Continuing on from our initial look at Magic: the Gathering 2014 and my own return to playing we are now going to take a look at the retail packs known as Deck Builders Toolkits. These packs have been released for several of the recent yearly sets of Magic and replace the more limited Starter Decks that, when used alone, players would have trouble making useable decks from. Whereas the Intro Decks I had mentioned previously are playable right out of the box with a specific theme and strategy in mind Toolkits are intended to give the player to choice of what kind of deck they wish to make. In addition they are an excellent way to boost a new player’s collection early on.
We’ll start off with what you can expect to find in each kit:
While not very exciting, land cards are essential to deck building and play as they become the basic resource you will use to cast other spells. 20 of each basic land type or colour are included. An average 60 card playing deck usually contains around 20~25 land cards so this is plenty.
These 85 cards appear in every 2014 toolkit and offer a solid foundation for each colour of magic. The cards are taken from the 2014 Core Set as well as the most recent expansion block Return to Ravnica (inc. Gatecrash & Dragon’s Maze). These particular expansions follow the storyline of the dual coloured guilds and as such encourage multi coloured deck play so fit the limited nature of the toolkit format very well.
For the 2014 toolkits 11 sets of 10 cards each have been set out to form common strategies. Each toolkit contains four of these 10 card sets. Examples of themes are Sacrifice, Aggression, Life Gain, and Control.
Once you’ve been playing Magic for a while you will know the joy that comes with the opening of a booster pack. Each contains 15 random cards of various rarities from a specific core set or expansion. Magic 2014 toolkits contain random boosters from the 2013 & 2014 core sets as well as the three Return to Ravnica expansions.
Two large, double sided, fold out posters that explain the rules of play and basic deck building and play strategies.
In short, you get quite a lot of cards for the £17.99 asking price, especially considering that it contains four booster packs that would cost about £3 each if bought alone. As a player builds their collection they will likely move onto simply buying booster packs but for the beginner or someone looking to quickly expand their collection this is certainly the way to go.
But are the claims that a toolkit contains everything you will need to build a usable deck true? I decided I should probably put this to the test so I grabbed a sealed toolkit and sat down at my regular magic hangout Geek Retreat. I commandeered some help from Dominic, once of the many helpful, experienced players that attend the regular Wednesday Night Magic sessions and we cracked open the toolkit and went through the cards. After picking out several card with work well together a theme began to emerge. What we ended up with was a reasonable solid deck that while quite unfocused was very much playable in the several test matches that we put it through, mission accomplished.
Now that isn’t the end of the story, most powerful magic decks will have a much stronger focus on specific mechanics and goals that will require multiple copies of cards and that is not something you are going to be able to pull out of a toolkit but what it does offer is a starting point. Play your newly constructed deck a few times and you’ll begin to discover mechanics and strategies that you enjoy and from there you can trade for and purchase additional cards to focus and improve your deck.
The two decks that I currently play are built around the generation of angel tokens using the white Angelic Accord enchantment and direct damage triggered by sacrificing black Festering Newts and both of these cards are part of the 2014 fixed toolkit set. The most important bit of advice I can give you however is to find other players and talk over your ideas with them, they will be more than happy to help anyone new to the game.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.