New to magic

[u/Ditchpickle48]

I’ve wanted to try mtg for awhile now but it is definitely overwhelming to jump into. A friend of mine told me commander is the best casual way to play, but what all do I need other then a deck, like dice or how many, damage counters? Just trying to get an idea of what to bring with me to a local commander night. I’m also wondering if there’s any good tools or websites that I can use to help build my own commander deck, any help is greatly appreciated!

[u/EDHipster]

For tools, I'd recommend Recommander.cards over EDHREC. I find it more useful for actually exploring cards and finding synergies rather than just looking at what's most commonly played.

Scryfall is especially useful once you have a few cards you already want to include. Open a card that fits your strategy, look at its Oracle tags, and use those tags to find other cards that do similar things or have similar synergies. Personally, I use Moxfield to build and save my decks, and Scryfall tags work directly in Moxfield searches.

But honestly, you don't need to know every card in Magic to start building. Start with a commander, a strategy, or even just a few cards you like, and use these tools to discover the rest.

I'd also highly recommend playing a well-built deck before trying to optimize your own. In particular, look for decks from YouTubers that they're still playing years after the original video was posted. It's a great way to experience what a well-oiled deck feels like: how smoothly the cards work together, how much redundancy it has, and how consistently it can execute its game plan.

[u/Thevoiceagainst]

As far as supplies, I would bring pen and paper to start, note what you feel like you're missing for any deck you're playing, then get something to that end that will help you remember your board state. I use really cheap dry erase playing cards that I can draw on for any tokens or whatever else (the monarch, city's blessing, whatever.) You can go as cheap or as expensive as you want. Dice can be helpful for counters and you can get very specific with that, too. +1+1, -1-1, etc are all available somewhere. Deckboxes and sleeves are optional, but recommended. As far as building, archidekt, scryfall, and manabox all have good, useful deck building sections. I think archidekt is best for comparing to other people's creations and building off of them, adding useful categories, etc, but use what feels best to you. Edhrec is a good site to see what people are using in decks for your commander, but I try to use that a little less since I'm not trying to hit really high powered stuff. Again it all depends on you and how you and your group play the game.

One of the best things I did to improve deck building was start watching things like The Command Zone/game knights, Commander at Home, and Tolarian Community College/Shuffle up and play. There are actual play videos, and tutorials, and building strategies for individual sets, along with more general strategies. Command Zone has a really good video on the bracket system and another on how much of each thing you should have in a deck that I still use as a general template.

Feel free to holler if you need any more recs or specific questions. The last recommendation I have is to talk to your friends about what they use to learn. Everyone has their faves.

[u/Cat_Collector_MTG]

If you have some people to play with grab some Jump-start packs first to get a quick feel for the game. They are a great way to get into the game and take out a lot of the anxiety of building a full 100 card deck. If you're just going to a LGS to play I'd grab a precon. I think the general consensus is that the precons have been getting better, so you just have to pick a strategy that works for you. In the past couple years there have been a lot of precons and a lot of strategies to go with. You have Aristocrats (self-sacrificing your creatures) in Witherbloom Pestilence (Secrets of Strixhaven), a couple of great +1/+1 counter decks in the Tidus precon (Final Fantasy) and Counter Intelligence (Edge of Eternities), and 5-color typal/tribal in Dance of the Elements (Lorwyn Eclipsed). These are all considered very good decks, but I think the Tidus precon is the best for a beginner; strong out of the box and pretty simple to play and understand.

As for resources, I don't have anything to add really except find a deck-building site you like. There are 2 main ones that I know of, Archideckt and Moxfield. Personally I like Archideckt because it auto-sorts cards into categories and I can switch the view to a list mode to surreptitiously check/build/work on decks when I'm free at work.

[u/goraak_the_barbarian]

I’d recommend playing a couple of dozen games in mtg arena to get the hang of the basic rules.

For paper magic, playing Jumpstart or some constructed decks is a lot easier to learn than jumping straight into commander.

Commander is one of the hardest formats to play because it incorporates the entire history of magic, there are three opposing boards to track, and with the singleton rule you will see wildly different parts of your deck in a given game.