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Hi all im new to magic. I got the deck builders toolkit (2013) and i made this deck:

Arbor Elf X2
Bond Beetle
Abundant Growth
Fog
Prey Upon
Hydrosurge
Unsummon
Elvish visionary X2
Ambush Viper
Farseek
Titanic Growth
Timberland Guide 2
Wandering Wolf
Hamlet Captain
Essence Scatter
Negate
Mind Sculpt X2
Natural End
Borderland Ranger X3
Yeva's Forcemage X2
Divination
Briarpack Alpha
Ranger's Path
Mwonvuli Beast Tracker
Acidic Slime X2
Sentinel Spider

LAND
Shimmering Grotto
Evolving Wilds X4
Forest=15
Island=5

i didn't feel like i got enough decent cards to make a good  deck but please post what to add, change or do to this deck.

The most obvious issue with this deck is that it lacks focus.  It's all over the place.  You have too many different cards that don't add up to much.

First and foremost, I would get rid of the blue in this deck.  Make it mono-green and add some higher power creatures.  Since you're new and probably a bit limited in choices, I'll stay away from rares, but some cards you can use are Slime Molding , Archweaver , Axebane Stag , Centaur Courser , Garruk's Packleader , and Primal Huntbeast .

Second, in a green deck, mana gain is crucial.  Keep the Arbor Elf and Borderland Ranger , and maybe add a few Gatecreeper Vine s as well.  Mulch is also supposed to be good for land.

Third, run more removal cards.  Removal cards are cards designed to get rid of your opponent's threats.  In green, they're a bit hard to come by, but you can use more Prey Upon s.  Plummet and Aerial Predation work well against fliers, and cards like Giant Growth or Titanic Growth can take out a big attacker or blocker, but Prey Upon is your best bet in green.

There are other things that can improve your deck, but start with what I told you.

Thanks for the help ill do this, i just need to know what singles to buy and add to my deck to make it playable, this is a big help thanks!

Mono green aggro could be a great place to start for a beginner, and a personal fav deck build of mine. It's super cheap, under 25 bucks total, and plays well enough to win at a casual FNM. If you are interested, I'll post a list for ideas.

Jan 4, 2013 -- 9:30AM, jnp5021 wrote:

Mono green aggro could be a great place to start for a beginner, and a personal fav deck build of mine. It's super cheap, under 25 bucks total, and plays well enough to win at a casual FNM. If you are interested, I'll post a list for ideas.

If you could that would be great!

I agree, mono-green aggro is fun and powerful enough now to be good.

Since you're new, you may not be able to get some of the older cards (my shop doesn't even carry stuff as recent as Lorwyn anymore), but there are great green creatures coming out all the time.

that being said, some cards for mono-green are pretty easy to come by, here are some of my favorites:

Overrun is one of my favorite finishers, especially if you're running a lot of cheaper green guys like Garruk's Companion or your wolves.

Primalcrux is "old," (Eventide came out before Zendikar), and pricey, but man is he awesome.  A very scary card for your opponent, as he generally starts out big, and just keeps getting bigger for something you want to be doing anyways (playing creatures)

I Lke to run any big creature with Flash as kind of pseudo removal.  If they attack with some kind of fatty (which, outside of green, is usually a 5/5 or a 6/6) it's very satisfying to flash in a Cloudthresher and destroy it.

Green really needs card draw.   Garruk's Packleader is a great start, and, if you can get your hands on them, some Harmonize (which has been reprinted in a lot of the duel decks and for Commander) would be great.  You want it to either be reusable, or draw you multiple cards at once, or its not really worth it unless it also does something else, like Abundant Growth .  I've had limited success with cards like Commune with Nature and Cream of the Crop too.

Llanowar Elves is one of my favorite mana rampers.   Arbor Elf is functionally the same, but can be better if you have something like Overgrowth to put on the forests he untaps.

That's about it.  Last piece of advice is to include creatures with a variety of green's abilities.  Trample and Reach in particular.  Green is notoriously weak to anything that flies, so Reach can be a lifesaver.  Also look for things with Flash and either Shroud or Hexproof to keep people from just playing Doom Blade or something on your guys.  Regenerating guys can be good now too since the game seems to hate on it a lot less now

Thanks for the advice everyone i have come up with a new deck based off a few cards i have allready and some that have been recomended, do you think this is decent for casual play with friends?

Borderland Ranger X4
Prey Upon X4
Titanic Growth X4
Ranger's Path X4
Arbor Elf X4
Plummet X4
Baloth Woodcrasher X4
Aerial Predation X4
Llanowar Elves X4
Terra Stomper X4
Thorn Elemental  X4
Forest X16

(This is just an idea for my deck please give me ffedback and changes to make as im sure it isnt perfect!)

Also i have a budget of around £20-£30 and id be ordering off magicmadhouse so if you can please keep that in mind with card or deck suggestions, i wouldnt be willing to buy £300 cards! 

borderland ranger isnt very good
plummet, aerial predation and prey upon are conditional removal - you're better off splashing black or white for actual removal
unless you have insane amounts of cheap ramp you dont wanna go below 20-24 lands
titanic growth doesnt go well with fatties
ranger's path replace with skyshroud claim

20 cards out other than the path
replacements should be
4-6 land
2-8 ramp cards
1-2 lightning greaves
depending how much ramp you add you can put in more fatties or some 3-5 cmc creatures like vorapede or leatherback baloth
regal force is crazy draw
garruk wildspeaker is great for ramp decks
green has great creaturebased disenchants like acidic slime , and you want a few.
since you've gone at least halfway with creature based ramp id run overwhelming stampede

Leatherback Baloth x3
Lightning Greaves X2
Garruk Wildspeaker X1
Murder X2
Putrefy X4
Ranger's Path X4
Arbor Elf X4
Baloth Woodcrasher X4
Llanowar Elves X4
Terra Stomper X4
Thorn Elemental  X4
Forest X16
Swamp X8 
 

Is this any better?

If someone could post a deck list using some of the cards in the first post i made that would also be a massive help! 

4x Ambush Viper
4x Briarpack Alpha
4x Terra Stomper
4x Llanowar Elves
4x Elvish Visionary
4x Leatherback Baloth
4x Harmonize
3x Hurricane
3x Lightning Greaves
3x Overrun
2x Garruk Wildspeaker


21 Forest

Thanks for the list i might consider making that, but i feel the latest deck i posted would work better how would you rate it?

Leatherback Baloth x3
Lightning Greaves X2
Garruk Wildspeaker X1
Murder X2
Putrefy X4
Ranger's Path X4
Arbor Elf X4
Baloth Woodcrasher X4
Llanowar Elves X4
Terra Stomper X4
Thorn Elemental  X4
Forest X16
Swamp X8 
  

having monsters is great, this deck is fine.  here are some issues, Murder needs to be replaced with Abrupt Decay   Terror   Doomblade or Dark Banishing as these spells don't require a BB casting cost and you are not dependent on getting out that second swanp as much. 

This deck is also vunerable to stalling as you run out of cards to play as your opponents remove your only "threat" creatures in the tramplers.  So a way to make all your creatures a threat is an answer

personally I wouldn't complicate things by adding another color.  You likely don't have the lands (like Overgrown tomb or even Golgari Guildgate ) to facilitate it.  You have the advantage of running green at least, but that only means you can use cards like Abundant Growth and fetches which are card slots you could be using for ramp and fatties.

That being said, It is true that borderland ranger isn't very good.  Personally I like Farhaven Elf as it puts the land into play.

If you must add another color, I'd recomend white over black.  White and Green play better together since they're "allied" colors.  things like Armada Wurm and Enlisted Wurm are good beatsticks and you could use Oblivion Ring and/or Journey to Nowhere for creature control and lands like Sunpetal Grove for color fixing in addition to your fetchers and things like Abundant Growth

also, Thorn Elemental sounds cool, but itreally isn't that great.  Dealing damage as though it weren't blocked means it deals no damage to creatures blocking it.  I learned to like Trampling creatures better because they kill defenders AND hit players

Whoa...y'all got wayyy off the mark on the mono green AGGRO part...

Don't splash black. It's not bringing you any real help at this stage of the game.

MGA seeks to do a few things. First off, like all aggro, it wants to dump it's hand quickly and swing for the win.

How do we do this? We keep the curve VERY low, no big green fatties. No useless 1/1 ramp goons. Just raw quick power with pump.

But how do you stop control? You need hexproof and indestructible guys so you can skip past destruction spells. Counter magic can be fought off with cavern of souls , but that is not budget friendly at all.

This is my current non-standard list, and it's super budget and brutal!

4x young wolf
4x gladecover scout
4x strangleroot Geist
4x predator ooze
3x champion of lambholt
4x wild beastmaster

4x giant growth
4x rancor
3x ranger's guile
1x withstand death
2x blessings of nature
3x revenge of the hunted

21x forest

Lots of punch, very in your face, tons of pressure. This is how you should be playing MGA.

The other lists are ok but that's Big Green, and IMO, too too heavy and reliant on ramp to win

Jan 4, 2013 -- 9:09PM, jnp5021 wrote:

Lots of punch, very in your face, tons of pressure. This is how you should be playing MGA.

no, that's how you play Red Deck Wins :p

still a cool deck though, never thought of green as a very fast color myself.  Plus it's much more fun, for me, to play big creatures with Green.  I'm not usually a Timmy, but green to me is the Timmy color.  I also see a deck like that being weak to any form of instant speed removal or instant speed sweepers like Volcanic Fallout

I have seen green midrange decks using cards like Garruk's Companion and Troll Ascetic where the curve levelled out at 3 (instead of 2) and used little to no ramp with creatures like Stampeding Wildebeests and Yeva, Nature's Herald , though.

either way, when I think of "Mono Green Aggro" I think of a deck with a slightly slow early game and a strong mid to late game.  When I think of RDW I think of a deck like that that aims to win with fast creatures around turn 4 

agro green is a fairly effective decktype - the deck jnp posted isnt all that vulnerable to volcanic fallout so your response is kinda weird. Midrange is too slow to beat many decks.

when the design team of a game decides to name a strategy a derogative term like timmy it should be a clue that they arent going to give said strategy the support it needs, and, indeed, they havent. urzatron+emrakul works but thats more of a johnny strategy.

big green is under pressure from 2(-3) sides:
very fast agro will overrun it unless it gets a fast hand and the first fatty it casts helps vs agro like pelakka wurm or bogardan hellkite
control is the archenemy. in a game where size offers 0 protection from removal, fatties are like the fat boy in a boxing fight, he may pack a punch  but he will never connect (hence the term fatty?^^)
some cards can deal with spotremoval through protection, tokens or draw, a few are uncounterable and even fewer have decent ability vs sweep.
None of them deal with all of them in a decent way while at the same time packing a decent punch - not if you factor in the "effective card disadvantage" caused by playing ramp in the first place
the only fatty i can think of that truly gives control a run for it money would be angel of serenity
the third possible problem for big green would be tribal or other forms of synergy which often churns out a bigger combatpresence than fatties provide at smaller cost. Tribal is easily disrupted though, but big green doesnt have many options and cant really spare the cards to do so.

add to this "internal" issues like consistency, caused by the need for enablers like ramp cards that do nothing on their own - and conversely cards nike fatties that are hideouly inefficient without said enablers, and you have a fairly bad decktype.

So while big green can answer most challenges it generally requires branching out to nongreen fatties, green fatties tend to be things like primalcrux , best described as timmy bait, and answering all of them is not possible. still big green can be nasty at a casual table

@jimlich: quite decent. a few final tweaks:
baloth woodcrasher isnt very good outside a deck built to support it
the advice that murder should be replaced by doom blade or the like is solid - you could also just skip removal and stay monogreen
id prefer tornado elemental to wood elemental but wood is decent

and aain i want to push regal force , its just so goood

I said it seems weak to instant speed removal and sweeper effects, not that it loses to it.  But mostly I was saying that with a green deck like that, why not just play RDW?

And who says Timmy is a derogatory term?  WTC designs its cards, especially rares, for one or more of the 3 archetypes and doesn't attribute a "good" or "bad" value to any of them.  Also, Emrakul is practically Timmy's wet dream, even when ramped into with Urzatron or 12 post.  He's huge, and has a bunch incredibly splashy abilities that would make any Timmy drool.  Johnny cards are cards Timmy would look at and wonder what the hell it's good for like Sway of the Stars ("that sucks, you lose all your stuff!") or something

But I guess we'll agree to disagree, because I play Mono Green accepting that I will lose to certain decks and that no deck can have all the answers to everything.  Although somehow my own Big Green deck doesn't lose to fast decks and stands a chance against control decks due mostly to smart playing, troll ascetic , Scryb Ranger and Stonewood Invocation .  Getting a Spectral Force out turn 3 or 4 doesn't hurt either.

At least I learned there's a difference between MGA and Big Green (apparently), and I've been calling my deck the wrong thing for 5 years 

emrakul is indeed quite timmy-y. but he's so expensive that to be playable you need to johnny-up the deck and use a strange ramptype like urzatrom/12post or find some method to cheat him out.
timmy is a wideeyed, naive fool bareely capable of grasping strategic concepts. It can be applied neutrally or even affectionally by a doting grandmother. When applied by the kind of person asked to join a design team its bloody well derogative. Perhaps not without some fondness but definitely mixed with a large spoonful of scorn.

as for MGA vs RDW...you're probably right that RDW is the stronger deck in most matchups - RDW tends to focus on getting 20 damage though, and has trouble dealing with lifegain as well as playershroud....its a similar style but different. Green has better 2 and 3 drops  as well as mass boost vs red burn spells. If RDW is stronger its not by much.

the deck you describe seems more like green midagro than biggreen - to be big you need 8+ cards costing 6+ mana and the ramp to go with those. (i just made up that rule, but you get the point - biggreen is ramp and expensive spells usually creatures)
the cards you'vee mentioned so far would definitely lose to a fast deck (on average ofc) but seems quite decently prepared for a control matchup.

Again we can agree to disagree on this, but I've always heard Timmy described as the player that likes big things.  Big creatures, big effects, anything big and flashy.  Then I think about some of the decks I remember being popular a while back, specifically Cruel Ultimatum which is most definiteyl a Timmy card.  Obviously there is a place for Timmy everywhere, and the Timmies of the wide-eyed variety are simply a fraction of the whole.  Besides, if Timmy didn't work in the creative department, who would design cards for him?

I have no idea why I'm defending this so vehemently.  Probably because I call a lot of my friends Timmy because they like big effects and creatures, but they're by no means bad or inexperienced players.

@OP sorry to threadjack.  We're kind of getting off topic here 

if there has ever been a competitive deck built around powering out spells in the 6-8 cmc range ill concede my point but i doubt it. I would expect the cruel ultimatum deck to be part of a control deck variant?

discussions on the web have that effect, at least on me. they draw you in^^ 

IMO, MGA is better placed to win vs a wider gamut of deck types than RDW because of increased resiliency.

RDW is faster by a smidge, but none of its creatures have hexproof, undying, persist, or indestructible. This makes them roll over to spot removal and sweepers. Yes, you can sweep me with fallout on turn 3, but my young wolf comes back as a 2/2, my Geist a 3/2, and my predator ooze just yawns. Next turn I rancor or hopefully flip a revenge of the hunted and it's GG. In a format where removal is so so strong, the resiliency factor is better than speed.

I personally classify all aggro decks as creature based attack topping out at 4 mana. Big Green/Red/insert color here decks for me start at 5 and up.

Timmy isn't always a bad term either. My best deck, grixis control, has several spells and critters over 6+ mana. My major boom card is bolas planeswalker at 8 mana. That is super Timmy IMO. But it's in a control shell. Idk, maybe "real" Timmy's just wanna play with 30 stompy dudes all costing 7+ mana? Who knows.

well its not like we can look up the final definition of timmy but i wouldnt call a control deck timmy even if there were a few expensive spells in such a deck. indeed wincons are often expensive....Timmy to my mind is the offensive strategy that wants to win with big stuff.

control is spike, even if spike isnt neccesarily control. (well, if spike is only what works i guess you could make a control deck that sucks, but certainly control is neither johnny nor timmy so of the three the style that descrbes control the best would be spike)

Hmm, yes you do make a positive point. I'll say I can get behind that

8 pieces of air-killing can be replaced by a few Silklash Spider or Hurricane s.  These still kill fliers while also providing a bit of pressure. 

I saw Pelakka Wurm mentioned, and recommend a pair if you take the mana-ramp approach.

Soul of the Harvest is also a fine card for green ramp.  Being able to draw more than one card a turn is well worth the cost, much of the time.

Cheers!

Jan 5, 2013 -- 7:32AM, jnp5021 wrote:

RDW is faster by a smidge, but none of its creatures have hexproof, undying, persist, or indestructible. This makes them roll over to spot removal and sweepers. Yes, you can sweep me with fallout on turn 3, but my young wolf comes back as a 2/2, my Geist a 3/2, and my predator ooze just yawns. Next turn I rancor or hopefully flip a revenge of the hunted and it's GG. In a format where removal is so so strong, the resiliency factor is better than speed.

"response" Show

As for the actual deck at hand,   Predator Ooze is indeed an amazing loking card.  For a first deck i'm not sure what the OP wants to be doing anymore but Big Green is a pretty common 1st deck.  I feel like as long as you have something to play on most turns and a few key creatures that are resilient to most forms of removal (so either they are hard to keep dead like Young Wolf or Troll Ascetic or have more than 4 toughness so Lightning Bolt s won't kill them) you'll do fine.

Or you can go the speed route.  Though we already know my opinion on that (for those that missed it it was "why not just play Red Deck Wins?").  It can be fun to play a surprise deck like that, though, since not many people are expecting green to be fast

I'm just not a fan of RDW I guess. I can protect my guys with ranger's guile in MGA so my attacks stick, along with my pump. Plus g2/3, lots of decks have ways of gaining life, RDW nightmare. Heck, any deck anymore has access to it, and things like wurmcoil engine , thragtusk , centaur healer , and the like all take RDW out of play. Yes it's faster, but as you lose creatures and burn, your hand and board becomes empty. Try beating an opponent in that scenario, staring down a wurmcoil. Not pretty. Now the hope is you won before they have that kind of mana, but too many ways of disrupting the creatures, gaining life, and countering burn spells make it a subpar choice. Vs other aggro, RDW is pretty darn good. Tho my mono white allies deck would beg to differ ondu cleric +more allies+ cloudshift :D

Now there are clearly answers and outs in all types of decks, and both RDW and MGA are sorta one trick ponies. It's just my opinion that MGA's trick is better in more scenarios more often than reds.

lifegain doesn't bother me now that I run Stigma Lasher in my RDW :p  Besides, MGA would suffer from the same problem with life gain, the only bonus is staying power instead of burn if your creatures die.   Personally I like the versatility of burn, so I'd pick RDW in that case.  I find pump spells to be easy to play around, especially auras, so I'd rather be the guy that 2 for 1s people's pump spells with one Lightning Bolt than the guy who gets 2 for 1'd himself

but now that we've just boiled it down to personal preference we should probably agree to disagree and stop cluttering up this thread with a debate abot the merit of RDW over MGA out of respect for the OP

but staying power means that lifegain isnt nearly the same problem. heroes' reunion is bad news for burn spells, healing for more than what 2 spells can deal in damage. for MGA however it "just" means that it will take another turn to kill opponent, if that.
lifegain and playershroud are relatively rare in mainboard but much less so in sideboard, factor those in and MGA will have a better chance at winning g2 than RDW - although RDW likely has a slight advantage G1.

Jan 5, 2013 -- 4:17AM, rawsugar wrote:

if there has ever been a competitive deck built around powering out spells in the 6-8 cmc range ill concede my point but i doubt it. I would expect the cruel ultimatum deck to be part of a control deck variant?

discussions on the web have that effect, at least on me. they draw you in^^ 

First ever major tournament I won was with a ramp green phatty deck into force of nature . I remember it being very hard to trade for one of the birds of paradise I needed.

More recently then that would be things like tooth and nail decks which won tournaments and dragonstorm decks which one tournaments.

There have also been many titan decks that won tournaments and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is so strong it got scapeshift banned in modern.

So yeah basically your above statement is a little silly.

Jan 5, 2013 -- 5:44PM, rawsugar wrote:

but staying power means that lifegain isnt nearly the same problem. heroes' reunion is bad news for burn spells, healing for more than what 2 spells can deal in damage. for MGA however it "just" means that it will take another turn to kill opponent, if that.
lifegain and playershroud are relatively rare in mainboard but much less so in sideboard, factor those in and MGA will have a better chance at winning g2 than RDW - although RDW likely has a slight advantage G1.

this logic is flawed.  You're assuming that a deck that runs lifegain would have no defense against the creatures making it lose life.  Sure that lifegain spell undoes 2 Lightning Bolt s' but at least those bolts didn't have to worry about getting blocked, because you can be sure a G/W deck with lifegain will be running defensive creatures that are very unfriendly to any type of aggro whether it's MGA or RDW.  As for g1 vs g2, RDW gets a sideboard too, and can side in some nasty anti lifegain spells like Neverending Torment and sulfuric vortex to manage those threats.

besides, what did I JUST say about Stigma Lasher ? 

^^assumes it will resolve and connect.

Not a safe assumption in the slightest. Having to rely on a creature for that effect is...not very reliable.

I don't see why you think rawsugar's logic is flawed tho. His analysis is pretty much spot on. RDW does have a very strong G1. But 2/3 it does not get as strong of sb choices as other decks, because it can't deviate from it's strategy of kill kill kill! Without sacrificing too much speed.

Vortex is a good sb card, except that it's murderous in the 3 slot where you wanna be casting those hasty dudes and spells.

It goes back to g2/3 choices. RDW just aren't that strong vs other decks.

RDW does get hellrider for evasion, but then MGA gets champion of lambholt .

It does all come down to preference I suppose.

Jan 5, 2013 -- 6:36PM, jnp5021 wrote:

It does all come down to preference I suppose.

it does.

considering I don't play with sideboards I'm not an authority on the subject so I could be wrong there.  The argument still stands, though, that RDW has plenty of options when it coems to life gain

and I definitely think its safer to assume a burn spell will hit an opponent than a creature.  Counterspells and damage prevention are far less common than blockers.

I think I'm gonna stop talking now though because A: I'm feeling ganged up on for basically just saying a deck was like RDW and B: we've officially threadjacked the OP's thread about a simple green fatty deck.

Lol we have. Sorry u feel Ganged up on. Just expressing different styles of play. Always good for learning

Jan 5, 2013 -- 7:30PM, jnp5021 wrote:

Lol we have. Sorry u feel Ganged up on. Just expressing different styles of play. Always good for learning

OK I promise this is the last one

I only felt ganged up on because there were 2 people on the opposite side of the debate from me.  Otherwise it was a fun and, thankfully very civil  I've seen internet debates get way more out of hand than this lol.  Glad there's no bad blood or anything

^^ you are a poopy head :D
There! Burned!!! Oooooo!!!!
Haha no I jest...lol