Had my first Magic: The Gathering games yesterday: Any advice for newbie?

[robvalue]

Ok, it sounds like my guide would be too simple for you anyway then. It's mainly to do with common mistakes people make, and general playing strategies. But if you've played loads before it will probably be obvious to you.

Thanks for the heads up about this "wastes" thing, I've not heard of that! I'll check it out.

Edit: OK, I think I get it. I think it sounds bloody stupid at first glance. We'll see I guess. I've been unimpressed with their new ideas for a long time, I think they ran out of juice after the Urza block. It had a lot to do with why I stopped playing, we couldn't even be bothered to buy any singles from new sets for our draft box. But I'm a bitter old M:TG player who has gone through almost all of it, so don't listen to me

Edit again: Ah bollocks, I forgot the site that used to host the guide in question stopped hosting and it got lost.

[Joods]

Rob... I have an interesting deck. I call it my "Un" deck. It's comprised entirely of cards from the Unhinged and the Cracked series. It's a lot of fun to play with. I put cards like Granny's payback in there. I have a combination of Word Mail and a 2/2 creature called Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental. Essentially, with that combination, I can bring out a 27/27 creature for a total of 4 mana. I also have a card with denimwalk in it. My daughter begs me to let her play that deck.

[robvalue]

Lol, that sounds like a lot of fun!

Ah yes, I remember seeing those un- cards, although I never got round to owning any.

[Joods]

Well, given that I have a massive stockpile of MTG cards (Over 8000), I have at least 100 "un" cards. I especially love how they have their own set of rules outside of the standard MTG rules.

[Neo-Scholastic]

My advice is this:

Buy cards.
Put cards in archival plastic.
Wait 30 years.
Sell cards.

You just won.

[robvalue]

I did something similar. I forgot to put them out of reach of my dog and she chewed up one of them. Doh!

[ReptilianPeon]

I don't know if this is allowed (the person I played against said there is no limit on creatures), but in my third game I managed to get like twelve creatures out. All I have is a beginners Blue/Green deck. The opponent had a high toughness creature - low strength - and was not getting the cards they needed so I kept bring out more creatures until I had a way to overcome their highly tough creature.

[Faith No More]

My strategy is to try to find a minimum amount of cards that work well together and then use four copies of each card.  That way you have a better chance of drawing the right cards that work well together.  

Make sure you try to have cards with varying converted casting costs.  One of my problems in my decks is that I tend to have too high of a mana curve, and it takes too long for my decks to get going.  Consequently, my decks don't do as well when I'm only playing against one person.  I kick some ass in multiplayer, though.  Make sure you have plenty of cards with low casting costs, so you can get something going early on in the game.

Another thing concentrate on is to have cards that attack the other player's plan somehow.  Things like countering spells, making the other player discard and instants that take out creatures tend to work well.  My decks tend to focus on building up my own army as opposed to attacking directly what the other player is doing, and that tends to screw me over when the other player counters all my spells or makes me discard a bunch.  I play with a guy that uses a bunch of Hymn to Tourachs, and it pisses me off to no end.

All in all, find a theme and stick with it.  Plus, knowing when not to use a card in your deck can be the toughest.  Sometimes a card will seem so kick ass that you feel like you have to use it, but if it doesn't fit well in your deck, you may have to remove it.  You have to pay attention to what works and what doesn't, and learning to refine your deck based on how it performs is the real key to kicking ass.

And finally, know your limits.  They don't call it cardboard crack for nothing.

[Faith No More]

I don't know if this is allowed (the person I played against said there is no limit on creatures), but in my third game I managed to get like twelve creatures out. All I have is a beginners Blue/Green deck. The opponent had a high toughness creature - low strength - and was not getting the cards they needed so I kept bring out more creatures until I had a way to overcome their highly tough creature.

Yeah, there is no limit on creatures, only that you can't have more than four copies of a card in your deck, and there can't be more than one copy of a legendary card in play at a time.