Mastering Magic Cards: An Introduction to the Art of Masterful Deck Construction

If you have never heard of Magic: The Gathering, then you are probably quite confused by now. In a nutshell, Magic was created by a mathematics professor from Walla Walla to be a simple little game that could be played by two people in 30 minutes. Instead, he created a marketing monster. You buy cards to make up your playing set like baseball cards--random cards are sealed in foiled packs so you have no idea what you are getting when you buy them. From all these random cards, you and your opponent make up decks of around 60 cards each. The game is a contest of warring wizards, casting spells that summon creatures and enchantments to attack or otherwise reduce the opponent wizard's life to 0 from a starting amount of 20. For a simple game, it becomes quite complicated after that, because there are now over 1000 different cards to select for your decks, thus ensuring that almost every game you play will be different.

The book at hand tries to make sense of some of the chaos surrounding the game by discussing the mathematics of deck building (why you shouldn't play with more than 60 cards, what percentage of "mana"-- the magic that fuels spells--you need, etc.), and strategies of play. When this book was published, it was more relevant; today, I would not recommend this book except for those Internet Magic players because many of the deck ideas discussed herein involve out-of-print cards that would cost a fortune to actually possess. Magic is something like the Internet--it changes rapidly, and what might have been a workable strategy four months ago is likely a quick defeat today (or outlawed in tournament play).


Too long for such a simple book   June 13, 2000
iVan Wong (Hong Kong)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

The book doesn't teach you much on the strategy on MTG. It's just too simple. For the thickness of this book, I expected more from it.


This book made me an advanced player   November 6, 1998
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I have read this book cover to cover one ten times! This book not only helps you learn how to build competitive decks, it helps you understand why you should build the deck how you are building it. It has a formula for building decks which I never ignore. I learn more and more from this book each time I read it. No matter if you are the world champion or you just learned howw to play, you should definitly read this book. A must for any magic player!!!


Good teaching tool for building competitive Magic decks.   December 22, 1996
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is an informative Magic-TG guide for beginners and purists alike. There are many useful techniques for playing and especially constructing a good deck. It also includes several decks that are actually easy to assemble with the purchase of a few cards. On the downside, some of the decks included require cards that are out-of-print or otherwise too expensive for the casual player and the card list is outdated beyond Fallen Empires. Otherwise, a worthwhile purchase for any Magic player