MtG Deck Tech: How Many Cards Should I Use In My Deck?

MtG Deck Tech 

"How Many Cards Should You Use In A MtG Deck?"

One of the most basic necessities of Magic the Gathering is building your play deck.  Whether you are playing tabletop Magic, Magic 2014 Duels of The Planeswalkers, or Magic on iPad or another tablet, you still have to tweak and tune your play deck to make it competitive.  This starts with the first lesson on Deck Size.

There are 2 minimum deck requirements depending on what format of MtG you are choosing to play.

Constructed Format - In the Constructed format you build your deck from your card pool of cards you own, or in the case of Magic 2014 Duels of the Planeswalkers, from the base deck of cards and the cards you have unlocked for possible addition to your deck.  This format has a minimum requirement of 60 cards per deck.

Sealed / Draft Formats - In the Sealed and Draft formats you are only allowed to use cards from the provided packs allowed for the event.  In the Sealed deck format you only use what you open in your own packs. In draft format you open a pack, pick a single card out, then pass that pack to the player next to you and continue picking one card from each pack passed to you.  There is no Draft format in Magic 2014 Duels of the Planeswalkers, but the 2014 edition of the game did just add the Sealed format to the game.  In both Sealed and Draft formats you have a minimum requirement of 40 cards.

Choosing The Correct Amount Of Cards For Your Magic Deck

Regardless of which format you are playing in, you should always use the bare minimum of cards required to build your play deck.  That means no more than 60 cards for a normal Constructed deck and no more than 40 cards for a Sealed or Draft format deck.  

Why only use the bare minimum of cards for your deck?

You only want to use the bare minimum requirement for MtG deck size because of two simple concepts - Consistency & Probabilty  When building a deck to be competitive, you want the slimmest, most efficient, leanest deck possible so that it will perform consistently.  The more cards you add to a deck, the less efficient and less consistent it will become.  

Having a slim deck means that you have a better chance (or Probability) of drawing a nice opening hand, better chance to prevent getting mana screwed (not having enough lands to cast your spells), and a better chance at drawing what you need when you need it!  The more cards you add into your deck the less probability you will have of drawing what you need, thus your deck will suffer from what I like to call "Deck Bloat".  You deck is bloated when it has more cards than needed to run consistently as your deck probability suffers.

So remember when building or tweaking your deck - Run Slimmer & Run Stronger!

If you are playing on Magic 2013 or Magic 2014 Duels of the Planeswalkers, the game is set up to automatically bloat your deck!  As you unlock cards they are automatically added to your deck, so be aware and slim that deck back down to 60 as you unlock new cards.

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