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A quick note before you begin reading this: This page was put up just after Stronghold came out, I believe, and at the time I was quite the novice player. The strategies and decks outlined below look pretty goofy to me now. Nonetheless, I leave this page as it is because the decks are great for people who are just starting out with magic. They are easy to build and simple to play and always turn out to be tons of fun. After playing in tournaments and dealing with a few too many 3rd-turn kill combo decks I wish I could go back to the halcyon days when Basilisk/Lure was the ultimate combination. End note.

This page was setup to help inspire new magic players with deck ideas and concepts. The decks found at this sites are all decks that I've put together using cards I own. For this reason, some decks aren't as optimized as they could be, but that's left up to the players who use the decks.

The themes and strategies presented here are very general tactics that you will encounter at some point while playing magic. Become familiar with them and you will be better prepared when playing against a new deck.

Strategies

The following are the three strategies that most decks follow :

Active Decks: Active decks are the most common of all decks. The idea is to actively assault your opponent. Speed is always an important factor with this strategy and damage is typically straight forward : creatures or direct-damage. You win by beating your opponent into the ground.
Reactive Decks: Blue is the king of reactive decks. The idea with this strategy is to wait until your opponent does something and then react to it. A typical reactive deck puts out very few permanents and are generally slower at defeating an opponent. Reacting to an opponent can mean countering spells or taking control of permanents. Some reactive decks take a less direct route to kill an opponent, such as using Millstones to drain an opponent's library.
Pro-active decks: Of all deck types, this is the one I've seen played the least. Pro-active decks win by not letting an opponent do anything, usually through land-destruction and discard. Black and red are the most common colours for pro-active decks.

Themes

Weenie Decks

Weenie decks recieved their name because they are composed of weenies, creatures with a one or two casting cost. White and black are the most popular colours for weenie decks, although red's goblins are also frighteningly efficient especially when combined with Goblin Shrines and Goblin Caves. Green has a very large number of one and two casting cost creatures, and a Giant Growth turns a weenie into a WEENIE, but the amount of larger and inexpensive green creatures make green Big Creature decks much more common. Blue is the only colour which doesn't have an obvious weenie scheme, but creative magic players are capable of anything.

When playing a weenie deck, one must remember the phrase "Power in numbers." By playing as many creatures as you can every turn, you will typically win by overrunning your opponent. Cards like Howling Mine or Elkin Bottle will let you draw more cards every turn. This can be very important because you will find that you can very rapidly empty your hand while playing a weenie deck. Another artifact which is common in weenie decks are Winter Orbs. Only being able to untap one land every turn isn't going to harm you much if all of your creatures cost only one or two mana. An Infinite Hourglass is something else to consider while building a weenie deck. This artifact gives all creatures +1/+0 for every counter on it, and it gets a new counter every turn. If you have ten creatures on the table while your opponent only has 3 or 4, you have a definite advantage. Just sit tight a few turns until you have a dozen 6/1 creatures.

If your deck is mono-white or mono-black, Crusades and Bad Moons are a must. Even if your opponent is playing the same colour, you will have more creatures who will recieve the bonuses. White also has Armageddon, which destroys all lands. While you'll only need to put down one or two land to get back up to steam, your opponent may be paralysed for three or four turns. With black you have Necropotence, an enchantement which lets you draw as many cards as you wish, as long as you have the life to support it.

Big Creature Decks

After reading the description of a weenie decks, many new players would assume that a Big Creature Deck follows the same idea, but uses big creatures. Anyone attempting this will quickly see the problem with this strategy. A "big creature" is usually classified as a creature with a power and thoughness which add up to at least eight. These types of creatures almost always have a high casting cost which make them slow to bring into play.

One way of playing a Big Creature Deck is to have a good mix of creatures. That way, you can play the smaller creatures while waiting for the mana to cast a big game-ender. If white is your colour of choice, good combinations would be playing a large creature and then casting Armageddon to stop your opponent from bringing in anything to match your creature. Another way is to cast Wrath of God first, clearing the table of everything before bringing your big creature out.

With green, mana is never a problem for long. With creatures like Lanowar Elves (tap for a green mana) and Fyndhorn Elders (tap for two green mana) you can quickly boost the amount of available mana. Then you can cast spells like Rampant Growth to search though your library to bring out even more land. Wild Growth lets you tap an enchanted land for two mana instead of just one, and the new Eladamri's Vineyard adds two green mana to each player's mana pool at the beginning of each turn. Often your opponent will end up struggling to use up the off-coloured mana and not take mana-burn while you can use it to drop your big bruisers like the Craw Giant (6/4, trample, rampage 2), the Scaled Wurm (7/6) and Krakilin (casting cost of two green and X, it has a power and toughness equal to X and can regenerate.)

Other colours also have their big creatures, mentioning them all would take up way too much bandwidth.

Burn Decks

A burn deck is red and packed with direct-damage. This is most certainly an active deck. A burn decks destroys an opponent with Lightning Bolts, Incinerates, Disintegrates, Fireballs, etc... Storage lands, like Dwarven Holds, work great in burn decks because can save up mana for a huge blast. Since red has a lot of strong walls, it's usually worth slipping a few into your deck to stop your opponent's creatures, so that more of your spells can be cast at your opponent. Smoke is terrific at stopping speedy creature decks by only letting players untap one creature every turn. Furnace of Rath is an interesting enchantement : it doubles all damage that a player recieves, but that applies to you too.

White is probably your most dangerous opponent while playing a burn deck. Cards like COP:Red and Justice will quickly bring you to a screaching halt. A Nevinyrral's Disk is probably your best hope to shut those pesky enchantements down.

Something to note about direct-damage is that many magic players dislike it. You know what : They're all dead now.

Counter/Control Decks

If you don't mind being a bastard, Counter/Control Decks are the most fun. Most are essentially Reactive, stoping your opponent from casting anything that would hurt you. While playing a Counter/Control Deck you must judge every card your opponent plays and ask yourself : "Is it safe to let through? Should I counter it? Should I take control of it?" Practice will teach you what to do.

Counterspells and Power Sinks are some of the best counterspells. Spell Blast, though not as powerful as the first two mentioned, is another great spell if you have the mana to use it, or if your opponent is casting cheap spells. Need to control the flow of weenies pouring out of your opponent's library? Cast Soul Barrier and watch your opponent take two damage for every creature he plays. Big Creature problems? No problem. Cast Control Magic on the biggest, baddest one and it's yours! Enemy attacks anyway? Cast Ray of Command on one of his attacking creatures to gain control of it for the turn, and use it to block another attacker! Your friends may start to despise you, but you'll still be whipping their butts, with their creatures no less!

Decks

All of these decks have been constructed for casual play. They have not been verified for tournament legality, so check the rules before you enter any competitions.