Even if you don't play in tournaments, the tournament deck building formats for Magic The Gathering can still be useful guidelines to follow if you enjoy dueling with other Magic players. Here's a brief overview of how all of the different deck building guidelines work for each format.
Once you've picked your deck theme and colors, you're ready to put your Magic deck together! Your deck will contain land, creatures, enchantments, artifacts, instant and/or sorcery spells. A good starting point is to gather up all the Magic cards you think would be good candidates for your deck, and narrow it down to 60 cards as you focus your theme.
Once you've picked out a theme for your deck, it's time to choose which colors of magic you'll be using. Each color has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Using a mono-color deck will help prevent mana problems, but adding a second (or third) color can often help make up for the first color's weakness.
Whether you are a competitive tournament player or a casual gamer, it's important to find the right type of Magic The Gathering deck to suit your play style. Some decks thrive off heavy offense (lots of creatures or direct damage spells) and others from their defense (counter-magic and removal spells). Depending on what Magic cards are available to you, you can also build a "combo deck" that combines a a few different cards together to provide an instant win condition.
