it's the meat of the thread. You can of course opt to put it at the end if it suits the thread better. I will go in depth a bit more about the deck itself after.

At last, you should have a more in depth explanation of the deck. The point of putting 40 beaters and 20 lands should be obvious, it's nice to have a guideline. If there's any sort of interaction within the deck, pointing it out helps a lot as it might look rather unfitting to the deck if not. In short, address how your deck is aiming to win, and how it's going to reach that goal. If you're on a budget, saying that is a good idea as well. Try to keep the OP (Opening post) rather short though, because if not it might end up as tl;dr material. Try to address if there is something you especially want comments on (like a certain matchup or on a card decision.)

The deck

Now onto the focus of your thread, the deck itself. You want the deck to be rather easy to read, and navigate through. Creating categories in the deck is often a good idea, like Creature, Lands and Others, or Disruption, Win-Cons and Utility. Having the cards itself linked to gatherer is a good idea, so the reader doesn't need to look up every card he doesn't know himself. I'm a living gatherer, so I rarely have to do this, but a lot of other people have started playing in later sets, so they won't know as many cards.

On the deck itself, there are some common guidelines that are useful to follow. First of all, try to keep your deck as close to the minimum of the format requirement, usually 60. In addition, unless you have a specific reason to (tutors, expensive mana cost, only that many copies), having four copies of each card is a good idea. This improves the consistensity of your deck, resulting in higher chance of the deck executing its intended purpose. If your deck doesn't, it's most likely going to be suggested by someone, so rather just do it right away.

Various tips

• Use capital letters and punctuation. It makes your post a lot more readable and sensible, and you look smarter. Everyone likes to look smart.
• You might be wrong. I know, horrid to know, but don't get all out angry, chances are that you might be the one that's wrong. If you get all high and mighty, then suffer from a downfall when you are proved wrong, it might come back to haunt you later on. Don't be a douche.
• Don't bump your thread within a 24 hour limit of the last post. It's not needed if it's still on the first page either. In addition, I personally hate people who draw the conclusion that "Is my deck perfect?" Yes, it might just be solid and not need any adjustments, but people might be turned off for other reason. The deck might just be tiresome, or your OP might turn people away from various other reasons. Don't jump to that conclusion immediately.
• Most of these can also be applied to people who respond. Try to keep your post clear and easily readable, in addition to not come off as some sort of superman. However, don't be too humble either, as it weakens your suggestions. Try not to go too off-topic either, no one likes their threads to be derailed into Browbeat and Milling arguments. Also try to refrain from driving a subject too hard.
• Don't suggest dual lands. Most people can't afford them, and they are more of an obvious inclusion if you can include them. If you want to include them, have at least some other suggestions to the deck.
• If your deck is intended for Standard play, there is a casual section in the forums you can already use, found here.
• Preview the deck before posting it, it might just turn out weird.
• Good luck on the deck!

Credit for the info above goes to Mown.

How to make a decklist table

Make a deck list using this code. Copy it, start the post/thread with the deck list, click the "HTML" button, then paste this code there, and click "Update". If the spacing is off, click "Preview" until it's fixed. (Don't know why you have to do it this way, but it fixes the problem.) After that, just put in your deck list, and hit Shift + Enter or Shift + Return to go to a new line. Do not hit just Enter/Return as that will double space the deck list. Shift + Enter keeps it compact, rather than stretched all over the post.

<table border="1" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th colspan="3"><big>Deck Name</big></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Lands:</span></th>
<th><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Creatures:</span></th>
<th><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Spells:</span></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">1x Land</td>
<td valign="top">2x Creature</td>
<td valign="top">3x Spell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>## Lands</td>
<td>## Creatures</td>
<td>## Spells</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

This will create the following table:

Card Linking
To add links, use <a target="Magic" href="url">Link</a>. This will create a basic link. It will open in a seperate window, and every link you do using target="Magic" will open in the window that opened the first time you clicked a link. Similar to what autocarding used to do. Note that if you preview after adding the target="Magic" attribute, the attribute will be deleted. If you don't want all the links to open in the same new window as the first, use target="_blank" instead. Each link will open in a seperate window, clicking the same link more than once will open a seperate window each time you click it. If you choose to leave the Target attribute out, the link will take you away from the forums, to the destination, instead of opening in a different window.
<a href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=CARDNAME">CARDNAME</a> to make a direct link to Gatherer. The new link will not require replacing spaces, just type the card name. Alternatively, you can use [c]CARDNAME[/c] for the easier autocard now that it's been added to the forums again. As a result, the previous link is probably no longer needed (though I'll continue to use it because I like all my links to go to the same window). Here's how to demonstrate autocarding: &#91;c&#93;Birds of Paradise&#91;/c&#93; = [c]Birds of Paradise[/c] Either don't preview before submitting, add the autocard demonstration last, or change the autocard demonstration back to what it was before previewing. Once you preview, the text in your post will be parsed into an actual autocard. This is why you need to follow one of these steps when demonstrating the autocard.

<table border="1" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th colspan="3"><big>Relentless Ritualists</big></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Lands:</span></th>
<th><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Creatures:</span></th>
<th><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Spells:</span></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">24x &lt;a target="Magic" href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=Swamp"&gt;Swamp&lt;/a&gt;</td>
<td valign="top">24x &lt;a target="Magic" href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=Relentless Rats"&gt;Relentless Rats&lt;/a&gt;</td>
<td valign="top">4x &lt;a target="Magic" href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=Dark Ritual"&gt;Dark Ritual&lt;/a&gt;<br />
4x &lt;a target="Magic" href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=Cabal Ritual"&gt;Cabal Ritual&lt;/a&gt;<br />
4x &lt;a target="Magic" href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=Coat of Arms"&gt;Coat of Arms&lt;/a&gt;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>24 Lands</td>
<td>24 Creatures</td>
<td>12 Spells</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

That code results in this table:

Table tag and attributes
In <table border="1" cellspacing="0">, the border attribute represents the thickness of the frame around the table. You can do 0 for an invisible frame, and no visible cell dividers. Cellspacing is the distance between cells, I prefer 0 so that there isn't a white space between the cells, making it look more like a spreadsheet in appearance. You can also use Background="url" attribute inside either the Table tag, <th>, or <td>. Just use any url to an image and that will be the background for the table or cell.

Th tag and attributes
In <th colspan="3"><big>Deck Name</big></th>, colspan is the number of columns wide that cell is. Since this table was made 3 cells wide, I used 3 so that it took up the entire row, allowing the Deck Name to be centered over the entire table. If you want to have Deck Name hovering over the table, instead of being the first row, you could use <caption><b><big>Deck Name</big></b></caption>. Just put it after <tbody>

The <th> and <td> tags.
The difference between <th> and <td> is that <th> is treated as a header. It basically just bolds the header here, but usually it also increases the font size slightly. I had to use <big> for that purpose here.

How to make rows and columns.
Each row is started with <tr> and ends with </tr>. Inside of that add as many cells as you want. Each cell is started with <td> and ends with </td>. There isn't a limit to the number of rows or columns you can do, aside from the text size limit imposed by the editor.

Text alignment
Valign="Top" just means Vertical Align to the top. If you don't use the Valign tag, it will align the text with a vertical center. (Aligned to the left, but cells with less lines of text will float in the center) If you use "Bottom" it will align the text to the bottom of the cell. You can also use Align="alignment", and replace alignment with Left, Center, or Right for aligning text to the left side of the cell, centered in the middle of the cell, or to the right side of the cell.

Text formatting with the Style attribute
Style, contained with in the <Span> tag can do a few things, the underline using text-decoration:underline is one example. You can also do color:red for red text. The usable colors are aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white, and yellow. Although, you can custom make your own colors using color:#ffffff. The first 2 f's are Red, the second 2 are Green, the last 2 are Blue. Just change the letters to what ever you want. Background-color: is a way to change the background color of a cell. The same color rules as before apply here. Use one of the 16 mentioned color names, or a # followed by the letters for the custom color you intend to use. If you use more than one attribute in a single cell, keep it all in the Style attribute seperating the inside attributes with a semi-colon. Style="text-decoration:underline;color:blue;background-color:#ff8800" for underlined blue text with an orange background. I don't know much about font families, but Style can also use font-family:times to change to a Times font. There's also Verdana. Sometimes you can just use the exact name of a font you yourself are using, but if the person viewing the page doesn't have that font, they won't be able to see it. Also, font-size:16px gives you 16 pixel tall text. Just adjust the number to fit the size you're after.

Making a Spoiler
You can use the equivalent of the old spoiler tags by putting style="color:#000000;background-color:#000000;" in the Span tag. That gives you black text on a black background, when you highlight the message, you'll see the original words. <Span style="color:#000000;background-color:#000000;">Spoiler Text</Span> gives you Spoiler Text. Thanks to Qmark for suggesting it.

Mana Symbols
<img src="http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?size=small&name=W&type=symbol" /> will create a link to the white mana symbol. You can change the symbol a number of ways. "http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?size=small&name=W&type=symbol" is the url you use. Change the size= part from small, to medium or large to get different sizes of mana symbols. The name= can be changed from W to any mana you want, W,U,B,R,G, or dual color mana symbols. WU,WB,UB,UR,BR,BG,RG,RW,GW,GU, as well as single color dual mana symbols. 2W,2U,2B,2R,2G. You can also use numbers, any number from 0 to 16, for a colorless mana symbol of that number, or X for the X mana symbol. You can also use Tap and Untap for the Tap and Untap symbols. Use Snow for the snow mana symbol.

Edit: Added table changing information.
Edit2: Added how to give a background image to a table or cell.
Edit3: Changed first paragraph to suggest posting into HTML button, fixes some spacing problems.
Edit4: Added an easy Gatherer link for any card name.
Edit5: Added mana symbols and tap/untap symbols.
Edit6: Added a table demonstrating autocarding.
Edit7: Added spoiler tag replacement.
Edit8: Changed the Autocard Method, the link will no longer break by previewing the post, but it will still delete the target attribute preventing the link from opening in a seperate window. Thanks CarstenHaese for the javascript showing me the method.
Edit9: Added how to make a good deck critique thread info by Mown.
Edit10: Removed reference to missing autocard, and ugly smilies. Also added instructions to make the autocard.
Edit11: Added how to demonstrate an autocard.

Testing

Edit: This is pretty cool, I'll probably start using it. Thanks a lot.

Added some info to the OP. A much more thorough description of what each html tag does, and ways to manipulate the tag for your own personal effect. It includes info on how to change the font you're using, coloring, background colors, etc. Enjoy.

If you know of anything else that can be added to this sticky, go ahead and post it here. If you want to know if something can be done, post here and ask, if it's possible, I'll update the OP to include the extra information. Note that you can't change the color of links, I tried a few different ways. The color is fixed by the css for the forum, something you can't really edit inside a post.