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

[ReptilianPeon]

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I don't know what you're running mostly, but my best advice is to play fast. Always try to go first, always go ahead and attack unless there's a really good reason not to, stuff like that. I've seen plenty of new players lose games by a turn or two because they didn't do something they could have or should have. It used to happen to me a lot in the beginning.

Also, make sure you balance your deck. That's not just having enough land, either. Ideally you want to anticipate what kinds of cards and decks are likely to give you trouble/shut you down and stock your deck with answers to those things (control, removal, board wipes, etc.). The specific support you need well depend on the deck, but in general you can't go wrong with blue and/or white, since those are generally the best control colors.

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I'll have a deck I'm satisfied with by the end of this week I suspect. I went on a spending spree to get me started. I intend to only play in Modern format.


I can give you a rough idea on the deck that I intend to build:

For certain I will use:
4 Scrying Sheets
4 Extraplanar Lens (better for mono colour decks but I think it can still work well with Snow-covered Lands.
20 or so Snow-covered Basic Lands (a mixture of either Red and Green or just one of those two colours depending on how well the deck goes)
4 Highland Weald


Since I purchased two copies of the Aurochs Stampede theme deck, I'll be using any creatures from that which look promising.
Basically as many Snow cards I as the deck can handle so that I can benefit from Scrying Sheets as much as possible.
May also include Strata Scythe.

The theme of the deck I'm trying to make:
What I'm trying to do is accumulate as many Snow-covered Lands as quickly as possible in order to bring out as many creatures as possible. The strongest creature I'm likely to use will be Rimescale Dragon.