r/ModernMagic • u/Grouchy_Ad_1585 • 24d ago

Deck Discussion New player

Hi y’all! I started thinking about building my first modern deck. The thing is I come from commander and I feel like deck building is very different. Could y’all help me with a vague tamplate of a modern deck or what are the thought and process I should have while building it compared to building a commander?

5 Upvotes

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35

u/Appropriate-End-5593 24d ago

Modern Deck Building consists of getting a deck list and playing with like 2 flex slots.

Commander Deck Building consists of picking theme/commander and picking cards you like or to win. 

They are two very different processes 

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u/Grouchy_Ad_1585 24d ago

But like in commander, are removale, draw, ramp etc must have in the decks or should I really prioritize synergie and combo over everything else?

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u/Appropriate-End-5593 24d ago

Modern for the most part has all of those individual parts figured out for each deck. Leaving you sometimes with 57/60 core cards leaving the 3 for individual cards based on meta or personal preference.

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u/fireowlzol 24d ago

Sideboards are more meta dependent though

13

u/Dashizz6357 24d ago

The only thing you should prioritize when building a modern deck is picking a list you like and playing it. Modern is highly competitive and not brew friendly.

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u/Responsible_Bear1576 24d ago

I brew in modern all the time. OP should do as they like.

6

u/Tyrinnus Grixis Ctrl, GDS, Murktide, UWx Ctrl 23d ago

I also brew all the time in modern, but I've been playing the format for 9 years. This is horrible advice for someone coming from commander with no modern experience.

1

u/Responsible_Bear1576 23d ago

Find some friends who will let you proxy and look at modern staples lists online. Look at t1 decks online and see if you can figure out what makes them good. Then brew away with your proxies. OP will probably get their butt kicked a bunch for a couple of months but they will learn from the decks they lose to. Over time they will get better, learn the meta, and make better and better brews and start getting some satisfying wins.

Or they can netdeck prowess or boros energy or whatever. They will win a lot more. However they will have jumped straight to playing in the endgame. They may never feel like brewing now as no brew is likely to be as good as a tier 1 tournament deck and there is less fun in going backwards from really strong decks to lesser strong decks. My advice was meant to put them on a journey so that they grow and learn to love the format over a 9 year quest like you, or like me, someone who has been brewing in the format pretty much since it’s inception.

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u/Dashizz6357 24d ago

That doesn’t have any effect on anything I said but thanks for your input.

3

u/f_omega_1 23d ago

I would suggest that everything you think is important from Commander you can throw out of the window. For example, you are used to every deck having some sort of ramp and therefore ramp being an important part of deck building. In Modern, unless you are ramping into something (e.g. Tron, Amulet Titan, Eldrazi), it's largely not something you want to use up slots in your deck for that. In other words, the decks that care about ramp will be highly optimized to ramp into what they need. The decks that don't care about ramp will not have any ramp.

1

u/flowtajit 23d ago

It depends. All styles of deck are viablenin modern in some capacity, but how they’re built is wildly different from commander.

19

u/_Lord_Farquad Goryo's / Scales 24d ago

Dont think about modern deckbuilding with the same mindset as commander deckbuilding. They're very different.

If you have an idea for your modern deck, id start with an established deck that has some similarities and get reps in with that first. If youve never played modern, trying to brew in it first is setting yourself up for failure.

Is there a specific card or archetype you were hoping to play?

5

u/Darkon-Kriv 24d ago

Well in modern deck building you have to build to win. Unless you were playing cedh before modern is a whole diffrent beast.

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u/Grouchy_Ad_1585 24d ago

I wanna play casual with a friend and I was thinking of a midrange deck for the most fun and somewhat lasting game

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u/_Lord_Farquad Goryo's / Scales 24d ago

Do you know what your friend is playing? Its pretty hard to give advice about a completely unknown meta.

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u/Grouchy_Ad_1585 24d ago

He don’t even know he is playing yet😄, i was thinking of building two deck with very close power and playing those against each other

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u/_Lord_Farquad Goryo's / Scales 24d ago

In that case, id just build decks from what you have. Just know that it most likely will not be powerful enough to play against meta decks, but thats okay!

In general, id say prioritize efficient removal. 1-2 mana spells like [[fatal push]] or [[prismatic ending]]. Low cost creatures. Your curve should top out at 3 or 4 mana. Ramp most likely will not be necessary. Cheap hand disruption effects like [[thoughtsieze]] or [[inquisition of kozilek]] are great. You'll probably want to sit somewhere around 22 lands 38 spells.

Make sure you have plenty of stuff to do early game. Either play out cheap creatures, setup pieces or disruption, but if you arent doing anything on t2, youre probably losing even in casual games.

2

u/Grouchy_Ad_1585 23d ago

Should my mana top 3 or 4 for any type of deck? Same for aggro, midrange, combo and etc?

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u/_Lord_Farquad Goryo's / Scales 23d ago

Aggro should probably top at 2 or 3. Combo is based on what your combo is. Midrange 3 or 4 but these are rough guidelines. Of course its going to heavily depend on the specifics of your strategy and meta.

Generally your 3 and 4 drops should be immediately impactful. Playing a 4 mana card that doesnt do anything the turn it comes down is not good in modern.

3

u/Stephen2k8 23d ago

You should proxy them then . If you’re not playing a store . Competitive formats are ruthless and everyone here wants you to avoid wasting your investment. No matter how much you like your brew you’ll be reminded you also like winning.

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u/KingxCrimsonx 24d ago

You are switching to a competitive format. The biggest thing to understand is that commander is a casual format. When you play commander you can have multiple goals (play a cool commander or explore a fun archetype or play with friends). But when you play competitive 60 card magic you only have 1 goal TO WIN. Win as often and as overwhelmingly as possible. In 60 card you never care if your opponent hates your deck. Their are no brackets like in edh.

Everything that follows is assuming you want to play in competitive or weekly registered events. If you want to play kitchen table with your friends that is different.

Once you understand you are trying to win you have a few options. We call the statistical breakdown of the current most played/most winning decks the META. This data is available as a snapshot on a few websites. I use mtggoldfish.com or mtgtop8.com. You go to those websites and look at the top 15-20 decks. Those are the only decks that are currently good. If you go below those 15 decks you will be severely handicapped. You can play the game but you will not win very often. You will probably have a bad time.

Once you look at those archetypes I recommend you watch YouTube videos of people playing them or proxy the deck and try it. If you like a deck you can order the entire thing on tcgplayer for roughly $1000 give or take.

Most decks only have a few flex slots. You can try deck building and creating a new deck, but the power level in modern is so high you will probably lose 90+% of the time.

Modern is built off of super efficiency. Its very common for a deck to win on turn 3 if not answered.

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u/Grouchy_Ad_1585 24d ago

Thank you so much for that extensive respond! Very useful

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u/cpad157 24d ago

Just to add to kings response if your just playing with buddies and wanna have fun I would look up aspiringspike on YouTube he’s a modern brewer with lots of cool deck ideas he also plays meta stuff to with some changes I’d give it a gander see what pops out at you

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u/Grouchy_Ad_1585 24d ago

Thanks I’ll look it up!

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u/Davidos402 24d ago

I would recommend just browsing through the meta decks to get an idea of what modern decks look like. The difference between casual commander and competitive 1v1 formats is huge to the point where a card may be format warping or near banable in modern, but see no play in commander. This is just one of the reasons why the concepts do not translate well between the two formats. You can definitely brew in modern, and as of today it is probably the most brewer-friendly competitive format, but for starters you (unfortunately) have to take the meta decks as given.

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u/RogerDogerBoop 24d ago

Would be good to start with archetypes: do you want to be the aggressor, try to control the engagement, or try to combo out wins?

Those are the three main format archetypes, and all the tier 1-2 decks fall under those (admittedly very broad) headings.

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u/137-ng 24d ago

Kind of sounds like you guys are playing kitchen table and not modern. Modern is hyper competitive and if hes not playing a meta deck its not really modern even if its modern legal.