How to Build a Deck on MTG Arena and Which Events to Grind

Making a deck on Magic the Gathering: Arena is a gradual process - but also an extremely fulfilling one! Your heart will skip a beat every time you open up a card you need in a pack or a Draft; you’ll believe in a higher power whenever an Individual Card Reward (ICR)  happens to be the exact card you need. And then that breathtaking moment when you realize you have enough Wild Cards to finish off your deck in one final spending spree…

But before you can reach that hallowed point in time, there’s two things you have to figure out:

• What deck do you want to build?
• How will you get your cards?

How to Pick a Deck

The first factor I consider when building an Arena deck is its cost. On Arena, cost is determined solely by the card’s rarity; to give an example, Arclight Phoenix and Chance for Glory are both mythics, so they cost the same on Arena (whereas if you were to look at the value of the physical cards, Arclight Phoenix would be worth over ten times as much as Chance for Glory). An Arena deck comprised mostly of commons and uncommons will be far easier to build than one with a bunch of rares and mythics.

Another consideration is whether the cards in the deck are future-proof. Cards in the Standard constructed format rotate every two years, and the next rotation will take place in September. When that rotation hits, cards in Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, and Core Set 2019 will no longer be Standard legal, while cards from Guilds of Ravnica will remain legal. Note that there are rumors that Wizards intends to introduce an Arena-eternal constructed format, where every card on Arena will be playable.

Future-proof can also refer to whether a card is likely to remain played when future sets are released. This is obviously hard to predict when you don’t know how new cards will shape the metagame, but extremely powerful cards such as History of Benalia or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria are good bets. I would also consider rare dual lands to be safe picks.

And, of course, you want decks that can win. A good place to look for those are on Wizards’ own website, which periodically posts decks that went undefeated on Magic Online Events. Let’s analyze two of them (taken from https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/competitive-standard-constructed-league-2018-12-27) under the above lens. Note that I’ve removed the sideboards, as many Arena matches are played without sideboards.

Let’s break down this deck by set and rarity, excluding the basic lands.

Suckatog

Runaway Red

Runaway Steam-Kin

Legion Warboss

Goblin Chainwhirler

Ghitu Lavarunner

Fanatical Firebrand

Wizard's Lightning

Shock

Risk Factor

Lightning Strike

Banefire

Mountain

The Flame of Keld

Experimental Frenzy

This deck is relatively cheap: no mythics, and only 18 rares. In addition, most of the rares are from Guilds of Ravnica, so they’ll remain Standard-legal until the fall of 2019.

Now, let’s take a look at a Golgari (Black-Green) decklist:

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Golgari Midrange

Wildgrowth Walker

Seekers' Squire

Ravenous Chupacabra

Midnight Reaper

Merfolk Branchwalker

Llanowar Elves

Jadelight Ranger

Carnage Tyrant

Vraska, Relic Seeker

Vraska, Golgari Queen

Vivien Reid

Karn, Scion of Urza

Vraska's Contempt

Cast Down

Find // Finality

Woodland Cemetery

Swamp

Overgrown Tomb

Memorial to Folly

Foul Orchard

Forest

Detection Tower

And a breakdown by set and rarity, again excluding basic lands:

Ouch. Over half the cards in this deck are rares or mythics. Putting it together will require far more effort than building the mono-Red deck - maybe not worth it with Ravnica Allegiance on the horizon! 

Of course, it’s important to remember that you don’t need all of the cards in a deck list; sometimes you can play a reasonable facsimile with a few substitutions. Do you really need to play Detection Tower? Is Karn, Scion of Urza actually that good?

How to Get the Cards You Want

The old truism about Time and Money holds true in Arena as well. Which is to say: if you’re willing to spend enough money to buy the Gems to purchase enough packs to get all the cards that you want, then that’s super - bust out your credit card and build whatever deck you want! However, if you want to spend your valuable time rather than your hard-earned money, read on.

I’m going to break this up into items that directly give you cards - packs, ICRs, Wild Cards - and events.

From this table, you can see that ICRs are the easiest to earn, but have the least chance of getting you the cards you’re hoping for. On the other hand, Wild Cards take the longest to obtain, but will always get you the exact cards that you want. Packs fall somewhere in between those extremes, as you can earn the required 1000 Gold after completing a single set of daily quests; and the cards within are random, but guaranteed to be from a specific set.

Grinding the cards you need from quests is possible, but extremely time consuming. Participating in events speeds up the process; do well enough and you can earn back your entry fee and enter the event again!

* note that Draft and Sealed Events rotate from week to week; one week may be Guilds of Ravnica Draft, and the next may be Ixalan

If you need cards from a certain set, I’d recommend Sealed or Draft Events if they’re available; otherwise, buying packs is the way to go. On the other hand, if you’re just trying to build up a generic collection, Constructed Events will give you the most rares and mythics for your Gold. Personally, I love Limited events, and I used the cards I got from those along with the Wild Cards I quickly earned from opening reward packs to build my Constructed decks.

If you have any questions, check out my previous article here. 

The next Magic Set is right around the corner. Join me next time when I talk about things to look out for when Ravnica Allegiance hits Arena!