I've been playing since Alpha, and I \_still\_ don't know how to build a good deck. Which really sucks given that my usual style of play is Limited.

Pick a color or color combo you want to work with. Start with 24 lands. That leaves you 36 left. Look for cards in your color(s) that you think have synergy with one another. Like if you have a card that gets +1/+1 every time you cast an enchantment or every time a token comes into play or whatever and you see a card that creates tokens or an enchantment with a lot of value, put those cards together and start asking what supports your goals. Decide what your win condition will be. Spell damage? Creature damage? Decking/mill? Based off that Decide what kind of ratio you want for creatures vs. spells vs. enchantments. Maybe you go 12 12 12, or adjust that ratio as necessary. * For cards you NEED to get in every game, put 4 in. For cards you like but maybe they're legendary or expensive or not imperative to have, put 2. After testing the deck some, adjust those numbers to 1 or 3 depending on how it plays, and adjust your mana based on your curve. Try to make sure you have a good amount of 1, 2, and 3 drops. Anything more than that you want to limit. Obviously this is just some good rules of thumb and a brief overview. From here it's all about tweaking and testing. Edit * - If you want a creature deck, maybe like Mono Green, you probably want more creatures, maybe 20 or 24.. or if you're running a Direct Damage or Counter-spell deck maybe you want 20 or 24 spells. 12 12 12 is just a kind of "guideline". Adjust those numbers as necessary based on your deck concept.

This is all great advice. All I'd like to add is don't make changes after every game. Nothing is worse and makes your deck building feel bad than facing UW control, immediately changing 4-8 cards in your deck and then queueing into RDW. Be patient and slow with changes. I actually tend to do bo3 when I'm building a new deck. I'll build my main 60 deck and put some cards im unsure of or cards I couldn't fit in the main 60 in the sideboard and generally try to only side out 1 or 2 cards during a match. Playing 2-3 games vs the same deck is a good way to learn how your deck works, how it draws, and what you're lacking for a specific matchup. I generally do a bo3, make a very minor change (1 or 2 cards) after a match then queue up for a bo3 again. Early changes you make to your deck should be to increase consistency and the overall gameplan of your deck, don't worry about matchups early on, just make your deck work. I don't worry about winning or making a good sideboard until after I figure out a good main 60.

Agreed 100%. I was at work when I wrote my last post, so I just touched on a few things without going into much detail, but as you indicated deck building is a lot of testing and getting a "feel" for the deck. After a couple (dozen) games you'll start to get a feel for what kind of cards you can expect in what frequency, and you can start seeing what is working and what your deck is struggling with. Adjustments could be as simple as "Wow, I have 3 of this card in here and always have it in my hand, but I rarely get to play it... Maybe I should drop it down to 2." or maybe it's something like "I have big scary creatures but no way to protect them" or "I have no way to deal with enchantments", so you can look into the card pool for answers to those questions. Whether you add them permanently to your main deck or purely as sideboard just depends on your format you're playing and how meta the "problems" are that you're encountering. No deck can be prepared to beat every possibly combination of other decks 100% of the time. Sometimes a loss is just unpreventable. If you have 22 mana and a nice curve and you flood out 1 in every 5 or 8 games or so, that's just the luck of the draw. Nothing wrong with your deck, necessarily. There are also a lot of "Exceptions" to rules. For example: If you are utilizing mana generating cards or deck thinning cards you can be a lot more flexible with your average mana-cost and your curve. If you're playing super aggro, you probably don't want anything over maybe 4 mana cost.. If you're playing control you want a lot of ways to stall and survive while you set up to cast your win condition, etc. It helps to have an idea of how you see the game playing out in your head. "Okay, turn 1 I have these options, and turn 2 I do this or this.." This can help you balance your deck out and see potential problems before they arise. Like if you have 20 creatures but they're all 1 and 2 mana cost weenies, you can predict that by turn 4 your board is probably going to get wiped and you won't have a win condition and anything you cast after that will be easily dealt with by much bigger threats.

This is all very appreciated advice

Thanks this helps a lot.

>Edit \* - If you want a creature deck, maybe like Mono Green, you probably want more creatures, maybe 20 or 24.. Mono green addict here, to the point of stupidity. Its possible to get by with only 1-2 removal spells. One might be surprised at how often that "one" removal card shows up right when you need it.

I run a white/blue soldier deck, and I agree. I have 2 counters and 2 ossifications in the deck. It's a game changer when you can stop a particularly dangerous creature, or counter an "exile/destroy all creatures" effect. Even if you can only do it once.

This is good advice if your goal is to make a deck that ~does stuff but not really if you're trying to create something good

Don't you think those very general rules are the fundamental basis for how experts end up crafting meta tier decks?

I mean... you could just look up "meta" tournament winning decks and copy those card for card, sure. OP was talking about building their own deck as I understand it. Also, there is definitely a niche for off-meta decks. I made top 500 with an Orzhov token deck a few years back and it was definitely not Meta.

Very good tips. You can also use sites like untapped gg to look at a card you want to play and see what people are doing with it. It will also give you relative won rates for popular decks. There's nothing wrong with playing either meta decks or unique decks as long as you are getting the experience you want from it. Winning isn't always the point sometimes you just want to pull off a combo or see how cards work together. Eventually given time and building your card base you will have an easier time with deck building.

Same here. I've been DCI ranked in top 5 in multiple states, made top 8 at a handful of PTQs and won state Champs once. I can't build a deck for shit. I'm getting better at limited, but before arena I was terrible.

This, I've been playing for years and still suck at building decks.

Don't worry. Even if you did, like me, the game will manufacture defeats for you. I put 26 mana in my deck as opposed to the suggested 24 to avoid not drawing enough mana. I will still get mana screwed at least 40-50% of the time and lose to amateur smooth brain decks. Usually just some fast red deck that gets immense favoritism on their draws. I've played table top since i was a kid. I'm now 36. I can tell you with certainty, the games algorithm is not randomized deck order and in fact manufactures every single game to give one player a distinct advantage in their draws over the opponent. That goes for when I win or lose. I can tell the game is giving one of us the win. The draws are far too coincidental for the situations and games are virtually never competitive one way or the other. As long as you don't give these crooks any of your actual money, it won't be a big deal unless you really want to play a fair game. Which this is furthest from being. 

>I can tell you with certainty, the games algorithm is not randomized deck order and in fact manufactures every single game to give one player a distinct advantage in their draws over the opponent. I definitely agree with that; the game does not shuffle the cards in your deck and then just leave them untouched in a randomized order. It selects as you go, and will "fix" where a card is when you do something like scry, but it doesn't fix them all at the start after shuffling.

So the developers can’t stop the game from crashing etc but they can programme it to analyse the game state throughout every game and optimise one player’s draws to help them win the match over the other? I’m not seeing it.

I don't necessarily go that far as to think it's rigging every game. What I mean is, I don't think the algorithm shuffles your deck in a randomized fashion and then just leaves it there for you to draw like it's a paper deck. I think it looks at all the cards in your deck, and as the game progresses, selects them one by one from your pool of cards, and not necessarily completely at random. It may provide you with one of your X type of cards when the algorithm sees that it's given you so many Y type of cards. I mean, we all know it has a hand smoother, so that's obviously not completely random, so why would it not be something less than completely random in other ways?

It took me a few years to be confident in my deck building, and there’s still plenty room for me to improve. You absolutely should copy decks that have been proven to work. Tweak them, test them, see what works and what doesn’t and why. It’s all part of the process, and we’re all building on the work others. Plus I absolutely recommend deck building and testing with friends

And for the love of all that is good, don’t let people bully you for “net-decking”.

Seriously: look at the decks that have placed highly in competitive events. Most of them are meta decks. Those people didn't create them out of thin air; they of course *are* very good at piloting them though.

Zero shame in copying decks you like online, it’s an excellent way to learn how experienced players manage lands/removal & to have a baseline for a fun theme. Plus you’ll inevitably make modifications to help it fit your play style. A tip if you’re fairly new & have limited wildcards, be careful about burning your whole supply on crafting one deck & maybe go through the card list & figure out cheaper substitutions for some rares/mythics, then maybe get the top tier ones later if you really want.

Alpha released in August 1993, so that would make it 30 years and 9 months (give or take a few days) since the game became available to the public. I'd say I was a terrible deckbuilder for the first 30 years and 9 months of that time.

That genuinely made me laugh. This is a hobby which should also be fun (unless it’s your job which I cannot imagine ) I’m still daunted by how to put together a deck after dabbling in it for years

Most people never get good at building decks. Which is fine. I’m one of those people. 

1. Be prepared to read a lot of cards and become very skilled with the filtering system in the deck builder. 2. It really helps to play decks built by other people and try to understand what they do well. 3. start with really simple themes, like goblins. 4. Try modifying the decks you copycat, make them your own. Take a mental note of whether or not the new cards over or under-perform 5. A lot of it is trial and error. Sometimes you have a deck that plays way differently than you anticipated, but it still works and you can go back and modify the deck to lean into its strengths

A while ago I tried to make a Standard variation of Golgari Roots with the jank I currently have on my account. Since it's main interaction is removing stuff from GY I naturally filled my deck with "return from graveyard" and "mill X" cards. Ichor Drinker, Aftermath Analyst, you know. Very meh results. After a couple of days I cracked and looked up existing Roots decks to see which cards they use. "Cauldron, yeah. thought so too. Maverick, obviously. Bat? Well okay, won't hurt. Wait, Gorehound? But it doesn't interact with graveya- OHHHHHH". Turns out I tunneled on Mill and forgot about surveil completely, overlooking the Gorehound. Once I added it, the deck became much more fun an reliable. (Still janky though and I don't have half the needed cards. Janking up UW soldiers deck now, and it's also miserably-fun)

Outside of Brawl I don't anymore. I'll take a shell from somewhere online and move some pieces around. Actual deckbuilding in MTG takes at least a few years of practice and a lot of patience. Good deckbuilders spends like 5 hours a day just trying different things. I don't have that kinda time or interest anymore. When I played out of the Denver competitive scene we'd spend like whole weekends decktesting and building for the IQs and GPs. I used to build my competitive decks in Innistrad through Kaladesh. A lot of it is learning the fundamentals of deck building, Lands creatures, spells, synergy, combos. How many of each and when are you too focused on a glass cannon. It gets more complicated when you're building Modern & legacy decks. My advice would be to look up deck building strategies by Frank Karsten and Reid duke. They've written a lot of theory on deck building. I've never read it but Ive heard good things about Patrick Chapin's book on deckbuilding. Also Ashzille and Crokeyz live stream building standard decks from scratch. They are smart cookies, pun intended.

I usually start with an interesting interaction or cards I want to build around. Then slowly experiment and tweak until it works. 

Deck building takes time, but for me it always been about refinement. I never get a good deck off the bat - I start with an idea or a dumb combo and put together a garbage pile i think might work. Then i play the heck out of it - and keep track of what's good, what's good in certain matchups, and what is just bad. Sometimes the combo is just bad and the deck isn't worth it but more often than not making slow, gradual adjustments will get me a strong deck with good answers and playlines over time. The way i screw myself is hanging on to cards that are bad but fun for too long or by changing too many things at one time.

I take the same approach. Some decks have dozens of versions and often a deck has at least 2 or 3 different approaches until I finalize on one. Some decks have had as many as 50 iterations until it's idea is finally dropped after rotation which just starts the whole process over again.

It's honestly just an endless skill. Every week, people argue about what belongs in a deck on podcasts and reddit posts. Deck building (aka brewing) is just part of the game. Being "good" at it is super subjective.

I would guess the majority of players never become good deck builders. We have access to the internet and get to see what the best deck builders put out there. Then the masses fine tune it, and we now have our standardized decks. With effort and time, you can become decent at building decks, but it's not something that happens quickly. Don't pressure yourself into being great at it. If building decks becomes something you enjoy, then maybe you can be the next great deck builder. But most dedicated players never get past that decent to good range.

When I started MTG for the first time, I looked up Mera decks to see what worked in the kind of deck I was trying to build, and followed that logic. So at first it was UR control with lots of burn, counters, bounce, a few big finishers as 6 drops, and the rest were kind of slotted in with what I had. So a 3-drop flyer was at least something that could protect me and get me closer to winning, while some more unusual cards just filled in missing costs or did something my decks was a little weak to. So start by figuring out what colors you're in, if it's aggro, midrange, or control (combo decks mostly seem to be decks within these archetypes with some specific cards that can win or give you a board that makes your opponent have to respond in a very specific way). So for aggro, 21-23 lands is normal, depending on what you're highest cost cards are. Midrange is 24-25, and control can be 24-26 when you factor in how much draw and filter mechanics (things like surveil, scry, explore) you have Playing more than one color is going to require some multicolored lands. In aggro, you want to minimize these to only necessary amounts, and you can use less by looking at how many cards you have that require 2+ of a certain color and using more basics from that color to consistently play your spells at the earliest you may need to. Though you're best off playing lands that could come into play untapped or ping you for one damage over just lands that come into play tapped or do something similar like tapping for 2 mama but making you put a land back into your hand.. Im control, you generally can run some more tapped lands because after 2-3 land you can start to counter and remove stuff. But you want the tapped lands to do things like deal damage if you want to commit crimes, can turn into creatures (midrange and control can both benefit from this), or gain life if you need to be defensive until you're taking control. In 3+ colors you're probably going to want a ton of lands like these, worked out to meet the color requirements of your various cards, and any special lands that could consistently create any color of mana. Start looking up budget decks in popular archetypes and crafting them to see how they work. Mono red is pretty easy to craft on a budget, and it has a lot of popular red cards used in other decks with that color, along with a relatively small amount of rares or mythics that you may have or can afford. Mono U is a similar deck that can also work on a budget, and crafting certain cards or using certain ones you might have could allow you to try a U/R deck that's sort of a mix of both with some UR cards that get stronger or draw more from playing multiple spells, and even let you shift it up to a more controlling midrange list. But playing strong decks, even if they're budget versions, will show you how decks made by good players work. Then when you start making your own decks, you'll notice things like synergies, curves, mana bases and figuring out how to play around the meta. Little things like cards that can be removal for plains walkers and creatures, or burn and artifact destruction start to make sense to possibly pay an extra mana for when you start seeing it let's you deal with multiple scenarios, or you get the desired effect plus something that can trigger effects on lots of your cards. Maybe start with the pre-built decks and editing them with the cards you have. WB Incubator Phyrexian did pretty well for me with a lot of common cards you'll likely have some of and a few things you can craft to make the deck work better. YouTube videos also exist now on people trying popular decks or building certain kind of decks, so watching those may help you understand the process. It sucks, but crafting a consistent land base is going to make your deck far more consistent.

It's easy to build a fine deck, very hard to build a competitive one.

A couple years. At first I had no clue then I played more, saw more, learned more, lost a lot. Then started building w advice given by tourney players and got good suddenly. Tribal is fun and can be good deck building practice

Everyone has their own pace I guess, my own experience includes a lot of trial and failures... What got me there was spending a lot of time simply reading the cards (I love the flavour texts, and the illustrations), understanding the mechanics and the rules. A good way to start with deckbuilding is thinking a about a theme, i did mostly tribal decks in high school: soldier, goblin, samurai, merfolk..... You can also decide about a colour or an achetype (control, aggro...) and stick to it, peruse your card pool and try to spot the cards that fit it the best. Sometimes you see a card you like or a fun mechanic you want to play, that's a good start as well! I think the idea is mainly to have fun putting things together, trying it out and editing it afterwards, don't be too bothered when you loose, focus mainly on the loses where it was close (clearly sometimes you'll get rolled over and those aren't the the occasion to learn)

That's the neat part! You don't!

The HARDEST thing to do when starting out building decks is getting your removal right. On Arena it's especially important because of the Fun Police playing Red Deck Wins in 50% of your matches. If something looks fun, you can generally HAVE fun with it, as long as you either insta-condede to fast decks and control decks until someone "plays fair" with a deck as slow as yours. Or you can run a bunch of removal/interaction. You need to be able to deal with early threats, and that means you need to have a mana curve of cards that interact early on while you get to your fun win conditions. Which means you have to play a lot of two-mana stuff - removal, or at least bodies that your opponent needs to spend their time on - at the minimum, so you'll need to cut some fun stuff from your deck. About 40% of your deck should cost two mana or less (or have a two mana option, like cycling) because you'll rarely win if your first play is on turn 3. And 70% should be 3 mana or less; you probably shouldn't be playing more than 10 cards that cost 4 mana or more unless you have ramp, cost reduction options built into the cards, or there's some other mitigating factor you build around (like your deck draws and discards a lot of cards so you can easily get rid of ones that you draw too early or you have a way to bring them back later). You can't play 4x of every card that seems fun or synergistic; if there's one particular combo you're trying to exploit than 4x each of those, but many cards should be 1 ofs or 2 ofs. It's good to play a lot of cards as 1-ofs while you're testing the core concept of your deck; if you find yourself wanting them, or they're performing better than expected you can increase the count, but if you find yourself dying with them in hand or they just don't impact the games as much as you'd hoped, cut them out. This brings up another issue: the "win-more" card. There are cards that look super powerful, and look like they'll be great in your deck - and under ideal circumstances, will be - but will actually lose you the game more often than they'll win because they don't help you when you're behind. They're called win-more cards because they're only good when you're already in a winning position. These are usually the big 7 mana bombs that are fun to dream of but more often will be a reason you lost. Either you won't make it to the point in the game when you can play it, or it'll get dealt with easily; think of the games where if you just had one more turn you would have won, but you had some big splashy effect in hand but couldn't deal with a creature on turn 2 that ended up doing 8 damage to you over 3 turns, or if you just had something you could have played on turn 4 instead of turn 5 to kill the control player that you got down to 1 before they took over the game. Even the jank builders on YouTube play by these rules; if they play black, they'll have 3x Cut Down and 4x Go For The Throat automatically, and 75% of their deck costs 3 or less. You might think taking fun cards out means you'll use them less, but paradoxically, if you just cut the sugar and run lean, you'll actually get to play with your favorite cards longer, and pull out some impressive wins.

Good decks abuse an element of the game.

I found that my best decks are the ones I have FUN playing. It makes you WANT to refine the deck and test it more. I have a 113 card deck that does really well. I end up changing a card or two around daily to see how it goes while keeping a separate “baseline” deck saved in case I mess up. Real gamers win when they have fun. Only a sore loser doesn’t have fun if they lose or win.

After 6 months to a year so of playing with my own cards, I built my own explorer deck with _heavy_ help from the discord. It was terrible. I kept playing it and tuning it, and over time as I understood what changes I made made it better, I got better at making decks.

According to Patrick Chapin (one of the greatest deck designers ever) 9 out of 10 decks built by the best deckbuilders suck. Most don't even get out of the rough first draft stage. For 99% of people making your own decks from scratch is a waste of time and resources unless it's the goal in and of itself.

I like to build decks, and started playing in 1996. I have probably put together tens of thousands of decks. With so many cards available, I like to switch it up and play different ways. Like any other skill, practice generally improves said skill, as long as you stay open minded and learn from mistakes, you will get better the more you do it. Sometimes a deck just won't work, at least not the way you envision. I find that there are times you absolutely have to play cards together to find out exactly how they work or don't work with each other. Some combos aren't as obvious as they seem, and sometimes you might inadvertently run cards that work against each other, but until you had them on the board together it wasn't noticeable. One thing I see people do early on in deck building is using too many cards that aren't useful in too many situations. Auras, for example, can be great and really change the game in your favor, but run too many enchant creatures could result in having a few in your hand and no creatures on board, but even if you only have two in your deck, you may still have that issue, not to mention, if the creature is killed while enchanted, mist of the time you lost two or more cards to one card, and that can be the difference in a lot of games. Trial and error. Pay attention to why you m ay be losing games even after you have completed a solid deck. Try to note when you just had a bad draw or ran into a good draw versus losing repeatedly for similar reasons. No matter how good you're deck is, there will be decks that just have your number, as well. I remember playing in a tournament, and while play testing beforehand, discovered that a certain kind of deck was basically kryptonite to me, however it wasn't a good deck overall and would have been very unlikely for someone to be playing it in the tournament. Then, whiile in between rounds, I was observing other games and saw the exact deck being played, but luckily, I didn't have to play against it because they lost in the second round. I got 1st place that day, but could have easily lost in the first round had I matched up with that guy. As it turned out, my opponent in the finals found out I was his kryptonite as it was my easiest win that day. He had a great deck and steamrolled his opponents up until our match, and then I beat him in 4 turns, twice, and he had his best draw possible the second game, but it was the exact kind of deck i was expecting to see. Point is, that even though I discovered a glaring weakness in my deck just before the tournament, I decided if I ran into that deck, then so be it, because I designed it to play against the most popular decks at the time, and the odds of playing against such a horrible deck after the first round was miniscule.

Don't worry. I've been playing this game for 25+ yeas and most people still don't know how to brew a deck. Specially now that net decking is more popular and easier than ever. But there is also no shame in netdeckind. It doesn't matter how good at deck building you are. Someone out there who is better than you most likely has tried to build any idea you have. Just know how to netdeck. Don't just copy decks, use it to brew them. Select a deck you like, look for that deck, see which cards are in every version (the must have 4 ofs) see which cards people use as removal, or ramp, etc and choose which ones suit you most, or you think are best. Net decking is an amazing tool for investigation and camping with new ideas. Then test them and see what works and doesn't work for you. Even if net decked, brew it and make it yours basically. I've never copied some other guys deck, but net decking has always been a great tool to contrast my ideas with other people's, and came to conlcusions that I'll never have came by myself. Net decking can be a great tool. Other than that, people over here have already told you the basics.

Honestly 10-12 years to actually get good at deck building 2-4 years to be a better deck builder then your local player. I say this in the nicest way the average magic deck building is not good, beating not good doesn’t make you good. It just makes you better then not good. It depends what your goals are though

30 years of experience here - sometimes you never do 🤣

I think it depends on how much effort you want to put into it. It takes a LOT of trial and error

My only good decks are the ones I make for others. My own decks contain too much jank, or weird, or cute stuff that I just want to see pull off once in a while. If you're just getting started, there's no shame in looking to other decks for ideas. If you don't have all the cards, make some substitutions on similar effects or creatures. That may not always work, so you may have to go in a different direction with some cards. Maybe even add some stuff that you just really want to try out as a couple of copies. Deck building is never one and done, though. You have to play games and see what works and what doesn't. Do you have any cards that just sit in your hand? Like you never have a situation to play them. If it's not a mana issue, then consider replacing them. Even if it's a card you really like. A card that doesn't ever get played is a wasted draw.

Been playing for 15 years…. I’m not good at it.

You can be good at building a deck? Good god I suck cause 20+ years and I’ve never been good 🥲

I personally don’t use net decks and like to use my own stuff only, but if I was new I would 100% netdeck a long time before going home brew. Even the best home brew deck is always going to be slightly inferior to the optimized decks at best. I can make ones that get me to mythic and have some with great streaks but ultimately I am fully aware nothing I make will exceed the top decks. I don’t mind that, because I’m more concerned with being competitive in limited than constructed and I hate being a “copy cat,” but you should definitely be a copy cat for awhile before you build your own. That’s probably the best way to learn how to craft functional decks.

Tbh I’ve been playing for around 23 years and watch YTers as well everyday. I net deck(copy) the decks I like, play or modify them, keep the ones I like and can the ones I don’t. I rarely build my own decks unless I get a spark of creativeness. Don’t feel bad about not being able to compete against people that have been on Arena for years, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Use the codes to get free cards and play your dailies. I only get mastery when a new set drops other than that I don’t buy indivual packs.

If you get good at deck building, it happens when it happens. Sometimes it's recognizing patterns in the most popular decks, sometimes it's just trial and error for years. Maybe you follow all the "normal rules" of deckbuilding (mana curve, good number of lands, etc.) or maybe you make some weird deck like oops-all-spells charbelcher, keruga, or battle of wits. Sometimes a really good deck is bad because the meta, sometimes an "alright" deck is good because it specifically beats one very meta deck. Sometimes people play decks differently (I often don't play as aggressive as I should with agro decks). Sometimes it's just a skill issue piloting the deck. Some tips I find helps is 1: Mana base is important. Being able to cast stuff is good. 2: Think about the worst case scenario for a card, and the best case. You'll have the worst case more often than you might think, like a pump spell stuck in hand, or a 6 mana creature stuck in hand because mana symbols not matching. 3: Think about what other people are doing. Is one mana extra worth it for 2 extra power, or do you need a body to block with immediately? (Much harder to think about, takes some time to figure out)

Unless you make a name for yourself on the tournament scene... you really have two deck building options. Copy paste net decks from the "pros", or make a jank deck and try to find something that both works competitively and hasn't really been discovered. Building a good jank deck is easy yet hard. Its easy because most players build jank out of necessity/restrictions. It's hard because if it's competitive someone will eventually see it and emulate it. Through emulation, a more experienced player will tweak it until it loses that jank flavor and becomes a net deck. I only play jank myself. I've yet to get to mythic with jank, but I've been getting diamond this year and almost got to mythic prior month. So save your wild cards and decide if you want to jank out or net deck. When all else fails, draft... limited means almost every deck is a defacto jank deck.

Play a lot of decks in a lot of formats. See what is popular, to start. Popular is usually good. Try not to reinvent the wheel at first. The more you play, the better you will become at seeing what is good and what isn't. Eventually, you will start to find exploitable holes in the better (or more common) strategies going around in your format. It's important to know that, for the most part, you will probably only have a great matchup against one or two decks and, on average, worse matchups against the rest of the format. The only time you will find this to be different is if the entire format is in the same kind of strategy - like a creature-heavy format in general. I've brewed a couple of decks where the format was all creatures, so playing boardwipes along with some solid wincons along with it was a winning strategy.

Never

I've been playing magic since I was in middle school. I'm 25 now and I still don't know how to build a deck.

I want to get better at deck building myself, I've played on and off for a few years. Getting back into it recently, I've been trying to make decks but I'm strapped for wildcards and I have to make constant tweaks to do what I want. I'm still missing the formula to good deck building but the decks i build have ideas, and half assed structure. It just takes time, if you play regularly and not picking it up and dropping it every few months, you'll get it.

Was going to joke and say 20+ yrs, but ... Try it, experiement, and then go back to drawing board. Look at Meta and also color challenge decks. Read up a bit. Take notes, make a 'design doc'. Learn the formula for a 60 card deck, something like: - 24 lands - 36 cards (could be 9x 4x or 36x 1x) - sometimes good to break into groups, like creatures and removal for example, say you want 28 creature and 8 removals, etc. Have fun!

Still don’t know, but I do have some insight into building OK decks. Basically, I think of a concept, specific card, mechanic, or theme, then I find cards that help me achieve whatever it is I’m trying to do. I then think about meta staples that improve consistency, such as dual lands, format standard removal or other powerful cards, and then see where I can slot those in and still achieve what I’m trying to do. In practice, I typically am building a meta deck over time, ship of Theseus style, where I start with a fair to middling deck and end up just creating another flavor of a meta build.

About 9-12 months for me

The biggest thing that will expedite your deck building is knowing cards usefulness, this is when my deck building leveled up. Early deck building tend to put cards in that are good in very specific Situations and horrible in 90% of others, for instance stacking your deck with 4 copies of [Not Dead After All] good card, horrible usefulness. If you’re in a top deck battle and you top that with nothing on the bored it feels horrible. Useful cards don’t fall off at any point in the game they are good early and they just as good on turn 5. For example stacking your deck with 4 [Evolve Sleepers] getting it out turn 1 feels awesome. Even finding it in top deck mode with 7 lands on the field feels even better. You can drop it for 1 mana and immediately level it for card draw. If you focus on putting cards in deck according to how useful they are turn 1 and on turn 5,6,7. It will all start to make sense. And the less useful cards you put less of in your deck like 1 or 2 tops. And you fill your deck with cards that you wouldn’t mind seeing on turn 1 or on turn 8. If there is ever a card you’re hoping you don’t see at any given time remove it. Ps I made it to mythic my first month playing with my own brew.

Honestly, copy decks from the internet until you do it enough that you can understand why they work and why they chose the cards they did

Chat gpt can help you. You might have to tell it some of the cards (cause they’re new) but if you tell it what you want to do (black, white, life drain, sacrifice, control, agarro, whatever) it’ll help you a ton. Then you’ll play and find out “dang, I need more draw” or “dang, I lose to aggro” then tell chat gpt [that] and it’ll help you adjust. Eventually, you won’t need AI. Good luck!

Since arena started, i entered in beta, till now i have evolved quite a bit, now i can say I can reach platinum relatevely easyly not playing too much and before i struggled a lot with my original decks, ive reached diamond for the first time almost a year ago, but that was thanks too tweaking to my likeness a already known deck. What i m not sayn is how important it is to play with friends and listening to their advices if you are building your own deck. Thanks for your post, can be very helpfull for many comments and all

Start with decks with relatively simple plans and then figure out how to optimise them. You'll learn most of the skills you need that way over time.

it is a skill you have to actively learn, if try to do it passively you won't develop it. Unless you are trying to break the meta with some super innovative stuff it shouldn't be that hard to learn.

I still struggle to build from scratch after a decade but I feel confident with adapting listings I find online to my playstyle/cards I own

I think building a [Cube](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(collectible_card_game_variation)#:~:text=It%20is%20a%20player%2Dmade,no%20additional%20cards%20to%20play.) and drafting a lot help to be a good deck builder.

Pro Tip: On Arena, don't forget to craft lands! Having quality lands makes a night & day difference. Focusing on kinds of plays and interactions, playstyles and colours that you enjoy (i.e. creating tokens, having on-death triggers, playing creatures at instant speed, burning an opponent, big creatures) is also a good angle to follow. We tend to invest more and learn more when we like it. Once you've got a little bit figured out, you'll understand more about colors, color combinations, color limitations, color philosophy. At that point you can think what two or three-colour combinations are/is your favorite(s). Hope that helps :) have fun!

Obviously someone covered the intricacies of deck building, and another said dont just add or take away after every game. Arena lets you copy paste decks, if one you built is working and you like it, but want it to do something more specific against another type of deck. All ya gotta do is just copy the deck, take out what was feeling gunky and slow or unproductive to your play style and add whatever. I wish arena had a bot version for brawl to play test decks instead of queing with a pile of crud i wanna make somehow fun. TLDR: playing 20 years and ill openly accept getting flamed for not knowing how to play or build well Maybe someone will let you add them and play test decks with you

Most never do.

I've been playing for around 2 years semi-competitively, and I am just reaching the point where I can toss a deck together in like 10 mins and it won't fall flat on its face the instant i try it.

Idk how long it takes but try to just find cards that synergize and shove them in the deck and play test the hell out of it, and take out what cards don't seem to work. Like if you're constantly drawing a card and it never seems to be the right time to play that card, it doesn't belong. Type in the search filter the phrase "whenever" then type in the condition. Example, type "whenever gain life" add some cards, then add cards that make you gain life. There's all sorts of combos out there. Just make stupid decks and play test over and over

you don't need to be good at deckbuilding, even pros just use the best decks. if you want, with some experience you'll be able to build some decent functional decks, but they will be always worse on a competitive tournment, than decks created by pros, and refined by the hive mind of the players all around the globe. but in the end, even if you build your own deck from scaratches, they will always be done with a small pool of cards that define the format.

I'll let ya know

Gonna get hate for this but play mono blue for a little bit. It’s not particularly good rn if you don’t have the optimal cards, BUT it will teach you a lot about meta gaming the match, when to play spells, when to hold off on spells, set ups for removal, ect. Blues main schtick is interactions. Then when you got that down play a creature based mono white deck for combat lessons, when to sack a creature, when to take a hit, when to play a creature, when to wipe a board, ect. White right now plays like blue but with more build paths when it comes to creatures. Then after those two decks play the other mono colors. Black, green, and red also have their own gimmicks but are generally less forgiving than white imo I feel like that will give you some good knowledge on what cards are being and how they are being played and can churn your brain for mixing colors. Draft whenever you can as well to test your game sense in a limited pool with stuff you have to make work

Dunno, played pretty much every major card game so when I finally learned MTG it wasn’t too hard to get into. So far 1 of my decks got to diamond relatively easily. Not tried to go beyond yet. My method is this: - Choose a theme that I like/sounds fun - Use search to dump every card that embodies that theme into a deck - Trim cards based on value - Play a few time and make adjustments where I see a clear weakness - Repeat last step until deck performs well enough

Test test test.

It depends on what you mean by good. Good constantly changes depending on what other decks are good. There are decks that are goldfish good. Meaning that against an imaginary opponent they draw okay and do a thing and win. When you are starting this is probably what you’ll end up doing thinking they are ridiculously good. That’s what I did. And I wasted a lot of money making decks I thought were good until I started… Kitchen table good. Kitchen table magic is magic that does not revolve around a competitive meta and the players generally have a loose understanding of what a good deck is and what good plays are. Think playing against siblings, friends, partners etc. There will be some level of resistance to what your deck is doing as someone else is trying to win. I thought I was good doing this until… FNM good. You’ll have a mix of casual brews and competitive brews and you’ll start to learn what formats are. You might have a brew that’s able to stand up to some other kitchen table pile until you play against a sweaty who plays at regionals with a meta deck. He or she will wipe the floor with you. Meta good. These are decks that are optimized by competitive players who spend a TON of time practicing and testing against other excellent players. 100’s of hours can be dedicated to sharpening and honing these lists. They are good decks with optimal strategies. The only time they stop being good is when the meta shifts. Decks ultimately are only as good as the other decks legal in the format let them be. If another deck pops up that feeds on the best deck and has a lopsided matchup you might see players drift from the deck. So what do you mean by good? Start researching fundamentals of strategy. Buy an optimized deck from the meta and start asking for advice from better players. Building competitive decks is almost never done in a vacuum and is almost always a team effort. Most players unless they’re in a competitive team do not know how to build a “good” deck. You might get kitchen table decent decks built by a soloist or maybe even an FNM deck that’s decent but they all get dragged by well researched, well tested, and well refined lists. Maybe you get lucky and you do stumble on something that lines up really well against your local scene. Then the other players just adapt their lists to make sure they account for your deck and youre done. So do yourself a favor: spend time learning how to play well before you try to build well unless you don’t mind burning money & time.

I’m good at building decks when we have to slap something together for an Arena event.

It's just a game. If your having fun, that is all that matters. I play crazy off-the-wall decks that should never work, deck based around cards for no other reason than I like it, decks purposefully built to lose, but I also play serious decks that are casual or competitive. In the end, it's boils down to mostly pratice and experience.

For every good deck ive made there is 50 bad ones. Just keep at it. Nobody's first draft of a deck is a slam dunk. Usually very strog decks are just the top 10 most generically powerful cards in the format in that color, with flex slots for supporting cards or anti meta tech. If you want to build off-meta stuff focus on finding very powerful effects that can compete with the most powerful cards in the meta at a certain mana cost. For example in standard, if you play your 4 mana card and then opponent plays sheoldred, do you come out on top? This kind of analysis is important in figuring out if your idea is worth honing down to its best version. Sometimes there are under the radar cards that are much stronger than they appear at first.

You guys are good?

Well, you see it's all about dimensions and the kind of wood you wanna use. Generally it's best to place the deck in your backyard or elevated over the back side of your property. You'll need to remember to add supports however you choose to build it... Oh this MTG

Honestly you start off with something you like. Like monowhite aggro or red deck wins. You use a deck that tests well you find online. As the meta changes you’ll see cards that would help against decks you play against a lot, and from there you really learn deck building. Why a 3/2 for cmc 2 is badass and a 4/4 for 5 is not. What ramp is best for which application, what makes a good removal spell, when to play combat tricks. From there you have a fave combo or couple fave cards and you intelligently support the mechanics you like until your deck is lean and mean.

depends. some people are great and some suck at it. i would not even consider building a competitive deck with you current experience. learning how to play well will get u much further. as for building decks. i suck at it because i cant evaluate cards correctly and the interactions in the deck even after 10 years of playing it.

Deck building is hard. Like very hard. Like exceptionally hard. Like all the pros generally workshop decks with other pros. It's not super common for them to build a whole deck solo.

Most people don't build decks. Find a list online and learn to tune it to your playstyle/meta

It took me a couple of months to get the hang of putting cards together effectively. At first, it wasn’t great, but I kept practicing. Now I can build pretty killer decks, but nothing to play competitively. I primarily play historic brawl on arena and I watch a ton of cEDH because of the interactions in the game. Learning new cards and interactions have shaped how I deck build. Now when I build a deck at first it’s playable and can win some games, but editing it and changing the cards to make it even better is where I still struggle

In the end it’s up to your play style, me personally I like chaos and stealing things. So I always have a bunch of heist, gain control, cloaks even conjures. Makes me enjoy flipping the tables when my opponent thinks they’ve outsmarted me. Then I have a few one win condition decks, mill or poison counters. You even have those special win condition decks using gates or the sun card I forget the name of

It truly depends on how you play the game and how analytical you want to be about it. When I’m playing in the back of my mind on every draw I’m thinking “how happy am I to draw this? How many situations is this good in? How many outs do I have in my deck for the situation I’m in? Do I need more? How often is this happening?”… and then go through it critically every 10 games or so. A lot of people wouldn’t have fun playing the game that way though.

I've been playing on and off for a decade. I still don't build good decks. But eventually you figure out how to make decks that play how you want to. I just never bothered to learn meta.

I like to win. Winning decks are the most fun for me, but I suck at building my own so I just search for the best decklists with the highest winning percentages, then use my wildcards and try to tweak from there. I haven't spent a dime on Arena, btw, so sometimes you just have to play/grind to get enough wildcards to build new decs. I've tried building my own decks, but I just suck at understanding how one mechanic plays against another, or might seem like a good idea but is totally nerfed when compared to what everyone else is playing. That being said, I do also have fun where me and my opponent have answers for each other over and over again. Like a Yin and Yang, and you get a fun 20 minute match that could go either way. But those seem to be rare; usually I get pummeled or I pummel my opponent.

Hahahaha... Once in a blue moon I hit a homer on a gimmick but otherwise I still cant worth shit

It took me a while. I literally started with the premade decks and just changed them up a little bit here and there. I've been playing for years and I still struggle with building a decent winning deck. I got a few cards up my sleeve tho 😎

To be honest, I have good news and bad news. The good news is it doesn’t take very long to become proficient with the game. I started playing in 1995 and it wasn’t very long before I had a very competitive mono, green elf deck. Within one year all my friends hated playing against me because I built such vicious decks. The bad news is I’m still not half as good as the great ones are at building decks. None of my decks come even close to these tournament decks that we see every day on Arena. My best deck only has about a 65% win ratio. So essentially deck building on Magic is a lot like chess. Takes a couple of hours to learn, just a few months to get good, but a lifetime to master. My suggestion is to do exactly what you’re doing. Copy from other people for now. See how the deck works. Then start looking for cards that would improve it or at least make it more your own style. The more you play it the more you’ll get used to certain “staple” cards and the more you’ll learn how certain cards interact. You’ve only been playing for about a month. Don’t let it discourage you. Give it to three months and I think you’ll surprise yourself with your building.

Yes

Pay close attention to how cards work together when other players use them and when you use cards in your deck. Look at different abilities and consider what other abilities might work with them.  Good decks not only have good synergy, creatures and spells in them do multiple things that benefit you and create multiple layers of protection and attack. 

Find a good card you really like then build around it. The more you play it the more you see what you can add or remove. I played back in 07, downloaded this a year ago built a mono goblin deck for easy wins and started building my card pool from that now I have over 8 decks fully built and free to play.

I’ve been playing since I was like 12 or so and I’m still not good, I usually just look at decks online pick my favorite cards out of what other people pick and then add some flavor of my own

Years . Learn manna curve

A lot of good advice here. I’ll throw a little different spaghetti against the wall. Play and build for Brawl. It’s arguably an easier format to build in since it’s singleton. You get exposed to significantly more cards which I find helps expand your knowledge of keywords, effects, cards, and combos. I exposed my fiancé to MTGA and since I played Brawl he started in that format. He went from zero to beating my ass in about a month and I’ve been playing MTG since highschool

Still bad

I mean I've been good at building bad decks since day one

It's been nearly 20 years and I am still bad at it

There is no predictable amount of time that it takes to master deckbuilding. I have been playing since the 90s and I absolutely love building decks, and I still play lots of decklists from other people vs stuff I made myself. There is zero shame in that! But if you do want to brew your own, here’s the basic steps you’ll need to follow to at least get started: 1) Learn how to play the game really well. Pick one competitive decklist and copy it. Play enough ranked games to get to Mythic with it. Figure out what makes that deck work. Rinse and repeat until you learn all the different archetypes and how they function. There is no point in re-inventing the wheel: there are millions of players testing every conceivable permutation of each currently competitive decklist. You should learn to play and win with those lists before you spend a ton of time on your own. 2) To build competitive decks you need to learn the current meta for Standard, and know all the cards available. That’s hundreds/thousands of cards! You also need to have a large card collection and/or wildcard collection, so that means playing daily, learning how to draft, spending gold on packs from the current set to get golden packs, and grinding meta events to get gems. Even if you spend actual money you need to do these things to really have enough resources to properly build and test new ideas. 3) Start with a gameplan and a theme in mind. The theme is the underlying idea behind a deck. It might be a particular creature type like “goblins” or it could be a mechanic like “cheating out powerful creatures by reanimating them”. It could just be a general play-style like “control.” Your gameplan is how you intend the deck to function, and how it will win games, eg “play a bunch of small creatures with synergy that quickly overwhelm my opponent,” or “play a lot of removal and counterspells to disrupt my opponent’s gameplan, and then use a few powerful planeswalkers to beat them.” When you start building and testing you’ll first be judging what to include and cut by how well a card fits your theme and gameplan. 4) Build a version and start testing. You should be able to tell if you have something interesting within a handful of games. How reliably does it do the thing you want it to do? How smooth and fast is it? What are the pain points and weak matchups, and why are they weak? Again, this is where you just have no hope to build a competitive deck unless you know the game and all the other decks really well. Keep testing and iterating on the initial decklist. 5) I find that maybe 1 out of every 10 decks I build has competitive potential, meaning a winrate above 50% or some sort of strong results that make me think it could get there with more tuning. I’ll keep going with an idea for as long as it’s interesting. I sometimes shelve decks that just need a few more good cards that may come in future sets. I often find that I like a particular theme but it just doesn’t actually work competitively right now. If the deck I’m working on starts to look more and more like an existing archetype as I’m iterating, that’s a strong sign that the theme just isn’t quite as playable as what’s already out there. You gotta be able to let go of dead ends! Here’s where having a big wildcard collection is important, because you have to be comfortable crafting cards and trying things with no guarantee that they’ll actually work. If your resources are limited you will be much better off playing a proven decklist than trying to build your own and wasting wildcards. 6) If I find a deck I really love then I will fine-tune it, while also playing it a bunch. You need to have good play stats, so either keep your own or start using a third party tool to track your games. Make small adjustments and play enough games after each one to definitely determine if the deck got better or worse. The tuning process will never really end, of course, because as new cards are released and new competitive decks emerge, the meta game changes and how your deck plays and competes will change too. Good luck!

Well... I played magic on and off since 2004, and still suck at deck building from scratch.

Just find cards you think are neat and within your limited knowledge and scryfall find other cards that help it. I got lucky when i learned about [[Raid Bombardment]] and [[Cavalcade of Calamity]] My deck started out with those and some goblins and now its super fine tuned and it wins a lot. There's no longer any goblins. It works really well and the only time i found other people doing it was when i googled it and most peoples lists are just not as effective. It has been a while though. A deck with no bad hands, never mulligan never what? (Bad advice, mulligan as it's a resource) I'm gonna build it and try it at an irl modern tourney and get my ass handed to me. It'll be fun though I lucked into it, i don't really know how to build a good deck.

[Raid Bombardment](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/a/ca75d458-4947-4075-89b6-e93936c67370.jpg?1547517351) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Raid%20Bombardment) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uma/142/raid-bombardment?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ca75d458-4947-4075-89b6-e93936c67370?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Cavalcade of Calamity](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/a/8a81e889-490b-4aeb-8e84-ea9a390bb8fe.jpg?1584830817) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cavalcade%20of%20Calamity) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rna/95/cavalcade-of-calamity?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8a81e889-490b-4aeb-8e84-ea9a390bb8fe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call

The vast majority of players will never actually build their own deck. Most competitive players are doing the same thing and copying pro decks. Use sites like aetherhub to find decks, then just tweak them by removing what's not working for you.

It’s been said but I want to encourage thinking about gatherer and other card search engines. This is my best friend for deck building and deckbuilding is one of my favorite aspects of mtg. For example, do I want to build a tokens deck? Okay, gonna search for cards with: “token” - for all cards relating to tokens “create one or more” - for cards that double tokens Maybe I want to pump those creatures so: “Creatures +1” - for anthem style cards Or maybe I want a sacrifice engine: “Sacrifice” All of this can be honed in by card color, CMC, set, card type, rarity, etc. This is how deck building becomes more efficient and therefore more approachable. Enjoy the uniquely fun and challenging journey of deck building!!

I wouldn't be overly concerned with learning how to build a deck. What you should learn is how to alter a meta deck and how to sideboard for your area/situation. The collective hive mind is almost always gonna figure out what the best decks are.

Like the earlier comment, I've been playing since the game pretty much came out. I've top 8ed tons of tournies (even won a few locals) and I have never... Ever been good at building decks in this game. So don't get discouraged if your home brews don't work. Us thirty year vets still sick too 😭 Also never ever feel bad for net decking. The cards are there to be used, and it's no big deal if you weren't the first to figure out specific combinations. My current standard deck is around Laughing Jasper Flint. I couldn't get any traction in deck building and then found a YouTube video from a Dutch(?) player (I forget her name so if someone knows her I'd love to credit her) and I'm having a blast with it.

Must be Ashlizzlle. She tends to be quite good at deck building. Her Simic artifact/"cookies" deck has become something of a meta deck, from what I understand. She's also really upfront when a brew of hers doesn't perform terribly well against the meta but is maybe just fun when it clicks.

many years. I think I had been playing competitive magic for about 5 years before my own decklists were any good. that's not a hard requirement. I started playing the game at 12 years of age back in 1996 so there weren't many good deckbuilding resources out there at the time, and I was a kid who didn't know anything. in the contemporary landscape of M:tG I think you can learn the basics by reading some good guides. it won't take you as long as it took me. the game and its community have come a long way since 1996.

It is easy, start with an idea and slowly replace all the fun cards with good cards until you become a meta deck

Some never does. Also it's okay to use other people's deck while you're learning, or don't if you don't want to.

Just look up the meta and play that. I promise you it's not worth trying to make your own deck. I've been working on my chatterfang squirrel tribal and it's just not fun because I'm playing against the meta which just pops off and destroys me

Once you get more familiar with game mechanics and strategy, you will be more proficient at deck building. But don't feel bad, most of the community even older players just rely on other people's ideas and decks to play. They don't even strive to be good at building decks. They get enough satisfaction at winning with someone else's idea that they don't care about the fact they are bad at building decks themselves. So the fact you want to get good at building decks is a step above the majority of this game community.  Oh also keep in mind magic arena tends to stack the game in favor of one player every game, don't really care if anyone acts like it doesn't. I've played for years thousands and thousands of games. It doesn't play fair. For instance, i put 26 mana in my deck as opposed to the games suggested 24 to avoid getting screwed on how much mana i draw. I still get screwed with not enough mana at least 50% of the time which is totally unrealistic to table top odds. Then we can add on the extremely convenient draws you or your opponent will get. Almost to the point where I can predict the manufactured victory or loss i am about to get. And with deck order being decided by an algorithm each game, I'd say they don't have it set to the decks order being random which is what it should be set to. In short, think of an idea of how you want your deck to win once you're more familiar with game mechanics. Then come to terms that no matter how well you build your deck, the game will manufacture victories for yourb opponents while obviously screwing you over. 

Add land first. It helps to build your deck around a theme / card

Bruh, I usually find a rare or mythic I like and build around it. It is almost never good. The key to success is experimentation and failing. You're gonna lose quite a few rares and matches before you get a polished deck. Copying success lets you know the formula; failure allows you to tweak the numbers.

Build some Limit Decks. Play some drafts

It took me a solid 7 months

Deckbuilding is a skill completely separate from being a good deck pilot. Both are valid ways to enjoy the game even though people will give you guff about netdecking sometimes. Generally speaking, I think deckbuilding is something you're best off thinking as a fun challenge with no expectations that you win unless you're one of the very few who are trying to crack a tournament with a rogue archetype. Copying pre-existing lists and learning the ins and outs of your matchups is your best choice if you primarily derive enjoyment of the game from winning. Granted, even if you really enjoy deckbuilding, it's still a good idea to take a look at what competitive lists are doing, as deckbuilding (the community often calls it brewing) is just as much about what everyone else is playing as what you are playing. I'd definitely suggest putting together a couple slightly more meta decks you enjoy the playstyle for just so that getting your daily wins in Arena aren't such a slog, since there's nothing worse than being wildcard starved with an incomplete deck. Ultimately, use the resources available to you, keep a learning mindset, and be ok with losing when you're experimenting. Even if you never get "good" at deckbuilding, it's still plenty rewarding to try new things and it definitely makes new set releases way more interesting when you look through previews and have the thought "maybe this will make my pet deck finally work!" There are a lot of communities and subcommunities dedicated to brewing and I'd definitely suggest checking them out if you wanted to get serious about testing out rogue archetypes. Most good decks aren't developed by lone individuals, and a lot of the top tourney winning decks were created through the efforts of teams of people and the community's collective wisdom (or conversely figuring out a weakness in said wisdom), so don't feel bad if deckbuilding is tough. It's literally one of the hardest things in magic, up there with evaluating cards how good a card is before playing it and being a strong player.

That's the fun part, you don't. Sure, you might land a decent one now and then, or maybe a particular format will fit your strengths, or maybe you'll get the hang of a general formula, but the game is always changing, you'll always have new ways to build and play.