Now that we know the basics of deck building. It/s time to build our first deck. I would suggest as a beginner, stick with a single color, White, Blue, Black, Red, or Green. Adding 2-3 colors in your first deck might feel overwhelming, and you may find that your mana-to-spell ratio is unbalanced, which will cause very slow gameplay as you wait to draw the right cards.
For this walkthrough, I will share my first and favorite deck. This link is my Manabox Deck list you are welcome to import into your own. However, if for any reason the link does not work, you can find my deck build on Moxfield as well.
Now I would encourage you to download the Manabox mobile app. Not only will you be able to import my own decklist, but you can easily keep track of your card inventory and search for other cards that fit your deck strategy very easily.
Chosen Commander:
I have chosen Heliod Sun Crowned for this deck. Before building, I need to know how I want to use him. What are his abilities? How can he help buff others?
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When I look at Heliod Sun Crowned, I see that he is an Enchantment Creature (Legendary is required), indestructible, gives Lifelink to another creature, and triggers +1/+1 when i gain life. With these attributes, I want to build a deck that's: |
With Heliod's ability, I can focus on gaining life to beef him up, or use him merely as a support to strengthen the rest of my creatures. However, because of Heliod's devotion effect, I'm not always guaranteed he will remain a creature. If I lose too many cards in play, he will merely become an enchantment while still supporting through life-gain triggers. My best option would be to use him as a support piece, rather than the flagship of my deck.
A few creatures I have chosen to include in my deck can not only help with lifegain, but also provide additional protection.
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Soul Warden is auto-include. As long as this creature is in play, every creature that comes onto the field gains me 1 life, which triggers Heliod, allowing me to put a +1/+1 on any creature or enchantment (this includes Heliod even when he is not a creature)
Sunscorch Regent: When playing a four-player game, each spell cast by the other three players while I wait my turn will strengthen my Regent, give me more life, and trigger Heliod to add more +1/+1 counters. When my turn comes around, I could potentially have some heavy hitters ready to swing.
Once I have my creature list built to around 25-30 (depending on your strategy) I now have about 60-70 cards in my deck.
I like to use the remaining 30-40 cards to split evenly among my artifacts, sorceries, instants, and enchantments. This gives me a good baseline to work with. Once I have that laid out, I give it some test play, swapping out sorceries for instants, artifacts for enchantments, and so on...
Here are a few cards that would synergize well with this deck:
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Authority of the Consuls can be a great auto-include. Not only does their creature come in tapped, leaving their defenses down, but gaining 1 life for each creature works well with Heliod's lifegain +1/+1 counters to prepare my creatures for my next turn.
Oketra's Monument: works well with reducing the cost of casting creatures, creates a 1/1 token for each creature cast, which also triggers Soul Warden, giving me 1 life, which triggers Heliod again.
Mass Calcify: A simple honorary mention at this point. It provides no synergy to anything, and it's an expensive 7 mana cast. However, it is a great card to boardwipe your opponents, leaving all my cards safe from any harm. The only time it would be worthwhile is if I have Nyx Lotus or Nythos Shrine to the Nyx in play, which boosts my own mana count based on how many white color pips I have in play.
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Now that my deck is finished it is time to test it out! If you are using a deck builder such as Manabox or Moxfield as suggested, each builder has a built-in playtest feature that allows you to test your deck and learn how well your card draws are. This will help you decide if you need more of any particular card type. I would encourage you to take advantage of this if you have not had the chance to test your deck out with other players.
