There are thousands of cards and hundreds of decks to choose from if you know anything about MTG, and the same applies to Arena. Beginners may seem overwhelmed and may not know what decks to use to get a firm grasp on the game, and that won’t cost anything. Luckily MTG arena offers 15 free starter decks that are better than you think.
The best decks for beginners will be decks that are easy to play and understand. These will be creature decks or a Red Mono Burn deck. Each color in MTG will offer its creatures an ability that is generally associated with it; red-haste, green-trample, white-life gain, black-deathtouch, blue-flying. These card mechanics make it easy to win and learn.
If you don’t want to spend any money but want to come up with winning decks with the free cards that MTG Arena gives you, this article will help you do that. We will go over how to get all the free cards and then discuss what type of decks you, as a beginner, should be looking to build.
Best Decks for beginners overview
Not only is MTG Arena free to play, but if you are a beginner, the game starts you off with 15 free decks consisting of hundreds of cards without you having to spend a single cent on the game. The decks comprise of mono and dual-colored decks.
The mono decks offer a basic understanding of how each color works in regards to its mechanics. Then the dual decks try and give you a sneak peek into how you can combine colors to offer you greater versatility and how cards of different colors can be mixed and complement each other.
What are the MTG Arena starter decks?
There are five mono-colored decks that you unlock as well as ten dual-color decks. We won’t go over every single deck (only the best ones) in this article and all the cards that come with them, but you can check out the decklists and the cards here.
How do you get a starter deck in MTG Arena?
To obtain your free starter decks in MTG Arena, you must play through the NPE (new player experience). This is a type of tutorial the MTG Arena forces you to play if you wish to get your free cards and decks. You are able to skip the tutorial, but then you won’t receive any of the cards for the mono-colored decks or dual-colored decks.
The NPE provides you with five tutorials that you have to win, and after that, five color challenges open up. These challenges are given to you in a series of five matches. The first four matches are played against the AI and have a predetermined draw. This is so new players are able to learn and understand the basics of MTG.
The last match is played against another player, and typically, you will be playing against a new player with a starting deck too. Winning this match awards wild cards and cosmetics.
The five mono-colored decks will be unlocked through this process and will be upgraded by completing all five of the challenges for each color.
MTG Arena will then give out daily quests for you to get your dual-colored starter decks after the color challenges have been completed. One thing to note is that when you are done with the NPE, playing the AI will not give you any progression on any rewards track. Beginner players can play against the AI to test out their strategies and any new cards that they put into their decks.
What are the best starter decks for beginners?
Beginners may not understand all the possibilities and mechanics that can be applied to a deck in MTG, so the best thing to do is keep it simple and play with decks that are easy to understand and can be used to win easily. With that in mind, the basic principles of MTG work around putting out creatures and casting spells that will help you kill your opponent. This can be done with any color because all colors in MTG have creatures and spells, but some colors are better at it than others. You also want to play with what you prefer and according to your playstyle.
As a beginner, we also need to consider that you don’t have many wild cards (blank cards used to create cards you want), and you won’t have many uncommons, rares, or mythic rares. Therefore the best decks to create will be simple ones that use the basic principles of MTG.
Creature decks
For creature decks, each color will have special abilities associated with their creatures. These can vary, but typically white will heal, black will have deathtouch, red will have haste, green will have trample, and blue will have flying. Remember, you will get creatures with different abilities for the other colors, but primarily, these abilities stated here are consistent with these colors.
Let’s quickly go over these abilities to get a feel for what you would prefer and what would suit your play style.
White life gain creature decks
life gain is the ability that will heal your total health for a certain amount. For example, a white card may have the ability that says when this card enters the battlefield; you gain 2 life.
This is great if you want a deck with creatures that raise your total health, making it difficult for your opponent to kill you.
Red Haste creature decks
The rules of MTG state that when a creature comes into play, it cannot attack that round because it has something known as summoning sickness, which prevents this. Red creatures have the ability known as haste, and this means when you put them on to the battlefield, they can attack straight away, which means you have the upper hand with creatures in most cases.
Red creatures are great if you intend to rush your opponent and kill them within the first few rounds.
Black deathtouch creature decks
Creatures with the deathtouch ability are great because any amount of damage dealt to another creature by a source (in this case, your black deathtouch creature card) with it will inflict lethal damage.
For example, if you have a 1/1 deathtouch creature and you block or get blocked by a 10/10, your creature will inflict deathtouch killing that 10/10.
This is a potent ability because it means you can have cheap cards that can kill almost any creatures your opponent has, offering you many attack and defensive strategies.
Green trample creature decks
Green creatures in MTG have the ability to trample and will typically be large creatures (have a high attack and toughness number). Trample is an ability that allows you to assign the remaining damage to your opponent if your card is blocked.
For example, if you have a 10/10 creature with trample and it is blocked by a 2/2 from your opponent, the remaining 8 damage that would usually be negated because you were blocked will be applied to your opponent’s health.
These creature decks are great because it means that you can always go on the offensive knowing you will deal damage to your opponent.
Blue flying creature decks
The great thing about the flying ability in MTG is that creatures with flying can only be blocked by other creatures with flying or ones that have the “reach” ability.
If you have a flying 3/3 and your opponent has a 5/5, but it does not have flying or reach, you can attack knowing that they won’t be able to block.
This is an effective tactic and is a meta deck in MTG every so often. Due to this ability, you can put out a handful of creatures, and in a couple of rounds, you can take down your opponent because he won’t be able to block
Spell decks (burn decks)
In terms of sorceries and instants, spells can also yield good results if you have a deck with the right combination. As a beginner, we won’t focus on all the colors but rather only red because red offers spells in the way of burn.
Other colors offer removal spells but not ones that will be able to kill your opponent outright or without the help from other cards and various mechanics.
Red burn spell decks
Putting together a red deck with a lot of burn spells can aid you in damaging your opponent’s health, or it can help you with removing stubborn creatures on the battlefield.
For example, a card like Shock deals 2 damage to any target, and there are thousands of instances where this card has been used to aggravate the opposing player by destroying a 2/2 or effectively killing them when they are on low health.
There are many combinations of a red burn deck, and in some cases, they are used in conjunction with creatures with hast to create a deck that is so aptly named “Red Aggro.” This is another meta MTG deck that is always being played and winning.
Are Planeswalker decks good for beginners?
Planeswalkers are specialized cards that offer extraordinary abilities and are usually put into a deck to aid in its mechanics. If you do not explicitly know what a planeswalker does and how it can effectively boost your deck when it comes into play, then as a beginner, you should probably stay away from them even though they look fantastic.
Furthermore, they are expensive to get a hold of, costing one mythic wild card, and typically more experienced players won’t just have one in their decks but four to increase the chances that they will be able to draw them.
Instead, stick with simple decks (like the ones we described) that can get the job done. You may lose a couple of times to more experienced players, but you will get a grasp on how the game is played, and instead of spending your few mythic wild cards on a planeswalker you think will work, save them until you have more experience in the game.
Conclusion
We discovered that MTG Arena gives you 15 free started decks, both mono and dual-colored. These consist of hundreds of cards that you can mix and match, creating decks that effectively cost you nothing and are pretty good if you know how to build a deck.
As a beginner, it is always best to stick to the simple outlaying aspects of magic to get a grasp on how to build decks and how the game is played. We went over some pretty fabulous beginner creature and spell decks you can make so that you will be able to become more experienced and win more often.
Remember that if you start to accumulate wild cards try not to go and get cards that catch your eye like planeswalkers but rather save them until you are more familiar with the game and then go to a site that offers decklists that you can peruse and import into MTG Arena.
One such site is Magic Esports that shows you what all the pros are using and how well the decks do.
