Practice · half-decks

One of the four half-decks is your base pack. Take whichever of the other three makes a deck with it, judging them by what they do for one another rather than by how strong each looks alone.

The five strategic ideas, in short

• Blitzkrieg. Cheap, aggressive creatures plus removal and finishers. Pressure from turn one and something to finish with when the momentum stops.
• By land and by air. Cheap, aggressive creatures plus creatures with evasion. The ground stalls; the fliers keep going.
• Hammer and anvil. Defensive creatures plus creatures with evasion. The ground holds while the air wins.
• Green likes it big. Big creatures plus mana accelerators, with combat tricks. Survive to the point where size decides the game.
• Strength in numbers. Cards that draw you more cards, plus the cards that buy time — removal and blockers — so you live long enough to spend them.
• Anything that is none of these is Jim’s deck: good cards that do not serve one another.

This exercise practises MTG Functional Synergy.