I played MTG pretty hardcore from the Mirage block through Invasion then stopped. I picked it back up shortly after DotP2012 came out and have been buying mostly common/uncommon cards and playing casually with friends. I already preordered my common/uncommon playsets from Avacyn Restored although I'm not really looking forward to any of the cards there. Just the collector in me I guess. I think I've gotten up to somewhere around 15,000 cards at this point.
As far as decks go, one I'm running right now is a W Life Gain deck centered around Ajani's Pridemate and Chalice of Life/Death. Since one of my friends only plays a U Control deck this typically means I end up with one or two Ajani's with Claustrophobia floating somewhere around 40/40 until I can pop an Oblivion Ring and one-shot him. Oddly enough, I never seem to get my Chalices during my games with him.
I'm also playing a B Necropotence deck with all the best lifelink/lifedrain/creature destruction I can muster. Also I'm an asshole and use some of my older cheap cards like Hymn to Tourach and Hypnotic Specter. Beyond that I have a pretty standard R Burn deck and a G Beatdown deck.
Finally I have two multicolored decks themed around Dark Ascension and the Diregraf Captain and Immerwolf. The BU zombie deck tends to get pretty good traction quickly but the RG werewolf deck seems a bit lacking. It just takes too long to get going so I think I'm going to scrap it in favor of a BR vampire deck.
@haffy: The basic idea is you build a deck of cards and the goal is kill the opponent, usually by doing damage and reducing their life to 0. A typical deck is approximately 1/3 Land cards and 2/3 Spell cards. Your lands are your resources and determine how many spells you can cast per turn. Your spells can do a wide variety of things including summon creatures, create one-time effects, or cause permanent buffs/debuffs.
Determining the skill of a player is twofold. The first part happens before the game in the form of deck construction. Most high-level decks involve a lot of synergy and efficiency. With hundreds and sometimes thousands of cards to choose from, it can be very difficult to narrow down the specific cards you want in your deck and the best players will be able to do this intelligently in order to maximize their chances to achieve a win condition. There is also the metagame aspect. As new sets are released and the available cards for tournament play change, different deck types will rise to prominence. Some players then find success by building decks specifically tailored to counter whatever the flavor of the week may be.
The second way skill is measured comes from the actual playing of the game. Although there is a certain degree of luck involved, the disadvantage of a terrible hand can often be mitigated by smart play and proper allocation of resources. Good players will be able to look at the spells they have available and, combined with their knowledge of their opponent's deck, decide when to sit on their cards and when to burn through them to turn the tide of battle.
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